Lola Montez Conquers the Spaniards (6 page)

“We will be pleased to watch,” his wife added, and smiled.

I knew then that I wouldn't be able to eat a thing, and said, “If you please, I am ready to accompany you now. I have no appetite, having dined quite late, I assure you.”

“Very well. We may speak in French, by the way? My wife will be more at ease, if so.”

“
Oui, bien sûr
.”

He flipped his hand in the air and a waiter appeared as if by magic. All heads in the restaurant turned, and all mouths hung open as we promenaded past, Concepción's perfume wafting across their nostrils as her voice wafted past their ears: “We
must
stop at the
chocolaterie,
Juan, on the way.”

Although I had told them I was not hungry, that was a lie. I was ravenous, my stomach growling angrily, and of course Concepción knew it. In their fiacre, as we bowled along the city streets, I ate a number of divine chocolates, which only made me feel worse. Grimaldi began to question me while his wife listened, her head to one side, eyes raking the view out the window. “You are, I understand, a married woman?”

“To my regret, yes.”

“And part of your reason for undertaking this journey is to sidestep a court appearance?”

“Obviously Señor Hernandez has given you all the details, monsieur.”

He patted my hand reassuringly, and then took his wife's. “Extremely unfortunate, isn't it, darling? Think of being saddled with an uncongenial husband.”

“Too detestable,” she agreed, with a toss of her head.

He turned his eyes back to mine. “Then, Miss Gilbert, you know the terms of our agreement. Yet there is much you do not know.”

“Yes, including what I am to do for you in return. It has cost me many sleepless nights, I assure you.” This was very true.

“All within your capability. Now that we've seen you, we know this for certain.” His eyes caressed me briefly. “You are as stunning as Hernandez reported.” I was thrilled by this, but he went on. “It will require nerve and quick reflexes. A certain amount of bravery.”

This sounded a bit worrisome, though I tried not to let it show.

“And that is why I am taking you to the shooting gallery for a lesson. Discover what your natural aim is, and your tolerance.” The fiacre, at this point, turned off the main street and up a circular drive, approaching an opulent stone house surrounded by manicured gardens with meticulously trimmed hedge ornaments. We drew up to the front door and the driver leapt down.

“Behave yourself, Juan,” Concepción murmured, holding her hand out of the cab door. She descended with grace and a flourish of underskirts, as well as a complete lack of acknowledgment of the driver who had assisted her. Over a shoulder as she was moving away, she called, “I shall expect you for drinks at the usual time. Do not be late.”

“
Mi querida
.”

The horses were again whipped up, and we headed back into the heart of the city. As soon as she was no longer with us, I felt immediately more at ease, and interestingly, so did Grimaldi. He let his head rest against the upholstered cushion, while his fingers played in the breeze out the window.

“Let me set the record straight. We are not aristocrats, Miss Gilbert. May I call you Eliza?”

“I prefer Rosana.”

“Rosana, then. We are not aristocrats, though my wife occasionally likes to behave as if she is.” He smiled indulgently and smacked his lips. “However, we count among our closest friends several members of royal families, both French and Spanish, as well as brothers of the cloth, some of whom are extremely close to God. We fight on their behalf, as we hope you will consent to do.”

I murmured something that sounded encouraging.

“Though the civil war has nominally ended,” he continued, “there is still great uneasiness. It could flare up again at any moment. The Spanish northerners are wildly patriotic about Don Carlos, the pretender for the throne. The northerners are fearsome
bandidos,
with mountainous terrain in which they can hide a thousand men at a moment's notice. We are on the side of the queens, naturally—the regent Cristina, and her young daughter and future queen, Isabel.”

“I see.”

“Cristina is in exile—in fact, she is here in Paris, due to unfortunate circumstances beyond her control. She will explain this herself when you meet her.”

The legendary Cristina, I realized. The earl will be thrilled! Wait til he hears, I thought, he'll be tickled pink in more than one place!

“We understood, from Señor Hernandez, that you wish to learn traditional dances.”

“Oh yes,” I said, perking up even more.

“You wish to enter the world of the dance, as your profession?”

