A Divided Inheritance (39 page)

It was a lesson on how to hold the sword. In the morning, she had just held the sword as if shaking someone’s hand and that was difficult enough. Now she was expected to apply leverage and
control – the index finger round the heel of the blade, the fingers tightly round the grip, so that the pommel sat in the hollow of the wrist and the quillons lay horizontal.

The leather grip was soon damp in her hand, her fingers not quite long enough to lie straight where they should. The proper way was painful; it gave her blisters and made her wrist ache.

Elspet and Zachary advanced and retreated up and down the yard, fighting the new technique and each other with wordless concentration. At one point she caught a glimpse of the Morisco girl
Luisa, passing by with a chicken squawking under her arm. She paused to stare at them as if she could not quite believe her eyes before calling through the kitchen window, ‘Mama!’

Moments later the old woman was peering out of the door to look at this new spectacle of a woman fencing. Zachary had noticed the audience too and put on a nonchalant, easy air, adding extra
cuts and thrusts as if Elspet was completely beneath his notice. It frightened Elspet, and she struggled to keep away from his blade, ignoring the watching women. It took all her concentration
simply to wield the rapier.

When the word came to lay down arms, she seized her chance.

‘Please,’ she said, grasping Zachary by the arm, ‘I wanted to ask you to sign this.’ She drew out the rolled paper, in its sad, damp state.

‘What is it?’ he said, narrowing his eyes, and attempting to free himself.

‘It is a paper asking Greeting to stay the sale of the house and business. You said you would reconsider.’

‘Only if you kept out of my sight. That was what I said.’

‘But I have to have something in writing, you know I must. It is not my fault we are tied together through my father’s will. The half of the business won’t be enough to house
me, not if you sell now, so it is an agreement to stay the sale, and I’ve written in a modest settlement.’

‘I don’t see why I should agree to more.’

‘Because I did not expect to find myself in this situation. Will you sell now, and leave me with nothing?’ His stubborn face drove her to raise her voice, so frustrated was she that
he refused to understand. ‘Because it’s unfair, because I was to be married, and now . . .’ She was out of words, she had tried them all. It was hopeless. She threw the paper down
on the ground, let her knees buckle and sank into the dirt. ‘I . . . I beg you, please.’

Zachary wrested his arm away, looked around to see who was watching. ‘Get up. Get up, I say! You humiliate yourself.’

‘And so would you, in my place,’ she cried. ‘I have to live, cousin. And poverty makes beggars of us all.’

He looked at her then, a long, hard penetrating look. His face softened, as if recalling with regret someone he once knew. He picked up the paper from the dirt and untied it, sitting to read it
twice. She stood, hardly daring to draw breath, thinking he might lose patience, refuse again.

‘Very well,’ he said, ‘I’ll sign it. And then perhaps you will stop hounding me.’

She nodded, hardly daring to breathe.

‘Have you ink?’ he asked.

‘I’ll ask someone.’ Quickly, in case he should change his mind, she hurried to approach Alexander, who bent to hear her, and then produced a box with quill and ink block from
his carry-all. She knocked on the kitchen door and asked Luisa for water. Luisa brought a pail and a cup, then hung around outside the kitchen pretending to water the pots by the door, but glancing
at Zachary with sidelong darts of her eyes.

Zachary plucked the cup from her hand, poured a few drops of water on the ink block and scribbled his signature with a flourish, looking up to see if Luisa was still watching.

His name dried instantly in the warm air and he rolled it up and tied up the ribbon before holding it out.

‘There. Now for God’s sake go back home. Leave me in peace.’

Now the tears came. She gulped them back. It was the relief. ‘Thank you. You’ve no idea how much this means –’

He shook his head and said, ‘On the contrary, I think I have.’

After practice, Zachary threw on his sword and buckler and darted out of the door and away into the welcome darkness of the narrow street. He did not want company. The men
would mock him, having to fence with a woman. But now perhaps he’d be rid of Elspet Leviston and the tiresome Wilmot.

Alexander was avoiding him, that much was clear. He obviously didn’t like Zachary questioning Alvarez’s methods. But to Zachary’s mind it was better that way than to follow
blindly like some damned goose.

