The Flesh and the Devil (81 page)

         
'Wait!' in a voice like a pistol shot.

         
'If you do not have food you will take another fever. I
shall be back in a little while.'

         
She caught up the pack and ran towards the glow
of
 
the fire, cravenly glad that he could not come
after her. Only once did she dare to
 
look back, and she saw his clenched fingers gripping the edge of the
cart as if it were a lifeline to which he clung. She had a sudden lunatic wish
that the vehicle had iron bars across it, like a wild animal's cage.

         
Two days' journey had taken them into the midst of the
sharp, rocky hills, and Juana had begun to feel that she had passed her whole
life in the company of mules and that her lifetime had been a thousand years.
There were fifty or sixty in the train, all loaded with packs and panniers, and
after the first night Placido had not bothered to have the poor beasts unloaded
for sleep, so that their complaining cries continued night and day. The dust
and the smells and the noise seemed to leave a trail of petty squalor across
the harsh, yet somehow serene, landscape.

         
After coming so close to betraying herself to Tristan,
Juana would have crawled on her hands and knees rather than spend an hour in
his company. The hill-tracks very soon reduced her feet to cut and blistered
agony, but she only tore Nieves's ample shift into strips and shared them
between her own feet and Tristan's wounded leg. While the mule-train moved she
kept pace with it, straying sometimes from the track in search of growing
things that might be eaten, peering back over the hills for signs of pursuit,
but always keeping well away from the creaking ox-cart in the rear. At night
she slept on the ground beneath its wheels, so that she would hear Tristan if
he called out or became restless, but so that he should not be able to see
where she lay. When she brought him food and newlyrinsed bandages twice a day,
she did so while the drovers were resting and eating nearby, and in a silence
that no gibe or question could penetrate. She was afraid, horribly afraid, that
if she once answered him she would betray herself beyond concealment.

         
The drovers treated their human freight as if it did not
exist, an attitude which extended even to the elderly man who drove the cart
they rode in. They made room for Juana at the fire when she came there, allowed
her privacy if she found a stream where she could wash, but otherwise ignored
both her presence and Tristan's. She guessed that they did so in order to be
able to deny all knowledge of them upon oath if need be, never dreaming of the
bloodcurdling threats that Placido had laid upon any man who was seen to take
an interest in the young senora at the expense of his work.

         
As the food supplied by Luis began to run low, or she found
that she needed things that shedid not have – milk was essential when it proved
that Tristan could not stomach solid food at first-she learned at last why Luis
had insisted upon the blue gown. The solution made her smile a little grimly at
her own simplicity. To the eyes of a sheltered lady it was nothing but a
garment to be worn on a fit occasion, and useless otherwise; but to her new,
more practical sight it became what Luis had seen in it, a treasure-house of
things to barter. Collar, cuffs, jewelled pins, lengths of gold and silver
braid that had been simply ornamental became treasures to be haggled over,
valuable confections of silk and precious wire that would bribe an unfriendly
drover into giving help.

         
By the third day Tristan seemed to have recovered from the
anger that had made him try to goad her, and an unspoken truce prevailed. They
spoke briefly and stiltedly of practical things that never touched upon the
past, and slowly Juana's guard relaxed. She still sensed the cold wariness with
which he studied her while she talked to him, but found that she could bear it
more easily; her spirit was toughening, as were her delicate hands and feet,
and her new, dogged practicality told her that to let her heart break now would
do him and herself little good - at least she could help him back to health
during this journey. But as he gained strength he refused to allow her to tend
his wound night and morning; he bathed it and bound it himself, his face as
coldly detached as if he were ministering to someone else. Juana saw him rip
off bandages that had been stuck to the wound with his own blood, and he had
not made a sound, retorting to her protests that they should be soaked free
that they had not the water to spare. All he allowed her to do-and that only
because he could not - was to sniff the wound for gangrene before he bound it
up again.

         
She had not heard of gangrene until he told her of it, a
few curt sentences concerning its symptoms and what it could do to a man. He
studied her face as he spoke, watching the colour leave her cheeks as though he
were conducting an experiment in science, his eyes icily observant on the dread
growing in her dark ones. It crossed her mind that he was torturing her
deliberately, but she dismissed the irrational thought. He was speaking so to
drive home the importance of the disease, that was all, and to teach her that
her negligence could mean the loss of his leg or even his life. She fought down
her fear and listened with a face as set and expressionless as his, refusing to
wince from the thought of the corruption that could attack his flesh, even
though her own revolted at it.

