A Woman of Seville (17 page)

She’s been told the wrong time. Paula is knotting her hands together fretfully and saying ‘Oh’ repeatedly as if she’s surprised and put out that she’s missed the farewell on the docks.

There’s a blur of boys running towards us and Telmo and Arauz bound up beside her. ‘Sorry,’ the brothers say, dragging on her shawled arms. ‘That’s the time we thought it was. But they woke us even earlier this morning.’

She might have been cross with Telmo and Arauz as it appears to have been their mistake, but their presence seems to cheer her up. They’re standing on her feet as they muck around, ruining her pretty shawl as they swing on her from either side.

She’s gone to a lot of trouble; she’s looking very dressed up. I haven’t seen that shawl before. It’s embroidered with tiny pink rosebuds. And she’s put up her hair. Her head is wrapped in a shiny scarf that’s been wound around itself in the shape of a turban. The gold scarf is attracting a lot of sunlight. As I watch, the domed headdress connects with a needle of gold emanating from the summit of the watchtower rising behind her. Paula and the
Torre del Oro
are one.

I’ve no doubt that if Rastro was looking towards the dwindling party we have become on the docks, he would see the sun striking Paula’s head like a beacon. The felucca bearing the Mercedarian party downstream is in the middle of the river now, cream sails fluttering, sailors drawing in their oars. I can see the Morisco boys standing on deck, still waving frantically at the shore. I’m absolutely sure which of them is Luis; he’s always been the tallest boy.

I found it harder to say goodbye to him than I’d expected. I gave him a keepsake in parting, a silver pendant with a skull embossed on the metal. It’s just the sort of amulet young boys love. Luis kissed the skull before he hung the chain around his neck. Then he kissed me on the cheek. That was embarrassing. I didn’t like him doing that. He shouldn’t have forgiven me yet, but he has.

The voyagers on the felucca are the size of fingers now. Soon they’ll be too small to see. Other vessels are already blocking our view: tartans, barges and the frightening galleons. It’s very busy on the river this morning.

Telmo and Arauz are pointing out Rastro’s boat for Paula. They’re still hanging onto her shawl. I step back from the water’s edge. The crowd around us is thinning and I catch sight of Harmen’s apprentice. ‘Victor María!’ I shout. I got to know this young man at Harmen’s and Fillide’s wedding. (Marius made sure I was sent an invitation.)

Victor María waves back at me and comes over to say hello. He’s leading a donkey with a braided halter. Paula turns around to greet Victor María and we both remark on the presence of the animal in his company. Victor María explains that the beast has been carrying provisions for the voyagers—gifts from the Weddesteegs for Father Rastro on his long journey.

‘Is Harmen Weddesteeg here too?’ Paula inquires, looking around for him.

‘He was,’ Victor María assents, ‘but his wife had a toothache.’ Victor María laughs a bit recklessly at the memory of Doña Fillide’s predicament.

‘Too much marzipan apparently,’ he continues, attempting to sound more concerned. ‘She and Harmen
left as soon as the boat did. I’m surprised you didn’t spot them earlier.’

‘I only just arrived. I missed everything.’ Paula looks at the river in despair. The felucca is no longer visible. It’s somewhere out there behind all the other boats.

‘We could see them very clearly from the top of the Giralda,’ I say to her. ‘I could take you up there, if you’d like?’

Paula protests tiredness. ‘Up the hill and then all those floors to climb,’ she sighs.

Victor María offers the donkey’s services for cathedral hill.

‘You won’t have to walk to the top of the tower either, Paula,’ I insist. ‘From halfway up there’s a superb view.’

Paula says she’s never ridden a donkey before, but as a girl she was always on and off her father’s mule. Is the beast strong enough to carry her? She’ll give it a try. Victor María holds the donkey and she manages to pull herself on lopsidedly. The donkey brays its objection.

‘What a fool I must look,’ she says, rearranging her skirt to cover her ankles.

‘Not at all, not at all.’ Victor María suppresses a smile.

