Circles of Fate (8 page)

Another loud cheer went up from the crowd and she turned back in time to see the picador's lance plunge into the bull's shoulder, brilliantly on target in the thick muscle at the base of the neck. The enraged bull rammed into the horse, but his horns weren't able to penetrate the protective armour. The second picador cantered in to complete the job of weakening the beast's powerful neck muscles. It could be said that the bull's courage had been truly tested, and the second stage of the fight could now commence.

In danced the first banderillero to plunge the darts, gaily decorated with fluttering strips of coloured paper, into the bull's shoulders, executing neat little side-steps so that the bull's lunging horns missed his body. The idea was to further weaken the bull's shoulder muscles and force his head lower and lower, exciting the bull and also preparing a target for the matador's sword.

Now everything was ready for the final part. The matador dedicated the bull to the president of the ring. His sweetheart, if he had one, was obviously not in attendance or he would have dedicated the bull to her. He changed his cape for a smaller one on a slender stick, called a muleta.

Expectancy was high. Cathy felt as though her lungs had been turned into a furnace and her breath blistered her throat.

“He'll make seven passes,” she hissed excitedly to Edward. “You see if he doesn't!”

Seven times the bull plunged, seven times he found only a fluttering red cape. He was as exasperated as the crowd was thrilled. Exasperated, puzzled, weakened and weary. It was time for the kill. “Death to the bull,” roared the frenzied crowd. “
Muerte! Muerte!
”

This was the most tense moment of all. To kill the bull the matador must lean between the horns. He is wide open to danger because he cannot know that the bull will not suddenly lift or turn his head. At that moment all that protects him is his own bravery, which is tested to the limit.

The sword sank into the hulking body, finding its mark between the bull's shoulder blades. It was a good clean stroke. The bull lunged and appeared to fall. The matador's bow to the crowd was a little precipitant because the bull, although dying, had not yet fallen to his knees. Screams and shocked gasps expelled as the bull made one last thrust with his horns, grazing the matador's hand, drawing blood.

The matador proudly brushes it off. No one can work too close to the horns and not receive wounds. “It is nothing,” he tells the crowd. “A mere scratch.”

For a superficial wound there seemed to be a lot of blood, although some surface wounds do bleed profusely and, surely, if there had been injury to the bone the matador wouldn't look so chirpy. It was sweet relief to see the blood apparently contained, if not altogether staunched, in a make-shift pad until it could be medically attended to and that same hand raised in a gesture of exaggerated triumph.

Cathy rolled her eyes round to meet Edward's, dizzy with relief and happiness. “The president of the bull-ring will award the matador an ear from the bull now,” she confidently told him. “He might think the fight exceptional enough to award him both ears. I say! Are you all right?”

“Yes,” said Edward. But when he tried to get up and walk, he weaved about like a drunk, and his pallor was decidedly green.

“Where's Edward?” was the first thing Anita said.

“Indisposed.” Cathy suppressed a giggle. “Don't worry. We bumped into Claude Perryman – my boss, remember?” As if Anita could forget
him.
“He's taken Edward to his house to lie down for a while. He'll have recovered for the procession.”

“Edward is never ill,” said Anita. “What is the matter with him?”

“His first bullfight. It affects a lot of people that way. Come on. I can't wait to show off my costume.”

Anita wasn't surprised. It was pale green, high at the waist, low at the neck. A pearl on a thin pendant chain lay in the dip of her breasts. She piled her red hair high in a style befitting of the Empress Josephine. It made her neck look longer, her arms and waist slighter, and the pearl acted as a magnet, drawing eyes to her superb bosom.

“Dare I?” she said, looking at her revealed curves.

“Of course you dare,” said Anita emphatically. “Zip me up and help me put on my armour.”

Cathy assured her she looked exquisite, a fact also confirmed by Cathy's full-length mirror, because the dainty ankle-length dress which Cathy had kindly loaned her suited her youthful, supple body. Her eyes, deftly if heavily made-up, were lost in depths of dark mystery, and the bangles on her arms caught the light and jangled softly as she moved.

