The Shores of Spain (51 page)

The hotel was close to the train station, and a few moments later, they straggled into the lobby, hoping to book enough rooms and beds that they could all sleep—those who weren’t too afraid of being taken back to the prison, that was. Marina left Joaquim sitting in an upholstered chair in the foyer and went to the front desk in the marquesa’s wake.

The clerk at the desk looked appalled at the state of his unexpected guests, but quickly regained his professional aplomb when faced with the marquesa’s sharp glare. When she demanded that he clear rooms next to the one Joaquim and Marina had, he stammered, “But . . . but . . . that hall has been booked, ma’am. We can provide other rooms, but those rooms are
already
being held for Mr. Tavares.” He waved at Marina as he said that last part.

“We didn’t have the entire hall,” Marina protested.

The clerk turned to her. “Not before, Mrs. Tavares, but Lady
Ferreira’s agent sent another telegram yesterday morning, and she arrived just this evening.”

“Lady Ferreira is here?” Marina asked, suddenly feeling limp with relief. But she couldn’t stop now, not while decisions needed to be made.

The clerk turned and checked the keys on the wall. “Yes, Mrs. Tavares.”

“Then may we have the keys?”

Marcos and Father Escarrá helped Joaquim up the stairs to the second floor, and the commotion of herding several exhausted and overstimulated children up the curved stairs was enough to alert Joaquim’s foster mother that they’d arrived. Lady Ferreira emerged from one of the rooms on the hallway, a picture of elegance in her fine brown suit and ivory lace. She ran down the hall to join them, brown eyes wide.

Joaquim blinked at her blearily, as if he feared he was hallucinating.

Lady Ferreira stroked the side of his face. “Filho,” she said, “what have you done to yourself?”

Then she smiled down at the boy silently clinging to Marina’s hand. “And you must be Alejandro. I am pleased to meet you.” She turned back to Marina. “Dear, why don’t you get Joaquim settled in his bed, and we’ll sort out your entourage? We have twelve rooms on this floor. . . .”

Drained, Marina was more than happy to leave everyone in the capable hands of Lady Ferreira, even the cranky marquesa. While the chatter continued in the hallway, Marina opened the door to their suite of rooms and let the men carry Joaquim inside.

The healer followed immediately, instructing the men where to lay him and what to fetch. When they’d brought her everything she needed, she shooed them off and turned her attention to Joaquim’s ankle, where one of the sirenas had bitten him. It had scabbed over,
but even Marina could see that the tears in his skin were ragged. “Will it heal?”

The healer set a basin under his foot and proceeded to sponge it with warm water. “Bites are always nasty. Now, Mrs. Tavares, why don’t you leave me to this? I’ve handled plenty of injuries like this before. And I suspect that Alejandro is hungry. . . .”

Marina only then realized that Alejandro had followed them into the bedroom. He sat in a chair to one side, eyes worried. “Alejandro, why don’t we go see if we can find some food?”

He rose at her suggestion and followed her out, casting one glance back at Joaquim. “I’m sorry he’s hurt,” he whispered.

Marina stopped and touched the boy’s cheek with one hand. “Don’t worry,” she said as firmly as she could manage. “He understands why he had to go there. He’ll be fine.”

She was relieved her voice wasn’t shaking. Joaquim had better not disappoint her.

The hallway was empty for the moment, so Marina cocked her head to listen and decided that the refugees were gathered in a room farther down the hall. She led Alejandro that way, only to pause again when she saw a woman coming up the steps—the woman her aunt Jovita had sent to follow them. She had to have been watching the hotel. Marina grasped Alejandro’s hand in her own.

The woman stopped on the landing and inclined her head politely. “Your aunt will be most pleased to see that you’ve returned safely. And you’ve brought the boy back with you. Were you successful in finding his mother?”

“Yes,” Marina said, “although she’s very ill.”

“I see. How unfortunate.”

Marina kept her eyes on the woman’s face. The woman might not know Leandra Rocha, but she should at least put a
little
sympathy into her voice in front of Leandra’s son. “Yes, it is.”

From a room a few feet farther down the hallway, the marquesa
emerged, clutching her cane in one hand and leaning on Father Escarrá’s arm. They came toward the stairwell.

