The Flesh and the Devil (2 page)

         
She nodded acknowledgement to old Histangua, wondering how
many more unwanted welcomes she would have to endure, and took de Castaneda's extended
arm, her fingertips resting on air above his lace-trimmed linen cuff. Dona
Beatriz glanced at her in approval of this correctness, thankful that no force
of emotion had betrayed her niece into laying a hand on any man not related to
her by blood.

         
As they moved slowly forward through the bowing ranks of
servants, de Castaneda said, 'You underestimate your beauty, Senorita Juana,
not to mention my nephew's zeal, if you think he will be willing to part with
you once he has seen you. High birth does not necessarily make a man an eunuch,
and Bartolmé is a man like any other in that.'

         
Her long lashes flickered, but she made no response. She
moved carefully, eyes downcast, so that no indelicate hint of her foot should
be seen beneath her gown as she crossed the immense patio on de Castaneda's
arm. Once or twice she glanced through her lashes at the dizzying splendour of
her surroundings, loathing them yet fascinated by the sheer soaring
magnificence of the harsh, granite-built facades.

         
'It was the gift of the King -' de Castaneda had caught her
covert look-'to Bartolomé's father, when he raised him to the rank of Duque.
Impressive, mmn?‘

         
Again she made no answer, but her heart agreed with him. It
was absurd, she was thinking; no one could have sought her out as a wife for
the owner of all this. One looming face of the quadrangle surrounding her was
the size of her father's whole house, and she had seen, in a reluctant glimpse
from the carriagewindow, how the Castillo Benaventes sprawled across the crests
of a whole ridge of low hills. From a distance it had had the air of a
fairytale edifice, remotely beautiful, a pattern of misty gold and palest blue
amid a cluster of dark trees, yet here within it she was conscious only of the
impregnable strength of its stones and a sense of crushing unhappiness.

         
She had closed her eyes as she passed under the shadowed
colonnade and across the yawning threshold, as if doing so would protect her
from some unknown evil, while behind her she could hear her aunt's voice as she
kept up a wondering litany. Juana paid no attention; time enough if her plan
failed, she thought, to learn the precise dimensions of her prison. She would
have the rest of her life in which to study them.

         
I hate it all,
 
her mind cried suddenly, like a frightened
child's.
I want to gohome.

         
But at Zuccaro there would be no sanctuary; no purpose in
imagining that she could go back, pretending to be a child again, when her own
recklessness had deprived her of her father's protection. Miguel would never
shelter her now, she knew, when she had tried to cast away the exalted husband
he had offered her so proudly for the sake of what he had called a childish
humour.

         
It had seemed natural to defy a father who had always doted
on her - who, if he sometimes blustered or grumbled, could always be coaxed at
the last in yielding to his eldest, dearest daughter. She had not dreamed that
in wanting to marry Jaime she would lose Miguel's indulgence.

         
Momentarily her mind was so full of Jaime de Nueva that she
seemed to see him before her, his image caught beneath her lowered lids as he
had looked that day when he had told her he loved her.

         
'If you mean to pluck that flower, may I have it?' He had
been standing beside her on the terrace overlooking the garden, watching her as
she toyed nervously with an oleander-blossom on the overhanging tree nearby.

         
She bad been studying him covertly, painfully aware of
loving him, and his voice had made her start so that the bloom came away in her
hand.

         
'It will clash with your doublet.'

         
She had held up the flower close to the peacock-blue silk,
pretending to wince, and he had laughed, then abruptly looked grave.

         
'Sometimes a bold contrast is better than perfect harmony.
Juana-' he had spoken with a rush, his smooth olive-skinned face colouring - 'I
have no right to speak to you so without approaching your father, but I cannot
bear to wait. Could you will you be my wife?‘

         
In that instant of dazzling joy it had seemed merely
incidental that they had not had her father's permission, or Papa de Nueva's,
to speak of marriage. Their families had been close neighbours and friends for
so long that their love had seemed not only natural but inevitable, a conse-quence
that would be greeted with joy but no surprise. But that day the stranger had
called on her father from the Conde de Maranon, and after that, somehow, Miguel
had not been at leisure to speak with Jaime. Days had turned into weeks: de
Castaneda had at first ridden over from the Guide's home each day, then come as
a guest to Zuccaro. Juana, blind with Jove, had not known what his presence
meant until it had been almost too late.

         
Now she wrenched her mind back to the present to see him
studying her with greedy closeness, his bright eyes as unblinking as a toad's.

