After the War: A Novella of the Golden City (6 page)

Joaquim took the notebook, eyes narrowing. “Do you remember what happens in
this
story?”

Alejandro remembered most of the tale of a mother and son trying to get help to release the boy’s father from prison. “The boy hits the man attacking his mother with a rock, and they escape to the nobleman’s house
—
the father-in-law. His mother tries to threaten him with blackmail, but decides it would be wrong. The father-in-law is impressed with her honesty, though, so he vows to help her. They travel to Madrid, where he demands her husband’s freedom.”

Joaquim sat down on the end of the settee. “Have you read this book already?”

“That’s what I was saying, sir,” Alejandro pointed out.

Joaquim tapped the notebook with one finger. “No, I mean this notebook.
Today.
Have you read it through already?”

Alejandro shook his head. “No, but I recognized the story, so . . .”

Joaquim stared at him, mouth pursed as if he was trying to decide what to say.

“I don’t understand,” Alejandro said. “What’s wrong?”

“You’ve wanted proof? This is your proof.”

He stared at Joaquim for a moment, but found nothing to say.
How can this be proof
?

“Only Alejandro Ferreira would know how that story goes,” Joaquim went on. “You didn’t copy it. You
wrote
it, Alejandro, years ago. It’s never been published, and I don’t think anyone has ever read it other than myself and Marina
—
possibly Miguel
—
so you’re
remembering
it.”

Joaquim handed back the notebook. Alejandro touched its cover, almost reverently. There were more than twenty of these notebooks. “Did I write all of these?”

“Yes, and if you recognize the tales in them, that’s because you recall writing them.”

Alejandro threw his hands up. “Then why can’t I remember Serafina? Or you?”

“I don’t know,” Joaquim said gently. “I’ll ask Gaspar’s opinion. But this is a step in the right direction.”

Alejandro shook his head. He was tired of small steps.



After dinner, Serafina sat on the balcony in the twilight, her guitar in her hands. She played a mournful tune and, as Alejandro watched her, began to sing. It was the first time he’d heard her sing since that first night in Lisboa.

He simply watched her for a time.

He felt confident now that he wasn’t an imposter. He
must
be the same man who’d written all those stories. That meant he wasn’t doing anything illicit by bedding Serafina. It was a trivial thing to worry over, but it had bothered him since that first night, even though it clearly hadn’t troubled her.

He wanted to get to know her. To understand her.

She had avoided being alone with him all evening, chattering gaily through dinner and then closeting herself with Marina to discuss wedding preparations. Alejandro suspected that as soon as he let her know he was there, Serafina would draw him toward the bed, and all thought of talking would flee. It
had
been a successful tactic so far.

She paused in the middle of her song, set the guitar aside, and jotted down a few notes. Her braid slipped over her shoulder as she leaned forward, ruining the illusion that she had short hair.

She’s writing a song
. He hadn’t realized she wrote her own songs. He watched as she gazed down at the words on the paper, her lower lip caught between her sharp teeth.

Then she threw her hands in the air. “Where is Miguel when I need him?” she asked herself in a vexed voice.

Miguel?
Alejandro stepped back into the shadows of the bedroom.

She rose, clutching the guitar in one hand, collected her papers, and came inside the bedroom before closing the balcony doors. It wasn’t until she turned to lay the guitar on their bed that she realized he was there.

“Who is Miguel?” Jealousy roiled in the pit of Alejandro’s stomach, an unfamiliar sensation.

She didn’t start guiltily. “Your cousin,” she said blankly. “Miguel Pinheiro. Have you not. . . ?”

Oh, that Miguel.
“Why do you need
him
?”

Serafina looked puzzled
—
and a little hurt
—
by his tone. “To read my words. He always reads my poems.”

Have I read any of her poems?
Alejandro licked his lips, feeling that pit opening up at his feet once more, the feeling that he knew nothing about this wife of his. “May I read it?”

Serafina hesitated, a flush staining her cheeks. “You’re not overly fond of poetry.”

Am I not?
Alejandro shook his head. It charmed him that she could be so shy about this subject when she was so forward on others. “I would like to read it. If you would let me, that is.”

After a moment, she picked up the top sheet of paper and brought it to show him. “I’ve only just started this one,” she told him. “I’m having trouble with the meter, matching it to the tune. I may have to rethink the notes to make them fit.”

Alejandro angled the sheet of paper so he could better read the words written there in a fine, slanted hand. It was only half a poem, telling of a woman’s loss of her lover, a topic Serafina knew better than she should at her age. Far too many Portuguese widows knew that loss. “It’s lovely.”

She stepped back, flushing. “Do you truly think so?”

Why did she doubt him at every turn? “Yes. It’s unfinished, I can tell, but I think that once you’ve worked out the meter, it will make a lovely poem.”

“I can’t figure out how to end that fourth line,” she said, gazing down at the paper.

The poem was arranged in quatrains, but he didn’t know how to end that last line in a way that would keep the
spirit
of the words. He simply didn’t know much about poetry
—
or music
—
and told her so.

“Miguel could figure it out,” she said wistfully.

“Shall we go to see him? I haven’t met him yet.”

Serafina suddenly looked uncomfortable, her lips pressed together. “I, um . . . you quarreled with him.”

