Only Sofia-Elisabete

by Robin Kobayashi

  North-eastward we continued, hurtling towards an unseen land, the frontier called Aragón. Alone with my thoughts, I meditated upon Mr. Munro. I imagined my uncle’s reaction when he discovered my mode of escape—a rope tied to the balcony, which made him think elopement. I imagined him kicking down the door at Mr. Munro’s lodgings on Calle de la Salud, his pistol in hand, shouting, “You Scotch dog! Where is she?” I imagined Mr. Munro tumbling out of bed, wearing only his linen drawers. His freckled face turned pale when he learned that I had run away—and, since he was the one person who could guess at my planned route, I prayed he wouldn’t tell my uncle.

  Before long, we rolled into Alcalá de Henares, a somber university town, where we stopped to water the mules. Here, the boy passenger hobbled off, without a word, a ghost from another time to be wholly forgotten, though not by me. Tessier, heedless of the boy’s fate, struck up a conversation with me, curious to know my name, the reason for my penance and why I, a mere girl, traveled alone in such a dangerous country. He took out a small journal book to scribble notes in some sort of alien code.

  I explained rather peevishly, “My name is Teresa Blanco, daughter of a conniving confectioner. They call me Teresa the Terrible. I’m a mean and artful hussy, a regular saucebox and boldface, who coveted another girl’s novio—a Scotsman who came to Madrid.”

  “A Scotsman in Madrid …” He scrawled with his pencil.

  “I won him by murdering a Scottish song about posies—a favorite serenade of his to trick girls into loving him—but he soon wearied of my giddy brain.”

  “A trickster …” He scratched away.

  “This was my just desert, you know, for my spitefulness to that other girl, who is prettier than I am. And now, because of her, I must do penance for a year, wearing this coarse habit that makes me itch.”

  Tessier raised a brow. “You don’t seem penitent to me.”

  “I assure you that I shall be the pink of penitence—the pink of pilgrims!—once I reach Zaragoza,” and I gave him a saucy toss of my head.

  That evening, at a posada in Guadalajara, we supped on partridges swimming in a black broth, and a weird omelet adorned with chicken feet. Tessier became drunkenly amorous, ogling me while he crammed chicken toes into his mouth. He offered to share my bed.

  “I’ll give you a real if you’re a good penitent and make me beg for mercy.”

  “You stay away from me, Frenchy, or I’ll give you my knife!” I reached for my mother’s navaja that I carried in my garter.

  He slurred out, “Woman, you are muy hombre—very manly.”

  Disgusted, I took my leave, but he followed me, and that’s when he pinched my bottom. “You scoundrel!” cried I, and I punched him good and hard on the arm. He staggered down the passage in agony. Even so, once inside my room, I wedged a rickety chair under the handle of the door—though, what good that would have done, I don’t know—and for the remainder of the night I slept with one eye opened. When the mayoral roused us with the bell at three o’clock in the morning, Tessier and his guide didn’t join us, and I was glad of it.

  Just when we were about to set off, a new passenger sprang into the galera—he, a whirl of cloak and a manly scent of chocolate and cinnamon and trouble. There being no light inside the galera, I could only wonder who this mysterious stranger might be until he revealed himself at daybreak. But I didn’t want to wait that long in suspense.

  “Quién es?” I called out, asking who was there.

  “Gente de paz,” was the customary reply—peaceful people, meaning a friend.

  He fumbled with flint and steel to light a cigar, and he blew a cloud of cinnamon-spiced smoke in my direction. Outside, somewhere in the plaza, the sereno sang out, “A las tres y media, el sereno-o-o.” Half-past three in the morning and all was quiet. The mayoral cracked his whip, and away we thundered into the desolate gloom.

  He was dark-eyed, clean-shaven, good-looking, about twenty-one, with white teeth, a prominent jaw, a large mouth, a wide forehead and a showy silk handkerchief that he tied like a diadem round his forehead. Well-dressed, he wore a black cloak, red sash, turquoise-blue waistcoat and embroidered short jacket, along with Mahón trousers (or nankeen as they’re called elsewhere). His sugar-loaf hat with upturned brim was made of black velvet and adorned with two tassels of silk, in the shape of balls, one near the top and the other on the brim.