He strode along the street dodging the wheel-ruts and cracks in the ground. Some houses had lamps lit and hanging outside their doors, and so he aimed for the pools of light in-between them
before being plunged back into the darkness. Many an unwary stranger had broken their ankle just walking in Seville at night, or so Ana had told him with relish.

His cheeks burned as he remembered being watched by all the servants, and worse, by Luisa Ortega, the mathematician’s daughter. Though she was not smiling, her lips pressed together, he
had not missed the hint of merriment in her eyes. She was beautiful. It was all he could do to keep his mind on the training, and whenever the kitchen door opened his eyes drifted there, hoping for
a glimpse of her.

He did not stop at the tavern as he usually would have but went straight home to his chambers. The catches on the arms case slid open easily and he lifted out his sword. How could Señor
Alvarez let Elspet Leviston touch his fine new sword with that rusty old blade? Why, he had only collected it from the hiltsmith that morning.

He drew it from its scabbard and examined it for nicks and marks, but to his relief it was just dusty. The watermarking gave him a glow of satisfaction; that this beautiful pattern was made by
his own hand, and the sight of it cheered him. He had never had anything specially made before; his possessions were all secondhand, stolen mostly from those more stupid and careless.

He stroked the edge of his sword feeling for rough edges, brought out the buffing leather and the soft lint cloth for polishing and then went out to the balcony where he rubbed at the blade with
a passion.

What if he had made a mistake in agreeing to postpone the sale of the business? God help him if he was developing some sort of conscience; that would never do. Scruples served men no purpose,
except perhaps to make them sentimental fools – his childhood of coney-catching on the streets had taught him that.

Poverty creates beggars of us all, Elspet Leviston had said, and didn’t he know that to be true. Just the thought of it had caught him off-guard. Now he’d signed the blasted paper,
and he supposed he must honour it. Alvarez laid great store by honour. A gentleman’s honour. He worried that they were all too good for him, all these worthy well-to-do gentlemen, for one
look from Alvarez and he felt himself tumbling, as though the pit of his former life yawned beneath him waiting to reclaim him. He feared that the old Zachary, the nip and foister, the petty thief,
the gambler and cozener, must be visible to the rest of the men.

Sometimes the temptation of their purses, left so carelessly lying by the wall, was almost too much. His fingers still itched to pocket them. And now he had spent Leviston’s coin, well, he
struggled to resist the lure of their satchels yawning temptingly open. Just the other day one of the other students, Girard Thibault, had caught him eyeing his jewelled cloak pin; he
couldn’t help himself, it was a habit.

‘What are you looking at?’ he asked, and Zachary thought quickly and said that his brother had a pin just like it. Of course Thibault replied that he couldn’t have, as it had
been commissioned by his father from a goldsmith in Antwerp.

Zachary set down his sword and polishing cloth, and the pot of rank-smelling potash he used to clean off the dirt. He washed his hands in the ewer and dried them. Thibault was an odd fellow, he
thought, obsessed with his stubs of lead and his draughting. And yet so were they all, Alvarez’s students – men who did not quite fit into society, men who seemed awkward, as if they
could not bear the world as it was, like everyone else did.

‘Hoy, Zachary!’

He sheathed his sword, put it down on the tiled floor and leaned over the railing.

‘Gabriel!’ His apprentice friend craned his neck up at him from below.

‘Thought it was you.’ Gabriel moved himself back into the middle of the road and shielded his eyes to see better. ‘Is this where you live?’

‘Yes,’ Zachary shouted back.

Gabriel whistled softly, and shook his head, his eyes catching twinkles of light.

‘Wait there, I’ll come down.’ He feared Gabriel would ask to come in and see how well-appointed it was in comparison with his baked-brick room in Triana. He would think Zachary
far too grand. And yet only a few moments ago Zachary was wondering if he was good enough for the elevated company at Señor Alvarez’s. He sighed. He did not seem to fit in anywhere.
But he girded on his sword belt and pulled on his boots.

‘Ana, I’m going out. Won’t be long.’ He turned the key in the lock and shouted to the kitchen as he passed.

‘Hey, it’s good to see you.’ He clapped Gabriel on the back. ‘What brings you to this part of town?’

