The Licence of War (71 page)

“I don’t care if he is poor, and there have been marriages between cousins in our family for centuries.”

“I ought never to have let him back into our house,” moaned Doña Cecilia. “But that settles it: you shall leave for England with Don James as quickly as possible.”

The next morning, James Beaumont began his courtship. Elena was furious, and would not say a word. “She is shy,” Doña Cecilia apologised, though she more often complained that Elena was incorrigibly headstrong and outspoken. Beaumont returned to his inn, and not a half hour later, Antonio marched over demanding to know the truth about this rumoured betrothal. Doña Cecilia addressed him privately, and Beatriz reported to Elena that he had walked out looking thunderstruck. The following day, Beaumont informed Doña Cecilia that Antonio had stopped at the inn to congratulate him and invite him as a guest to the house of de Zamora. “What a splendid fellow your cousin is,” he told Elena, “and unusually broad in his understanding, to welcome a foreigner and a Protestant to his home.” Elena was mute, this time from shock: she could not believe how easily her passionate lover had capitulated. “How silly could you be, to take Antonio’s flirtations seriously,” chided Doña Cecilia. “He will marry into wealth, Elena: I’ve heard he has his eye on young Teresa de Salves.”

Elena sank into despond, unreconciled to Don James; and Antonio stayed conspicuously away from the house. Then on the eve of her departure from Seville, Beatriz drew her aside. “All is not lost: once your sisters are asleep, tiptoe to my bedchamber, where I’ve arranged for Don Antonio to meet you.”

“He’s come to rescue me,” gasped Elena. “God bless you for this, Beatriz!”

Like a hero from Elena’s romances, Antonio clambered in through the window and swept her to bed. His increasingly intimate embraces drove her into a voluptuous frenzy, and without a struggle she surrendered to him the prize that should have been James Beaumont’s. “For a convent-bred virgin, you learn fast – although you do have the best of teachers,” Antonio observed, reclining on the bloodstained sheets. “It’s a pity we have only one night with each other.”

“One night without the Holy Church’s blessing,” she corrected him. “We’ll find a priest, Antonio, and be wed before sunrise. Then my mother will be powerless to undo the bond between us.”

“The tragic fact is that we cannot marry,” sighed Antonio, “because of your father Don Giraldo’s improvident lust.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Elena, bolting upright in bed.

“Let me explain. He courted
my
mother before yours, and became mad with envy when Doña Elena was married off to the ancient fellow whose name I bear. Don Antonio de Zamora couldn’t raise his prick to save his life! And since Don Giraldo couldn’t have the woman he desired, he took her sister for his wife and her for his willing lover. I am the fruit of their adultery. As she was dying, just after she brought me into the world, my mother confessed this to Fray Luis and to her beloved sister, whom she asked always to be kind to her poor ill-gotten child.” He smiled at Elena. “You and I are both cousins
and
brother and sister.”

Elena was at first speechless. Then she cried out, “Who told you such a despicable lie?”

“It’s no lie. Doña Cecilia told me, the day I learnt of your betrothal. She would have kept everything secret, had I not professed my affections for you and commanded her to dismiss that milksop Beaumont. I can see why your father abhorred me – the hypocrite, condemning
me
for my dissolute ways. I also see why, when she begrudgingly let me back in, Doña Cecilia made me swear that I wouldn’t touch so much as a hair on her daughters’ heads. And I thought it was because of my famous reputation with women.” Antonio’s fingers wandered to the moist cleft between Elena’s thighs. “If she knew what hair I am stroking now! I hope Don Giraldo is turning in his grave, don’t you? Our sin is sweet revenge, on him and on the Englishman who is robbing me so unfairly of you.”

Elena at last comprehended Doña Cecilia’s haste in packing her off to England. Yet as she gazed upon Antonio in his naked glory, she
wanted him, even at the price of eternal damnation. “Antonio, we are twin souls who belong together. What our father and your mother did is not our fault, so why should we suffer for it? And if we’re married,
my
mother will
have
to keep the secret, for the reputation of our house. No one else need know.”

