The Guardian of Secrets: And Her Deathly Pact (23 page)

Celia’s first impression of Don Miguel, who sat regally at the top end of the table, had been justified. He spoke to the servants by name and smiled when they served him, yet he was still very much the master of the house, with an undeniable air of authority that should not be challenged. She listened to him talk and was spellbound. He was timeless, she thought, like a precious gem that would never lose its sparkle with age. Celia smiled at him, and Don Miguel smiled back from where he was seated. She had made a friend.

Course after course of soup, salads, fish, and meat were placed in the centre of the table, and Celia was overwhelmed. The Spanish family seemed to be able to talk and devour every dish with gusto at the same time, whereas she had given up after the fried fish, unable to eat another bite.

Later, after coffee and sweet biscuits, Marta stood up, with Rosa following her lead. “Celia, will you join us?” Rosa asked her.

Celia bid goodnight to the men and followed the other two women from the room. It had been a long and eventful day, and she was tired now, exhausted from the day’s travel and yearning for her strange yet inviting bed.

Celia had left the window open during the night, and the lace curtains now swayed gently in the soft morning breeze. She opened her eyes and was struck by the glare of the morning sun. She stretched and rolled over to the other side of the bed and watched Peter, still asleep in his cot. After a while, she went to the window and let the morning breeze caress her face. This was a brand-new day at the beginning of a brand-new life, she thought with both apprehension and excitement.

She chose a plain grey skirt and blue blouse, which accentuated the turquoise blue of her eyes. She tied her hair loosely with a blue ribbon, letting her curls cascade to the centre of her back, and looked once more at her reflection in the mirror. She was ready for anything.

After she had nursed Peter, now seven weeks old she made her way to the kitchen. She had been informed the night before that it was in the basement, and she followed Rosa’s directions to the letter, down two flights of stairs and long corridors that seemed to go on forever. She was amazed to feel rumblings of hunger in her stomach. How she could be hungry after the huge meal she’d eaten before going to bed was beyond her. Never, she thought, had she seen so much food on a table.

She reached the kitchen and stopped just inside the large wooden doors. Long counters stretched before her, three aisles of them. She hesitated once again as eyes from every corner of the room followed her every step. Women ladling from giant saucepans, cleaning floors on their hands and knees, and spitting and then polishing silverware—while at the same time chattering in a mumbo jumbo of words—abruptly stopped what they were doing and stared in her and Peter’s direction with an open curiosity that first scared and then amused her.

“Buenos días,” she said, tentatively, unsure of her pronunciation.

“Good morning, Celia,” Rosa said in perfect English from a table in the corner. “Did you sleep well?”

“Oh, yes, thank you. I can’t remember when I slept better. And Peter only woke me twice during the night.”

“Ah, Peter,” Marta said in a thick accent. “I hold him, yes?”

She took the baby out of Celia’s arms without waiting for an answer and began to investigate his clothes under the light crocheted blanket that covered him. She examined every part of Peter’s tiny body, and Celia had to stop herself from grabbing him back from her. Rough fingers dug into his skin as he was turned and stripped of his clothes, and finally he lay as naked as the day he was born.

“This child… too hot… Just his nappy, please, Celia… Too hot!”

Celia stared at her son’s face with its contented expression and wide-open eyes and nodded her head in agreement. “Yes, if you think so.”

“My husband told me that Peter is Pedro in our language. I call him Pedro, yes?” Marta said, not waiting for an answer.

Celia looked at her son, then at the two women, and finally at all the other pairs of eyes in the kitchen, which seemed to be watching her every gesture. At that moment, all she could think about was escaping to her room with Peter in her arms. She realised that she was in a strange country with strange people, and that now, instead of escaping to her bedroom, she would rather run back to the ship. Marta wanted to change her child’s name without a by your leave, she thought. Celia was an English name too; did that mean they wanted to change hers as well? She could feel the eyes of the two women boring into hers. They were waiting for her answer. She didn’t want her to call Peter by the name of Pedro. Peter was her father’s name.