“More than anything. Or maybe an actress, I haven't decided.”

“I will be able to help you with both. I have enormous influence upon
le monde du théâtre
in Madrid. They listen to me still. And, I suspect, always.”

I couldn't believe this! Upon meeting me, the powerful Señor Juan de Grimaldi knew that
I
was exactly what he'd been looking for! I stole a glance at his profile. He had closed his eyes and a little smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. He certainly thought highly of himself—as did his wife. Perhaps this was a Spanish trait? Far more interesting than our British reticence and false politeness, our wretched habit of apologizing for everything and nothing. Something to emulate; I vowed to begin immediately.

“What will you have me do, monsieur?”

“Call me Juan, please, Rosana. First-name basis for adventurous undertakings.”

His hand was on mine. How had that happened?

“In Madrid, you will be given an acting role in the revival of my play,
La pata de cabra.
I trust you have heard of it?”

“Not yet, but I long to.” Take that, Fanny Kelly!

“As a member of the company, you will be in a better position to carry out the tasks, not onerous, but crucial to the Spanish cause, that will be assigned to you.” He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it, wetly, with apparent sincerity. “Dancing will follow, fear not, dear accomplice. I would never allow you to come to real harm.”

“I am glad to hear it.” Why must he speak about nasty things like harm when I was about to take the stage by storm in my first professional acting role!

At this point, we came to an abrupt halt. We disembarked, Grimaldi flung instructions at the driver, and we entered a monolithic, gloomy building that turned out to be the shooting gallery.

“First we must turn you into a crack shot, Mademoiselle Rosana. Follow me.”

Now, although quite giddy with nerves and hunger, I was also realizing that I had unexpectedly entered a swashbuckling adventure and that I was going to be allowed, even encouraged, for the first time in my life to behave with the energy, fervour, and spark that has always animated me. Although women are trained from infancy to believe themselves the weaker sex, I have always had difficulty accepting this dogma. And now here I was in Paris, and here was this distinguished, powerful man, looking to
me
to help solve an international crisis. How
had this happened? I felt like pinching myself with sudden joy, sure that I could rise to the occasion! If I needed good aim and a steady hand in order to do so, so be it, and gladly!

Grimaldi took me up a huge but shabby marble staircase and into a long room with targets on the far wall. We were quite alone. He placed a leather-bound book on a table and then opened it up: Inside the book lay two tiny, perfect pistols, each just over six inches long, with all the accoutrements. “I have spared no expense on these: finest of their kind. They call them muff guns in English because they can be hidden inside of a ladies' muff.” He handed me one of the beautiful things. “Relatively small,” he continued, “.41 caliber, weighs about two pounds.” It was light, but felt so potent in the hand! “Listen carefully. It is a cap and ball pistol, or percussion. Here's how you load it.” Taking the other pistol from the faux book, he showed me. A measured charge of black powder was poured down the upright barrel, then a wad was used to tamp it down, then a ball of lead forced down onto the wad. “Now it's loaded, but won't fire,” he told me. “So to fire, you cock the hammer and place this small percussion cap on the nipple. Without the cap, no bang. With the cap—” He turned swiftly, fired, and hit the target in the exact centre. I jumped up and down and clapped my hands, I was so impressed.

And then I tried. It is embarrassing to remember how truly wretched I was. However, we all must learn, and on that day I began my true apprenticeship. After some mishandled loadings and a couple of hapless, wild firings, he got behind me and placed his arms on either side of my own, holding the pistol along with me, helping steady my aim. Not surprisingly, I suppose, this led to a number of little intimacies that I knew without his telling me that Concepción must not hear about, and which were, in fact, simply part of the introductory process. Pinching and tickling—why do they love to pinch, as if testing the flesh for edibility? A few wet-lipped smacks—they mean nothing by it, it's just a test of their power, as natural to them as breathing. Men will be men, and for the most part, I have always been happy that they are, particularly when they have something tremendous to impart to me.

As the shooting gallery began to fill with other
gentilshommes,
coming from their clubs for a jot of diversion, I found myself again the
recipient of admiring male attention. I was quite a novelty—the first woman, they claimed, to have dared enter their gallery. When the ribaldry and jostling began to accelerate, Grimaldi called a halt to our practice for the day. I was hot and exhausted and he, grumpy.

