Hart, Mallory Dorn

by Jasmine on the Wind

  Dolores gave up the always hopeless quest for information about her mother, but in revenge she teased her aunt. "Better to wash like a fish than stink like a goat. Men— gentlemen, that is—don't like goats, Auntie."

  Her aunt pursed her lips and wrinkled a sweaty forehead plastered with wisps of hair. Dolores was yet a child. How did she come to speak in such a manner? Yes, she had noticed the lengthening leg, the budding chest. She had even provided Dolores with some soft, clean rags the day her monthly bleeding commenced. But Dios mío, that was only some months ago....

  Touched by her aunt's dismayed expression, Dolores relented. Quickly ducking herself she came up streaming and laughing. "Ah, Tía, don't worry. Do you know what I think of boys—young men—the pack of them, idiotas? This! Pouf!" She clapped her hands in the water, splashing a geyser all around and loosing a peal of girlish laughter that pulled the corners of her aunt's mouth up into her fat cheeks again.

  Tía Esperanza was relieved. That was more like Dolores. This bathing, this concern about a little excess dirt, didn't yet mean her little girl had fled forever. She simply liked to dandle about in the water. She saw Dolores's brown tunic, which reached only to the girl's bare knees, lying in a heap on the packed earth of the yard, and there was a momentary sadness in her heart. Poor, unskilled in any honest way, for she could neither weave a basket nor sew a seam, Dolores was destined to marry at most some artisan's apprentice. Papa el Mono's money would never go into the decent dowry which might attract a shopkeeper, for instance. Ah yes, gentlemen, indeed.

  She ripped out the last few feathers, and there was the goose, plucked naked. "Dolores, come out of there!" she ordered. "I cannot leave the imbeciles in the kitchen too long to their own devices."

  "One more minute, Auntie, one more," Dolores entreated her indulgent aunt, unwilling to leave the silky feel of the water against her skin. Nevertheless she quit her lolling and began to wash seriously. She rubbed a piece of coarse soap against the small breasts that had finally appeared on her chest this year. It felt peculiarly good....

  She raised a glistening arm to wash underneath and became fascinated by the progression of sparkling drops beading down its length. Supposing they were jewels, she dreamed, the baubles of Queen Isabella. They would be sapphires and pearls, in fact her whole arm would be shimmering in cloth of silver sewn with jewels, as once she had seen when the Court had ridden through Ciudad Real. Like the proud ruler of Castile and Leon, she would raise a gold-hilted sword to the shoulder of the gallant young knight who knelt worshipfully at her feet....

  Two youths sauntered around the corner of the scullery, the gleam of mischief hardly hidden in their elaborately casual glances. Dolores's soaring moment was shattered. She quickly refocused her eyes and pulled her queenly arm back into the water. In fact, she narrowed her eyes, being experienced with the two of them, and crouched deeper into the cloudy water.

  Her brother Carlos moved his tall, spare body with economy, but Francho, the orphan her aunt had taken in years ago, approached with an easy grace, almost a swagger. He gripped in his hand the neck of a small lute he had robbed from a group of musicians and from whose worn strings, by dint of dogged practice and a natural ear for melody, he was able to coax a number of popular ballads. He had lately taken to composing doggerel of his own, too. He considered the battered instrument one of his dearest possessions and was rarely without it unless he was working. His smile was all innocence now as he cradled his lute, twanged a few chords, and impudently improvised in a clear, pleasant voice that had begun to deepen:

  There once was a mistress, a mistress there was

  With visage bedizened with dirt and with fuzz,

  She danced for the Devil and fearing his wrath

  Leaped into a barrel and took her a bath!

  Both youths choked back their laughter, although Carlos tried to seem grave, but Dolores knew that the anticipatory gleam in Francho's cerulean blue eyes meant her no good, and as they started toward her again she shrilled, "Stop! Don't come any closer."

  "Carlos! Francho!" Tía Esperanza warned, coming to a sudden decision there and then that Dolores had outgrown these sorts of rough pranks that even she had once laughed at.

  The boys halted where they were and looked at each other, then back at Dolores, who sat so temptingly in a barrel which could be dumped over in a second.

