The Flesh and the Devil (80 page)

         
that

         
happened

         
on

         
the-the

         
|

         
night you were shot?'

         
'Some

         
things

         
perfectly,

         
others

         
imperfectly.

         
How

         
long

         
is

         
it since?'

         
'Two days.' Her voice was carefully toneless,

         
'Is it so? I have no memory of anything between being
carried through the streets by a parcel of drunkards who kept dropping me, and
waking to see you. The rest is just confusion. But everything else that
happened I can recall, I I had a long time to think of it, thrown out amongst
the town‘s cess.'

         
Heat flooded her cheeks momentarily, and she hoped that he
would not see; her hair had fallen forward, veiling her face in deeper shadow
as she bent over him. 'Have you never wondered how I came to be beside you?'

         
'Perpetually,' he retorted dryly. 'I can only suppose that
you wanted to witness the success of your plan for yourself - you knew that
Elena would never defile her fine house with a corpse, and that I must be
brought to Luis's alive or dead. Do you still trust nothing but your eye?'

         
She flinched, but there was no answering blaze of temper in
her face. Instead she said, 'I went to Luis because I did not know where else
to go. That night -' She paused to fold his discarded clothes together, then
resumed, 'Do you remember how Don Bautista boasted of the guest that the
governor was sending him, the one who would bestow such honour on his house by
staying in it?'

         
'He talked of one such. yes. What of it? '

         
'It was Eugenio. He had tracked us from Andalusia.'

         
Tristan stiffened abruptly and she held him, her fingers
unwittingly tender even while she had to strain to keep him still. He said
curtly, his breathing rapid,

         
'He could not, I am not such a fool. I sent all the
servants on to Turon so that none of them could guess where we were going. The
only person who knew that I had any connection with Villenos was Pedrino, and
he-'

         
'— was followed,' she finished for him. 'Eugenio put one of
his men on his track, and Pedrino led them to you in all innocence. He must
have thought that he had been discharged because Eugenio had no use for zanies,
but he was being used as - as a tracker.'

         
'What else?' His voice was perilously calm, but his hand
closed in her hair when she would have released him.

         
'I - Nothing. Nothing else.'

         
'You are not weeping because of Pedrino's hoodwinked
innocence, and this story is only begun. Did Pedrino find out what had happened
and bid you tell me?'

         
She shook her head almost unnoticcably, 'It was Eugenio
himself who told me. He - his man came to Dona Jeronima's house and kidnapped
me just after you had — had gone.'

         
'Go on.'

         
Something in his voice unnerved her so much that she
dragged herself away, reaching across the cart to pick up one of the empty
sacks, then took one of them in both hands and began to rub vigorously at
Tristan's chest and arms, scouring until the rough weave had warmed hit
ice-cold flesh. It was like ministering to a wounded lion, she thought; danger
was in the air all round her, and yet she found herself delighting in the hard
contours of him, in the smoothness of his skin beneath the abrasive sacking. It
was of this that she was thinking as she heard her own voice, a little uneven,
in a bald explanation of her capture by Eugenio that omitted any reference to
the child.

         
'Eugenio boasted of how he had used Pedrino. He said that -
that once Pedrino had recognized the man who was following, he had to be killed
before he could warn you who it was.'

         
Tristan was silent for so long that she thought he had lost
interest, and her hands hesitated. In the starlight his face wore its usual
look of watchful impassivity, and when he spoke his voice was still level.

         
'Go on. Why did Eugenio take you and not me? He must have
known that it was I he had to thank for Bartolome's death.'

         
'He blamed both of us, but he said that you - you were
already accounted for.'

         
Juana began the painstaking rubbing again, her head
studiously bowed. Not too long in any one spot lest she should rub the flesh raw;
there was a faint answering tingle of warmth in his flesh now, and her fingers,
her hands, her arms were glowing with effort. She struggled to turn him,
rolling him on to his uninjured side so that she could work on his back, and
caught her breath inaudibly. Across the gleaming span of his shoulders and the
breadth of his back the freckles were clustered so thickly that the skin was
darkened to bronze, visible even in the faint light; and so,; too, were the
scratches across his broad shoulders, the marks of Elena's passion.

         
Tightening her lips, she continued, 'He told me that he had
induced some hotheads to challenge you in defence of their sister's honour, and
you were as good as dead. Me he meant to take back with him to the Castillo.'

         
Tristan stirred slightly, but his voice came without any
inflection. 'Why? He must have been half-dead after that fit of his, and
however he has recovered he could have no use of you.'

         
She flinched, then flared with a trace of her old
hostility, 'I had no chance to ask him that, for he had me gagged. But I would
guess that he needed no better reason to take me there than that he knew I
hated it! You and he are much alike,'

         
she added recklessly.

         
Her arms were aching now as she rubbed down his back and
over hips and flanks where the bones jutted too prominently now. She was
breathless, but she dared not stop. She rolled him on to his back and worked
on, gentler now as she felt the chill leaving him, carefully avoiding the
bundle of rags bound round his long thigh. It seemed impossible that what was
beneath was not sinewy and hard, golden flesh like the other, but the memory of
that raw, gouged ugliness was vivid in her mind. It was only when she found
herself chafing his feet, panting now with exhaustion, that she realized how
long it was since he had spoken. She looked down at him quickly, almost
defensively, and saw the green eyes like ice in his gaunt face.

         
'How did you persuade him to let you go?'

         
'I did not -I escaped.' In a very few words she told him of
de Castaneda's death and her escape.

         
His eyebrows lifted, but at last all he said was, 'Why do
you suppose the Italian should stab him, Juana?'

         
She caught her breath. He had seized on the very point she
had sought to gloss over, because of her own uneasy suspicions about
Martinetti's
noble gesture,
but she would not say so. With a proud lift
to her head that threw the long hair back from her face, she answered, 'He
disagreed with - with what Eugenio meant to do, I think. He told me before he
escaped - after he had killed Eugenio-that he was tired of serving him in any
case, but that I -'

         
'That you - ?' he prompted relentlessly.

         
'That I had a knack of inspiring poor men to kill for me.'
She turned from him to pick up the fresh clothing and shake it out. 'And it is
true, is it not?'

         
He said in a voice full of tightly-leashed impatience, 'If
you are planning to put those on me, let it rest. I shall do well enough with a
couple of sacks to cover me for the night. I cannot -' He broke off, and she
suddenly noticed the nerve throbbing in his scarred cheek.

         
He had been taxed even beyond his endurance, she realized,
flinching inwardly from the thought of his pain, and she folded the garments
again without a word. He watched her in silence for a moment, and then said 'So
you escaped, then, and fled to Luis. How does Eugenio's death make you a
witch?'

         
She told him, adding what she knew of Dona Jeronima's death
and describing Don Bautista's fury. He listened while she covered him with the
heavy sack, keeping her attention on what she did so that she need not listen
to what she said and have to remember that night.

         
'The men who brought you were just leaving Luis's house
when I came; after that I had no more conscience for Eugenio‘s death.'

         
She could have bitten her tongue out as soon as she had
spoken. Tristan's head jerked up, his eyes gleaming like a predator's, his
relaxation stiffening into such alert attention that she felt afraid. Heart
thudding, she scrambled to her feet with the alight clumsiness that was just
beginning to hamper her movements, and climbed out of the wagon.

         
'We have talked long enough. . . . I must go to the fire
and cook our supper, though there will not be much. Luis said
 
that this journey would take ten day, and all
we have for food is what he and Elisabeta could spare us, the drovers will give
us nothing and we cannot pay them, for if they find that we have money they
will rob us.' She was babbling, desperate to escape before he could speak, but
he said,