The Winding Stair (40 page)

She did indeed. She was not sure how much of the fantastic story she believed. She was not even sure how much of it he believed himself, but one thing stood out brutally clear. Because of his own illegitimacy (‘forged documents', Gair had said) he needed her beside him to back his incredible claim. It all began to make a terrifying kind of sense. What old Luisa had said … the clothes hanging ready in the closet … Vasco had carried her off. His elaborate courtesy, the dramatic kissing of hands, merely masked the fact that she was entirely in his power. And there was so dangerously much that she did not understand.
She took a deep breath. ‘You have amazed me, cousin. I don't know what to say.' She must have time to think.

‘I don't wonder. It's a tremendous prospect, is it not? Queen of Portugal. Think of all the good you can do, Juana. Think how this country needs you. Your grandmother wanted it for you: remember that. She knew. That's why she sent for you. If she could speak now she would tell you to take up your destiny and be a Queen. It's fate you see, that our family should have come back, quite by chance, to the Castle on the Rock. As its owner – as my wife – I tell you, Juana, we can't fail. It's our duty, don't you see, to save the country.'

‘You overwhelm me, cousin.' The more he told her, the less she trusted him. Now, at last, she understood why there had always been something strange about his love-making. Nothing he had ever said to her had been quite true. She would be mad to believe him now. She would be madder still to let him see that she did not. ‘It's all too much for me,' she said. ‘You must give me time to take it in.' Dared she ask some of the questions that boiled in her brain? ‘But my grandmother knew, you say?' That should be safe enough.

‘Of course. I told you. That's why she sent for you. Oh, she was glad enough to give up acting as Handmaiden – she was absurdly too old for that: I don't know how she managed to keep it up so long – all those stairs, and the cold down there. Ridiculous at her age.'

‘So you're a member, and I never knew.' Had he intended to betray it? She managed, she hoped, to sound as if she was simply impressed by his cleverness. But once again her brain was racing. Twice he was supposed to have rescued her from the Sons of the Star. And he was one of them. No wonder he had found it so easy. She found herself looking at the bandage on his left arm and wondering if there was any wound underneath it. Dangerous even to think of that. The more she learned, the more aware she was of her own danger. And there was something else. Something more frightening still. If her grandmother had been conspiring with Vasco all the time, had she told him about the secret panel? About Gair?

She thought not. She hoped not. But how to find out? ‘How in the world did you manage to meet my grandmother?' She asked it in tones of simple admiration. ‘Without my ever having any idea?'

‘Oh, that was easy enough.' She did not think he much liked the question. ‘But there will be time for explanation later. Just now, you are in grave danger; you must give me the right to protect you.'

‘You mean from the Sons of the Star? But, if you're a member?'

‘Don't you see?' He did not enjoy having his logic questioned. ‘There's a division in the ranks. That's where the danger, lies. The better part of the members are heart and soul for me, for Sebastian, but there are still some madmen who think the French will bring Portugal freedom. They are the ones we have to fear.'

‘I see.' She was trembling at once with terror and with relief. Her grandmother had not betrayed her all the way. Vasco did not know about the secret panel. He had no idea that she had listened to the meetings and therefore knew that Sebastian's name had never even been mentioned. He thought of her merely as the Handmaiden of the Star, a woman, beneath serious consideration. He must continue to do so. ‘A Queen,' she said. ‘It's like a dream, cousin.' A nightmare.

‘So you agree? You'll marry me, my Queen?'

Something very odd about his tone. She had never thought so fast, remembered so much. Was she beginning to understand? He did not want to marry her. Did not want to marry at all? No time to think it out further, she must use this instinctive knowledge for all it was worth. ‘Vasco!' She stopped. ‘Sebastian, my King, of course I'll marry you.' She seized his hand, kissed it with passion, and thought she felt him recoil. ‘But – a royal marriage? Not a hole and corner one like my step-sisters'. Surely you and I should wait and be married as a King and Queen should, in the Cathedral?'