We pass through the city gates and head uphill. I stride out in front while Victor María leads the donkey. Whenever I look back, Paula and Victor María are being passed on
the road. When I get too far ahead, I stop. Let the others catch me up. Walking beside them, I hear Victor María say something to Paula about forbidden rocking horses and she laughs so much she slips off the donkey. This gives Victor María a chance to help her back on again.

At the entrance to the cathedral stable-yard I wait and watch while they secure the beast. They should stop laughing now, as we’re going into the sacred citadel. I’m surprised at my own terseness, but they haven’t included me in their joke.

‘No visitors today. The bells are not ringing.’ ‘The bells, silent? For what reason?’ We’re standing at the Giralda gate.

‘Maintenance. Some of the clappers are hanging loose.’

I’m about to turn on my heel, when Paula steps forward, opens her purse and hands the sacristan ten times the normal fee. She’s getting into a party mood.

We are the only ones ascending, it seems. The walls echo our footsteps. Victor María and Paula have remained demure since entering the cathedral, so I stop resenting them.

‘Have you been up here before?’ Victor María eventually asks Paula.

‘Never,’ she whispers.

‘You don’t need to whisper,’ Victor María replies.

‘I can’t help it.’

I’m counting the floors to the halfway mark. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen.

I loved doing this when I was a boy.

Paula has been keeping pace with us men. The climb doesn’t seem to be troubling her.

‘No bells to hurt your ears at the top, if you want to go all the way up,’ I say to the others, encouragingly.

‘No bells. Just like a mosque,’ Victor María remarks.

‘The ramp is so wide,’ comments Paula.

She’s right of course. There’d be room for a crowd of people to walk six abreast.

‘So the Moors could ride up here on their mules,’ I explain.

Soon afterwards we arrive halfway, at the sixteenth floor.

I let Paula and Victor María catch their breath while I jump up onto the ledge approaching the south-facing window. Below the Guadalquivir coils like a massive serpent, looping away in the distance. There are so many watercraft heading down the river today that I can’t be sure which of the sailboats is carrying the Moriscos away from the city of their birth.

I hop down from the ledge so the others can take a look. Paula climbs up first, as there’s not much space, and Victor María supports himself rather precariously behind her.

She seems rapt by the view.

‘I can see the Church of El Salvador and the Town Hall and the Church of the Magdalena and even the Mercedarian convento,’ she says with childlike wonder.

‘But look to the river,’ suggests Victor María.

Paula moves her head. She says nothing for a bit. ‘Which is their boat, do you think?’

Victor María shakes his head. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

I can’t see Paula’s face, but she sounds breathless rather than sad. Any disappointment took place earlier, on the dock. She wanted to say goodbye to Father Rastro, but perhaps he may not have wished to grant her such a civilised courtesy. The departure time had been changed to keep her away. I could tell from her anxious expression when she arrived at the water’s edge that Paula was thinking of it as a reunion rather than as a farewell.

‘I think I can see my house in Triana.’ Paula is looking further afield.

‘Can you see your house?’ Victor María queries.

‘Oh yes. On the rise, directly opposite the
Torre del Oro
. It’s behind the one with the yellow flagpole.’

‘Two storeys?’

‘Two storey, yes. It has upstairs and downstairs,’ Paula says, stating the obvious. She laughs at the silliness of her
own remark. Victor María starts laughing too, warmly. He’s laughing to keep her company, I realise.

I’m going to get nowhere with this pair today. They’re acting like imbeciles. Why is Paula so friendly with Victor María? He’s a pleasant enough man but he’s practically a serf; she’d be paying for his services if it came to that.

Once again I try to persuade them to accompany me to the top of the Giralda, but Paula says she’s too tired to go any further. She doesn’t look tired, but I suppose she is.

I’ve never entered the tower without going all the way up to the minaret before. I owe it to myself to keep on climbing. For company I shout the numbers of the floors as I ascend. Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three…Approach the final incline of steps where I lost my goldfinch. Climb up and up and out into the minaret with the white-frosted sun directly overhead. Take a walk around. See who else is up here. Not even one worker mending bells. A gritty, swirling wind is making my eyes water. I pull out a handkerchief and close my eyes to dab at them.