         
'You understand?' He shifted his weight slightly as he
spoke. The floor of the cart was bare, splintery wood, and there were not
enough sacks for both padding and covering. The immaculate servant, the
extravagant traveller from England, had vanished in a grim-faced vagabond;
Tristan's red hair was tangled and darkened with dirt, and lack of food had
deepened the hollows in his face to shadowed crevasses and pulled the skin taut
over gleaming ridges of bone. His scar stood out sharply against his pallor, even
though the copper stubble of his fast-growing beard helped to hide it. Juana
wondered irrelevantly why he had never grown one before to mask his
disfigurement, but the question answered itself. Such a man, who silently
flaunted his scar and his startling colouring amongst a predominantly dark
race, who could choose his clothes so audaciously, would not soften the shock
of his appearance for any onlooker or imply that he was ashamed.
This is
what I am,
 
his scarred face said;
accept
it or avoid me.
 
And she had tried to
avoid him, but he would not let her, and now their positions were reversed-she
would not leave him unless he sent her away.

         
She nodded, avoiding the green eyes that seemed to search
her face. 'Yes, I understand.'

         
'If the gangrene sets in, bribe a mule-doctor to come and
cut off the leg.' He spoke as unemotionally as if the facts had no connection
with him. 'It will probably kill me, but it will be quicker - unless you grudge
the expense of a bribe, but if you do I cannot guarantee you a pleasant journey
during the time it takes me to die. Though, of course, you may enjoy watching.'

         
She answered stiffly, 'If you are like to die I shall not
need the money for your passage - I dare say I can afford you so much
kindness.'

         
'My thanks, madam.' The inclination of his head was a
mocking echo of the old pretence of servility, but there was no amusement in
his face.

         
Juana dropped her gaze to her hands and saw them locked
rigidly together, the white knuckles giving away what it had cost her to speak
so callously, but she did not think he had seen them. Deliberately, she unlaced
her fingers and looked up, to find him watching her with a hard look on his
face that made her heart contract.

         
'Though I have some claim on your bounty, do I not? You and
yours are mine by law since you married me.'

         
'I shall not cheat you,' she retorted, and swung herself
down from the cart. To conceal the existence of her child from him was not
cheating, she comforted her conscience; only a refusal to put another weapon in
his hands.

         
It was on the morning of the eighth day that Tristan
surveyed his wound and observed unemotionally, 'I think the risk of infection
is past now.'

         
Juana gave a little cry of thankfulness and turned her head
away, cutting off the sound as soon as it was uttered. His gaze flew to her
half-averted face.

         
'It is healing. What will you do when I am no longer tied
here by the leg?

         
Go among the mules to avoid my company?'

         
She started to rise, but his fingers locked round her bare
ankle and held her fast. 'Answer me, Juana.' His hold tightened slowly, and she
had to grip the cart to keep her balance.

         
In a goaded voice she retorted, 'We will be in Cadiz before
you can stand, let alone walk - unless you have discovered the faith to pray
for a miracle. Let me go!'

         
Something in the green eyes hardened, but he did not
release her. 'At least you have shed that damnable reserve, if only to quarrel
with me. Tell me now, will we reach Cadiz the day after tomorrow? I
 
can still count,' he added dryly when she
looked startled.

         
'Why not ask Placido? He scarcely speaks to me,' Her
expression was sullen, but her tips were trembling because he was still holding
her.

         
'He will not discuss his affairs with a piece of baggage,
which is all I am to him.' His lips curved in a self-mockery that she did not
see. 'And the man who drives this can seems to think I have the evil eye, and
will not even look at me. Like you.'

         
'You should have asked the Condesa to come with you, then,'
she replied suffocatedly, and he shook his head.

         
'Elena has no use for anything but what gives her pleasure,
and I doubt that she would roam these hills barefoot or haggle with peasants
for food, for the sake of novelty. What pleasure does it give you, Juana?'

         
She tensed to wrench her foot out of his hand, but he
sensed it and tightened his grasp painfully. Her head went back with an
irrepressible gasp, and she returned fiercely, 'The pleasure of seeing you suffer!
What else?'

         
'And when I am no longer suffering enough to please you,
you will leave me. Is it so?'