  "Hombre." Francho poked the lean Carlos in the ribs. "What is this? A fiesta day? A saint's day? If Dolores is washing herself there must be a special event coming up, otherwise she doesn't care how dirty her face is."

  Carlos smiled in his peculiar, reserved manner, with only half his mouth turning up. "Sí, hombre," he drawled, "and if she washes her face how will we ever know her from all the other wenches? That way at least she was easy to recognize."

  "Perros!" Dolores yelled at them, suspecting the worst. "Maybe your faces are so clean, los bajos? Get out of here."

  Tía Esperanza shook her three chins at them. "Sí, and what matter if her face be dirty? Soon enough the tosspots at the wine keg will be looking under the dirt." Or under her skirt, the aunt thought to herself darkly.

  His aunt's remark had sharpened Francho's attention on the pert, sun-browned face from which tilted gray eyes watched him warily over the barrel rim. She looked the same to him as always, didn't she, only cleaner? And yet—his smile did not falter but he felt a small shock of surprise. The baby roundness of her cheeks and of her indented chin had somehow melted away, for the familiar face seemed more finely contoured along the delicate bones. It occurred to him that the pink lips had acquired a sort of definite molding, and more width. His eyes followed the tangled strands of wet hair to the tops of her shoulders, which glistened in the sun and which seemed to have lost their sharpness, and the arm she shot from the water to shake an angry, clenched fist at them had rounded out, no longer resembling a frail twig.

  Francho had never much thought of Dolores as female or pretty, she was just Dolores, someone to tease and tussle with when things were dull, an unintimidated hoyden who made a passable cutpurse. From his vantage point of a half-year past fifteen he still considered her a child. Nevertheless, the more sculpted outline of her features could not be denied. He watched Dolores's lips hurl epithets but he scarcely heard. It suddenly was obvious to him that the young girl in the tub could be praised for more than her deft fingers, and somewhere behind this thought he knew he'd already noted her prettiness and hadn't wanted to accept it. He was amazed at how quickly girls changed.

  Frowning ominously at the mischief seekers who still stood leering at the angry girl, Tía Esperanza nevertheless found her thoughts occupied by how fast they had all grown from children to adults. Dolores was her favorite, a lively and, until lately, a grubby child. Carlos was close-mouthed, aloof, he always made her a little uncomfortable because it was hard to tell what he was thinking. Pepi, the youngest, whose hard birth had killed their mother, was the image of his father, a wiry boy with a stutter and a grin. And then there was her foundling, Francho. She watched him teasingly strum a few more chords while Dolores fumed, and remembered—was it already over six years ago?—that hot day when she had battled with Papa el Mono to keep the starved and heatsick little boy who lay in a stupor on a bench in the scullery.

  "...Santa María, Santa Ana, San Raimundo, they will all know of your heartless deed.... The Devil will come for you as his own... you will be forsaken...." She remembered pleading, "You cannot put this feverish child into the heat, into the dust, without a mouthful of water, cruel man. No, I will not let you. The poor little soul, see how little and skinny he is, he has no father, he has no mother, no—"

  Papa el Mono had clapped his hands over his ears and screwed up his face. "Hold! Hold, you screaming woman, you are knocking a hole in my head. Enough! Succor your doxy's bastard, give him some gruel, whatever will shut up your trap, and send him away. And be it on your head if he steals every coin we have." Shaking his head in disgust, the innkeep shuffled off to see why t
he evening's roast pig had not been spitted yet.

  From the moment the little boy opened eyes shockingly blue in his pale-olive face, and, crooning at him, she pushed the damp, black curls off his forehead, Esperanza knew that God had sent this particular little tatterdemalion for her to take care of. When the child recovered a bit he said his name was Francisco, that he was nine years old, that he was homeless and had wandered from a place farther north for many weeks. And then he stubbornly set his mouth against saying any more. She kept him mostly out of Papa's sight and spun out the time it took to put a little meat on his bones. In turn he was wide-eyed at life in the hostelry and seemed willing to stay on, and so, a few weeks later, she once more accosted her brother to convince him that the child would be a good addition to the small band of cutpurses he was training.

  "I assure you, hermano mío, he is very smart—small and quick and not only that but he can read. Every day he reads to me the public notices the guards knock to our gates," Tía declared in wonder.

