Three-Cornered Halo (11 page)

He went even greyer than usual. “But, Bellissima——!”

“Who would harm me?”

He shifted his eyes. “No one, of course, Bellissima Bienquista—Most Lovely and Much Belovéd.… But it is due to your position, you cannot go without a guard.”

“And a woman?”

“At least two of your ladies.”

“Tell them to keep back, then,” she said. “Tell them not to press round me. I want to be alone a little.” Without further ado, she walked quietly away from him, down through the olive groves and the sleeping groups to the little stream. Her guard sprang to arms, shuffled their feet hurriedly into their sand-shoes and slouched down after her. The secretary spoke to the women and they followed, keeping their distance. These foreigners, they said among themselves, who had no respect for the siesta hour!—nor did they trouble to subdue their voices for she could not understand a word.

A woman was sitting at the edge of the stream, who did not move as she approached; such commoners as had awakened to see her pass, had scrambled hurriedly to their feet and humbly taken themselves off. Her guard ran before her. “Go! Depart! You can't stay here.”

She was an elderly lady with a squashed straw hat and carrying a large green-lined parasol. “Go?” she said. “Certainly not.”

“You must leave at once, you cannot be allowed to remain.”

“Nonsense,” said the elderly lady. She added loudly: “English. Inghlesi. No comprendo.”

“But you must go. La Bellissima is coming: be good enough, Senora, to retire immediately.”

“Oh, well, that's different,” said Miss Cockrill, reverting immediately to quite fluent Juanese. She looked past the guard and for the first time saw the Grand Duchess. “I beg your pardon,” she said, getting up to her feet and doing a little bob. “If I'd known it was your Highness … Milles—er—milles regrets.…”

La Bellissima stood staring at her for a moment. “Madame—un moment, s'il vous plait. Vous parlez-Français?”

“Ern per,” said Miss Cockrill; an overstatement.

“Vous etes Anglaise?”

“Onglaise, oui, certainmong.”

“Et bien …” She thought it over and made up her mind. “Ayez la gentillesse, Madame, de vous assesoir un petit moment; et parler avec moi.” Her small hand waved imperiously, the attendants melted back thankfully into the shade of the olive trees, and she sat down, all in her satins and laces, on the grass beside the stream. “Asseyez vous, Madame, je vous en prie.”

“Mademoiselle,” corrected Miss Cockrill, obediently sitting down too.

“Pardon: Mad'moiselle.” She sat for a little while, looking down into the water, her hands very still in her silk-embroidered lap. She said at last, always in French: “May I ask your name?”

“My name is Harriet Cockrill, Bellissima.”

“Miss Cockrill? But was not that …?”

“The inspector, yes: he's my brother.”

“El Exaltida thinks highly of Inspector Cockrill.”

Cousin Hat bowed as gracefully as is possible for a middle-aged lady sitting on the ground, and struggled to convey that her brother had a deep respect for El Exaltida: which in fact was not strictly true.

“And you, Mademoiselle—do you know the Grand Duke?”

Miss Cockrill had not the honour of a personal acquaintance with His Highness.

“In that case …” She paused for a moment, pondering, “Mademoiselle—if you should later meet my husband—you would have the great goodness not to repeat what I may say to you?”

“Si vous voulez parlez un petit peu plus lontimong?”

The Grand Duchess repeated it slowly. But it seemed an odd request, for all that she wanted, apparently, was a little grounding in English history: the Tudors especially. “Your King Henry VIII.…”

“Honry weetiaime?—oh, yes, the eighth. Yes, him?”

“He had a wife called Anne?”

“Unn?” said Miss Cockrill. “Oh, Anne. Oui. Unn Boleyn.”

“She—died? She had her head cut off by her husband? But, Mademoiselle—why?”

On the whole Miss Cockrill supposed, it was because of Queen Elizabeth. Being a girl, she meant: or rather, not being a boy.

“This is what my husband told me, yes. But—only because it was a baby girl her husband chopped off her head?”

Of course, said Miss Cockrill hurriedly, in defence of her country, that couldn't happen nowadays.

“Not in England,” said La Bellissima.

