Captain from Castile (9 page)

"Yes, sir."

Pedro shifted uneasily on the knee piece of the prie-dieu, which was ridged in order to make the act of prayer an act of penance at the same time. The skin of his back prickled. He wished that his father would get on with it.

"Now," Don Francisco continued, "I wish to explain once more why I will not permit you to frequent the Rosario. Remember, when you become an officer, that it is always unjust to punish a man unless he knows Vv'hy he is being punished. I forbid the Rosario because it is the resort of low company, muleteers, vagabonds, and bandits. It is unbefitting your name to be seen there. In such a place, you acquire bad manners and bad habits. A bad habit formed in youth is no small thing. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Finally, I wish to ask whether this girl, Catana Perez, is such as Diego de Silva described her. I am not a hypocrite. I have had sweethearts in my time; but for the most part they were obliging wenches and not professionals."

Pedro turned to look up at his father. "On my word, sir, de Silva lied. Catana is a strange girl and wild. More than that I don't know; but she is not a trull."

"I'm glad to hear it," said the other. "I take your word for it. De Silva has every mark of a liar. . . . And now, my son, I shall give you twenty lashes."

Pedro clenched his teeth, and the blows were laid on with clocklike regularity. They brought the water to his eyes, but not a murmur to his lips. To have cried out would have been shameful. He clamped his arms about the prie-dieu and stared at the crucifix.

Meanwhile, the door, which Don Francisco had locked as usual, was under siege from the other side by Doiia Maria. If Pedro was silent, his mother was not. The punishment went on to a running accompaniment of knocks, demands to be let in, entreaties, and threats. Don Francisco might be at present in the saddle, but he could look forward to a bad half hour later. When the lamentation changed from Spanish to Italian, and he was compared to Nero of Rome and Attila the Hun, he knew that the situation was dangerous.

"Patience, my dear," he called, hastening execution; "we have almost finished." And to himself, "Heaven help me! What a nuisance women are in education!

"There," he said at last—"twenty. It grieves me to flog you, son. My compliments, by the way—you stood your punishment well."

Then, with obvious misgiving, Don Francisco opened the door to a torrent of maternal sympathy.

Mercedes de Vargas always cried when her brother was beaten. Still catching her breath, she now stood in his upstairs bedroom, holding the pot of goose grease which Dona Maria gently applied to Pedro's welts. In the flare of the candles, her sallow child's face looked swollen and miserable.

"On your name-day too!" she repeated.

"Cheer up, hermanita," he smiled. "I've had a wonderful name-day."

Dofia Maria's mouth worked as she spread the grease. "Your father seems to forget that he is no longer in the army," she said in a pinched voice.

"It was nothing," Pedro boasted. "I could have stood ten times as much."

"Of course there was that strumpet," mused the other, as if something had to be conceded. "But we will not speak of her. I know you will not break my heart. . . . Now you must go to bed, darling, and rest."

"I don't want to go to bed."

"Please, dear."

"No! Caramba! I couldn't sleep at this hour."

Worse than his father's blows was his mother's babying. It was only nine o'clock. The wakeful Andalusian night had just begun. Through the open window came a babble of voices from the street, a snatch of song, the stir of the town reviving from the sun-afflicted day. Pedro had plans for the evening. He wanted to reconnoiter the walls of the Marquis de Carvajal's garden; not that he did not know them perfectly, but he had to haunt them. He had to stand in the moonlight by the gate and dream of tomorrow night. Perhaps another miracle might happen, and he would catch a glimpse of Luisa; or she might see him; or at least he could peer through the gate and try to imagine which window of the palace was hers. Anyhow the purlieus were sacred, and he was drawn to them like a moth to the candle.

"I'd only slap mosquitoes and sweat," he went on. "And I can't lie on my back."

"Very well," Doiia Maria yielded. "Then you must wear my lawn shift. Your shirt is too coarse against the skin."

"Mercedes, fetch my lawn shift—the old one."

"Oh, Jesus Maria!'' he fretted. "I won't wear it, Madrecita!" And springing up before the shameful garment could be brought, he slipped into his shirt and doublet though they scratched abominably. "There— you see, it's all right."

"Stubborn!" said his mother.

"Thanks all the same," he answered, kissing her; and then escaped.