“Since you’ve located the boy’s mother, I’ll need you to turn the journal over to me. For safekeeping,” the woman added, ignoring the marquesa’s approach. “Subminister Paredes wouldn’t want anything to happen to it, and I can get it back to the islands safely.”

Marina wasn’t certain whether or not to trust her aunt’s emissary. She’d left the journal in her handbag, though, back in the bedroom. She turned in that direction, but a glance at Father Escarrá’s expression stopped her. Still a few feet from the woman, he mouthed something at Marina, the word
mentirosa
—liar.

She turned back to the woman. “I don’t think so. We’ve secured it in the hotel safe,” she claimed, “and it will remain there until we book passage out of here.”

The woman’s head tilted, as if that confused her. “Your aunt asked me to bring it back to the islands as soon as possible.”

“It can wait,” Marina said firmly.

The woman leapt forward and shoved Marina toward the stairs. With a cry, Marina fell. She managed to grab the railing with one hand and fetched to a stop against it. When she got back to her feet, she was three steps down.

But at the head of the stairwell, the woman held Alejandro to her side, a small gun in her free hand. “Let’s try again. You’ll go down to the safe and get that book for me. I’ll trade it for the boy. Simple enough.”

Marina gazed at the woman, her heart pounding in her chest. She couldn’t give up the journal. Her mother had died for it. But she wasn’t going to let this woman hurt Alejandro. She swallowed, and everyone seemed to stand still as if the world waited on what she would do.

Alejandro’s eyes were wide, his lips turned down. He was going to do
something
, just as he’d done with the man at the stream. Behind him, the marquesa’s expression was one of annoyance, her lips
twisted in disdain. Father Escarrá watched the gun in the woman’s hand. Even farther down the hall, Lady Ferreira had emerged from her room and stood still, knuckles white on her handbag.

Marina’s eyes slid back to the woman’s. The journal wasn’t in the safe anyway. She would have to return to the bedroom to retrieve it. “I have to go back to my room to get my key,” she said in a calming tone, “to prove to the desk clerk who I am. Don’t hurt him.”

The woman’s head inclined, and she took a couple of steps back from the stairwell, dragging Alejandro with her. Marina walked back up the steps to the landing and paused, facing her adversary. “If you hurt my boy,” she whispered, “I will claw your eyes out.”

The woman made a scoffing sound. “Get me the book, and I’ll give you the webless brat.”

Marina made as if to turn toward her bedroom, then fell on the woman’s right arm, letting her weight push the gun away. “Jandro! Run!”

The woman grimaced, shaking her arm as if to get rid of Marina’s weight. Alejandro took advantage of her distraction to jump onto her instep with both feet. Marina clung to the woman’s arm, but the woman swung her other arm at the boy, knocking him back against the wall. He hissed and looked ready to fling himself at her again when a heavy
thwack
sounded and the women’s eyes rolled up into the back of her head. She crumpled forward, bearing Marina to the landing with her.

Marina struggled to get out from under her, pushing the dropped gun to one side with her foot as she did so. She let loose a sigh of relief when she saw that Father Escarrá had Alejandro safe in his grasp. The woman remained slumped on the floor, the frail marquesa standing over her, gripping her ebony cane in both hands like a club.

“Thank you, Marquesa,” Marina said breathlessly.

“Stupid woman,” the marquesa grumbled. “Turning her back on me because I’m old. It’s my legs that are weak, not my arms.”

Marina reminded herself never to underestimate that woman.

Lady Ferreira approached and, without a word, picked up the
gun that lay on the carpet. “I take it that I should shoot her if she moves?”

“She’s not going to move for a good long while,” the marquesa muttered.

Lady Ferreira shrugged, checked to be sure that the safety on the gun was off, and tucked it into her cummerbund. “Well, then, I will just keep an eye on her until the guards arrive.”

Marina stared down at her crumpled adversary. She would have clawed the woman’s eyes out if she’d hurt Alejandro. She’d meant those words. But she was glad she didn’t have to take on her enemies alone.

“Guards?” she asked Lady Ferreira, wondering if she’d heard that correctly.