  The innkeep's shoulders rounded in self-defense. "I don't know. Who is he? Where is he from? How does it happen that he has such learning?"

  Tía shrugged. "What does that matter? He will not tell me much. Perhaps he is ashamed." Her fat face began to fold up and she wrung her apron. "Believe me, brother, he will make a fine pupil, he will bring us a mountain of reales, wait, you will see. Carlos likes him. He is going tonight with Carlos to the plaza major, just to watch—"

  Papa jerked his head around. "He already knows? What crack-brained loco idiocy, woman, you will ruin us. How do we know he will not run right to the Hermandad and betray us for a few pennies' reward?"

  "No, no, he would not do that, you don't know how polite and shy he is. This lad is an angel from God. I beg you, brother, just talk with him, let 'Fredo teach him—"

  "Basta! Enough, woman, I will think of it." Papa el Mono whined and shuffled away, worrying the inside of his ear with a finger. "I need to take a little siesta in this cursed heat, and you bray like twelve asses, a man has nowhere to turn for peace under his own roof...."

  A buzzing fly landed on Tía Esperanza's oily nose and brought the present back with a rush, breaking her few moments of musing. She shook off the annoying insect, frowned at her three charges, still confronting each other with insults. The raw-boned and stone-faced Carlos, a man of seventeen, already was breaking into the dangerous but lucrative business of stealing and selling horses. As for Francho, it was hard to see that small, undernourished, and strangely naive streetchild in this broad-shouldered, self-assured youth with the spark of deviltry in his black-fringed, azure eyes. She relished the fact that his hulking instructor 'Fredo boasted often to Papa how easily Francho eluded both outraged citizens and city guards alike. He was maturing, his worn tunic was tight across his chest, and his voice had lowered, but he was a good boy, one who could read and write and even sing, and he came to High Mass with her every week.

  And Dolores? Tía considered the glowering girl. Dolores would often climb into her aunt's great lap to give her a big, hard hug of affection. Who knows, Tía Esperanza mused, getting lost in her own daydreams, Dolores might yet turn out to be a real beauty and be noticed by some man of worth who would keep her well. Perhaps even the Alcalde of the city, whose roving eye was well known. If she became the mayor's mistress, Dolores would live in a fine house with her own serving wench. And then perhaps the favored mistress would remember her old auntie with a valuable trinket... some money... a place in a pilgrim's caravan to Santiago de Campostela....

  Francho decided they'd traded enough smart remarks with Dolores and lowered his lute. Grinning, he nudged Carlos and gestured toward the angry bather with his head. Carlos nodded, very solemn, and they moved forward together, intoning:

  "Oh, what a splash if we turned over the whole barrel...."

  "Dolores would float down the courtyard on the tide...."

  "And minstrels would write ballads about it, the song of the naked nymph, backside up on the tiles...."

  "Flowing over the wall and into the horsetrough for another dunk." They doubled over with laughter at their victim's helpless scrabbling to find a hiding place in the water.

  "Tía!" Dolores shrieked to her aunt, who was sitting gathering wool. "Stop them. Dogs! Animals! Dirty scum! Your scullery maids will show you their nakedness, not I. I'll slit your throats, whoresons!" Her voice hit a high note.

  Tía Esperanza heaved herself up and waddled toward them like an avenging avalanche, ready to swing the plucked goose by its neck, muttering darkly.

  The avalanche and the goose would have descended on their heads if they hadn't heard Pepi calling from the stableyard, his voice insistent and shrill with excitement, obviously something more important brewing than this little pastime. With an assenting glance at each other they abandoned the game, dodged away from Tía Esperanza's slaps, and loped to duck around the corner of the building.

  "I'll make you sorry, you slop-tails," Dolores yelled after them. "You'll be sorry you ever tried that, I promise you, cow dung... vile snakes...!" Her voice rose to a screech, and she hurled her hunk of soap at them as they disappeared.

  "Ay, madre mía, that witch will burst her throat one day," Carlos remarked mildly.

