A Divided Inheritance (31 page)

Zachary was reminded of a wild animal. It felt like a privilege that she had appeared at their table. But he was on tenterhooks lest she should decide to run off. Finally, she took a few sips of
wine and seemed to relax. By now the guitarist was playing a softer melody of rippling strings.

‘I didn’t mean to offend Maria. Shall I go after her?’ Gabriel asked.

‘No. She’ll soon calm down. And she’s with her father. She’s always been hot-tempered. She’ll get over it. It isn’t your fault.’

‘Zachary didn’t mean to rattle her like that, I’m sure. It’s just, I expect they know little of our country in England,’ Gabriel said as if apologizing for him,
‘and he’s not been here long, after all.’

‘I can see that.’ She smiled fleetingly at last. ‘He looks like a foreigner.’

Zachary was affronted, but did not react. He had been dazzled by her smile. ‘I thought she seemed nice, your friend Maria,’ he said to her, aware that this sounded a little
stupid.

‘She needs to watch her tongue.’

There was a silence then before Luisa asked, ‘What are you doing here in Spain? Englishmen do not get much of a welcome unless they have money to spend.’

‘He has money to spend, right enough,’ Gabriel replied. ‘His uncle left him a legacy—’ Zachary frowned at him. He was not anxious that everyone should know his
business. Gabriel fumbled to change the subject. ‘He is making a sword. I work at Guido de Vega’s swordsmith’s and Zachary is making a sword. A fine thing,’ he gabbled.
‘It’s almost finished already. That’s how we met each other. At first I thought he was a mad fool, a gentleman like him. I thought he’d never do it.’

‘A sword, you say? I’m sick of swords.’ She grimaced. ‘My father has just made us move to a fencing master’s house. Papa’s employed by the school of the
sword. He teaches them geometry and rhetoric. Heaven only knows why that’s any use for fighting.’

‘And you say you live there now? That must be interesting.’

‘Papa used to go down to the rapier school a few evenings a week. Actually, they don’t pay him. It’s a scandal. I keep telling Maria, they should be paying, gentlemen like
that. Heaven knows, they get enough out of us Moriscos already, with all the fines and taxes. But Papa won’t have it – he says he does it for the love of it. He gets on well with the
fencing master. He’s the only one he can discuss philosophy with, he says.’ She shrugged and raised her eyes to the sky. ‘We had to leave our other place, so now he’s there
all the time. Still, at least he’s happy.’

‘And you say it’s a school of fence?’

‘Yes. Near the Church of San Jacinto. But it’s only a few students. I don’t think Señor Alvarez’s method is very popular. They call it
La Verdadera
Destreza.
’

The name took a moment to register. He leaned forward. ‘Here? In Triana?’ He could hardly contain his excitement.

‘Yes. But it’s not a big place, not like the government one run by Don Rodriguez in the Arenal. Why, do you know of it?’

‘I’ve been looking for it. Is there a man there, a man with white hair, but young, not an old man?’ He could not contain his excitement.

‘Señor Alvarez, yes.’

‘You’ll never believe this. I really have been searching for it. Here –’ he raked in his satchel and brought out a corked bottle of ink, a pen, and a scrap of paper.
‘Write down the address for me, won’t you?’

‘I can make you a map if you like.’

She scratched out the curving inky lines of the riverbank, the narrow passageways and fortress walls, and pointed with the goose nib where to go. Her fingers were long and slender, there was a
fine down of dark hairs on her forearms. She pushed the paper towards him. The map was oddly familiar. A crack opened in time. Déjà vu, the French called it. A quirk of the moment
that made him shake his head to rattle it free of a history that had not yet happened.

‘The sign of a spreadeagled man,’ Luisa said, pulling back the paper and drawing quickly. ‘You know it?’

Gabriel shook his head.

She had drawn a man spread out like a five-pointed star. Like in Vitruvius. Uncle Leviston had talked of him. It was an omen, it must be.

‘Will I need an introduction?’ he asked, folding the precious piece of paper and putting it in his bag. ‘I mean, would your father vouch for me? I can pay.’

She was waving her hand and laughing. ‘For that place? No. But be careful. Don’t waste your good money. If you are after proper training, the men say Don Rodriguez is the
best.’

He did not answer; he knew enough of Rodriguez to know his methods were not for him.

Luisa paused behind the sheet, her mouth full of split-wood pegs. She was hanging clothes on the line to dry before going to work, when a noise made her stand on tiptoes to
look.

There he was, that pipsqueak Englishman, standing in the yard looking lost. He had found his way there, so her map must have been good enough for him to follow. She had never expected to see him
though, thought it was all talk. And she wasn’t so sure she wanted to be associated with someone who had so clearly been in a fight. She took the pegs from her mouth and smoothed her hair.
But Maria was very keen on his friend, the journeyman smith, though of course she pretended not to be. Maybe the English man wasn’t so bad after all.

She hurried over, the empty basket at her hip. ‘
Buenos días
,’ she said.

He replied in Spanish and smiled. His English accent was strong, but not unpleasant. He had arresting brown eyes which made her drop her gaze.