“Yes, dear. From the Portuguese consulate. They should be here shortly. Before I left the Golden City, I informed the prince that Joaquim was in trouble. He didn’t ask for details, just sent word to the consulate here that they were to provide whatever we needed. I had a porter place a call directly after you arrived.”

Marina closed her eyes and said a quick prayer of thanks. It was a wonderful thing to have friends.

CHAPTER 47

                   S
ATURDAY
,
2
M
AY
1903
; B
ARCELONA                   

S
ince Joaquim was still sleeping under Miss Prieto’s watchful eye, Marina carried a lunch tray down to the last bedroom on the hotel’s hallway. The Portuguese consulate guard standing at the end of the hall nodded smartly to her and, after knocking, opened the door for her.

She’d been putting this off, this difficult talk. But she needed to make her position clear. With the children gone to a park under the watchful eyes of Marcos and a handful of guards, and the women about to leave on an excursion to a shop, they would have some time uninterrupted.

So Marina gathered her nerve and carried the tray inside the room where Leandra Rocha lay still abed, her face bruised but composed. The woman had bathed, and her dark hair was braided neatly. Her splinted hand lay atop the covers. She pushed herself into a sitting position when Marina entered, moving slowly, as if in a fog.

“Can I help you?” Marina asked, setting the tray on the table next to the bed.

“No, please. I’d rather you keep your distance,” the woman said
in her soft voice as she finally sat with her back against the wooden headboard. “How is your husband faring?”

“His fever has broken,” Marina said, “although the healer wants to keep him asleep for now in hopes that his ankle will heal faster if she can keep him off it.”

“I never meant for that to happen to him,” Leandra said. “I am sorry. We never thought he would be treated that way. We assumed he would be taken to the main prison like any other prisoner.”

Shaking her head, Marina lifted the tray again and set it across the woman’s lap. “You cannot plan for everything, even with a seer aiding you. Now, you need to eat, to get your strength back.”

“Do not worry about me,” Leandra said. “I’ll be gone soon.”

Marina felt her stomach go hollow at that pronouncement. “You shouldn’t say that. We know healers in Portugal, terribly strong ones. One of them healed her husband’s tuberculosis. Surely she can help you.”

They
would
reach Portugal before Leandra became too ill. They’d had word from the Americans that a Portuguese ship would arrive tonight from the islands to take the former prisoners to the Golden City and from there to the islands if they wished. Consequently this would be a day of rest for them all, something they sorely needed, although the sooner they got away from the shores of Spain, the happier these women would be.

Leandra shook her head. “The more quickly this is done, the better. I don’t want my children to watch me linger on for months. Once I’ve made out my will and we’ve gotten them safely out of Spain, the Vilaró will take me elsewhere.”

Marina sat in the chair near the bed. “To die?”

Leandra gazed down at the food on the tray and began awkwardly cutting her sausage.

“Let me do that,” Marina said, gently pushing away the woman’s bandaged hand. She took the plate with the sausage, set it on the table, and began cutting the sausage into manageable pieces to put in
her soup. “You would be far more comfortable at the . . . at
our
house in the Golden City. There’s no need for you to be alone.”

“No,” Leandra said. “I won’t stay in the same house as my children. I won’t risk infecting them, or everything we’ve worked for will be for naught.”

Marina passed the plate back to her and Leandra slid the sausage into her soup. “Then where will you go?”

A hint of a smile touched Leandra’s lips. “He says he will take me to a place where I won’t be sick any longer. I would never be able to return, but he claims I will be able to watch my children grow from a distance.”

Something about her expression struck Marina. “Do you love him?”

“The Vilaró? Yes, rather foolishly,” Leandra said, “as I don’t think it’s possible for him to love me. He doesn’t seem to possess that manner of sentiment. But he is very fond of me, and enjoys being adored. It makes him stronger.”

That sounded like a strange relationship, but she wasn’t going to criticize this woman’s choices, not after all Leandra had been through.

“What about William Adler?” Marina asked. Mr. Pinter had brought the news that Adler was still recuperating in the hospital, but was now expected to make a full recovery.

“William is, I’m afraid, the same young man he was when I met him a decade ago, whereas I am . . . a thousand years older. That is why I’ll be leaving Liliana in his aunt’s care rather than his, if she’ll accept. She would be a far better guardian for a capricious child such as Liliana.”