It isn’t in my power to do it just yet, but in the future I intend to honour Luis and his friends and their families who’ve been driven from our land. A huge tableau is forming in my mind; a scene of weeping Moors flooding down cathedral hill, their battered baggage strewn along the gutters and a blind Christian beggar, caught up in the
surge. In the bottom left-hand corner of the tableau is my unequivocal title,
The Flight of the Moriscos
, written in my large, sweeping hand. In the right-hand corner, my own name writ just as large.

I open my eyes, walk forward to the balcony and rest my lower body against the balustrade. Looking down I scan the flotillas on the Guadalquivir. Enough time has passed; I won’t be able to find them down below, even if I had a telescope at hand. Enrique and the boys have turned the final bend in the river and sailed out of sight.

On the sixteenth floor, Victor María and I sit side by side on the ledge in the half-light, holding hands.

‘All those sittings in the convento…‘ I’m remembering with some regret.

‘Yes?’

‘You were there all along but I didn’t notice,’ I smile in disbelief.

‘There was some competition.’

‘No-one of significance,’ I reply, then add ironically, ‘except for the horse.’

‘Rastro always chose his horses well,’ Victor María speaks without enthusiasm.

‘I sense you don’t like him.’

‘He pulled a nest of chicks out of a tree once. Surely you remember?’

‘That’s a good enough reason then,’ I respond teasingly.

‘So when did you first notice me?’ Victor María asks.

I think I became aware of him when he turned up with the donkey on the dock this very morning. But now I know who he reminds me of.

‘I dreamed you up, Victor María. There was a ladder-man who looked just like you; he was always around me, but I didn’t make the connection.’

I’ve taken a risk saying this, and I await his response tentatively. Some men would find me a fibber or a fabricator.

‘Ladder-men from the picaresques of Barbadillo?’ he replies.

‘I suppose so.’ I’ve never heard of a writer called Barbadillo.

‘And what did this ladder-man have to say for himself?’ Victor María continues light-heartedly.

‘Very little actually. He was mute.’

Victor María nods. ‘Oh well, I hardly spoke to you in the convento, did I?’

‘That’s true,’ I reply. It is only today that I’ve listened to
and appreciated the sound of this young man’s voice. Yet, if I had met him for the first time today, he would mean nothing to me. The months I spent in the convento, when I failed to hear him speak but was absorbing his essence anyway, have made this present attraction possible.

‘So what did you two get up to if you couldn’t talk?’ Victor María presses.

I feel a little faint recalling an incident in the convento I’d completely forgotten. It happened during one of the early sittings. We’d stopped work for a spell and I’d embarked on a vigorous caprice. Victor María was helping me up onto the unsaddled white horse and I had once, twice perhaps, slid off the horse’s smooth side. I had been trying to impress (amazingly, it seems to me now) Harmen Weddesteeg, prior to my feeling for Enrique Rastro arising. Victor María was no more than a faceless minor to me back then.

I lift a scrunched-up fist to Victor María’s face and rest it against his cheekbone. I’ve found a word to describe his face. He’s becoming. That’s it. He leans forward and kisses me shyly and chastely on the mouth.

‘We didn’t get up to much,’ I interrupt, eager to keep on talking rather than let Victor María bring my body back to life. The latter, being the most sought-after thing, is perhaps the most unbearable to countenance.

‘The ladder-man taught me a lot of tricks of the trade,’ I tell Victor María as he puts his arms around my waist and draws me closer.

This is what it means, I realise, when they say you wake up and find yourself a new person. I’m gulping air now, I’m gulping air lest hanging around his neck becomes lawful magic.

‘Teach me his tricks then,’ he says. Victor María, having unfisted me, has no fear.

But he doesn’t really want to know. The art of falling into balance we’ve surely surpassed. And we have just this little bit of time to ourselves, to find out who we really are, before Diego returns.