  While I studied him, he studied me, his bold gaze fixed on my expensive walking-boots. Black-diamond eyes sparkled with roguish intent. He reminded me of a caballero ladrón, a robber cavalier, like the ones who loitered at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, taking note of people’s riches to rob them later.

  “Caballero, please have some bread.” I offered a small loaf from my alforja, knowing it is the custom here to share one’s food with strangers.

  He politely declined, yet I knew he was hungry because his heavily-lashed eyes told me so, and thus, I offered again. Knowing he would accept it this time, I kissed the bread as one must do before giving it away.

  “What is your name?”

  “I am Luis Candelas.”

  “Are you malvado?” I asked, quite frankly, whether he was wicked.

  “Very much so,” and he told me his story. “I was born the third son of a carpenter in Madrid. When just a boy, I was expelled from school for being a mischief-maker. Despite it, I read every book I could. At fifteen, I began to rob people. I was caught at it and sent to prison, but I broke out. When I was turned nineteen, my father died, leaving me some money. I tried to reform myself by becoming a bookseller.”

  I blurted out, “But that didn’t last.”

  He paused to stare at me. “A month ago, I stole a horse and two mules. Caught again, I was sent back to prison. Unlike other bandits, I don’t kill my victims.”

  “You’ve never killed before?” I found this hard to believe.

  “Perhaps you ought to be my first.”

  Was he funning me? A jolt of the galera brought us closer together.

  “Why must you rob people?” I barely hid my disdain.

  “I believe wealth should be evenly distributed amongst the people.”

  “Still, it isn’t right to steal. It’s a mortal sin.” I wrinkled my nose as if he stank of evil.

  “We think differently,” and he shrugged. “My friends help me to escape from prison, because I share the spoils of my thievery with them.”

  “When did you break out this time?”

  He pulled out his watch. “Five hours ago.”

  My boldness waned. I felt ill, with visions of surly bandits doing surly things to their victims—stripping them, beating them, even killing them. Convinced that Candelas planned to rob me of something, I dreaded the loss of my walking-boots. They, the only shoes in my possession, had a number of silver coins hidden in slits of the linen lining. Looking round at my situation, I saw I hadn’t much of a chance of jumping off the moving galera. I was in terrible trouble.

  “Will … will you rob me then?”

  He eyed me curiously. “Yes, if you wish it.”

  “Now?” In a panic, I tucked my feet under me, the better to hide my boots.

  “Later. Do we not have six more days to enjoy each other’s company?”

  Six days together! I threw myself at his feet.

  “Por favor, Señorito Candelas, do not take my boots. I need them for my journey over the Pyrenees.”

  “Los Pirineos?” He laughed. “No se puede—it can’t be done. You can bribe Spanish officers but not the French. They’ll know you’re a runaway because you’re female, not of age and traveling alone.”

  He explained that I might be smuggled across. He told me to go to Huesca, where lived Tomás Trueba, the barber and smuggler, and to tell him that Candelas had sent me. I must pay the barber a goodly sum. Did I have money? Not nearly enough, I lied to him.

  When he asked me my name, I answered at once, “Teresa Blanco, daughter of a confectioner,” which must’ve been a mistake. He demanded the t
ruth, or he would take my boots. Reluctantly, then, I told him how I had run away from Madrid so that I wouldn’t have to wed Don Fausto, the vicious old rake who had beaten me. Dressed as a penitent, I was making a pilgrimage to Zaragoza.

  “Let me see your hands, and I shall know if you are lying, rich-girl.”

  He examined the calluses on the sides and tips of my fingers, which I explained to him were from playing the harp. Wearing a devious smile, he stroked my palm with his thumb. My maidenly discomfort amused him. I tried to snatch my hand away, but he held on fast, nearly crushing my fingers in his powerful grip.

  “Don Fausto—he is very wealthy, and dotes on a ridiculous poodle-dog. For you, I will steal this poodle, shave its head and hold it to ransom,” he declared, with a fierce attitude.

