The Winemaker (13 page)

By the time the carts rolled to a halt at the railroad station in Barcelona, the youths were famished. Peña herded them into a workingman’s café and bought them bread and cabbage soup, which they consumed eagerly, enjoying almost a holiday feeling in the excitement of the sudden change in their routine. On the station platform afterwards, Josep nervously watched the approach of the locomotive, which bore down on them like an incredibly loud, cloud-belching dragon. Of all the youths only Enric had been on a train before, and they filed into a third-class carriage with wide eyes. This time Josep shared one of the slatted wooden seats with Guillem, and Manel sat in one of the seats in front of them.

As the train shuddered and lurched back into motion, they were warned by the conductor not to open the windows lest sparks and sooty smoke from the locomotive blow back into the car, but the weather was cool, and they were content to keep the windows closed. The clacking of the wheels and the swaying of the car soon became unremarkable, and the youths stared for rapt intervals as the landscape of Catalonia rolled past.

Long before darkness began to shut out the world, Josep had grown tired of peering beyond the face of his friend Guillem, who had the window seat. Peña had brought bread and sausage onto the train and eventually fed them. Soon the conductor came in and lighted the gas lamps, which sputtered and threw across the car flickering shadows that Josep studied until overcome by the mercy of sleep.

Tension had exhausted him more than a hard day of work could have done. He awoke at intervals in the course of the uncomfortable night, the last time to see an inhospitably dark day as the train jolted into motion following a stop in Guadalajara.

Peña distributed more sausage and bread until his supply was gone, and they washed it down with train water that tasted of coal and gritted in their teeth. All else was boredom until three hours beyond Guadalajara, when Enric Vinyes looked out and gave a shout, “Snow!”

Everyone in the cars crowded to the windows to peer at white flecks dropping from a gray sky. They had seen snow only a few times in their entire lives, and then for the briefest of periods before it melted. Now it ceased falling before they tired of watching it, but three hours later, when the train pulled into Madrid and they disembarked, there was a thin white layer on the ground.

Peña obviously was familiar with the city. He led them from the railroad station, away from the broad boulevard and stately buildings and into a warren of old narrow streets that twisted darkly between stone apartment houses. In a small plaza there was a market, and Peña drew two food-sellers away from an open fire long enough to buy bread, cheese, and two bottles of wine. Then he led his charges down a nearby alley to a doorway that opened into an unlit, battered foyer with a staircase wide enough for only one person at a time. They climbed to the third floor, where Peña knocked three times at a door marked by a small sign:
Pension Excelsior.

The door was opened by an elderly man, who nodded when he saw Peña.

The room into which the hunting group was led was too small for the comfort of so many people, but they sat on the beds and the floor. Peña divided and dispensed bread
and cheese and then disappeared, to return a short time later with a steaming kettle and a tray of cups. He poured several fingers of wine into each cup and filled it with hot water, and the chilled youths drank the mixture eagerly.

Peña left them, and they sat in the grimy pension and waited as the hours of the long, strange afternoon slowly passed.

The light outside the windows had begun to fade when Peña returned. He stood in the middle of the room. “Listen closely,” he said.

“Now you have a chance to show your usefulness. This evening, a man who is a traitor to our cause will be apprehended. You will help to capture him.”

They regarded him in nervous silence.

He reached under one of the beds and pulled out a box that proved to contain long sulfur matches with thick heads. He handed some to Josep, along with a small square of sandpaper on which to strike them. “You must keep these in your pockets, where they will not become wet, Alvarez. We’ll go to where the man will enter a carriage, and we’ll follow the carriage as it moves away. If the carriage should turn a corner, we’ll enter the new street too, and at every turn you will light a match.” He struck one, which produced an acrid stink.

“When I give a signal, the group will move to surround the carriage so he can be taken. Guillem Parera and Esteve Montroig, each of you must grasp a bridle and prevent the horses from continuing.

“If we should become separated, make your way to the railroad station, and I will pick you up there. When the event is over, you will receive a commendation, you will be taken to join a regiment, and your military careers will commence.”

Soon he led them from the pension, down the stairs again and out into the narrow streets. The snow had drifted down thinly all day, off and on, and now flurries of feathery bits fell more steadily. In the plaza marketplace the accumulation had extinguished the fire, and the vendors had left for the day. Josep stared at flakes blazing whitely against Peña’s raven-black hair. Following after the sergeant, the hunting group made its way through the weirdly-pearled world.

Soon they were out of the old neighborhoods and crossing avenues lined with great structures. On a boulevard, Carrera San Jerónimo, Peña stopped before a large and imposing building. Near the entrance, men in pairs and small groups stood under the flickering light of a gas lamp and talked quietly. The doorman gave the youths only a passing glance as they gathered around Peña.

The heavy door of the entrance was wedged open, and through it Josep could hear male voices. Someone was delivering an address, his voice rising and falling. Now and again, when he paused, there were shouts; it was impossible for Josep to know whether they were expressions of agreement or of anger. Once there was a collective groan; twice there was laughter.

