The Winding Stair (13 page)

Perhaps because to do so would have been to let him see how he had hurt her, and there was savage comfort in concealing that. She would show him that she could play his game as well as he, and with as little feeling. For he had made no bones about it. He meant to go on using her. Tomorrow he would arrive. ‘Ostensibly to call on you,' he had said. ‘You won't mind?' he had asked. Mind? She found she was biting the sheet, made herself lie still and slept at last, heavily.

Manuela was peering anxiously down at her. ‘Mrs. Brett is asking for you,
menina
. She said to let you sleep through dinner, but it's late now. Past one o'clock.' They kept Portuguese hours at the castle and dined at eleven.

‘How is she this morning?' Juana was out of bed with the words.

‘As usual.' It was hard to tell just what this implied.

In fact, Juana was amazed to find her grandmother up and dressed. She remarked on it as soon as they were alone: ‘I had hoped you would rest in bed today, ma'am.'

‘Impossible. Lock the outer door, Juana.' And then, when Juana had made sure that there was no one within earshot. ‘Don't you realise after last night, the danger of this business? Nothing must be unusual today. And – I have to see Mr. Varlow.'

‘Could not I?'

‘Alone? A young lady? Have you forgotten what life here is like? And there is no one in the castle we can trust. Never forget that, Juana.'

‘But surely I could give him a letter?'

‘At a pinch, yes. But we avoid writing if we can. The Sons of the Star are everywhere. You take your life in your hand if you write.'

‘But, grandmother, are they really so powerful?' Juana had had a great deal of time, in the sleepless night, to think about this. ‘They seemed – somehow – absurd. All that question and answer business! It was like boys at school. And – really – to let you watch them all these years and never even notice—'

‘Don't be misled by that,' the old woman interrupted her. ‘In fact, it's the measure of their power. It would simply not occur to them that I might be any kind of a threat. You heard what they think of women. They just think of one as negligible, a female, a thing. But they are none the less dangerous for that. For God's sake, Juana, don't fall into their own error of over-confidence. That way lies danger – no, the certainty of a horrible death.' She rose stiffly to her feet, walked, limping, over to the anteroom door, then turned back to face Juana. ‘It seemed so simple, risking your life, before I had seen you again. After all, what is one life, compared with the safety of a whole country? Now, I feel different. For my sake, Juana, be careful. If anything happens to you I'll never forgive myself.'

‘Thank you, grandmother.' It was heart-warming. ‘I'll be careful.'

A timid knock summoned Juana to the outer door where she found Estella looking both nervous and shocked: ‘There's a
young gentleman come to call,
menina
, asking for you. A Senhor Varlow.' She pronounced it oddly.

‘What's this?' Mrs. Brett's voice, loud and bullying from the inner room. ‘A young gentleman daring to ask for my granddaughter?'

‘He's an English gentleman.' Estella volunteered it timidly.

‘I'm sorry, ma'am.' Juana took her cue. ‘I met him at Forland House. I suppose he doesn't know our Portuguese customs.'

‘Then it's time he learned about them. Bring him here, Estella, and I will teach him to come paying calls on unmarried young ladies.'

So the interview Juana had dreaded began with a magnificent scolding, delivered in full voice by the old lady, who clearly intended everyone in the castle to know how she felt about Gair Varlow. Since Estella heard every word of it, there was no doubt that the story would be all over the castle by supper time. At last Mrs. Brett drew breath and spoke a little more mildly: ‘And what have you to say for yourself, young man?'

‘I must plead ignorance, ma'am. And beg your forgiveness, and Miss Brett's. I had the good fortune to meet her at Forland House: to hear her sing. When I heard she had come to Portugal, I could not believe in my good luck. I wished to lose no time in … in paying my respects to her and her family.' He was every inch the love-lorn suitor, fumbling for words, even, Juana could have sworn, blushing a little. Watching the consummate performance, she thought it would be easy to hate him.

Luckily he and Mrs. Brett were now keeping up a conversation of splendid banalities about the news of the day. After about five minutes of this, Mrs. Brett drooped a little in her big upright chair. ‘You will forgive me, Mr. Varlow, I know. I am a little tired today. I do not normally entertain strangers. Estella!'