  Candelas took my boots after I had tried twice to sneak away. He had already seized my knife and passports. He offered to protect me from other men, including bandits, but, in exchange, I must serve him, cleaning his shoes, rolling up his cigars, washing his feet, combing his long black hair and moistening it with oil and, oh yes, spittle, which is what they use here. If I didn’t obey and please him, he would deliver me to Don Fausto and collect a big reward.

  What good were my fighting fists when Candelas owned a long sharp knife? I was in his thrall. “Santa Isabel, please save me,” became my fervent prayer.

  That night, the unspeakable happened. Candelas forced me to sleep with him in the galera, where we shared his manta, a striped woolen blanket four feet wide. Lying so close to him, covered with his manta, I fretted that he would harm me. And when he pulled me underneath him against my will, his ardor heightened, I knew then he would devour me, to make me forever ruined, forever broken. But like Theodora in Handel’s oratorio, I would rather die than be a prostitute.

  I sang out in a sad wobble, “Angels ever bright and fair, take, oh take me to your care—”

  Candelas cursed.

  “—speed to your own courts my flight, clad in robes of virgin white.”

  He rolled off me, his ardor diminished. “Go to sleep then!”

  The angels had saved me this time.

  It didn’t make a difference to the others. The mayoral and his men whispered harsh things about me, about how I was Candelas’s girl, and they called me a lechuza, one of those low words for a whore. Their hungry eyes constantly wandered over me. Because of that, I stayed closed to Candelas, my protector and tormentor.

  Day two: Candelas told me about Luis Álvarez de Cobos, a respected financier, who secretly led the life of a ruthless bandit and womanizer, stripping rich ladies of their clothes and robbing them of their jewels. This clandestine bandit was well-read, an intelligent man, self-taught, not to mention devilishly handsome.

  Candelas spoke of himself, of course, though I didn’t believe his boast about being intelligent. The man was a brute. Trapped in his sinister world, I could do nothing but await my fate of being plundered, something which my captor reminded me of now and then. It gave him great pleasure to see me squirm. And when I failed in my duties as his drudge, an inevitability given my comfortable upbringing, his violent temper became known to me.

  “What a bungler!” he raged at me for missing specks of dirt on his shoes. “I ought to slice off one of your fingers. You’re nothing but a spoiled rich-girl, who thinks she’s better than everyone else.”

  “I don’t!”

  “You think I’m a coarse ignorant man.”

  “I don’t! I don’t!” But I really did.

  He pulled out the navaja from his sash. The wicked gleam in his eye told me he would cut me quick, his ferocity and madness doubly frightening. I threw the dirty shoes at him, one after the other, and he laughed like the devil. He then chased me round and round the galera until he caught me. I screamed in terror and fought back like a wild cat, but he overpowered me, twisting my arm behind my back.

  “Por favor,” I beseeched him in agony, “let it be my little finger then. I can play the harp without it, I believe.”

  Thrusting me aside, he broke out into derisive laughter at my request, which only a privileged young lady would have the audacity to utter. I sank to the ground, where I convulsed with angry sobs. Although I had survived this time, with all ten fingers intact, who knew whether he would change his mind later?

  Day four: I joined the ranks of robbers and thieves. Sofía la Ladrona I became, against my will. Candelas longed for a bottle of red wine, and when he wanted something, nothing could stop him from pursuing his risky business. We had just reached Calatayud, an ancient and crumbling town situated in a deep ravine. About ten thousand souls lived here. What Calatayud had, besides a castle, were fifteen convents, some of which stood proudly magnificent and, more importantly, stocked with bottles and bottles of red wine from Campo de Cariñena, the best wine in Aragón.

  At the door of one convent, the San Pedro Mártir de Dominicos, we presented ourselves innocently enough as a Dominican friar with his boy servant. One wonders from where or from whom we had obtained these disguises, though I suspected it was a tailor in town. “Say not a word,” Candelas had warned me beforehand. Mute as a chameleon then, I lowered my head in obeisance. I hadn’t forgotten that it was a crime for me to dress as a boy.

  “I am Fray Luis Álvarez de Cobos, here for the wine,” he lied to an old stooped friar, who was partially deaf.

  “Eh?”