Antonio removed his hand. “There is a tiny problem, my dear Elena: our marriage would be unholy, and forever cursed by God. You and I
are
like beautiful twins, but our common blood would produce monsters of nature – and everyone would know.” He started to pull on his clothes. “We inherited our sinfulness, from our father’s line. The blood of Moors ran in Don Giraldo’s veins, from a coupling as illegitimate as his with my mother, and as ours.” Out of his doublet he plucked a rosewood box and laid it beside her. “Open this when I’m gone, and wear what’s inside, in memory of tonight. As a small boy, I found it hidden among my mother’s belongings, and stole it as a keepsake. I never understood its full significance until my talk with Doña Cecilia: it must have been Don Giraldo’s secret gift to his lover. How ironic, and how appropriate, that I should pass it on to you! Our bad blood seems destined to surface in each generation. Still, you shouldn’t be too sorry for yourself,
mi hermosa
,” he laughed. “Count yourself lucky that I was your first taste of a man. On your wedding night, you can close your eyes and dream of my hands and my lips on your body, and the thrust of my virile sex within you. I really must be off or Beatriz will scold me,” he added, sauntering to the window. “She’s in the courtyard, watching out for us.”

Elena had been listening in stunned silence, but when he threw a leg over the sill, she rushed to stop him. There was her faithful Beatriz below, beckoning urgently to Antonio; and on his face she saw a cool complacency that mortified her. He kissed her on the cheek, swung down from the ledge, jumped and landed agile as a cat, and vanished with Beatriz into the shadows.

In the morning he did not come to say farewell, and James Beaumont interpreted Elena’s anguish as normal for a girl parting
from her family and homeland. While their cavalcade travelled the hundreds of miles to Bordeaux, where they would board ship for England, he tried to console her, with the help of her two Spanish maids. It was Beatriz she missed most, especially when, less than a month after her incestuous night, she knew enough to recognise the consequences. She steeled herself, behaved lovingly to Beaumont, and raised a thorny issue. What if his parents opposed the betrothal, and threatened to disinherit him if he did not break it? “You are of an age to choose your wife, so why should we wait? Let me convert to your church in Bordeaux, and we can marry there – then the match cannot be undone,” she urged, almost as she had implored Antonio. Beaumont agreed, ecstatic, and when they arrived at Chipping Campden, Lord and Lady Beaumont were scandalised, but had to accept. James was their heir and sole son, and his now-Protestant bride was big with child.

Over the next months, Elena dreaded what was ripening within her, to burst from her loins ghastly and deformed, like a demon in her illustrated prayer-book. By some miracle, however, she produced a healthy boy; and while disappointed that he did not resemble his father, the elder Beaumonts overlooked this flaw in their delight at a grandson. Still she longed for Antonio and thought guiltily of his keepsake in her lacquered cabinet. Yet Antonio had been wrong about her husband. James Beaumont was no milksop, but her brave champion in an otherwise inhospitable world. She bore him two sons who died in their infancy: God’s judgement. Laurence, in contrast, had barely a day’s illness, as though his thick de Capdavila y Fuentes blood rendered him immune; and he was sunny-tempered, precocious, and naughty. Her husband doted on him, as did her Spanish maids, who taught him fluent Castilian.

On his fourth birthday, Elena caught one of them whispering, “The older he gets, the more I see his father in him. God knows how the rascal found an opportunity to seduce her!”

“
Donde hay ganas, hay maña,”
chimed in the other. “Or as the English put it, where there’s a will there’s a way. After all, Don Antonio
was screwing Beatriz under Doña Cecilia’s very nose. I wouldn’t be surprised if that minx acted as his bawd. And
he
was no better than a spiteful valet pissing in his master’s soup. What he couldn’t have for himself, he had to spoil for Don James.”

The discovery of this double betrayal and of her own naïveté horrified Elena as much as fear of the truth spreading, and it killed her love for Antonio. She promptly told her husband and his parents that her gentlewomen were instructing Laurence in the Catholic faith and must be sent back to Spain. Lord and Lady Beaumont rejoiced that the papists were going home, warmed a little towards their daughter-in-law, and then died in quick succession while she was pregnant with her fourth son, Thomas. Although Thomas survived his dangerous early years, her guilty fear remained; and just once she had let a hint of her secret slip out, to Dr. Seward. For as Laurence grew from boy to youth, he was to her a monster of nature, transforming before her eyes into a second Antonio: beguiling, provoking, lazy, irresponsible, and sensually disposed; though like James Beaumont, he was not proud, and he lacked Antonio’s vanity. In defence, she had blinded herself to everything else about him that was not Antonio. She had done her best not to love him. Praise heaven she had failed, as signally as Antonio had failed to tear her family apart.

