Brimming with delight at her brilliant idea, Blanca danced around her grinning serving maid as Dolores dropped the deep blue, high-waisted gown over her head, then pulled tight the front bodice laces so that only a mere edging of her white chemise showed over the square, black-embroidered neckline. The neckline was lower than she had ever worn, exhibiting the firm rise of her satin-skinned breasts, which, Blanca declared with a touch of envy, did not even require a corselet to keep them high. And it was here, on this warm field, that Dolores nestled the round locket, enameled with fanciful birds and flowers, hanging it next to the strange, square coin suspended from her neck on a thin gold chain she had pinched years back.
With Blanca's help she draped the veil over the high, wide hennin, which did not look quite right since her burnished auburn hair waved loose beneath the hat instead of being totally tucked in, or at least coiled up around her ears. However, the idea was there, and except for a couple of inches too little at the hemline of the gown—"We can say it is an Andalusian fashion," Blanca giggled—they both decided that the effect was fine, that the transformation from serving maid to lady-in-waiting was made, in appearance, anyhow.
As Dolores craned to see the whole costume in Blanca's little mirror, they were interrupted by a soft knock on the door. Dolores went to unbar it, her step suddenly more stately, unable to contain a smile of pure pleasure as the veil rippled and the small train of the gown swished behind her. She opened to Miguel, who immediately swept off his peaked felt hat and pulled his gray forelock politely.
"Just come to remind you, my lady, that we must make an earlier start tomorrow"—he goggled as he realized it was Dolores and not Blanca—"if we are to reach the only inn on our road before dark...." He trailed off.
Laughing, they both at once pulled him into the chamber to explain Dolores's finery, for he must needs be part of the conspiracy too. Miguel could do little in the face of his mistress's insistence on the transformation but agree to go along with it. If it made his young mistress feel more confident, he considered, where was the harm? The gloomy Ganavet domicile could use the brightening up of two young ladies, and the wench Dolores would know better than to lord it over him.
"So then, when we reach home you will address her as a lady, as Doña Dolores. You do understand, Miguel, how this can but better impress my betrothed husband with our quality?" Blanca peered anxiously into the man's one good eye.
He nodded slowly, not wishing to upset her with the fact that having a lady in attendance would never fool anyone who could see even with one eye how deteriorated was her house and depleted the land. But he agreed, "Yes, Doña Blanca, it shall be as you say." Turning to Dolores he dropped a thick, gray eyebrow over his one eye and studied her. "Sí. You look the part of a gently reared damsel. But 'tis more than a gown that makes a lady." He grunted. "You must not forget your courtesies. My master may be old and close to death, but he is nobility and he can recognize such easily."
Her pride stung, Dolores faced him, chin lifted. "You have naught to worry, Miguel," she answered grandly. "I am a good mime and no actions of mine will give me away, even to the Baron."
"I shall hope so."
Casting one last sidelong glance at Dolores, the grooves deeper in his lined face, Miguel shrugged and left.
"You know," Blanca said as Dolores divested herself of both finery and chemise and knelt to say a quick prayer, "I remember a chest of my mother's garments and coifs still in the chamber where she slept. If the mice have not gotten them, we could make them over to be more fashionable for you." She was already snuggled down, naked, under their own sheets and a blanket of colorful wool squares sewn together. "Although I noticed in Merida that the hennin is fast losing favor."
"But what of my name? My family history?" Dolores questioned, slipping into the other side of the bed, naked too. Doña Dolores, the Lady Dolores, she repeated to herself, she already loved the sound of that name.
Blanca smiled into the dark, hugging herself with the pleasure of their little deceit, her spirits much higher now with the end of the trip in sight and a lady of her own to carry her train. But she was tired. "Well, let's go to sleep now and we'll think on it as we travel. You're so clever at thinking up things, we should have a complete genealogy by the time we see Torrejoncillo." She giggled. There was silence between them for a moment. Suddenly Blanca slid over awkwardly and kissed Dolores on the cheek.
"What was that for?" Dolores wanted to know, surprised and touched, imagining the demure Blanca's face reddening.
