The Flesh and the Devil (75 page)

         
'I was a fool.' Tristán‘s whisper sounded slurred, almost
dreamy, but it held an edge of self-contempt. 'Only a fool thinks that – love
begets love.'

         
Jealousy and pain pierced Juana‘s heart so precisely that
she felt as if it had stopped beating, freezing the blood in her veins. She
would recognize, now, the torment beneath the sardonic words because it
mirrored her own; he still loved the woman he had wanted in his boyhood, and
was tasting the bitterness of a second loss.

         
In a tone whose steadiness surprised her, she said, 'She
cannot know yet that you have been hurt. You were coming from her when they
found you, were you not? Or else they could not have known where you would be.
We can send for her to come if you want to see her again.'

         
He did not lift his head, but she thought the muscles
tightened about his mouth as he lay. The green eyes were fixed and staring,
hideously bright. 'No –

         
she will not come now. It is over between us; she – told me
so tonight.'

         
An irrational joy, as swift as her earlier pain, leapt up
in Juana, then died as she saw the torment in his face. Even if Elena did not
love him, it would not alter his heart; any more, she realized suddenly, than
she could have lain with Don Diego because Tristán did not love her.

        
'I must hurt you a little now, Felipe,' Luis interjected,
'but try to be still. I hope it will not take long.'

         
'Luis.'

         
Tristán sounded merely satisfied to have identified his
friend‘s voice, but Juana saw his long fingers curl round the edge of the table
and clench in readiness. Luis saw the movement, too, and signaled with his eyes
for her to come close so that he could whisper to her.

         
'He ought to have something to deaden the pain, but there
is nothing in the house. If he starts to move under the knife, you and
Elisabeta will have to try to hold him. Watch what she does and copy her, she
has helped me before.'

         
Juana nodded. There was no need to point out that the three
of them combined could not hold Tristán if he began to thrash about; Luis
already knew.

         
The probe glinted in the candlelight as Luis raised it, but
as soon as it touched the wound the metal‘s sheen was dulled. Luis‘s lips
hardened into a thin line as he dug; quickly and deftly as he worked, each
moment seemed to Juana to last an age as the metal slid coldly into the open
wound, probing for the lodged pistol-ball. Tristán‘s fingers curled tighter on
the table‘s edge, but he made no sound.

         
'I cannot see it,' Luis said through his teeth. 'Too deep.'

         
'Shall I lift the candle higher?' Elisabeta enquired.

         
'No unless you want to spill hot tallow all over him – I
shall have to feel for it. Hold him while I …'

         
He did not bother to finish the sentence. A short, stifled
sound came from the man on the table, and Tristán‘s nails clawed at the bare
wood. Fresh blood welled over Luis‘s fingers as he pressed down, holding the
straining body as still as he could, and Elisabeta moved to grasp Tristán right
ankle and hold it with all her strength.

         
'The probe is touching it,' Luis said suddenly, 'but I
cannot tell if I am pushing it deeper. Hold him, for God‘s sake.'

         
His arm moved in a quick, scooping motion like a man
digging a spade into thick mud, and Tristán gave a sheerly animal cry that
seemed to be torn out of him. His body jerked, the probe slipped and Luis
swore. He straightened at once, breathing heavily, and said, 'Again. I shall
have to try again.'

         
'You are killing him!'

         
Tears were mingling with the trickles of perspiration on
Juana‘s face. The heat of the candles had made the little room stifling hot,
but she was shivering; her brain noted that Luis‘s dark face was gleaming and
his shirt sticking to his back without bothering to consider the cause. If she
had had to give a reason for her sense of suffocation, she would have named
fear.

         
Her answered with a terrible simplicity, 'He will die
anyway if I do not.'

         
Tristán said something incomprehensible in a quick,
breathless voice, and she realized that he was reverting to his native tongue
as his fever rose. She said quickly, 'He wants something,' but Luis nodded and
bent again to his task with his graying hair flopping forward, his air more
like that of a carpenter sawing wood than a doctor tending a man‘s hurt. Unable
to bear the picture conjured up by her own imagination, Juana turned her back on
him to watch her husband.