Would it work? With his reluctance on her side? ‘The Se at Lisbon?' He considered it. ‘You're right in a way. Publicly, before the world.'

‘Yes.' Dared she? ‘There must seem nothing doubtful about this marriage, cousin.'

‘I believe you're right.' He did not like the implication, but he took it. And had taken, too, she thought, the bait of her sudden capitulation. ‘It would not be long to wait,' he went on thoughtfully, and now she was sure of the relief in his voice. ‘I meet my friends tonight, my Queen. I can tell them I have your promise?'

‘Of course.' His friends. The inner circle of the Sons of the Star?

‘I told them I would be married.' He was still considering it. ‘The friar waits below. It could be a marriage in name only, for now, my Queen. The true marriage could take place, when we are victorious, in the Se.'

What a fool he must think her? ‘I told them I would be married.' He might as well have admitted that he had been responsible for carrying her off. Well, the more foolish he thought her, the better her chance of escape. But her line now must be not so much folly as ambition. She rose to her feet, every inch, she hoped a Queen. ‘No, cousin.' she said. ‘It is the King I marry, not the man. You have forgotten, I think, how recently I refused you.' Much better she remind him of this than that he remember, later, and begin to wonder. ‘As a man, I like you well enough, but this side of marriage. As a King, I know you my master. Only, give me time – a little time – so I may learn to love you as I should. In the meanwhile, you have my promise.' She turned, swept from the room and resisted a fierce temptation to make a run for it down the stairs – hopeless, of course. Instead, she walked, as stately as possible, up to the room above, her prison. She knew that now.

He was following her, but at least she had the initiative. ‘I'm exhausted, cousin.' she turned at the door to face him. ‘I will bid you goodnight. But first I must thank you again for rescuing me.' At all costs she must not let him see that she knew he had in fact been her kidnapper.

‘Thank God I was able to. But we must continue to take every possible precaution. You will not mind if I lock you in for the night? Old Luisa will take good care of you. My men are on guard in the courtyard below, but I do not dare trust even my friends, who are coming here tonight. I will feel safer if I know your door is both locked and bolted.'

‘Your meeting is here?'

‘Why, yes. We meet without any melodrama; we are simply a group of friends, gathered for a hand of cards. In the morning I hope to be able to tell you it has been a profitable one.'

‘Yes.' If only, by some miracle, she could hear what he said to them. ‘And in the morning we will send word to my family that I am safe?'

‘I hope so.'

She was beginning to be able to tell when he was lying to her. He had no intention of letting anyone know where she was. Would he tell his accomplices that they were already married? Very likely. ‘I would like to meet your friends.' she said.

‘Impossible!' And then, reasonably. ‘We have your reputation to think of, my Queen.' He had stayed, all this time on the threshold of her room, now he looked past her: ‘Luisa, your mistress is tired.'

In some ways it was actually a relief to hear the key grate in the lock on the other side of the door and watch Luisa shoot the bolt. She might be a prisoner but at least, for the moment, she was safe. And at last she had time to think. Lying in the great four-poster bed (‘fit for a Queen', Luisa had said as she retired to her own pallet) she sorted out the day's terrifying discoveries. She was sure, now, that Vasco was the real leader of the Sons of the Star, the one whose return from abroad had meant such a change in the tone of the meetings. He might, or might not, be a little mad, but it would be lunacy to underestimate him. His claim to the throne might be, as she suspected, the merest fabrication, but that did not make him any less dangerous. When she thought how he had kept the Sons of the Star in hand, meeting after meeting, delaying action until he had built up his own claim, she could not help a kind of appalled respect for him.

And meanwhile, as she and Gair had suspected, his inner circle of friends had been meeting here at Sintra, making the real plans. How was she to find out what they were? And, more important still, how escape and warn Gair Varlow?