‘Yes, ma'am?' Estella emerged from her retirement in the antechamber.

‘Mr. Varlow wishes to meet the family. Will you fetch Elvira, please, to introduce him – and warn my sons to expect a guest. Wake them, if necessary.' And then, in quite a different tone, as soon as the outer door was closed behind Estella. ‘Juana, the door. Don't lock it: stand by it. Mr. Varlow, come closer.'

So Juana, leaning against the outer door, heard only a phrase here and there of their quick, low-voiced conversation. She gathered that the review of the fleet to which St.
Vincent proposed to invite the Prince Regent was planned for the following week. ‘I'll warn Strangford,' Varlow said. ‘He'll take care of it. Though, frankly, I doubt if even St. Vincent would be mad enough to put such a plan into execution. It sounds like an after-dinner project to me.'

‘Yes.' Mrs. Brett was pleased with him. ‘That's what I thought.'

On duty at the door, Juana thought she heard a noise outside, and opened it a crack. Nothing. She closed it again, in time to hear Gair Varlow say: ‘No; it may take some time to find another messenger I can trust. In the meanwhile, I am afraid my courtship of Miss Brett will have to be fairly assiduous.'

‘Yes,' agreed the old lady. ‘And not just once a month, after the full moon either. That would be too obvious.'

Sick with anger – at herself, at him – Juana was grateful that she could keep her face turned away from the other two. But now she did hear voices on the stair: ‘They're coming, ma'am.' She joined them in time for Elvira's knock on the outer door.

Elvira seemed less odd this morning, and was talking in fairly coherent prose. She greeted Gair Varlow quite normally and led the way back across the courtyard to the family's part of the castle where they found Miguel deep in talk with a priest Juana had not met before and did not much like now. Father Ignatius was short and stout, with a sharp and sliding eye. He apologised, at length, and with a humility that failed to ring true, for being absent on the ‘propitious occasion' of her return.

‘Nothing but my duty would have called me away,' he wound up with a flourish, and Juana found herself thinking: what duty? Had he, perhaps, been one of the cowled Sons of the Star? How maddening it was that the acoustics of the cavern took the individuality out of voices. From now on, she must suspect everyone.

Turning away from him, a little too abruptly, she could not help being amused to find Gair Varlow already deep in talk with Miguel about Pombal's expulsion of the Jesuits. It was a subject on which Miguel would fulminate for hours, and she listened with a mixture of irritation and awe as Gair kept him going with a well-timed and brilliantly non-committal word here and there.

Prospero joined them a few minutes later, explaining, with apologies, that he had been absorbed in a knotty point for the preface to his edition of Camoens. ‘It's a question of what really
happened to King Sebastian,' he explained, shaking Gair absent-mindedly by the hand. ‘You know the story?'

‘Of the King who disappeared after being defeated by the Moors? Yes, indeed. That was during Camoens' lifetime, was it not? Is it true that many Portuguese still believe that he is waiting, like King Arthur, in some limbo, and will return one day to save his country in its hour of need?'

Prospero shrugged. ‘Our peasants will believe anything. Sebastianism always revives when there's trouble. I expect if you asked Iago or Tomas – our footmen – they would tell you they confidently expect him to appear at the eleventh hour and rout the French.'

‘Fantastic! But apropos of the
Lusiads
, sir, have you met my principal, Lord Strangford, who translated them?'

Prospero had not, and would like to, he said, although he made it clear that he had his doubts about Strangford's translation of the famous Portuguese poem. ‘There are several points I should like to discuss with him.'

‘I am sure he would be most grateful for any help you can give him with a view to a future edition. With your permission, I will hope to arrange a meeting next time Lord Strangford comes to Sintra. Perhaps you would all honour us with a visit?' He finished the glass of wine and the little sweet cake Elvira had offered him and rose to take his leave. ‘You will bring your charming niece?' Once again, the note was absolutely right, and once again Juana found it intolerable.

But, ‘A very personable young man,' was Prospero's verdict, after Gair had gone.

