Only Sofia-Elisabete

by Robin Kobayashi

  Never again would I see Goya, so convinced I was of it. But there he stood, to my amazement, alongside Rosario, at a traveling animal menagerie one evening. She squeaked out papá whenever he called her Mariquita—his Ladybird. To cheer me, Kitt had taken me to see this tented spectacle of celebrated creatures—the majestic lion, the terrifying tiger, the Ethiopian zebra, the ferocious hyena. I had been debating whether to make my presence known to Goya, when I became seized with a much bigger surprise.

  Everyone heard my loud yelp of recognition. People looked over their shoulders to stare. Others laughed at me. I was in tremors, on the verge of going mad. Really, I was mad, in need of a good ducking in la Gloriosa to help me regain my sanity. Kitt, with a concerned look, bade me be quiet. He rubbed small circles on my back, trying to calm me, Sofía la Loca, who was causing a scene.

  I whimpered out, “I see a ghost.”

  “There are no ghosts here, only exotic beasts. It must be your imagination playing tricks on you.”

  “No, really, I see—”

  “Use your reason,” urged my husband, rubbing more circles on my back.

  But I persisted with, “It is a ghost in the form of an older gentleman, with grey hair and long side whiskers. He’s using a spyglass (my pocket spyglass!) to observe the terrifying tiger.”

  “Oh, him. I dare say he’s English, about fifty.”

  “No—mid-forties. But you see him, so he must be real.” Confounded by it, I tugged at my hair, a returning childhood habit of anxiety.

  This Englishman, having noticed me and my hair-tugging, rubbed his forehead with worry, a habit of his that I knew too well. My mouth dropped open. It was him, though older, heavier, greyer, and with a scarred forehead. Oh yes, my papai, this endearment having been my childish blend of the Portuguese and English words for father. Without a thought as to the impropriety of it, I darted off, shoving people aside. A lunatic I must’ve seemed, weeping uncontrollably, with an aching heart ready to burst from six years of misery.

  I screamed out for the universe to hear, “Papai, it’s me, Sofia-Elisabete!”

  People stood back in fearful alarm. Fathers shielded their children. Men protected their wives. Kitt ran after me, frantically calling my name. But I shut my ears to his cries. I flung my arms round this bewildered Englishman, sobbing and laughing, so deliriously happy! It wasn’t a ghost; my father was alive. Oh, that familiar and comforting earthy scent of his. Those strong arms. Those dark blue eyes like mine. That crooked sad grin.

  The Englishman choked on his words. “I’m sorry, but … you are mistaken … poor girl.”

  He wiped my tears with his handkerchief and in such a loving manner while he hummed a song to soothe me. Then, having given me his handkerchief, he ran so fast away as though he were dodging someone. Puzzled and hurt by his strange behavior, I searched my mind, trying to recall the name of the song he had hummed.

  It wasn’t until much later that night, when I couldn’t sleep, that it came to me—Tree on the Hill, a song from my childhood when I had lived in Scarborough, and something I hadn’t thought about in an age.

  PART THREE:

  England & Scotland

  Autumn 1825

  Principal Persons

  In England

  Colonel Fitzwilliam, my father

  Aggie Fitzwilliam, my stepmother

  Brodie Munro, an elder brother of Kitt Munro

  Margaret Munro, a younger sister of Kitt Munro

  In Scotland

  Old Mr. and Mrs. Munro, the parents of Kitt Munro

  Conn MacPhee, a guide

  Sorcha MacLeish, a milkmaid

  Edan MacQuarrie, a mute

  Cairstine MacColl, a healer with second sight

  11. Topsy-Turvy

  That impostor, that trickster—oh, I could throw my boot at him! He had stolen away my father. He had stolen away Tree on the Hill, the song that helped my father find me when, at the tender age of five, I had run off with my mother (been stolen, really, by Doña Marisa). No matter how hard this scoundrel tried to impersonate my father, humming our song, copying his crooked sad grin, he was doing a bad job of it, getting the important details wrong. My father loved me. He would have recognized his own daughter.