So the fact that he hadn’t met this particular cousin was
intentional
. He’d been to Rafael’s house a couple of times now and had met the two younger sons, but not Miguel, the eldest. “What did we fight over?”

She shook her head, her eyes on the rug now. “He wouldn’t tell me. He says you were a jackass, and he won’t come around until you apologized.”

Well, he’d known that sooner or later,
someone
wouldn’t like him. He was perfectly willing to apologize, if only he could find out what he’d said. “Was it over you?” he asked his wife.

Serafina shrugged. “I don’t know.”

That meant it
could
have been his wife they were arguing over. “Well, I’ll go over there and apologize tomorrow.”

Her lips pursed in a way that suggested doubt. “If he’ll see you.”

Alejandro smiled down at her. “I’ll be convincing.”



Thursday, 24 June 1920

Alejandro’s plan to seek out his cousin was set aside when another guest arrived at the house before breakfast, apparently bearing urgent news. One of the footmen knocked discreetly on the bedroom door just as Alejandro was drawing on his coat. “A gentleman has come to see you, sir,” the young man said. “About your military service. I think he’s someone important.”

Alejandro cast a questioning glance at his wife, but she merely returned his look with her eyebrows raised. “I suppose you should go down,” she said, picking up her cup of coffee again. She yawned and leaned back, tucking her scale-patterned feet under her on the leather settee. He’d learned quickly that she required a great deal of coffee in the morning.

Thus dismissed, he followed the footman down to the elegant front sitting room where Joaquim stood waiting with a stranger.

Or a stranger to me, I suppose.

“You don’t remember me, Alejandro,” the tall man said, “but Joaquim and I are old friends.”

Alejandro nodded. He could tell that they were on good terms from the way they stood, no tension between them. The tall man had near-black hair, unmarked by gray, with a conspicuous widow’s peak. Alejandro felt he should know that angular face. “I don’t know your name, sir.”

“Raimundo will suffice,” the man told him. “Joaquim told me of the threat to you, and therefore I’ve made some inquiries with the military.”

If only I could recall that face
. He’d definitely seen this Raimundo before. Not before the war, but perhaps a photograph? “Were you in the military, sir?”

The man laughed shortly. “I’m afraid not. But I have some responsibility for what happened in France and Belgium. Why don’t we all sit down?” Joaquim took his customary armchair and their guest sat on an old brocaded sofa, so Alejandro sat in one of the ivory chairs set across from it. “I’m here because I have some connections with the military,” Raimundo clarified. “I had to go to Bastião to get this, Joaquim, and you’re not going to like it.”

“What did he find?” Joaquim asked.

Raimundo handed over a file. “I’ll need to take that back with me, but I think there’s time for you to read through it. Essentially, Alejandro was loaned to the British Expeditionary Forces, to their military intelligence people. Unfortunately, Bastião can’t get any more than that. Whatever Alejandro was asked to do, the British want it hushed up.”

Alejandro swallowed. “Have I done something terrible?”

“I don’t think so,” Joaquim said. “You signed this paperwork, Alejandro. I don’t think you would have done so if you foreknew you would be asked to do something illegal, or that something bad would happen.”

That was a complicated sentence. “Such as losing all my memories? How could I not have foreseen that?”

Joaquim set a hand on Alejandro’s shoulder. “Because it’s a question that would never occur to you to ask yourself. You were probably asking yourself whether you would have to break any laws or hurt an innocent. Or if you would be physically injured. Or more likely, if you would return home to your wife. Which you’ve done, so your gift would have reassured you that it was a safe chance. A seer has to ask himself the
right
questions.”

Alejandro was beginning to think being a seer wasn’t as wonderful a gift as it sounded. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “So I volunteered to work for British Intelligence. Why would they even want me?”

“I assume they needed a seer,” Raimundo suggested.

“Does it say in my papers that I’m a seer?”

“No,” Joaquim said. “There’s no place in the paperwork for someone to list whether they’re a witch. Just as there’s no place to specify that you’re not fully human.”

That was why they’d returned the wrong body to the Ferreira family
—
none of his paperwork mentioned that his coloration wasn’t human. “What happened to the body they sent to you? The man who wasn’t me?”

“Since the army had no idea who he was,” Joaquim answered, “we had him buried with military honors in a plot near our family’s.”

“If they mistook him for me,” Alejandro said, “I’d bet he was involved in the same operation I was. Otherwise, why make that assumption?”

“Very likely,” Raimundo agreed.

Someone he’d been working with had been burned so badly that only his feet were spared. Alejandro sat down, breath caught in his throat. “I’ve read that in a book before. A curse bounced back on him and . . .”

Raimundo gazed at him, dark brows drawn together as if to ask whether he was mad.

Joaquim set the folder aside. “Alejandro, tell me the rest of the story.”

“Diamonds. They were supposed to steal something else
—
plans for an . . . assault
—
but they stole diamonds instead.” If he closed his eyes, he could imagine them, trays of jewels, taken from a jeweler, ripe to be stolen
again
, because the Germans couldn’t report them missing since they’d stolen them first. “No, the team stole both, but agreed to hide the diamonds and return for them later. Only one of them guessed that the . . . hero was going to turn them all in, so the other members of the team plotted to get rid of him before he could.”

“What is he talking about?” Raimundo whispered, loud enough that Alejandro heard.

“Could I have written that?” Alejandro asked Joaquim. “Ahead of time, I mean.”