"I... I suppose I can do that now that you are my lady," the girl stammered. And then, she breathed, in a rush, "Oh, Dolores, I am so glad you came with me. How should I have stood this awful journey without you, or what I must face at its end. I... I feel so blessed that the Good Lord fated us to come together. I know how hard you've tried to make my portion seem easier and how I've often been grumpy and unappreciative. But if I had a sister or kinswoman, I would have wished her to be just like you."
Shyness overtook her and she quickly slipped back to her own place, but Dolores caught at her hand and squeezed it warmly, swallowing the lump in her own throat, wordless for once. The erstwhile serving maid could finally only say, "Thank you. Thank you, dear Doña Blanca. I am grateful to you too."
"Good night, amiga," came the soft response.
"Good night, my lady."
***
Dolores was forced to surrender her dream to the insistent noise that had been irritating her, and she woke. She was facing the unshuttered window, so that the first thing she saw on opening her eyes was the morning star glittering lonely in the cold blue of approaching day. Then the noise came again, a loud whimper. A shadow moved, and, adjusting her eyes, she saw Blanca's profile and indistinct shape outlined against the window.
"Blanca. What is it?"
"Oh, Dolores, a pain. I have a bad pain, here, in my right side. It woke me up a while ago and it won't go away. Oh!" the girl cried, bending over, "it is so sharp it makes me feel sick."
Dolores slid from the bed, ignoring the goose pimples as the chill air struck her warm body, pattering to where Blanca was leaning against the window embrasure, one hand pressed against the side of her belly. Putting an arm around the doubled-over girl, she tugged at her, "Come back to bed, Doña Blanca, come back to bed where it is warm. You'll see, it is nothing, it will go away."
"It feels like sharp knives," Blanca moaned, but she stumbled along, allowing Dolores to help her back to bed. "I have never had such a pain before. What is it? What has assailed me?" She shivered as Dolores tucked the blanket about her curled up form. "Oh, oh, it gets worse," she cried out, convulsively drawing up her knees to her chin.
Quickly Dolores slipped on her chemise and padded over to the iron brazier, where she touched a candle to the still glowing charcoal. Blanca was like a babe-in-arms. The least cut or scratch or bad stomach made her go pale with fear. "Don't be frightened, doña, 'tis only air, gas," she called over her shoulder, "I will massage it for you and it will pass. Perhaps the meat for our supper was spoiled."
She put the candle on a stool close to the bed. "See, chasing away the darkness will chase away your fears. A light has always helped me to calm when terrible beasts pursue me in a bad dream and I wake up terrified. You'll see, by morning you will be well." But when she stroked Blanca's brow she couldn't help frowning, for she felt too much warmth under the palm of her hand. The girl moaned and quivered, whimpering, "Holy Virgin, Holy Virgin, help me."
"Shh, now, it is only air, you will see, it will soon come out from one end or the other. Let me rub the spot...." But at her gentlest touch on Blanca's lower right side the girl squealed with pain and knocked away her hand. "It will be cock's crow in a short while and the servants will be up. I will get you a clear, hot broth with some verjuice squeezed in, and the pain will dispell, I promise you," Dolores soothed, wishing she felt as confident as she sounded, for she had never known the sticking of air in the entrails to cause fever.
> She wished she had known her mother, who was a healer as well as a baker and who would have taught her which herbs and balms to use when people fell sick. She wished she had spent more time in the convent dispensary learning from the nun who mixed the potions and made the compresses. But Dolores knew no more to do than to hold Blanca's hand tightly as the pain made the girl writhe and clench her body. They would have to wait for morning to seek medicine.
Yet, in an hour Blanca was better, lying limp but quiet on the bed, breathing wearily through her mouth. Although her head was still warm, the onslaught of pain seemed to have passed, and when Miguel knocked she was quite able to get up. Dolores helped her to wash her face and hands and to dress and plaited and coiled her hair for her, placing a turbanlike coif just so on the droopy head. But Blanca could only move stiffly, for her side was sore and tender to the touch.
Dolores had donned her own gray serge gown, which would suffice to take the stains and wear of travel until they were closer to their goal. She would save the blue velvet, for it was Blanca's plan to rent them some saddle animals in a town close to Torrejoncillo so they might ride to her home with greater dignity than that lent by an old cart.