The hunting group waited, growing colder in the falling snow while almost an hour crept by.

18

The Spy

Inside the building, men roared and applauded.

An elderly woman hobbled forward into Josep’s vision, grey-haired, wrapped in two ragged shawls, with small dark eyes in a face like a wrinkled brown apple. Taking careful steps, she approached the men nearest her and held out a basket.

“Alms…Alms…A bit of food for me in God’s mercy, señor…Mercy in the name of Jesús!”

Her quarry shook his head as if warding off a fly, turned his back and continued to talk.

Undaunted, the old woman went to the next group, held out her basket and made her plea. This time she was rewarded with a coin and paid for the charity with a blessing. For a while Josep watched her limping her way toward him like an old wounded animal. Two men came out of the building.

“Yes,” Peña said quietly.

One of them was obviously a gentleman, a man of middle age, neat-bearded, wearing a fine-looking heavy cape against the weather and a formal high hat. He was short and stocky but erect and proud of bearing.

The other man, walking half a step behind, was much younger and plainly dressed. Which of the two was the traitor? Josep was bewildered.

“A carriage, Excellency?” When the gentleman nodded, the doorman stepped into the pool of light beneath the gas lamp and raised his arm. A carriage detached itself from the line of vehicles waiting down the street, and its two horses pulled it to the front
of the building. The doorman moved to open the carriage door, but the plainly dressed man was there before him. Clearly a servant, he bowed his head as the other man climbed in, and then he closed the door and went back into the building.

Josep watched in awe. The carriage was richly appointed and seemed enormous. He could scarcely see its occupant through the two high, narrow windows. Nearby, a man coughed and lit a match, holding it up before lighting his pipe. Startled, the doorman cast a quick glance and went to the seat of the cab, whispering something as the driver leaned down to hear him. Then he knocked lightly on the carriage door and opened it.

“My great apologies, Excellency. There appears to be something wrong with an axle. If you will pardon the nuisance, I shall get another carriage for you at once.” If the man inside answered, Josep could not hear it. While the passenger disembarked, the doorman hurried to the row of carriages, and soon a second conveyance was there, even more ornate than the first but narrower and with deeper windows. Before the gentleman entered the new vehicle, Josep saw his exhausted eyes and drawn features; his cheeks were swarthy and powdered, causing his face to appear as artificial as the one on the statue of Santa Eulália.

Now two men came from the building and approached the carriage. They were well dressed. Gentlemen, obviously. One of them opened the door of the carriage. “Excellency?” he said quietly. “It is done as you asked of us.”

The man inside said something muffled, and the other two entered the carriage, closing the door behind them. They sat opposite the first occupant, the three heads close
together. Those watching from the outside had fallen silent but could hear almost nothing, for the men in the carriage did not raise their voices.

They spoke for a long time, almost half an hour, Josep estimated. Then the door opened, and both of the men withdrew and went back inside the building.

Almost at once the servant who had ushered the gentleman into the coach returned, this time accompanied by a second servant. He knocked discreetly, waited for permission, and then opened the door. They got in with a word to the driver, who nodded.

Traffic was light because of the weather, but the horses moved away slowly, unaccustomed to the snow on the cobblestones.

Peña and the hunting group had little trouble keeping up as they followed the carriage down the Carrera San Jerónimo. They passed the departing beggar woman and left her behind. When the horses pulled the carriage around the first corner and entered the Calle de Sordo, Josep obeyed his instructions. His hand trembled when he struck the match and held it high, a sputtering circle of yellow.

They followed the plodding horses down to another turn, onto the Calle de Turso, where Josep struck a second match.

This was a narrower street and darker except for a single pool of light beneath a lamp.

Beyond the lamplight two shapes loomed, a pair of coaches moving slowly down the dark, street side by side. Then they stopped, blocking the way.

“Now,” Peña said, just as the carriage moved into the light.

Guillem and Esteve leaped into the road and seized the bridles of the horses while the hunting group surrounded the coach. From two coaches and the darkness on the other
side of the street other figures emerged, and several came around to where Josep stood staring into the startled face of the man within the carriage. The driver of the blocked coach was standing, and he had begun flailing at Esteve with his whip.

Agents of the militia, Josep thought as he saw the newcomers, three of them with drawn handguns, and he took a step back so they had a clear course to the coach door.

But instead they held out their guns.

A series of flat, coughing reports.

The man in the coach had turned to look out the window and presented a wide target; he jerked as he was struck in the left shoulder, touching the place with his left hand. His right hand came up as though in protest and Josep saw part of his ring finger fly away. Then another bullet hit him in the breast, leaving a small dark bite in his cloak like the hundreds of holes the hunting group had shot into their target trees.

It shocked Josep to recognize the bitter realization in the man’s face.

Someone shouted “Jesucrist!” and screamed, a long, feminine sound. At first Josep thought it came from a woman, then he realized that the voice was Enric’s. And suddenly everyone was running into the darkness, and Josep ran too, over the snowy ground away from the shying horses and the pitching carriages.

PART THREE

Out in the World

Madrid
December 28, 1870

19

Walking in Snow