The Flesh and the Devil (48 page)

         
Her maidservant moved away before she answered. 'He sent
word that you could have the earrings as soon as he was paid for them, senora.'
She spoke noncommittally, her head bowed over the gown on its stand at the other
end of the room.

         
Dona Jeronima's lips tightened. 'What? What was that? How
can I hear you if you mutter at me from there, you fool?'

         
'He wants his money, senora.' The maid raised her voice
slightly but did not venture nearer.

         
'Money? Before God, he has the honour of my custom and he
quibbles about money? Send to him now, this instant. Tell him I promise he
shall be paid, but I must have those earrings today.'

         
'Cristoforo has told him so already on your behalf, senora,
but he will not give them up. He says that you have promised before and not
paid.' The woman kept her voice carefully flat; she had no wish to draw her
mistress's temper on her own head by sounding pleased. 'Surely it is not so
important? You have many other fine jewels that you could wear instead.'

         
'Wear something that has been seen for the Saint's feast?
Besides, most of them are in pawn to the money-lenders already, as you know
full well. The state may condemn the Jews, but I do not know what I should do
without 'em.' Dona Jerdnima's acid tones contrasted curiously with her
carefully controlled face. 'Let it be, then, and leave me. You can tell the
jeweller . . . no matter.'

         
The maidservant whisked herself out of the room with
alacrity. She had been lucky this time, she considered — other messages, no
less unwelcome, had earned her a storm of abuse or a hail of whatever missiles
came to her mistress's hand. Either Dona Jeronima had lost interest in her
precious earrings, which seemed unlikely, or else she was concocting a scheme
to pay for them out of somebody else's purse, for there was nothing in her own.
Too many months of extravagance had followed her last success, and she had been
squandering money on that young man of hers, too. . . .

         
Dona Jeronima was thinking of her lover as she studied her
face in the glass. Nineteen, she reminded herself, and she over fifty, it
mattered not by how much; she could have been his mother, almost his
grandmother. But the child was becoming too expensive and must go. The fact
grieved her less than it would have done a few weeks earlier, and considerably
less than when, three months ago, she had first taken him to bed; his good
looks were of the florid type that quickly palled, and they could only excuse
his bull-like lack of finesse for a limited time. Now, his injured pride was of
less importance than her straitened means.

         
She studied her own face with renewed attention, her gaze
assessing, and her yellowish eyes stared back at her as coldly from the glass.
Her olive-toned skin was still fine, thank heaven; in this soft light the
fretting mesh of wrinkles scarcely showed, and the one grey lock in her still
sleek dark hair looked like an affectation rather than a prefigure of old age.
The thinness she had always regretted was an asset now, keeping her jaw firm,
her neck unlined—
almost
unlined: it still looked well enough under a
necklace. But behind the signs and signals of time that she checked every day,
as carefully as a fortress commander inspecting a besieging army, her face was
as it had always been: narrow, cattish, with thin, high brows, a narrow nose,
and a mouth whose arched upper lip distracted attention from the revealing
fleshlessness of the lower one.
The skullshows through you there,
 
one of her lovers had once said to her, and
she had smiled and agreed complacently.

         
To be bored, and short of money — the two calamities had
never come upon her at once before. Usually the money relieved her boredom, or
the excitement of getting more eased penury. Now Doha Jeronima was forced, for
the first time since she had married her late husband— that senile, doting fool
—

         
to consider as a matter of urgency what she should do. To
change her way of living, to economize, was unthinkable when her credit depended
on her reputed wealth. She must turn what she had to her advantage, she
thought, and it was too late to trap another fool into marriage — even if
Villenos were rich in wealthy, unmarried fools.

         
So, she ruminated, tapping her foot, not marriage— nor a
rich lover either, by the same token that made her buy young Manuel so many
rich gifts. All that was left was the game of brokerage.

         
She had won at that before, and it might even prove
stimulating now in the right circumstances; her poverty now would add an edge
of urgency to the game which was pleasing rather than distressing'. To
introduce two people who might not otherwise meet — that was the essence of the
game; and if Dona Jeronima made it her business to ensure that at least one of
the parties was rich and paid their generous hostess for the privilege of their
introduction, it made no difference to their enjoyment of each other. Besides,
the game lent spice to her usual round of entertainments, and it amused her to
watch the play; particularly where there was some little difficulty involved in
reconciling both the parties to the end of the game. . . .

         
She had been idle too long, she thought, watching the
kindling relish in her reflected eyes. This reverse was a blessing, a salutary
reminder that she was in danger of growing dull without a whetstome for her
wits.

         
With swift decision she clapped the glass down, careless of
the delicate inlay across its back. The time, with the town crowded for fiesta,
could not suit her purpose better; it should be simple to find what she was
looking for. She would venture out in her carriage. She often wondered if the
fools who paid so freely for her merchandize ever guessed that they could have
had the same, shorn of its elegant trappings, for a few escudos on the other
side of the town.