  “Thief! Body-stealer! You shan’t fool me!” These things I shouted in my nightmare, awakening Kitt.

  He, so drowsy with sleep, dropped a sloppy arm about me. My poor exhausted husband—I required much patience from him.

  Because of that, I turned secretive in my search for the mysterious impostor, for I had to know who he was. Here, in France, I’ve discovered that married women are very independent. They go about unescorted everywhere, and no one thinks much of it. So that was how I became a lone spy, stealing along the streets, lurking near the book-stalls, peering into shop windows. These covert operations took place while Kitt worked for Don Leandro. But I never saw anyone again who resembled my father.

  I was found out soon afterwards. It was a Sunday, at the Allées de Tourny. We had been promenading in the shade of elms and lindens when Kitt became suspicious of me and my distracted mind. The truth was, I had not been paying much attention to anything he said.

  “My work is nearly done here,” he repeated.

  “Done, is it?”

  “We must away soon.”

  “Oh? I suppose we must then,” and I affected a smile.

  “Oh? Is that all you can say, when you long to be again in England?”

  A blush of guilt revealed my deception.

  “Mrs. Munro, I know you’re looking for the Englishman. You should let that poor fellow alone.”

  Even so, I disagreed with him.

  They say everything is connected with everything else, whether in nature or history or our lives. We had remained only a little while longer in Bordeaux, when these mysterious enduring connections began to piece together. And though—as I look back—they started to reveal themselves then, linking us with others in time and space, we couldn’t see how these unrelated events had any relationship at all until after the fact.

  Things started with a stilts race, curiously enough. On market day, the shepherds from Landes marched into the city on stilts. It was the oddest sight, these stork-like men in their costume of sheepskin vest, linen gaiters, drugget cloak and béret. People believed them eccentric to walk high on stilts, whereas I thought them clever to tend to their flocks this way, so that they could step over the pools of water that formed on the sands.

  The Landais were running races for us in which they used a long staff as a sort of third leg that helped them to stoop to pick up coins. The English, as everyone knows, will bet on anything. Someone challenged someone, and a cry went up amongst them, in a collective mood singularly hilarious, that they race each other on stilts. They borrowed stilts and staffs from the bewildered Landais. Soon, the betting began, anywhere from one guinea to two hundred guineas.

  “I wager ten on Dingley!”

  “I will lay you fifty guineas that Nuttall won’t finish the race!”

  Thirty racers, including Kitt, convened in the Jardin Public—the Hyde Park of Bordeaux. They stood about on their stilts, eager to start.

  “Are you ready, gentlemen?” The gun went off, and a great roar ensued from two hundred lookers-on.

  “Come on, Norton, come on!”

  “Go it, Cadbury!”

  “Now then, Beaumont!

  Many of the racers struggled at first, some of them falling several times. Those like Kitt, who deftly used their staffs, strode forward. “Well done!” I shouted encouragement to him. Suddenly there were angry shouts. Someone’s stilt had collided with another’s, which caused a second and a third collision, and soon, eight competitors crashed down into a tangled heap. Kitt avoided the pile, because he had wisely situated himself near the outer edge of the race-course.

  “You have got the race for sure!” I cheered on Kitt when he strode by.

  Half-way through the course, an Englishman wearing a béret raced up
alongside Kitt, matching him stride for stride. The man raised his staff. And then, tragedy! Kitt stumbled, as did the other racer, and they both toppled very hard to the ground. Groans of disappointment rippled through the crowd.

  “Foul! Foul!” I shouted, along with others, believing this Englishman had cheated.

  Just when the crowd had given up on Kitt, he proved them wrong and, to their amazement, rose like the proverbial Phoenix, with the aid of his staff. “Bravo!” cried I, clapping my hands, and so very proud. Taking big strides, he steadily gained on the leaders—an incredible feat—and he came in second by half a stilt. That was how my man Kitt won his ten guineas in the Great British Stilts Race.

  “What happened?” I ran towards my husband, worried that he had been injured.

  He shook his head in disbelief. “A very rude, very arrogant Englishman called me a Scotch puppy.”