         
The golden skin was flushed with fever so that the thick
dusting of gold freckles that lent it its luminosity were darkened to copper
against the fieriness of sickness. The impassive mouth was stretched in a snarl
like an animal‘s, baring his teeth at pain in between the soft, muttered
incoherencies. His head had begun to move a little, restlessly, and his hands
beat against the table-top like those of a man battering for entrance at barred
door. Without thinking, she slid her hand into one of his and it closed
fiercely upon her fingers, clenching until her flesh whitened and she wanted to
scream; yet she could feel the frail, hectic pulse against her palm and knew
that this excruciating strength was deceptive, that it was only the convulsion
of a blind agony that did not even comprehend what it was that his fingers
grasped.

         
'A minute more,' Luis said through clenched teeth, and
Juana leaned over her husband as Elisabeta was doing and pressed down with all
her weight, as though she shielded him from lightning. The fierce heat of his
skin made her catch her breath; it was like lying across a bed of hot coals,
and his shivering shook them all. She heard Luis grunt, and then into the
silence came the wail of a child.

         
'Rodrigo – he must have woken.' Elisabeta made an
instinctive movement towards the door, but Luis‘s voice checked her.

         
He let the words die, and Rodrigo‘s yells were the only
sound on the room apart from Tristán‘s harsh, tearing breaths. Juana felt his
body rise up under her, fighting to avoid the pain as Luis dug deeper, and she
clung to the edge of the table as if it were a raft in the open sea, her arms
aching with effort.

        
The thought crossed her mind that his struggles might injure
the child, but she thrust it away and clung harder. Tristán‘s back arched
beneath her in uncontrollable spasm, and she felt his impulse to scream as if
it were her own, a nightmare of involition. Then, as suddenly as if she had
been struck deaf, she realizes that all she could hear was the monotonous
sobbing of the boy in the next room, and her urge to scream was gone: Tristán
has given one short, wrenched cry and was still.

         
She let go the table and straightened painfully, putting an
unbelieving hand against his cheek. His skin felt as dry as paper and burning
hot, and she remembered that the first time she had touched him she had
expected his skin to be cold. As cold as ice, as cold as death.

         
'At last.' Luis had not hesitated, but he sounded rather
weary. 'That strength of Felipe‘s is a curse sometimes – most men would have
swooned long ago. Now I can finish without giving him any more pain – until he
wakes, of course.'

         
'
Wake
s? He is not dead?'

         
Luis shook his head. 'Not yet. He may die from loss of
blood, or the fever, or a dozen other things, but at least he is not dead yet.'
He was swabbing fresh blood from the wound as he spoke. 'He was lucky, in that
either his opponent aimed in a hurry or else he was a poor marksman – the
saints alone know how it happened, but the ball seems to have gone in upwards!
It would have broken the bone else, but although it lodged deep it has not
broken his leg and he will not be lamed lastingly.

         
Juana stared at him, wordless with relief. Elisabeta had
gone to soothe Rodrigo now that she was no longer needed, and part of her mind
heard the outraged hiccoughing of the child subsiding while a sudden
overwhelming weakness swept over her, every event in this incredibly long night
rising up to take its toll. It was past dawn now; the bluish light that had
seeped under the door when she arrived had long ago passed into apricot and now
was paling into gold.

         
'Open the shutters.' Luis echoed her thoughts. 'I can see
better in daylight.'

         
Mechanically she obeyed, resting her cheek against the hard
edge of the wooden shutter as she stared unseeingly into the street. She knew
that she should be planning what to tell Luis and Elisabeta of the night‘s
events: to tell the truth about Eugenio would mean having to explain about
Bartolomé, yet they believed that she had sent the de Fronteneras to kill
Felipe…

         
Her tired mind gave up the unequal struggle. What they
thought of her did not matter while they let her stay near him, what was vital
was that Felipe should live. The rest could wait.

         
Turning away from window with a defiant squaring of her
shoulders that Tristán would have recognized, she went back to help Luis.

         
You should rest.' Luis entered the little bedchamber
quietly and shut the door, and Juana, after the briefest of glances, returned
her gaze to Tristán‘s unconscious face.

         
'I shall sleep when he wakes.'

         
If
 
he wakes,
her mind added and then shied away from its own thought. Luis put the bowl of
soup he carried into her hands, but she only looked down at it as she felt its
heat against her palms. She said, 'It is no use, he will not eat,' and started
to set it aside, but Luis prevented her.