Cathy, after watching her feeble efforts with a mascara wand, had insisted on applying Anita's make-up for her. Now, viewing her reflection, Anita conceded the other's artistry. Cathy had used light and dark tones to good effect, narrowing her childishly full cheeks, exaggerating and emphasizing the point of her chin. She had lifted her eyes at the outer corners and given her mouth a fullness that was sensuous. Anita was at once shocked, repulsed and excited by her new, seductive appearance. She knew, even at risk of hurting Cathy's feelings, that she wouldn't have dared to go out without covering her friend's handiwork. She submitted herself happily and was docility itself as Cathy added the finishing touch and fixed the face-concealing yashmak in position. Her features were a subdued blur, only her eyes showed, which were not her eyes but the eyes of a temptress, full of dreams and sorcery.

Even so, in comparison she felt flat, unbitten by the fiesta fever which gripped Cathy and the others they met as they walked along the street. Sober, when everyone else was more than a little merry. The bullfight was the apéritif to the evening's festivities, the appetiser, the social mixer, the mood setter. It had been a good fight and the mood was light and joyful.

The people who gathered in the street were all wearing fancy dress, as Cathy had said they would. More people joined the throng. As they walked down the street, doors opened on all sides, expelling demons and dragons and clowns wearing huge papier-mâché heads, ancient Greeks and Romans, men in loincloths, women in hooped farthingale skirts, ducks and dwarfs and, because it was as much the children's day as anybody else's, baby horses and Saracens. A diminutive Arab chieftain walked with a charming baby mermaid, matchstick legs thrust through the scales, carrying her tail over her arm.

Practically everybody masked their features. Cathy's mask was a flattering scrap of velvet. Several feminine profiles were hidden in black silk domino cloaks with deep hoods. Some of the men seized the opportunity of wearing masks which covered the whole head as well as the face. There was an abundance of comic masks with twisted, out-of-shape features. And more than a smattering of tragic masks, evil, leering, sly, jeering.

Anita decided to stay close to Cathy's side. But when she looked round she discovered it was too late. They had already become separated by the crowd. She didn't know where all the people had come from to turn a peaceful island into a place of bedlam.

The procession had already begun and people pressed forward to get a better look. Mindlessly, she found herself being carried along. Arms, legs, voices enveloped her and, pounding above the jarring music, she heard her own wildly beating heart and the small, pitiful cry of inner desperation as she was swept along, running to keep up, stumbling, feeling the crush of elbows as, on a welter of panic, she lost her balance.

A hand clamped protectively round her waist. Felipe's voice said:

“I've always wanted to capture a slave girl.”

She was held captive until her trembling subsided, and the musical instruments which had tortured her brain now poured out notes of sweetness as she drew calm and reason from his steady strength. As the honey-glow of early evening wrapped them in its tender golden light, it touched, with Midas fingers, the white stone houses, turning them into a soft pinky yellow – the colour of peace and calm and tranquillity of the mind.

“That's better,” he said. “What were you afraid of?”

“I don't know exactly. It was a turbulence that washed through me. I was at odds with the gaiety and I suppose it jarred.”

“I shouldn't have said you were the frightened gazelle type. What were you running from?”

“I don't know. I just had a compulsion to run.”

“And now?”

She must have made some physical movement because his arms had to tighten to contain her. There was something solid and assuring in his touch. She grew still again.

“I'm not running. Not now.” And yet her lightness of heart was suddenly burdened with a strange insight. At some future date she would run from him in a moment of blind panic. As surely as a thrown pebble causes havoc to still water, that fantasy fear-thought – because how could she know? – stirred her to anxiety. She shook her head, desperately trying to rid herself of needless pain. That came of its own free will, it didn't have to be sought out and invited. She closed her eyes and willed herself to accept the assurance his arms were straining to give her. She thrust back the unease to ask:

“How did you know it was me?”