Listless at the common room table, Blanca ate little of her breakfast, a spoonful of cooked oats and a bite of cheese, but Dolores purchased a substantial meat pie with some dried fruits for their midday meal and hoped the girl might find more appetite.
"What is the matter with her?" Miguel asked Dolores from the corner of his mouth, having noticed the glaze over Blanca's eyes and hearing her gasp and clutch at her side as he had to half-hoist her into the cart.
Dolores shrugged, but did not smile. "I think it is wind in the belly. She was even worse last night, but this morning she stopped her moaning and seemed able to continue on."
"I pray God she is not falling ill," Miguel grunted. He gestured at the meandering road they were traveling, hardly more than a trail, its boundaries indistinct from the surrounding woods and fields, its path full of stones and depressions. "There is naught between here and the hostel in Delbrava, and we must journey almost eight, ten hours to achieve that. And a bouncing ride, too. This is not the King's highway."
"Oh, she will be all right," Dolores said, hoping it would be true. "Just try not to drive us through every hole in Spain." Now she did smile faintly, joking to ease the old man's concern.
In fact, Blanca did seem more comfortable with each passing league, gasping only softly when the cart's rattling, wooden wheels joggled over jutting stones or a dead tree branch blown into the narrow path. Huddled in her cloak she leaned tiredly against the humped, wooden frame holding aloft the canvas. Her face was pale, but she would give Dolores a weak, reassuring smile now and then, and she insisted she felt much better. When they stopped to eat she even had a mouthful of the greasy meat pie Dolores and Miguel devoured, washing it down with water from a stoppered jug.
In mid-afternoon the fitful sun that had been warming the day disappeared altogether behind an overcast of low, gray-black clouds, which scudded swiftly through the sky above them. Soon jagged lightning flashed and deep rumblings echoed in the distance, spurring the few peasants who shared their path to turn off toward familiar shelters beyond the trees. But Miguel spied the red walls and turrets of a castle jutting up from the crest of a rocky hill, and he judged it was not too far. With a quick squint at the sky, he called back that they had time to reach it, for there they would surely be given shelter from the storm and perhaps even herbals to ease Blanca's bellyache. They jolted along, creaking and rattling and jingling as fast as the old man could make the mules pull the cart.
The horrendous clap of thunder right overhead and Blanca's sudden, terrible shriek of agony as she grabbed at her side occurred together, each as terrifying as the other. Dolores thought the poor girl was pitching from the cart and dove to hold her from falling out. But Blanca was vomiting, with a retching, gagging sound, vomiting and moaning, bent double on one side. Dolores scrambled to hold the burning forehead of the stricken girl, who was delivering up her guts over the side of the cart between breathless moans and gasps. Dolores was frightened now. This was not a simple case of indigestion.
Emptied, panting, Blanca fell back in her arms, turning up eyes bright with fever and terror. "Dolores, what is happening to me? Ay, mi madre, it hurts, make it stop, make it stop," she gasped out as Dolores groped with one arm for the water bottle to hold to Blanca's mouth. "I have never had such pain. My whole belly is on fire with the flames of Hell! I will die. I know it. Ay, ay..." she shrieked out, writhing to the floor of the cart, tears of pain spilling over her screwed up face.
Chewing her lip in consternation, Dolores yelled out to Miguel between the violent cracks of thunder. He came loping back to the cart, gray hair blowing in the rising wind. The careworn lines between his big nose and chin sunk deeper yet as he realized the serious situation.
Between them they maneuvered the screaming, retching girl onto the blanket on the floor of the cart, where she clenched herself into a tortured knot. There was just enough room for Dolores to hunker beside her. Miguel fished a blanket from the bundle of linen, while Dolores cut a strip from one of their sheets with the small eating knife she drew from the reticule hung from her belt. She wet the cloth with water from the jug and applied it to Blanca's burning forehead.
"How far to that castle?" she yelled at Miguel against the wind and the flapping of the canvas, as the first great drops splattered down into the swirling dust of the trail. "She needs shelter and medicines. Can we reach it?"