She hated herself sometimes. She wished she were stronger, but she wasn’t. She was weak, still weak, and pathetic, and always would be. She had only been here two minutes, and her son had been grabbed from her arms, disrobed, and given a new identity, and all as though she didn’t exist. She realised that she might regret her decision to come to Spain.

“Yes, why not?” she answered now without enthusiasm. “I think Pedro will suit him just fine, although it might take me a while to get used to it.”

“Pedro, Pedro,” she repeated over and over again. “Pedro Dobbs…” It didn’t sound right, didn’t have a nice ring to it at all. Pedro Merrill, yes that sounded a little better.

Celia noted that breakfast was just as grand as dinner. Cold meats and several different types of cheese lay on platters beside two baskets filled with pastries and bread. Hot chocolate was poured into a tall glass and a large pot of what looked like soup stood ready on top of the huge wood ovens. While she ate, Rosa spoke to her about life at La Glorieta. Ernesto worked hard, she was told. He came to the house for lunch but then seldom left the groves till eight or nine at night in the summer. Even in the winter months, he worked until darkness fell. He had complete control of the estate and managed it with ease.

Marta said, “He was born to be the master. He is a great leader.”

Rosa responded, “Yes, but he should have more fun, Mama. He is much too serious. My father doesn’t get involved at all, Celia. Oh, I’m sure that he discusses things with Ernesto. They are always shut up together in the green salon with their morning coffee, and God help Mama and me if we intrude on them. Since his retirement, my father spends much of his time reading and writing political speeches, which no one is ever going to read or listen to. He has never fully recovered from his stroke, and that happened years ago. He was always such a fit man, if you know what I mean. He was unstoppable, like a bull given a pardon in the bullring. He gets around with the help of his cane now, of course, but he never uses it when we have guests; he is much too proud.”

“And he drinks far too much wine,” Marta added disapprovingly. “Wine for breakfast and wine for bed.”

For the first time, Celia felt herself relax. They asked her nothing about her life, and she was more than happy to listen to them all day long if it meant she could keep her own thoughts to herself.

“How many people live in La Glorieta?” she asked Rosa.

“There are over five hundred souls in our care,” Rosa told her. “Most of them live in the village. My grandfather built La Glorieta pueblo after realising that his peasants were taking up good land. At that time, their makeshift homes consisted of tin huts and tents that eroded the rich soil in the lowest part of the valley. We now cultivate this area with our vineyards.”

“And how big is the village?” Celia asked.

“Oh, it is small, but we have a school, a bakery shop, and a blacksmith, who also makes sandals. There is even a small bar that serves wine and brandy, but only on very special occasions, of course. Ernesto looks after our peasants better than anyone else does. He is kind, some say too kind. He is a good judge and always makes the right decisions in disputes.”

“A good judge?” Celia asked, curious about the term.

“Yes, he is judge and jury. I remember a man coming to the house with his daughter. She wanted to marry a boy from the next village, but her father refused to give his permission until Ernesto gave his first. You see, the young man had no work and no home, so Ernesto offered to take him on, and on top of that, he gave the girl’s father permission to supply the young couple with an empty house in the village, which he did, of course. This is why our peasants love him.”

When Celia asked how long La Glorieta had been in the family, she was told that as far as they knew, it had always been theirs. Rosa then told her that the first Marqués de Dos Fuentes, her ancestor, was given the title by Queen Isabella in the sixteenth century as a reward for his loyalty in battle. She also gave various lands to him, in Madrid and Castellón, as well as estates in Andalucía, which were now run by other members of the family. The title of marqués still remained and was held by Don Miguel’s oldest brother, Luis.

Later, Marta and Rosa told Celia about the customs and way of life at the hacienda and in this particular part of Spain, but they were giving her only a rough outline of their lives, and she looked forward to the many things that she herself would learn as time went on. She also thought it strange that neither of the two women had mentioned Ernesto’s late wife, but she concluded that if they didn’t speak about her, then she had no right to ask about her. She also surmised that it was only a matter of time before the two women asked her about her own life, and she dreaded the moment Joseph’s name would rear its unwelcome head. She suddenly felt uncomfortably hot and would have liked nothing better than to escape the kitchen and their inevitable questions. However, what she feared most happened quickly and unexpectedly, leaving her with no time to prepare.