‘Right-thinking, too, for an Englishman,' said Miguel. ‘Really not at all an unsuitable young man, my dear Juana, if he has any means.'

‘He has nothing.' It came out more angrily than Juana had intended, and once again she was uncomfortably aware of Father Ignatius' sharp eye upon her.

Elvira burst into song:

‘ “
How shall I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle-hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon
”'

After that dramatic beginning, it was odd to find life in the castle settling down into a humdrum, domestic routine. Juana often found it hard to believe, as the monotonous rhythm of her days established itself, that down below, deep in the heart of the cliff, lay the cavern where, in a month's time – no, less than three weeks now – she must play, alone, her part of danger.

They rose early at the castle to take advantage of the cool morning hours. Juana breakfasted on rolls and coffee with her uncles and aunt, then visited her grandmother (if she was well enough) before riding out for an hour or two on her mule, Rosinante. She had objected, furiously, at first, to being accompanied by one of the servants, but Mrs. Brett had been firm: ‘I'm sorry, child. You're in Portugal now.'

So Tomas or Iago ran ahead with his lead-tipped staff while Rosinante ambled up and down among the orange groves and grape vines of the Pleasant Valley, and Juana tried to work out where, underneath, the secret cavern must lie. Her grandmother had told her that it was far enough from the Castle on the Rock so that the connection between them need not be obvious to the Sons of the Star who came by boat to a concealed entrance in the cliffs. But when Juana had asked if she knew where that was, Mrs. Brett had shaken her head: ‘Don't even wonder, child. It's not safe.'

Though it was mid-September by now, the hill's toward Sintra were still bleached brown, waiting for the autumn rains. To enter the Pleasant Valley was like entering a different world. Here, as at Sintra, the Moorish method of irrigation was still practised, making the fullest use of every drop of water from the little stream that ran down the valley. Here grapes were ripening on their vines, trained up poles in the tidy Portuguese fashion, and Juana pulled up Rosinante from time to time to pick a few of the ripest and eat them, hot, and sweet and tasting of sunshine. There were small green oranges already, shining among dark leaves, and she spent a whole peaceful morning watching the men dig out the earth from around their roots, water them, and put it back.

As Maria had prophesied, the sun and air were doing her
good, and so was the blessed freedom, in Portuguese, from her stammer. She felt more adventurous every day and rode a little further down the path by the valley stream. Soon she had passed the limits of her childhood explorations with Pedro and Roberto. They had never gone beyond the flat table of rock, about half way down the valley with the olive press and the big tanks where the grapes were brought at harvest time and trampled all night by barefoot
gallegos
who worked their way, thus, from vineyard to vineyard. Down to this pressing floor, the path was really a road, wide enough for the lumbering oxcarts to take away the casks of must or oil when the pressing was over. Beyond it, there were only the labourers' paths among the vines. The sides of the valley grew steeper, and the cultivated area smaller, hemmed in by a wilderness of tangling myrtle and cistus and creeping oak, which thinned out, higher up, to show the granite bones of the valley.

Juana's private ambition was to follow the stream all the way down to the sea. The odd thing about the Pleasant Valley, and the secret of its fertility, was that in it you were unaware of the nearby Atlantic. It ran almost parallel with the line of the cliffs, and its stream turned sharply to the right at the bottom to vanish on a tangle of undergrowth. But surely where water went, she could go too?

So day after day she tried the paths that fanned out downwards from the central plateau, only to find that each one petered out where the vines ended. She had not told Iago, who usually accompanied her, about her plan. Was it that it seemed rather a childish one? Or was there more to it? She did not remember being forbidden to come down here when she was a child, but the fact remained that she and her cousins had never done so.

She had almost overlooked the path that ran by the stream itself, because its entrance was masked by an untidy thicket of evergreen oaks. When she did notice it, one hot, still September morning, and turned Rosinante's head down it, Iago came running toward her from the plateau, where he had paused to talk to the men who were cleaning out the wine troughs. ‘Not that way,
menina
,' he shouted before he had reached her. ‘You can't get through.'