Now she remembered Laurence’s words to her, in the dovecote:
I thought that if the story was true, it would explain why you and I have always been at odds
. How her heart had melted, and how much it had cost her to hide her remorse. She had lied to him, and again tonight to her husband, not because she was afraid that they would stop loving her if she told the truth, but to ensure peace between Laurence and Thomas, so the bad blood in their generation would end. Too quietly to rouse her sleeping husband, she murmured, “
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa
.” As for the sin of Don Giraldo and her aunt Elena, which Antonio had apparently kept to himself while in England, she would take it with her to the grave.

Governor Aston greeted Laurence with cold contempt. “His Majesty has written to me of your and Lord Wilmot’s late disgrace, Mr. Beaumont. He further informs me you are on a hunt for a man obnoxious to his cause, and has instructed me to assist you however I can.”

This last part surprised Laurence, until he divined Prince Charles’ influence at work. “I thank His Majesty and you, sir, in advance. I brought with me some articles that Lord Digby gave me to return to Lady Hallam, if I may.”

Aston guided him into the reception room where Isabella sat, her hair elegantly dressed and her boy’s clothes switched for a satin gown. His love for her flooded back with painful vengeance, and it worried him that a month in Oxford had not restored her vitality. While her face and shoulders were not as thin, her skin was still unhealthily pale.

“Mr. Beaumont, how are you?” she asked. By her concerned expression, she had also heard of his disgrace. “But … what have you there?” Laurence handed her two books that made her frown and bite her lip, a diamond ring that she accepted with a faint smile, and a woven basket that she opened with an exclamation of joy. “Niger!”

“He’s a well-travelled cat, and far better behaved than Seward’s, though he did puke once or twice on the way.”

She picked Niger out and kissed his sleek head. “Thank you. He is the most precious to me of all.”

“Surely not more than the ring, my lady,” commented Aston, as if to a child.

“Oh yes, Sir Arthur,” she said; and Laurence knew at once from her tone that she disliked the Governor as much as he did. “The ring I shall sell, to buy myself something new. I had to leave the rest of my jewellery in London, including a necklace of which I was particularly fond. I can’t replace it, but I might find a poor substitute. I shan’t sell the books, however,” she concluded, regarding Laurence wistfully. “They both contain very sage advice.”

Aston cleared his throat. “Sir, how do you intend to go about your hunt?”

“I’ll start today,” said Laurence, “by releasing Mr. Draycott from Oxford Castle.”

“The same for whom you went to such great lengths, my Lady Hallam,” Aston said. “Had I known earlier that he was of value to Lord Digby, I’d have provided him straight away with more comfortable conditions.”

“I must insist on accompanying you, Mr. Beaumont,” said Isabella, “even if I was once told
that
gaol was no place for a woman. I’ll be fascinated to witness your second meeting with Mr. Draycott. On their first,” she explained to Aston, “I believe it was he who took Mr. Beaumont prisoner, in the name of Parliament.”

“This is no place for
anyone
, except perhaps Veech and your delightful host,” Laurence muttered to Isabella, as the turnkey ushered them through. The common pound was even worse than he recollected; obviously the Governor had not a shred of compassion for his prisoners.

Isabella was shielding her mouth with a fold of her cloak. “How I remember coming here to rescue your tortured body.”

“I haven’t forgotten, either, what you did for me,” he said.

Draycott occupied a solitary cell; while bare, it was at least clean. He had altered since that October night on the barge: there were streaks of grey in his hair, and deeper lines in his face. His skin bore the chalky tinge of incarceration, and he was unshaven. When they entered, he rose from his pallet bed and stared at them like a man in a dream.

“Good day to you, sir,” Isabella said.

Laurence extended a hand. “Mr. Draycott, Governor Aston has invited you to be his guest in Oxford, from henceforth, unless you prefer these rather monastic quarters.”

“Aston?” repeated Draycott, in an incredulous voice. As he took Laurence’s hand, his eyes strayed to Isabella. Laurence felt sympathy: they were both in love with her, and neither of them could have her.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Draycott said next, “but I cannot accept hospitality from a man I so detest.”