         
`Sanchiar!‘

         
The tone made Dona Jeronima's maid cross herself before she
peeped round the door, and she was startled to find her mistress smiling. 'Yes,
senora?'

         
―Lay out my brown taffeta, and call my carriage to
the door. I have decided to reform my way of living a little.' Dona Jeronima
eyes held a gleam of amused self-satisfaction. 'I shall begin this very day, by
going to church.'

         
CHAPTER 12

         
Juana had settled into the Armendariz household with an
ease and rapidity that surprised herself. After a week only Luis treated her as
though she were anything other than the boys' elder sister, and to Elisabeta
her total ignorance of household things was a matter for teasing laughter. At
first she had found it hard to believe that any girl of Juana's Iage could know
nothing of running a house beyond giving orders to others; then, ruthlessly
practical, she had set about teaching her guest what she needed to know. 'For I
cannot think,' she observed briskly, 'that Felipe will be able to provide your
ladyship with a retinue before the pair of you have starved to death for want
of a good cooked meal!'

         
Juana had laughed to cover her heartache and reflected
grimly that Tristan would have wealth enough if he kept his word and extorted
it from her father. Her self-esteem rejoiced that her husband was not in the
house to see her efforts in helping Elisabeta; it was bad enough when he
returned in the evenings: the Armendariz family would tease her by telling him
at great length of her mistakes and disasters, and she would see his austere
face relax in that surprising, disturbingly attractive laughter. It hurt to
know that the look of gentle amusement in his eyes was for the story-tellers
and not for her, but she did her best to laugh back as though the whole thing
were a jest that she enjoyed as much as he.

         
She knew where he went each day: swallowing her pride, she
had taken counsel from that withering
You could have known for the asking
and
 
questioned him outright after
the first day. Frozen-faced, he had told her. The gold from her dowry was
insufficient to buy them both passages on a ship from the coast, and he was
trying to sell the things of value he had to augment it. It took time, he told
her, because the cheaper things fetched little and the dearer ones he could not
sell for their full worth because the local traders suspected that they might
be stolen. ‗I am known here as a poor man, you see,‘ he had added
ironically.

         
‗I could sell them. No one here knows me -' Juana
could have bitten off her tongue as soon as the words were uttered, for the
betraying note of eagerness in her own voice. An inner stubbornness made her
wait unflinching for his answer, her chin arrogantly high as she met his
piercing regard for a long, breathless moment.

         
'You would be cheated' was all he said, and he had turned
away from her.

         
A stab of petty satisfaction thrilled through Juana as she
regarded the vegetables that she had been chopping for Elisabeta's stew.
Already she was growing quicker and more neat-handed, but Elisabeta still made
excuses to absent herself while Juana struggled so that she need not feel
self-conscious in the knowledge that her hostess could do the same work in a
quarter of the time.

         
A sound behind her made her turn so sharply that the blade
of the knife nearly severed her thumb, and her racing heartbeat told her who
stood there before she looked up.

         
'You are soon back,' she said tonelessly.

         
'I sold something. To a reputeless goldsmith who makes his
living by trading with knaves and who gave me barely a third of what the thing
was worth.'

         
There was a note of anger in Tristan's level voice as he
answered. ‗Now I must see what some of those jewels of yours will fetch.'

         
‗I thought you would have sold them first of all.'
The gibe did not move him, she saw, and as he moved towards the room they
shared she asked uncertainly, 'What was it you sold?'

         
'My sword.' He flung the words curtly over his shoulder and
a few seconds later emerged with one of the saddlebags and threw it down. Tell
me which you value most of what is there -' his face was like stone - 'and I
shall sell them last.'

         
Juana's throat ached as she bent to unfasten the buckles,
her fingers made clumsy by the knowledge that he was watching her with cold,
critical attention. The urge to protest at his sacrifice had withered and died
under his lack of response; he would have mocked her for pitying him, even if
he had believed her. Viciously, she wrenched the straps free and tipped the
saddlebag's contents across the folded mouth of one of Luis's grain-sacks.

         
The pearl necklace, the filigree bracelet, the gold cross
that she had had since childhood — none of them excited any emotion beyond a
sort of wondering sadness that she would not see any member of her family
again. Even now, when she tried to remember them, she could not see their faces
clearly. They had been part of the old Juana, the false one, who was becoming
less real to her day by day.

         
'Is this of value?'

         
She picked up a thin packet wrapped in a fraying piece of
oiled silk that she knew to be none of hers. Then, before she saw him move,
Tristan had crossed the space between them and snatched it out of her hand in a
single sweep.

         
'Only tome-call it a keepsake. It would not fetch much in
the open market.'