At that precise moment, I felt what I assumed to be a large buzzing insect zoom past my left ear. A second later, a little “thwok” sounded at the back wall. Several of the jocular gents cried out, some running to my side and others to examine the wall—where they discovered a fresh hole in the paneling with a bullet lodged in it. Exclamations and cries of alarm! Wait, I thought, disbelieving: Could that have been meant for me? Grimaldi, his face a threatening mask, had begun to pull me away when a tall, thin, dark-complexioned man with an enormous black mustache entered the gallery, having raced up the stairs three at a time and being all of a sweat.

“Señor,
por favor,
” the man panted, bowing low with one hand on his heart and then, straightening, letting forth a violent stream of incoherent Spanish, complete with melodramatic gestures and breast beating.

“Buffoon,” Grimaldi growled, and then he shoved the man violently. “
¡Imbécil!
” He grabbed the pistol from my nerveless hand and pointed it at the swarthy one in a threatening manner. “Get out of my sight!” The fellow turned on his heel and dashed from the room at breakneck speed.

“Juan,” I said, tugging at his arm, “was that—?”

“A mistake,” he told me, not very comfortingly, then loudly to the gentlemen who were clustered around, “One of you, and you know who you are, has been murderously careless. I shall be reporting this incident to the gallery's manager.”

The men retorted: “You cannot believe . . . We would never . . . ! Only at the targets!”

“And she was your target!” Grimaldi roared. My stomach lurched.
Merde
!

Juan chaperoned me away as the men were reaching for me, declaring their innocence. We clattered down the stairs, their voices following, Juan's grip on my arm very hard. The fiacre—how did his driver know?—galloped up from somewhere and drew in to the curb in reckless haste. My patron yanked at the door, bundled me inside, looked
up and down the street with suspicious, harried eyes, hauled himself aboard, and clashed the door shut. We were soon galloping headlong.

“Señor Grimaldi,” I said sternly, rocking to and fro with the motion of the vehicle, “I need you to explain to me exactly what is going on. Are you going to tell me that I am already in danger?”

“No no, certainly not. That was my confederate. He watches out for us at all times. An accident; those Parisian fools, their aim is notoriously flamboyant.”

My hungry, traumatized belly did an acidic flip-flop, and I sat back in my seat. How appalling, I thought: He's not telling me everything that the other gabbled to him. I've been shot at; I know it!

Looking forwards to the safety of my hotel room, I was surprised when I began to recognize landmarks we had passed on our way to the gallery, and even more surprised when the fiacre turned and headed up the laneway towards Grimaldi's mansion. “I have taken the liberty of relocating you for the remainder of your stay in Paris,” Juan said coolly. “You will find all of your gewgaws arranged to your satisfaction.”

Welcomed inside by an officious manservant, I was led to the bedchamber that was to be mine. My trunks and hatboxes had been unpacked and the contents sat or hung in well-ordered ranks. The room was opulently appointed in cream and blue fabrics, very French. I bobbed around, staring and becoming indignant. Who had handled my possessions—including my underthings? Had my removal from the hotel been decided from the beginning? A second chill note of apprehension seized me as I remembered the extreme chaos of my belongings, flung about the hotel room during my frantic search for a matching outfit early that morning. Since then, I'd been almost murdered (had I, really?) and everything I possessed had been handled and scrutinized, by one or several unknown persons. I sat upon the bed and stared at nothing.

After some minutes (and a good deal of disbelief), a knock at the door brought me the news that I was expected downstairs in the drawing room for drinks. Very well, I thought. I would need to maintain all the poise and sangfroid I could muster until I learned just who and what to fear and how to avoid same. I told myself that I could work these things out. I wanted so much to believe in my adventure, my new chances,
and (recklessly, perhaps) I'd decided that my visit to Spain would be the making of me; the silky sibilance of the language matched the persona I was beginning to imagine for myself, and also the fiery temperament. In short, I vowed that if the Grimaldis were planning to use me, well, I would use them too.