The Flesh and the Devil (29 page)

         
before he fell to the floor and lay still.

        
Torres's brows lifted very slightly. It was providential, he
was thinking, and as strange as it was welcome, for the poison which he had so
carefully selected to rid the King of his two embarrassments, Eugenio de
Castaneda and the nephew who should never have existed, still reposed snugly
inside two of the rings on his fingers; he had not intended to administer them
until the wedding feast itself.

         
Tristán had moved forward swiftly and was kneeling over
the
 
huddled shape, his long fingers
deftly loosening the high, strangling golilla collar; the dreadful colour had
faded from his cheeks, leaving them waxen. Juana stared down
 
at him in horror. The man was deadly sick,
yet his last conscious thought had been that obsessive desire to marry her to
his nephew. She seemed to feel invisible threads reaching out from the slumped
body, trying impotently to enfold her again in a web of malice. . . .

         
Front a great distance she heard Tristán's voice say, 'He
is not dead, but he needs a physician,' and she realized as he spoke that Jaime
had moved forward and was supporting her, her head against his shoulder, her
nostrils full of the familiar fragrance of him. In that instant she was transported
back to the safety and happiness of childhood, and she could listen to the
meaningless voices with a small, contented smile on her lips.

         
'This is his rage, Your Grace, too much choler has overcome
him . . . he should be taken to his bed.'

         
'Have him attended to, then — will you go with your
husband, senora?'

         
'Your Grace —' Jaime's voice sounded odd, close to Juana's
ear; she could sense the vibration through his chest without making sense of
the words. 'The senorita is fainting.'

         
'With Your Grace's permission—'

         
For correctness, Tristán should have awaited Torres's
assent, but without bothering to finish the request he crossed to Juana in
three quick strides and scooped her up in his arms before she, too, crumpled to
the ground.

         
It was much later, in the golden afternoon light that
presaged the swift Andalusian dusk, that Juana opened her eyes. For a moment
she stared unseeingly before her, knowing no more than that she was conscious
and had not been so before. Then her gaze flickered round the room in which she
lay, and she saw dark panels barred with gold from the grilled window, and a
high, painted ceiling. 'Awake at last?' enquired a voice, and the Condesa de
Araciel bent over her, her plump, hook-nosed face more gentle than Juana had
ever seen it. 'We have been concerned for you, senorita, you have slept so
long.'

         
Juana's brows puckered. 'Slept. . . ?'

         
She could not think why her sleeping should cause anyone
concern, then pictures began to come back to her. The imagined vision of
Michaela, a huddled, bird-boned heap on the courtyard stones; de Castaneda's
fallen body, like a stricken bull, powerless but malignant; herself, as she had
seemed to see her own body, sliding limply through Jaime's anxious grasp and
being caught up, before she could fall to the floor, as if she had weighed no
more than a baby. She moistened her lips and forced out the question she could
hardly bear to ask.

         
'What happened?‘

         
'You swooned when the senor fell ill, and one of the
servants carried you here so that you might recover in peace.'

         
‗No. . . I meant, what happened to my — to the Duque?
Has

         
he

         
been

         
found yet?'

         
'No.' Juana wondered whether she had imagined a faint note
of reassurance in the Condesa's tone. `Half the household is searching for him
— but he will be found. He likes to play in the hidden passages, only to vex
those who look after him, but when he is tired of the game, or hungry, he will
return again. This has happened before.'

         
An irrational hope died. Juana said, `But the senor was so
— so angry-‘

         
'Because he did not wish His Grace de Medina de las Torres
to know of his habits' was the reply. 'At other times he has simply waited for
his return — he has no real fear for his safety.'

         
Juana nodded. So, it seemed, de Castaneda would have his
wish even if he was not there to see it performed; Bartolomé's tricks had not
changed the situation. When he returned, everything would be as it was before,
save for a little delay — perhaps not even that.

         
'Proxy — Felipe —'

         
The almost unintelligible words came back to her now, and
she shivered slightly. Even if Bartolomé were not found in time for the
ceremony, it could go forward-if de Castaneda's last desperate order had been
heard and heeded by any other than herself.

         
The memory of long arms holding her high against a broad
chest like a wall made her ask almost involuntarily, ‗Who carried me
here?‘

         
The Condesa smiled thinly. ‗You need have no fear, it
was not your childhood friend - that would have been against all etiquette and
could never have been permitted! It was thc Duque's man. There is no
incorrectness in the case of servants.'

         
Juana wanted to laugh, and bit her lip against the hysteria
that threatened to well up and overpower her. The Condesa, however, took her
strange look for shocked modesty and explained soothingly that she had been by
Juana 's side since she had swooned; that the man had obeyed her orders to the
letter, laying Juana down on this couch and going out of the room again without
another look at her. He was waiting outside now, she added, to take news of her
recovery to His Grace de las Torres and to deliver a message to her on the
grandee's behalf.