How right he had been to urge her not to trust Vasco. She remembered, with a thrill of terror, the second time Vasco had proposed to her. It had been touch and go, helpless in his arms, whether she yielded and told him what she knew about the Sons of the Star. To have done so, she saw now, would have been to sign her own death warrant – and Gair's. From now on, she must watch every word, every breath, every look; and watch, equally, for any chance of escape.

For it was obvious that Vasco intended to keep her a prisoner until the time came to strike. It would be done with the greatest courtesy, but it would be done quite ruthlessly. Luisa was at once gaoler and chaperone. She would not be allowed to leave the room save in Vasco's company. He had told her that the courtyard below was full of his servants. Protecting her, or guarding
her? There was not a chance in the world of escaping from this high room, with its one window overlooking the court.

Her only hope must lie, fantastically, in the next meeting of the Sons of the Star. They would need their Handmaiden to let them in. She must persuade Vasco of this, and, first, she must persuade him that she was both negligible and committed to his cause. Thank God, she thought, she had managed a good beginning.

She woke next morning to the sound of rain, and wondered who had taken charge of the preparations for the olive harvest down in the Pleasant Valley. What could her family be thinking about her disappearance? And – more important than anything – had Gair heard about it? He, at least, could be relied on to draw some of the right conclusions. But he was so busy in Lisbon, it might be days before he visited the Castle on the Rock, and in the meantime, with her grandmother beyond helping her, there was no reason why anyone should let him know of her disappearance.

It brought her back to the question that had been plaguing her. How, in fact, had she been kidnapped? She forced herself, reluctantly, to remember that terrifying moment of midnight awakening. She had been looking toward the big closet that hid the entrance to the winding stair. Its door had been shut, she was sure of that now. And' the light had come from the other side of the room, the blow on her head from behind her.

The answer was obvious. There must be another secret entrance to the room, one about which her grandmother had not chosen to tell her. It explained so much. That was how Vasco had managed to keep in touch with the old lady. No wonder he had not much liked it when she raised the question. And now, horribly, she remembered the night of Mrs. Brett's ‘attack'. Vasco must have visited her that night, must have lost his temper for some reason and struck her. An old lady – his ally. It cast a terrifying light on Juana's own position.

She made herself present a cheerful morning face to old Luisa who woke, grumbling, to unlock the bedroom door for a girl with cans of hot water. ‘I hope you slept at least,' the old woman locked the door again behind the girl and approached the bed.

‘Like a log.' Surprisingly, it was true, and her head felt wonderfully clearer for it. ‘But did not you?'

‘No!' The old woman gestured angrily to the pallet which had been placed by the huge ornamental fireplace, a rarity in Portugal ‘I might have known no good would come of those foreign contraptions. This house was built by an Englishman.' she explained, as she fetched a heavy brocade dress for Juana's inspection. ‘He would have those fireplaces in all the main rooms. This one must connect with the one in the room below – they kept me awake till God knows when with their talk, talk, talk.'

‘They?'

‘The master and his friends. He entertains them in the dining room below – they play some gambling game with cards – and talk! I thought I'd go crazy.'

‘You mean you could actually hear what they said?' Juana was washing her face vigorously at the heavily ornamented hand-basin and put the question casually Over her shoulder. Fantastic, maddening, to have had such a chance and missed it.

‘I could have if I'd wanted to. What I wanted to do was to sleep, I'll have my bed moved before next week.'

‘They come regularly?'

‘Once a week. He's a devil for the cards, the master.'

So the chance might return, if only she could make use of it. And if there was time. ‘When shall I see my cousin?' She was to play the adoring female and this question was surely in order.

‘Over dinner. The master has been out for hours, but he said he would come to you at once when he returned.'

There was nothing to be gained by trying to persuade old Luisa to let her out of the room. She must keep up the pretence that all the precautions were for her own safety. No doubt the old woman really believed that they were.

When they met, she made herself greet Vasco with a warmth from which, she thought, he just perceptibly shrank, then with an even greater effort made herself wait to question him until they were seated at table. Once more they were alone. ‘We can talk more freely this way.' He made sure the door was firmly shut, ‘And it's safer for you.'