“How did your husband die, Celia? You do not wear black?” Marta’s eyes shone with sympathy, but they were also disapproving.

Celia looked down at her hands, folded on her lap. She knew that whatever she said now would be the story that would live with her, possibly for the rest of her life. Her lie would therefore have to be convincing, not only to her audience but also to her own ears.

“Well,” she began nervously, “one day, about six months ago, my husband, Joseph, went to a market in a neighbouring town. He went every Friday. He crossed the street, and there was a cart being pulled by two horses. They were spooked for some reason and ran out of control. He died under the wheels of the cart. The driver didn’t see him, you see, and Joseph didn’t see the cart.”

“Terrible! Terrible!” Marta howled, stopping all work in the kitchen. “What a great tragedy for one to die so young in such a horrible way! I’m so sorry, Celia. How can you endure such sorrow?”

Celia stared into her cup. She hadn’t really thought about what Marta and Rosa would make of her story; therefore, she didn’t know how she should respond now.

The Spanish women cried and then held her in turn with thick arms that threatened to suffocate her. The whispers in the kitchen grew to a crescendo, and soon it was hard to hear herself think. Their reaction affected her in a way she could not have foreseen, and tears running down her own face were joined by racking sobs that threatened to choke her. She wasn’t weeping for Joseph, she kept telling herself, and she wasn’t crying because she was sad. No, she was weeping for her father, for her lost home, and for her baby never knowing a father’s love. She was ashamed of the terrible lie she’d just told the two women, but her tears had inadvertently helped to achieve her goal, which was to convince her audience that a story she knew to be totally fabricated was in fact true. Her tears had served their purpose; she wouldn’t be asked about Joseph’s death again.

Later, in the privacy of her own room, Celia washed her face with cold water and stared long and hard at her reflection in the mirror. She despised what she saw. She had become a liar and a fraud. She was almost as bad as Joseph, very much alive and living out her father’s stolen life. Her head ached, and as she paced back and forth the length of the room, she realised that the lie she’d just told would have to be hidden in the same place that housed Joseph. She’d constructed a prison for him in the back of her mind, and the key would have to be thrown away, for she would lose her sanity if she thought any more about him. No, she determined, he and the lie could never escape to tell the truth. Joseph was dead, and he would stay dead!

In the middle of the night, a wide-eyed Celia stared out the window at the expanse of stars in a clear black sky. They were so bright that she thought she could touch them, so beautiful she was afraid to take her eyes off them, just in case she never saw such a sight again. Her mind raced with the evening’s events. It had been a strange day, marking the end of her first week at La Glorieta. She hadn’t seen much of Mr Ayres, Mr Rawlings, or Ernesto Martinéz. Meetings had kept them out of the house for most of the week, and in the evenings, they had dined without the ladies.

Tonight had been different. She had dressed with care, looking forward to the grand dinner being held for Mr Ayres and Mr Rawlings, who would be leaving the next morning, long before dawn. She recalled the evening in detail now and took out her journal whilst its memories were still fresh in her mind.

4
August
1913

What
a
strange,
eventful,
emotional,
and
decisive
evening
I
have
had.
During
dinner,
Ernesto’s
eyes
drifted
towards
me.
They
were
questioning,
kind,
and
concerned,
but
my
imagination
ran
away
with
me,
and
I
was
sure
he
could
read
my
thoughts
and
the
guilty
secret
that
is
flooding
my
mind.
I,
in
my
wisdom,
believed
that
by
some
chance,
the
women
had
got
to
him
earlier
and
had
told
him
everything.
I
wish
I’d
told
them
all
the
truth
now.
It
has
to
be
better
than
a
lie
that
I’m
sure
will
eventually
eat
into
my
very
soul.