The little patio, with the diminutive arcades around it, was dark except for a slanting shaft of moonlight and the faint glimmer from his father's cabinet. He stole across toward the passageway leading to the grilled entrance of the house. But at that moment one of the dogs barked, and Don Francisco appeared on the threshold of his room.

"Quien es?" he challenged.

"It is I, Sefior Father."

"What are you up to?"

Pedro cursed his luck. "I thought I would take a turn in the fresh air with your permission."

"Or without it," teased de Vargas, who now felt completely reconciled with his son. "Well, at night I suppose young tomcats must be roaming. Only, come here a minute." And when Pedro had joined him, "You'll be careful. You'll wear a sword—I see you've got your dagger—and keep to the middle of the street. I didn't want to alarm your mother, but Diego de Silva won't leave things as they are. If I read him right, he's a coward and won't send a challenge; but he has a big household. A thrust in the dark's easy, d'you see? That's the satisfaction he'll look for. Come in here and pick out a sword."

With a tingle of pride, Pedro entered the room and selected a blade from the rack of weapons. When he had buckled it on, his father added: "I suppose some men would keep you at home under the circumstances. But be damned to it! You'll never learn to take care of yourself if you skulk indoors. Now, one more thing. I've had a look from the window a couple of times. There's a man lounging up and down across the street—maybe a beggar, maybe not."

"Thank you, sir."

Taking down his hat and long cloak from their peg in the passageway, Pedro let himself out and turned right in the direction of the Carvajal Palace. A group of young fellows whom he knew passed with holas of greeting. When they were gone, his footsteps on the cobblestones were the only sound for a moment. Then, like an echo, he heard other footsteps behind him. Walking more quickly, he turned

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left at the next crossing; but the footsteps still followed and sounded closer.

In the middle of the road, he made a sudden about-face, his dagger in the left hand, his right hand on the sword hilt. A bulk in the darkness stopped.

"It's all right, companero" came a hushed but unmistakable voice. "Juan Garcia. By the saints, I'm glad you came out! God knows I'm in need of you."

X

Even though the street was little more than three yards wide, there was enough diffused moonlight to see that Garcia still wore the beard and make-up which he had purchased at Sanlucar. But from the desperate urgency of his manner, it looked as if the watch were on his traces.

"What's happened?" Pedro faltered. "Are they after you?"

"No, it isn't that—it's worse. We can't talk here. I've got a room at the Corona. Come along."

Moonlight meditations at the gate of the Carvajal garden had to be postponed. Pedro was swept on by the man's intenseness.

"I've been hanging around for an hour," Garcia continued in a whisper. "I thought perhaps you'd come out. If you hadn't, I don't know what I'd have done. I couldn't send you a message or call myself without somebody's getting curious, and it wouldn't do to run the chance."

They climbed uphill, threading the maze of alley-like streets and occasional groups of loungers, until a lantern showed the sign of the Crown over a broad arch, and they turned into the courtyard of the inn. An outer stairway led them up to the rooms of the second floor, which opened on a balcony running along two sides of the courtyard. At Garcia's heels, Pedro entered a bedroom, where his guide fumbled impatiently with a tinderbox and lighted a candle. It was a bamlike, raftered chamber with an alcove for a bed at one end and with the minimum of furniture. Garcia locked the door.

"We've got to talk low," he said, his eyes haunted.

"For God's sake, what's wrong?"

"I'll tell you. After taking this room, I waited until evening before looking up Madrecita. No use showing myself in the daytime. Then I

went over to the Calle Santo Tomas and asked a beggar where she Hved —those fellows know everybody. He gave me a queer look and made horns with his fingers, as if I had the evil eye. 'It must be this make-up,' I thought. But he took a coin I handed him, and pointed out the house —said she lived on the third floor. I climbed up the stairs, thinking she must be cursed poor. Dirty as a dunghill, it was. Brats and litter. I thought to myself how happy she was going to be . . ."

Garcia broke off and stood staring at the candle.

"I knocked at the door on the third landing. A woman opened up. When I asked for the Seiiora Romero, she acted scared like the beggar.

" 'She isn't here,' she said. 'I live here now.'

"I said, 'You mean she's moved?'

" 'Yes, moved.'