‘I had to deliver a dagger that Guido made for one of your neighbours. A fine-looking thing, sharp as a buzzard’s beak. And a twisted steel handle wrapped in padded velvet, like the
one he made a few weeks back.’

‘Come on, let’s have a jug or two and you can tell me how things are at Guido’s.’ They walked in the direction of the cathedral which rose like a cliff above the other
buildings. ‘This dagger, was it the one he started while I was there last week?’

‘No, he finished that. This was another, with a longer blade. I tell you, I wouldn’t like to be on the end of that thing. The customer, Don Calveros, is convinced he will be set-upon
at night by gangs of Moriscos.’

‘He sounds like a fearful man.’

‘No, he told Guido that the Moriscos are getting restless with all the rumours of their deportation, and are planning an uprising. He seems to think members of the Inquisition are not safe
in their beds.’

‘He’s an inquisitor?’

‘Aren’t all cowardly men? Seems to me they turn
familiares
because otherwise they must take a stand against them.’

They walked up the winding alleys until they came to the edge of the cathedral square, the tower of the Girandola looming above, but then Gabriel said, ‘It will have to be a small jug, I
said I’d meet Maria at the Corral del Toro in Triana.’

‘Maria?’ Zachary nudged him in the ribs and Gabriel rewarded him with an embarrassed grin. ‘Why didn’t you say? We’ll go straight there. Maybe this time I’ll
get to see some dancing.’

‘If you’re sure?’

‘Let’s not keep the lady waiting. Maybe she’ll be able to introduce me to a pretty friend.’ In his head he was already picturing Luisa.

They strode quickly down the street for the breeze had got up and they had to keep a hand on their hats to keep them on. The bridge swayed alarmingly as the river mouth acted as a funnel and the
wind was gusting there. They teetered across with the water sloshing over their boots and the noise of flapping sail in their ears.

The wind made it hard to talk, so they waited until they were seated in the shelter of the vine-shaded courtyard. There was no sign of Maria, so Gabriel asked about the training, whether it was
all he’d hoped.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s going very well.’ He was not going to tell Gabriel anything about Elspet Leviston, or about his doubts about Alvarez’s methods. It was
easier that way.

He seemed genuinely pleased, and asked what they did. Zachary bent the truth, told him how they were learning more subtle techniques than the Italians, told him that some of Alvarez’s
methods were so secret he could not divulge them.

‘Oh,’ he said, and an awkward moment passed between them, as if Gabriel could sense his evasion. He covered it by pouring the ale, noticing how Gabriel’s eyes kept sliding to
the door every time it opened.

It was Luisa who came in first, this time in a vibrant blue skirt and bodice over her cotton blouse, a blue like the sky just before dark. She did not see them and went straight over to the bar,
but Maria spotted them, and tugged at Luisa’s arm. Luisa glanced towards him, uncertainty written all over her face. She shook her head at Maria and gestured to the guitarist at the side who
was just plucking the strings, to tune them.

Maria came over to join them. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with her. She seems taken with sudden moods these days. But her friend was arrested by the Inquisition, so I guess
she has good reason.’

‘She told me. It sounds terrible—’ Zachary began, but the sound turned into a whine as the musician tightened the pegs, then he played a small arpeggio and began to strum.

‘Our fathers would kill us if they knew we were here,’ Maria shouted over the music.

Luisa made a show of ignoring them, and put her foot up on to a chair to remove her shoes. She kept her back towards them as she swayed over to the empty space in the corner and strapped on a
belt made of silvery discs which tinkled and caught the light. The guitarist slapped a palm on the body of his instrument in a
zapateado
and Luisa grasped her skirts and swirled them in a
flurry of blue as the first chords strummed out. A boy came round to light the candles.

The bar man called ‘
Olé!
’ and Zachary saw the flash of Luisa’s skirts, and felt the draught of their swing. The boy moved on and now Zachary caught
Luisa’s rapt almost angry expression. A power from her feet seemed to climb up inside her so that it erupted in fluid, graceful movements that spread to the tips of her fingers. Her feet
stamped into the ground as if to pull up some force from the earth with their hammering. And all the time her fingers snapped out the rhythm at the ends of arms raised in an elegant curve.