        
'I shall not see him!' Juana's heartbeat was quick and
painful. 'Tell him, Condesa, that I - I am recovered but would stay here
quietly for an hour or two, undisturbed. Any message he has for me, tell him, I
command him to say to you.'

         
'Very well.'

         
If the Condesa were surprised by her vehemence, she gave no
sign. With a light touch on Juana's shoulder that might have been sympathy, she
went to the door and let herself out, closing it behind her.

         
Juana relaxed again, letting her head loll back against the
cushions and watching, almost idly, the sunlight deepening from amber to flame
on the dark wood of the panels. The room was warm, and it was too much trouble
to think . . . unconsciousness was beckoning her again, and she was tempted to
let go of all the hideous shreds of memory and let the comforting darkness take
her again. Nothing could touch her, hurt her, there; and what she did not know
of would have no power over her. It would not matter if they found Bartolomé...
The sound of the door closing compelled het eyes open, she had not known, until
mite looked up at the door, that she had expected Felipe Tristán to enter in
the Condesa‘s stead. But the elder woman, plum and austere was approaching the
couch with her usual chilly serenity.

         
‗He had given me the message from the Duque -‘ she
did not bother to dignify the mercenary with his name - 'and he requested me to
tell you that he respects your wish for solitude. I suggested that I and some
of your ladies should stay outside the door and warn away the searchers if they
should seek to come this way and disturb you, and he assented and said that he
would tell His Grace de las Torres.'

         
Juana felt a curious twinge of uneasiness, almost like
disappointment. Why had Tristán admitted defeat at easily? He usually took
little notice of her commands, and she had rejoiced in the thought of having
the Condesa to help her rout him. Then she remembered the inner excitement that
had caught her attention when she had first seen him clearly that morning -
that blazing inward triumph that had changed his icy greets eyes to the brilliance
of emeralds. Perhaps that - whatever it was - still occupied his thoughts
enough to make him concede her the victory in this minor skirmish. Was that how
he would look, she wondered with sudden, convulsive violence, if she ever found
that she was to bear his child?

         
She thanked the Condesa for her thoughtfulness in a voice
that shook treacherously, and agreed that she would like her door to be guarded
while she rested. 'And the Duque's message?' she added, on an odd inflection.
'What did he say?'

         
The Condesa smiled. 'Only that His Grace sends his
apologies to you for his want of hearing. He understands that Senor de
Castaneda was speaking somewhat of your wedding ceremony when he was taken ill,
but he — the Duque — was so much agitated that he could not make out what it
was he said, and dares not act upon uncertainties.'

        
Comprehension filled Juana's eyes as she thought of the
Duque's pale, unmoved face watching de Castaneda's stumbling and shouting, and
a tiny smile tugged at her lips in answer. ‗I am grateful to His Grace‘
she said unsteadily. ‗He is a wiser man than I guessed.‘

         
When the Condesa had gone Juana heard a brief murmuring of
voices outside and knew that her guardians had taken up their watch. The
knowledge was soothing, and it made her feel safe as she had not felt safe
since she first missed Tia Beatriz and learned that her only sure protection
had been sent away from her. It was plain enough why de Castaneda had rid
himself of Tia, she thought with new, grim realism; her own complaints of her
betrothed's behaviour might be dismissed as childish exaggeration or an attempt
to win pity, but Miguel de Arrelanos would not disbelieve his meek, soft-hearted
elder sister.

         
Her thoughts darted back, against her will, to the previous
night; to the angry, whining voice and the scrabbling fingers. There was a row
of bloody crescents on the inside of one of her thighs, where Bartolomé‘s
fingernails had plunged when the first throes of epilepsy took him. ..

         
A sound from the darkest corner of the room, beside the
mantel, made her thrust herself upright. Strange, she thought, that she had not
noticed that flaw in the panelling before, that thin black line that split the
oak like a crack of darkness. A fault in the wood, she told herself, but it was
a fault that moved and grew.

         
Then, magnified in her ears, she heard the Condesa's voice.
'He likes to play in the hidden passages. . . .' And she had been too dazed,
too stupid to ask what the hidden passages were or where they led. A building
as old as this would be fretted with them, so that people could pass from room
to room unseen by means of concealed doors and secret ways. And one such door
was opening now, before her eyes, and the crack had widened to a strip of
darkness.

         
It would almost admit a man now, and her lips parted to
scream for the Condesa.

         
Light glimmered in the gap, almost white in contrast to the
dusky orange glow of the dying sun, and Juana felt her throat close in pure
terror.

         
'Quietly.' The whisper made her freeze. 'Do not call out,
Juana, or I must silence you.'

         
Numbly, she watched the panel swing wider, saw the
lantern-light gleam on the blade of a dagger. Striking upwards, it transformed
Felipe Tristán's face into something fiendish, the harshly jutting bones
disfigured by the bar of shadow that rived his cheek, the strange, slanting
eyes pale and inhuman. Then he took a step forward into the room and the last
of the sun's rays touched the brilliant hair.