She told him the others were indoors, that they had quiet study for portions of the day, and other times they trained here in the yard – she pointed to the straw targets nailed up to the
walls. He looked with polite interest, but the targets seemed pathetic, most of them tattered through use and homes to mice. As she talked, she noticed that his fingernails were bitten to the
quick, and that he had very shapely calves. When she showed him the targets she did not tell him that she dreaded the mice would not be quick enough to move when the men started their target
practice.

He listened, watching her closely, his head cocked to one side.

After that she ran out of things to show him, and stood feeling a little stupid. Her face grew hot. She looked up and caught his eye, and a spark ran between them, quick as lightning. She turned
to hurry indoors, her face flaming.

‘Where might I find Señor Alvarez?’ he called.

‘Here.’ Señor Alvarez appeared at the top of the flight of stairs at the corner of the courtyard. Sometimes it was uncanny how the señor sensed when a stranger was in
the yard. When Uncle Najid came, the señor was already alert and listening before he even knocked; she could tell by the way his attention was outside and not inside the room. Luisa went
into the kitchen and watched from the window.

As he approached, the Englishman bowed low, and introduced himself. ‘Zachary Deane,’ he said, and she remembered this time to note his name.

Don Alvarez appeared to know him. ‘Haven’t I seen you before? He thought a moment. ‘Ah. The man who is unpopular with the farmers. They seem to want to box your ears. I met you
in London, did I not?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir. You did. And I’ve looked for you all over. I want to learn everything you can teach me. I went to France, but they can teach me nothing. I want to learn to wield a weapon
the way you do.’

‘If you think you have nothing to learn from the French, what makes you think you can learn anything from me?’

‘I’ve seen you fence. And I know you are the best.’

‘You flatter me. Where do you stay?’

‘In lodgings, close to the cathedral.’

‘You will come every day?’

‘As many hours as you have, to teach me all you know.’

Señor Alvarez smiled. ‘Or to pull from you what you know already, but have lost sight of.’ He sighed, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know, first a Dutchman, then
someone from France, now an Englishman. What’s wrong with my own country? Do they not need to know how to fence?’ He sighed again. ‘Still, I suppose I’ll take you. After
all, you’re here, which clearly my own countrymen aren’t.’

‘You mean you’ll teach me?’ His voice was so delighted, Luisa suppressed a smile.

‘You’ll find a place to leave your things in the passageway by the kitchen. I’ll get Luisa to show you –’

She called, ‘I’ll take him,’ through the open window, realizing as she did so that she had just given herself away.

He came to the door and she motioned him to follow. She pointed to the row of wooden pegs where the others had hung their cloaks. He swung his off, and she hooked it up. It was a fine velvet
one, soft to the touch, and warm where it had been close to his neck.

‘They’re all in the library with my father,’ she said. ‘Every day – an hour or so by the glass, they talk about geometry before they come out in the yard.’
Now she could not keep the note of pride from her voice – it was pleasant to be able to show the place to someone else. And the library had more than fifty books. Fifty! Papa thought he had
died and reached the Rose Garden already, to live here and be able to handle all those books, even if he could barely read them any more.

‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘Señorita Ortega.’

Was he serious? She was unused to being called Señorita anything, and was surprised he had remembered her name. She glanced sideways at him, for he looked so taken with the fact that
Señor Alvarez was to train him, like a small boy who had been given his favourite toy. He asked about the others who studied there, and again he listened carefully to her reply and watched.
This was very strange. Perhaps this was the English way, certainly no Spanish man had ever let her talk like this without wanting to tell her his opinion.

And he thanked her again when she left him at the library door. His eyes widened at the sight of all the books, and at all the other young men earnestly engaged in their studies with callipers
and straight-edge.

‘A new recruit,’ she said. ‘Señor asked me to bring him up.’

‘Oh, not another,’ grumbled Papa. ‘Now I’ll have to start at the beginning again. I keep telling him it’s no use, all this coming and going. We need
consistency.’

She looked to see how the Englishman was taking it, and exchanged a shy look with him. He slipped into the vacant place next to Alexander, the tall Dutchman. Papa flapped his hands at her and
she ran down the stairs, faster than she should because they were worn slippery with use, so anxious was she to share the news with Mama before she had to leave for the pottery – all about
the new Englishman who was to study with Señor.

In the afternoon when she returned from work, she saw that the others had drifted away, keen on a few hours’ respite before the evening training, but Mr Deane was still in the yard on his
own, practising his moves, a fierce expression on his face.

She watched him through the window as she helped Mama prepare the vegetables. Of course she didn’t want to look, but he drew her eye. He moved like a dancer, she thought. His body moved
with ease and grace, but it was as if he was angry at something; he lunged at the targets over and over until the sweat slid down his face. She heard the clang of metal on stone as the blade
pierced through the targets. Clouds of dust rose from the ground where he skidded and stomped. When he was finished, he slumped against the wall, panting. She stood to the edge of the window,
holding a red bell-pepper in her hand that she had intended to core and peel. He did not look her way, but dabbed at his sword hand with the corner of his shirt. It was probably blistered by now
from wielding the corded grip all those hours in the afternoon heat. The English were crazy, she thought. He blew out air on to his upper lip to cool himself. A nice-shaped mouth, she thought and
she blushed. It was a sensation that made her withdraw, as if it were too intimate, watching him unseen from this window.