"I don't know," the old man yelled back, pulling the hood of his tunic up over his cap. "That castle could be further than I thought, mayhap an hour, and I can get little speed from these old mules. And if we are caught in a torrent the wheels will mire. But we'll try. Pray, girl, pray Jesu to overcome the evil demons that are attacking that poor child."
Dolores had just time to wonder if it was rain or tears she saw on his leathery cheeks before he hurried back to the mules.
The cart's canvas covering made little difference when the storm fully broke since the rain blew in from both open ends. Blanca was partially protected by the mound of chests and bundles blocking the back end, but Dolores's cloak-shrouded head and shoulders were soon dampened. She took no notice, all her attention taken up with trying to ease the screaming Blanca, wetting the cloth again and again, wiping sweat and tears from the grimacing face, holding tight to the clawing hands, bending to ears that turned this way and that to plead into them, "Take heart, Doña Blanca, the Lord will help you and the Holy Saints, for did we not pray and confess and cleanse ourselves of sin before we left Santa Rosa? Have faith, sweet lady, soon we will reach shelter and Miguel will ride for a Jew physician to ease your torments. Don't cry, Blanca, don't cry..."
Blanca flung her head and retched again, a thin fluid. Her chest heaved and her eyes bulged with the anguish of the terrible pain that blazed in her gut.
Tears of helplessness leaked from Dolores's eyes. She turned her stricken face up to the murky, streaming sky outside and pleaded, "Holy Virgin, Mother of Jesu, I beg you, intercede with Our Father, take from this guiltless girl such torment and suffering and make her well again..." Entreating for God's mercy several times over again as they jolted on she promised to give her new locket to the poor if He would save the kind young noblewoman who had befriended her. Finally, after a while, she noticed that Blanca's agonized thrashing had lessened, the desperate grip of the narrow hand had relaxed, and the unseeing, hollow eyes had closed. The cart lurched to a stop, and a sodden, dripping Miguel squished back to her.
"It's getting too late and dark to go on," he cried over the clamor of the rain, and she realized she could hardly see him. "The castle was bound in mist, lost to my sight at the onset of the storm, we may have even passed it. But I have found a clearing here and some sort of hut. If the thatch is sound we can at least spend the night out of the rain." He disappeared before Dolores could protest, running a few mo
ments later to report, "The roof scarce leaks at all, I think. It is barren of comforts but it is dry."
"But she needs herbals, bleeding, a potion to break her fever."
"So I know too, and her life is more dear to me than to you," Miguel shouted. "But I cannot see the trail or the holes and rocks which will break our axles. We must stay here the night, and at daybreak, the Saints protect us, we will go on." Hunched against the relentless, driving rain, he slogged back to grab the lines and lead the mules as close as possible to the shelter he had spotted just beyond a thin bank of trees.
The battered herder's hut whose rude door they shoved open smelled dank, of goats, dogs, and moldering straw. The failing light yet allowed them to see that there was neither hearth nor furnishings, but at least the hard-packed floor was swept clean. An ash-filled and blackened pit rimmed with a few rocks marked where a fire could be laid had they the fuel, but in any case rain dripped through the makeshift chimney punched through the roof above it. There were no windows.
With his tinder Miguel managed to light a couple of their candles in their iron holders so they could close the door against the storm. They rigged up a pallet from most of their bedding, and Miguel carried in and laid upon it a limp, moaning, stuporous Blanca, lips pallid, face glistening with the sweat of high fever, her gown drenched under the cloak. A spasm ran through her whole lanky body every few moments. Dolores wrestled off Blanca's cloak and gown, then wrapped her in dry sheets. She supported the sick girl's head with a pillow and wetted her lips with water while Miguel unhitched the mules and led in the dripping animals, tying their halters to a pole supporting the roof.
Stripped of their soaked outer garments and wrapped in blankets which still did not prevent the damp chill from seeping into their bones, the old peasant and the young serving maid so lately appointed lady sat huddled together against a wall and consumed the remains of the cold meat pie while they listened in misery to the moans and broken, delirious raving of poor Blanca.
Hart, Mallory Dorn Page 14