  “What a boor!”

  “He said, ‘Enough of your puppy business,’ and he tripped me with his staff. If not for him, I’m certain I could’ve won the race.”

  I stamped my foot. “He should be pilloried for such unsportsmanlike conduct.”

  But Kitt never held a grudge. Sighing to himself, he used his staff to lower himself to the ground, where he began to unstrap the stilts. Watching him do this filled me with a great longing.

  “Oh, Kitt.” I sank to my knees beside him. “Won’t you let me try the stilts?”

  He hesitated. “If we were alone in the countryside, then it wouldn’t matter.”

  “Please, I won’t get another opportunity.”

  Seeing that I had fixed my heart on it, his countenance softened, because he liked to indulge me whenever he could. He looked round, a good deal worried that others might observe us.

  “Be sure to stay clear of everyone in your gown.”

  “I promise. No one will see my legs or … anything else.”

  Still doubtful about our enterprise, he reluctantly placed my right foot in the stirrup, and strapped my calf and ankle to the upper part of the stick—a flat stick shaped to the outer part of the leg. After doing the same to my left side, he helped to raise me, instructing me to use the staff to steady myself.

  Stilted up more than ten feet high, I became a giantess who could see far and wide. What a superior view! There is something to be said for being lofty. Woe to them who can never experience the grand. I had been enjoying my loftiness for about a minute, and triumphantly so, when I espied my father’s impostor dashing through the crowd. He wore a béret.

  I gasped out, “Kitt, which of the English called you a Scotch puppy?”

  His brow clouded, which was when I knew it had been the impostor. Determined to catch the béret-man, I took a few shaky steps forward, almost losing my balance. Kitt grasped one of my stilts to prevent me from striding off.

  “Let me go!” My impatient self bounced up and down.

  I wasn’t long in doing this up-and-down business, when I found myself surrounded by half a dozen shepherds. They grinned roguishly and snapped their fingers, eager to see me, the stilts-girl, dance to a bouncing beat.

  “Tchangues! Tchangues!” they sang out “big legs” in the patois of the country.

  The spectacle of my bountiful assets mortified Kitt. Left with no choice, he surrendered to my wishes and hastily lowered me onto the grass. “Madcap girl,” he muttered, gently tweaking my nose. But alas, by the time he freed me of my big legs, the béret-man had given me the slip. I nearly cried at it.

  The Great British Stilts Race was the talk of the town. Newspaper reporters crowded round the winner, a beefy fellow by the name of Cadbury, who boasted of his athletic prowess and English might. Some of the newspaper reporters questioned Kitt about his tumble, but he didn’t say anything about my father’s impostor. Instead, he mentioned his great wish to win the race so that he could take me, his young wife, home to England. He explained that we were newly married. The headline of an article in L’Aquitaine the next morning translated to, “British Stilts Racer Finishes Second to None on Honeymoon.”

  “I wonder which newspaper reporter wrote this article?”

  Kitt’s nose twitched in annoyance. “An obnoxious Frenchman, rather drunk-like, accosted me later. He referred to you as Teresa, my wild honeymoon girl. I’m sure he wrote it.”

  Odds splutterkins! I never thought I would come across that savage Frenchman again—the newspaper reporter I had met on the road from Madrid. What an unfortunate connection he was in my universe.

  Kitt waited in expectant silence. There was nothing for it but to tell him the entire truth: that the newspaper reporter had been none other than Jean-Pierre Tessier, that I had escaped from Madrid using the alias Teresa Blanco, that I had been jealous of Teresa’s attentions to Kitt and, because of it, I said some unkind things about my rival.

  “She gets into my head.”

  He observed in his quiet way, “You dislike her, but you needn’t become unpleasant like her.”

  “You liked her.”

  He grimaced. “I endured Teresa’s complaints and caprices for Hopper’s sake, knowing I wouldn’t be much longer in Madrid. It was the least I could do for him—my tutor and the best fellow in the world—who had married Teresa’s sister.”