         
'A Duquesa-to-be, and looking so sad! It is discourteous of
you, senorita, to show so little joy in your good fortune.'

         
'I do not consider it to be such,' she answered steadily.

         
'You still regret that handsome peon of yours? You will
soon forget him, never fear-your own greatness will divert you if your
husband's charms do not.'

         
The idea seemed to amuse him.

         
'I cannot put aside my hopes so easily, Senor de Castaneda.'

         
She became aware that they had halted before a pair of
panelled doors, intricately worked in shimmering woods, and that two of the
servants who followed them had moved ahead to open them. Obedient to de
Castaneda's gesture, Juana went forward into the unseen room, then gasped as
something like a bundle of bright silks came tumbling towards her.

         
For a moment she thought that someone had tossed a doll to
land at her feet, and then she realized that it was a dwarf. The little man had
come somersaulting out to greet her, the whirling movement a ludicrous contrast
to the full court dress he wore, his top-heavy body like a spinning-top of
colour as he turned over and over. Short-limbed and heavy-headed, he was
dressed with all the extravagance of a courtier in velvets and silks, but the
childish, wide-set brown eyes looked incongruous above curling moustachios in
an old-young face that would grow wizened with the years.

         
Looking down at him, Juana could not smile. The manikin,
not much more than half her height, was as much the toy of other people's whims
as she herself had become.

         
Perhaps something of her inward anguish conveyed itself to
the dwarf, for he showed no discomfiture at failing to make her laugh. Instead
he bowed, with all the grace that his misshapen form allowed, and went
scampering back the way he had come. De Castaneda looked after him with a
chuckle.

         
'Pedrino, my wife's pet zany,' he told her carelessly. 'Now
you must eat and drink, ladies-there is refreshment for you, plenty of good
wine. Luisa, dismiss all these and let us be private.'

         
Fleetingly Juana thought that he had snapped his fingers to
summon a servant, until she saw the answering motion from farther down the
room. A woman had turned from one of the groups of silent people who stood
watching them, and was walking towards them as stiffly as a marionette. Her
sunken eyes looked almost lifeless; her silver-grey hair, elaborately curled,
was startling against an olive skin drawn so tightly over the sharp bones of
her face that they resembled old, discoloured ivory. She looked frail and
brittle, with an air of exhaustion as though the man beside Juana had arrogated
to himself all the vigour that should have been shared between them. As she
came closer, Juana saw that her thin fingers were flexing nervously against the
skirts of her dark blue gown.

         
'My wife," de Castaneda said perfunctorily, 'Dona
Luisa de Castaneda y Benaventes. Luisa, my dear, here is Banolomé's bride-to-be
come at last. Do you not think he will be pleased?'

         
Dona Luisa murmured something inaudible and extended an
almost fleshless hand to touch Juana's fingers.

         
Juana curtsied, but as she rose she said quickly, 'At last,
senor? Three weeks is no great delay in drawing a marriage contract, surely?'

         
The air around her was full of Dona Beatriz's distressed
cluckings and shusnings, but she continued to meet de Castaneda's gaze
squarely. At last he grinned and spread his hands like a haggler conceding
defeat, but his eyes remained amused.

         
'I am an impatient man, senorita. It is not surprising,
senorita? My only nephew is two-and-twenty and not yet married. He has wished
for a bride this age, and now, having found such a rare jewel for him, I am in
haste to present it.‘ His eyes ran over her almost jeeringly, hardening as Dona
Luisa touched his arm.

         
'Three weeks? But when you wrote to me, you told me-'

         
'I shall explain later, Luisa, do not trouble me now. The
Senorita Juana and her good aunt have had a long and tedious journey-it is
three full days since we left Navarre, the young lady is not fully recovered
from the sad indisposition that visited her just before we took our departure.
I hope the air here may benefit her and give her thoughts a new direction.'

         
Juana stiffened as though in response to a blow. The last
three days had been full of such taunts; de Castaneda seemed to relish the
thought of her failure and lost no opportunity to refer to it. She stared at
him steadily, her eyes full of an angry, half-despairing defiance, refusing to
let her sudden anguish show in her face. She heard Dona Luisa say something
like 'Does she know . . . ?' but de Castaneda shook his head, cutting short the
question while it was still unfinished. A servant was offering wine to her, but
she gestured it away; the authority of the slight gesture did not escape de
Castaneda, and his smile widened.