  “We have come for the wine!”

  Candelas, with his confident arrogance, explained that he belonged to the convent Santo Tomás, which had requested and arranged for a dozen bottles of their excellent wine. He was here to pick them up on his return to Madrid. The ancient friar led us to a large Moorish patio surrounded by three tiers of galleries rising high above one another, and he told us to wait here. I went into a cold sweat—so sure was I that we would be caught and sent to prison. A long half hour passed before a servant delivered up the bottles from their reserve.

  Everything went as planned until we reached the entrance. “Stop those thieves!” came a sharp cry. Believe me when I say that there is nothing scarier than a dozen Dominican friars and priests striding towards you, their white habits and black hooded cloaks angrily flying about them. With one great shove, Candelas knocked over a skinny bespectacled friar who attempted to intercept us.

  Outside the convent Candelas tossed up a handful of cuartos in the air. The greedy beggars came running, or crawling if they didn’t have legs, and they tumbled over each other, fighting, snapping, snarling to get at the coins. And when that happened, they blocked the entrance so that the friars and priests couldn’t catch us. What a mighty hubbub! I hurried off after Candelas, gripping the handles of my baskets, afraid that I would drop his precious bottles.

  Someone had summoned the Holy Brotherhood—the town’s police. They made themselves known, giving chase and firing off shots. Convinced that I was going to die with a bullet in my back because of Candelas and his unquenchable thirst for wine, I did the one thing I knew how in a state of panic—I shrieked to the skies.

  “Madre de Dios, help me!”

  I ran like the dickens, wincing from the stabbing pain of having to run barefoot on a stony dirt road. My crazed flight must’ve amazed my partner in crime. He didn’t know that I was a fast runner and that a good runner always runs with his legs.

  “Reload arms!” shouted the police commander to his men.

  From somewhere behind me, Candelas bellowed out, “Vámono-o-o-s!”

  We had no sooner handed our baskets to the escopeteros, and had leapt onto the back of the moving galera, when more shots rang out. Our guards fired back. Screaming hysterically, I dived onto the mattress just when the mules went off at full gallop. Candelas laughed heartily at our cunning escape. We outlaws had got clear off. I couldn’t believe it.

  Not long after, as our galera wound through the brown and barren mountains on a primitive road far from the main highway, Candelas drank wine from a leather cup. He licked his greedy lips.

 
; “The Dominicans always have the best wine.”

  “I wonder, does the wine taste better to you when it has been stolen?”

  He thumped me on the head.

  “Never think too much when you steal,” he rebuked me.

  To translate, never think too much because you might feel guilty for what you’ve done and what you’ve become—a lying thief.

  That night, the mortal sinner, being me, dreamed of standing nearly naked on a dirt road. The ruthless bandit, Luis Candelas, had stripped me of my clothes except for a short shift. Tinkling mule-bells grew louder, and soon, a dusty coach appeared, the occupant being my rejected suitor, Don Fausto.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” cried out the old man in my dream, and he jumped out effortlessly, despite his creaky knees. He collared me, and then he tied me underneath the coach as my punishment. In this manner, I was made to trot on my hands and knees back to Madrid, without any rest. Whenever I did tire, an escopetero took aim with his blunderbuss, ready to blast me, as though I were just another mangy dog to be shot down on the highway.

  Had Mr. Munro betrayed me in this dream? Had he told everyone that I was bound for Zaragoza? Foaming at the mouth, I panted out, my tongue dangling to the side, “I shan’t—forgive you—Kitt—Munro.” But in my secret soul, I knew that I would if he asked me to because I couldn’t stop loving him, even in my disappointment. If that makes me a fool, then I grant, it is true.

  Day six: the dreaded day arrived. Fourteen miles distant from Zaragoza, we stopped to feed the hungry mules. It was there, in the small town of La Muela, that Candelas announced a robbery would be committed. We stood on the road in plain view of the town-folk, who watched from their doorways and windows, curious about the bandit’s choice of victim—a penitent.

  Candelas blindfolded me. And then he stripped me of my habit. While doing so, he must’ve found the small pouch of cuartos hidden in the left sleeve. Coins jingled in his hand.