  "Or our heads," Francho added, but his grin had faded. He had turned to look back just as Dolores in her fury forgot herself, rose up to throw the soap, and inadvertently gave him a view of her glistening wet, small, pointed, and pink-tipped breasts, jutting out as her arm went back. A jolt lurched through his stomach and into his groin, a pleasant feeling even though it caught at his breath. It wasn't new to him, he was no virgin, but he clamped his jaw and tried to erase the feeling and the lingering picture of that pale, soft flesh. It was Dolores and Dolores was Dolores, not a girl...

  They intercepted Pepi and strained to hear the news, which he jabbered so fast, his monkey face screwed up so intently that they were forced to pull him away from the early customers straggling through the gates, and into a secluded corner of the stable so he could repeat it more slowly and coherently.

  "The constable, I heard the c-constable tell it to the s-smith near the Alcalde's house," Pepi stuttered doggedly. "They are expecting an im-m-portant party to arrive tonight. The C-C-Count of Tendilla, he said." Pepi's eyes grew big as he mentioned the name of the nobleman admired through the length and breadth of Spain and Granada. "The C-Count of Tendilla, riding with his household and m-men-at-arms. A rich c-caravan, fine horses, everything!"

  Carlos's hand shaking his arm calmed him down. "Did you happen to find out where they would camp?"

  "S-sí, to the north, off the road to Manzanares. But not the C-Count. The c-constable said the Count would be the guest of the w-w-whoreson scum Alcalde."

  His listeners smiled, knowing that the endearing terms were more likely Pepi's than the constable's.

  Carlos hunkered down, picking up a straw and chewing on it reflectively. In his memory only one royal cortege and few ricos hombres had visited Ciudad Real, even the Duke of Infantada, who owned castle and property but ten leagues distant, preferred not to spend time in the harsh climate of this part of Castile. Ciudad Real was not big enough to attract the visits of members of the Court, who preferred to pass through Valdepena and Alcazar de San Juan on their way north or south. So a large, noble party was a special event.

  Francho joined him in a crouch, unable to restrain the eagerness in his eyes. "Listen, amigo, a fat, noble purse would at least be worthy of our efforts. We take our chances in the church and at the fairs for a few trinkets and what amounts to a few gold ducats at best. But this means real booty, purses full of gold and chains and jewelry worth our time and lord grand ricos hombre won't even miss them. What do you think? There'll be plenty of confusion when so large a company arrives. I can easily slip in and—"

  "Not so fast, El Cid," Carlos interrupted, biting on his straw. "Personal soldiers are different from the stupid city guards. They have to have eyes in their heads if they want
to keep their fancy tabards. You'll have to carefully pick just the right time and place and make sure your legs are in working order if you don't want to end up with the rats in the Alcalde's dungeons."

  Francho flashed his engaging smile. He knew Carlos enjoyed the role of senior advisor and that he was right about the alertness of personal guards versus the lazy Hermandad riffraff whose vigilance in guarding the citizens was never too expert. But he felt Carlos ignored how experienced he was. Six years of successful stickyfingers counted for something.... "Don't worry. You know I could steal the pillow from under the bishop's fat tail without him skipping a single Deus Benitus." He punched Carlos in the arm lightly. "I'll have my souvenirs and they won't even know I was there. I'm thinking the time to move is when they arrive, that should be about sundown if Pepi has heard correctly. Not dark enough, true, but they'll be tired and unwary, and it seems the best occasion to have a stab at them before they disappear behind the Alcalde's gates."

  Carlos listened to him calmly, and Pepi was hardly breathing. Confidently he continued. "As for place, it will have to be wherever I see there is an opportunity to separate a prize from its owner. If Pepi makes a diversion I can be on them and gone in one second. It will be easy, like flicking the hat from a blind man's head."

  "That's the sort of reckless optimism that could be the ruin of you, my friend. Nothing that results in gain is easy, remember that, especially where you risk getting a lance in your ribs for any misstep or ill luck. Still, you have courage and brashness, and most likely they will see you through. They always have."

  The black-eyed gaze locked with the blue one. Carlos decided Francho had not grown overly much yet, even though his shoulders were broadening and his neck had thickened; he was still built slim enough to disappear through a crowd. The youth was smart, and in fact Carlos gave him a silent respect for his ability to read and write and to think quickly. There was an ease with which he approached the world which sometimes made Carlos envious. But Francho was often cocky and imprudent, taking unnecessary risks for the exhilaration of it.