"I said, 'Can you give me her address?'

"The woman looked as if she had a chill. She said, 'The prison's her address.'

"Then I got it out of her. They took Madrecita a month ago—the Holy Office—as a witch. People accused her—"

His voice died out. As if suddenly at the end of his strength, he took a step or two to a chair and sat down, his shoulders slumping, his big hands limp on his knees.

Though shocked, Pedro was not completely surprised. He had heard that old Dorotea Romero was a witch. Perhaps that accounted for the devil in Garcia that took him when he was drunk. But in spite of superstition, his heart bled for the misery in the other's bull-like eyes, and he would have helped him if he could. Only in this case there was nothing to do. Garcia might just as well have told him that his mother had died. What the Inquisition seized, it kept.

"A witch?" the man repeated. "Hell! She's no more a witch than my foot! Being brought up by her, don't you think I'd know? Regular at mass; prayers night and morning. Taught me the Pater Noster, Credo, and Ave. Used to hold me in her arms when I was sick. Used to starve so I could eat. Many's the time these hard years that I've dreamed of her. And now, because she's old, because some woman she was tending died—"

The horror of the torture room flamed in his eyes. He pressed both hands against his head, as if it were bursting.

"Perhaps they'll let her go," Pedro suggested in order to say something.

"I'm not fooling myself," returned Garcia. "When I heard it, I hoped

she might be dead." Brokenly he explained that by the grapevine method he had bought the information that she was still alive. "They'll burn what's left of her," he added. And then, desperately, "But there's one chance." He stretched his arms out. "Comrade, you've got to help me! If it was your mother, I'd do the same for you. You're the only one who can help."

Garcia's distress excused his reference to Dofia Maria, though Pedro winced at it—as if his mother could ever be on the same level with Dorotea Romero!

"How?" he asked.

The man leaned forward, dropping his voice to a mutter. "Listen. The Holy Office may be as holy as it pleases, but money talks everywhere. People's houses and property aren't confiscated for the sake of their souls. Believe me, the reverend fathers have the gold itch like anybody else, and I've known more than one poor devil who's bought his way out. Well, I've got money, d'you see?"

Low as Garcia spoke, Pedro glanced nervously around. It was impious even to hear such things. It did not savor of respect for the sacred tribunal.

"But I'm hamstrung," Garcia \vent on. "I'd hang to save Madrecitaj, but my hanging won't save her. Odds are I wouldn't even have sight of her in the prison if I was taken there. I can't go to the Inquisitor. Tou could."

Cold chills ran down young de Vargas's spine. He was ready to do anything in reason, but the idea of approaching Father Ignacio de Lora, Inquisitor of Jaen, with the proposal which he could see Garcia working up to, paralyzed him.

"No, listen," begged the other. "You could. I'll wager you know him, don't you?"

"I've met him."

"You see! Then it's all the easier. And he knows you. Son of Don Francisco de Vargas. No better blood in Spain. Beyond suspicion."

Reading the refusal in Pedro's face, Garcia clasped his hands together. "Hark you, son, for God's sake! When I saw you in the inn, I said, 'There's a lad of mettle'—the way you stood by that wench, the straight look of you. 'There's a bad-weather lad,' I said, 'that you could count on by sea or land, in march or fight.' My heart warmed to you. I felt we were born friends. You're the only one who can help save my mother. You won't turn me down!"

He saw that he was making headway, and pressed his point. The plan was that Pedro should present himself to the Inquisitor as the agent of Senora Romero's brother, a merchant of Valencia--"which is true enough," Garcia explained, "only he's dead." Juan Garcia, offered eight-hundred ducats in atonement for his sister's misdeeds, if the reverend Inquisitor would mercifully deign to considerthe sum sufficient. In view of the fact she had confessed to witchcraft under torture, her punishment might be considered enough. Pedro should explain that he had met Garcia at the Corona; that the merchant, a humble man, had besought his good offices and had enstrusted him with the money. His responsibilities stopped there; he was acting simply as a messanger, and should disclaim any futher knowledge of the merchant whatever.

"He'll know well enough why I didn't come myself Garcia reasoned,"He'll know that relatives of condemned heretics keep under cover:. And he'll know why I picked out a young man from a family like yours to act for me."