  Tessier had told him more, about how I had accused a Scotsman of serenading girls with the same Scottish song to trick them into loving him. Ay! My impertinent bitter remarks had been used against me. Covering my guilty face with my hands, I couldn’t bring myself to look at my husband, whose feelings had been hurt. But he had already forgiven and forgotten.

  In his calm way, he warned me about newspaper reporters. This Tessier, like so many of his occupational tribe, could not be trusted. In the article, the man had twisted Kitt’s words to imply that we had the means now to quit Bordeaux in high style. Tessier’s loose fib had created a fairy-tale ending for Kitt’s story, just to please the paper’s readership.

  Yes, we were richer from the stilts race but not nearly enough, at least in Kitt’s mind. He fretted that we would miss the Sarah, a fast-sailing cutter to Plymouth due to arrive here in five days. A true adventure-seeker, he had his heart set on sailing in a cutter and crossing the treacherous Bay of Biscay. The passage was four guineas each, and there would also be expenses in Plymouth, including the transportation to London, and more expenses in the capital. He began to brood about our finances.

  But then, one day, Kitt received a surprise letter, along with a bank-note for twenty pounds, from his brother. Brodie Munro boasted of a lucky run at cards. He wrote, “I recently removed to Chelsea, and your letter finally found me. You must pay me back, Brother Kitt—crim. con. or otherwise. I’ve told the governor that you’re in Bordeaux, reporting foreign news for me.”

  “Crim. con.?”

  “Criminal conversation, meaning adultery trials.”

  “And so … you must pay him back with that.” I couldn’t puzzle it out.

  Kitt frowned at the letter. “Brodie made out an excuse to my father for why I haven’t come home yet. And, in return, he expects me to write about these trials. My brother used to be a newspaper reporter, trading in such scandals. Presently he is junior editor at the Juggler.”

  “I have not heard of it.”

  “The Juggler—or Jugular as some of its detractors call it—is a self-described highly-spirited and clever literary journal,” he explained in an ironic tone. “Stuck between poetry and the reviews of books are notices of who has been blackballed at White’s, who has dueled on Wimbledon Common and who has tragically drowned himself in the Serpentine.”

  “How old is your brother?”

  “Three and twenty.”

  “Does he know about us?”

  He ran his fingers through his hair in a nervous manner. “I have not told him yet that I am married. You can understand my concern that he would write to my parents, juggling his words and unduly alarming everyone, before I could have a chance to write to them myself. Since my brother depends on his allowance,
he would have felt obligated to inform them of my marriage, had he known of it.”

  “When will you write to your parents?”

  “I wish to wait until we’ve set foot in Plymouth,” and he said no more.

  Kitt set off for his final day of work. With him gone, I went a-shopping to find myself a riding habit, because English ladies always wore dark-blue riding habits here when they traveled. But I lacked the means to buy something bespoke. Instead, I found a riding habit in pawn that fit me well enough—in plain dark-blue with black trim on the collar and cuffs.

  “It looks made to order.” Kitt admired it later that evening.

  “It’s second-hand for two guineas.”

  “Only two guineas? Did you buy a hat?”

  I proudly displayed my old sugar-loaf hat. The black velvet of the rounded cone and upturned brim, as well as the tassels, had been cleaned by the milliner. A short white-lace veil now graced its front.

  Kitt grinned. “You will set the fashion with your veiled Spanish hat.”

  We sat together in a happy mood. The watch and pocket compass lying on the table caught his eye. They were his old traveling companions whom he had given up for lost.

  “How did you get these?”

  “With the money I saved on the riding-habit, I bought back these things you had pawned.”

  He gave me a tender look. “Sofía mía, each day you are more exceptional than the last.”

  “Are you pleased then about your watch and compass?”

  “I wasn’t thinking of them as you well know,” and he caressed my cheek.

  Very soon after, Kitt made inquiries at the foreign packet-office about the Sarah. I could only imagine his keen disappointment when they informed him that an English lady, accompanied by a gentleman, had hired the cutter entirely for themselves and their servants. Kitt was gone a long time, probably taking a lonely walk on the quay before he returned to our boarding-house.