He took a handful of her long yellow hair, which she had not pinned up in its customary coronet. “You should not need to ask that,” he grinned.

“Where is your mask?” she said, eyeing his matador costume with distaste.

“I never wear one.”

“That's a particularly gruesome piece of authenticity.” She touched his bandaged left hand. He winced. “You really have hurt your hand,” she said. “There's blood on your sleeve. How did you –?”

He unhooked her yashmak and stopped the question on her lips by touching them with his own. It was not a gentle kiss, nor was it a means of deflection. She sensed in him a comforting compulsion. He'd wanted to kiss her. He'd had to kiss her. He had kissed her. She sighed happily.

“Only a fool would oppose this mood.”

She didn't have to give voice to her inner struggle. He knew. He understood better than she did herself. Some time they would have to talk about it, but not now. A wrong word could shatter the delicate balance in his favour. He didn't think he was misinterpreting her mood. He sensed the urgency, the need in her for flight, and he could have told her the reason why. He would tell her, as soon as he felt that she was in a receptive and benevolent mood and not a frightened prisoner to her own thoughts.

He swung her to face the light and looked at her rapt, absorbed face. He saw the little girl beneath the woman's make-up and noted that her eyes were darkly flecked with shadow-pains. The fingers of his hurt hand curved to her face and he was filled with a warm happiness as he released her of tension. Her jawline grew less taut as his fingers drew a caress down her cheek and chin before awkwardly cupping back her head. His good arm was like a steel band round her waist and excitement surged in her body before his lips touched hers, injecting her with fiesta fever.

It was next morning.

“Where did you get to last night?” queried Edward. “Where did you get to?” she countered.

“I wasn't feeling very well, if you must know. Probably the heat. It was very hot yesterday. The arena was like a melting pot.”

“But Cathy said you got seats in the shade.”

“Then it was something I ate. Yes, that's it. I was suffering from a touch of Spanish tummy.”

“And that's a load of bull. Hey! Did you get that? A load of –”

He looked pained. “Spare me the witticism. I'm not in the mood for jokes. I missed a great deal of the fiesta, but I wasn't exactly idle. I found something out yesterday. You were with that Spaniard fellow last night.”

“As a matter of fact, I was. Is that what you found out? His name is Felipe.”

“I'm well aware of his name. Better than you are.”

“What does that mean?”

“You're not going to like it.”

“Try me.”

“You know that Cathy and I bumped into Claude Perryman?”

“I know.”

“Because I wasn't feeling too well he took me back to his house. He didn't want to go to the fiesta because of his recent bereavement. Well, I didn't feel much like going either, so I stayed to keep him company and we had a long talk. He told me all about that Spaniard fellow. His name is Felipe Sanchez. He's Pilar's son.”

“Why should I not like that? I should think it's a point in his favour. He obviously has money and he cares enough about his mother to want to provide for her. Not all sons are as thoughtful.”

“I haven't finished yet. There's something else. He has money. He could buy Casa Esmeralda several times over if he chose to do so. It's how he makes it.”

“Are you suggesting his occupation is disreputable?”

“I'm not suggesting anything. I am giving you the cold facts.”

“Then do so. Stop making a drama out of it and tell me what he does.”

“He fights bulls. And kills them. He's a matador.”

Well, thought Anita reasonably, what did you expect? Hadn't she first been warmed, stimulated, attracted by his difference to other men? Wouldn't she have felt cheated if he'd been a bank clerk or a shopkeeper, or a solicitor like Edward? Edward's caution and predictable attitude irritated her. But a matador!

Edward was very tender with her. His grave eyes sought hers and his hands came down on her shoulders as though he knew and meant to hold her together.

“It's ironical, really, but this is what I was afraid of. I rushed you out of England and I tried to sell you the idea of turning Casa Esmeralda into a hotel, to keep your mind busy, to give you an interest. I was so afraid of your doing just exactly what you have done.”

“What have I done?”

“Fallen in love, or think you have anyway, with someone totally unsuitable.”

“You anticipated it? How clever of you!”