So that was it! After the sermon, a little connubial chat between husband and wife. Embarrassed at having so easily penetrated the gossamer veil of the Grand Duchess's reticence, Cousin Hat essayed to repair the damage with a thread of a different hue. “Of course that may have been only an excuse of the King's. There was another girl mixed up in it.”

“Another daughter?”

No, no, anything but that: another jeune fille, a jeune fille trés jolie, one of the ladies-in-waiting on the Queen, as once Anne herself had been. Catherine Howard, her name had been—or was it Jane Seymour? Anyway, she herself had in turn been beheaded for having an affair with a page: or was that the other one?

“Une ‘page'?”

“Les petits garçons avec des boutons,” said Miss Cockrill, making a series of rapid little dabs down the front of her dress (a most incomprehensible business, she had always thought, and surely Henry
must
have been misinformed …?)

The Grand Duchess could be seen to be mentally reviewing the young ladies in attendance on herself: what she saw did not visibly discourage her further, but she was plainly still puzzled. “Mademoiselle—let me confide in you a little, let me ask you to help me, to explain something to me: and give me your word, which I know to an English lady is sacred, that you will say nothing to anyone of what I may tell you.”

Miss Cockrill licke her finger, crossed her heart and wished to die, all in French.

“Well, then, this morning … But no, I will go further back than that. Mademoiselle, at home in Paris, my family is well born; rich enough, well placed in the world—but not extravagantly so. And this is important for two reasons: it means that the Grand Duke had no material reason to choose me as his wife: he chose me—I must say it with simplicity—only for my beauty. He saw me at a reception, he went at once to my father, merely walked across the room to my father and said, ‘Sir, you have a very beautiful daughter. Have I your permission to pay my addresses to her?' My father of course agreed. He said afterwards that the Grand Duke seemed so large, suddenly appearing towering over him there—though my father himself is a very big man—that he dared not say anything else; but of course he would have agreed anyway, it was a great match for me. But … You see what this means? He married me because I was beautiful, because I came of a tall and generally handsome family—and it is his business to produce tall and handsome heirs; and once I have produced his heirs for him, there is no one very much to enquire what becomes of me; just a middle-class family, no great power of aristocracy, of politics, of wealth.” Her nervous lingers cropped at the yellow flowers in the green grass all about her, she tossed a handful of them into the stream and watched them, like little gilded boats, float merrily away. “I do not speak too fast? You have understood?”

Miss Cockrill had understood perhaps one quarter. The Grand Duke had married her only because she was beautiful: well, men did that kind of thing. And whatever arrived to her, her family could do nothing about it. As to what might arrive—there were further rapid and only half-comprehended explanations. Her mother, or ‘la mère' as La Bellissima appeared to prefer to call her, had apparently warned her daughter of what she might expect once her function was fulfilled. The same thing, after all, had happened to the last Grand Duchess once Juan Lorenzo himself had been born and a couple of supporting brothers to insure the inheritance; and before that to no less than three of the Grand Duke Pedro's wives; and before that again … Despatched: mysteriously dead, as soon as the succession had been established; with a harem of pretty dancing girls to take their place.

“But—murdered?” said Miss Cockrill, absolutely aghast.

What else? The little Duchess threw up her hands and a shower of grass and petals fell all about her. This was not twentieth-century England or France: this was San Juan el Pirata where life was held cheap and no one enquired very closely into Palace affairs, and after all, what Lorenzo's own father had done, that surely he might do too …? “One child, Mademoiselle, perhaps two—and then, when my figure is ruined, my skin is coarse, I have ugly veins in my legs …”

“My dear child, who has been talking to you?”

The Grand Duchess shrugged. These truths were self-evident. Her mother had said …

It seemed very odd to Miss Cockrill that a mother, whose convictions apparently amounted to an almost certain pre-knowledge of the Grand Duke's intentions, should have encouraged so exceedingly parlous a match; she appeared, at any rate, zealous in advising her daughter against premature maternity. “The day a son is born to me, Mademoiselle, that day my death warrant is signed.”

“And, on the other hand—if you don't have a child?”

“I suppose,” said the Grand Duchess wistfully, “that that is where your Jane Seymour comes in.”

“I see,” said Miss Cockrill. But she did not see very clearly; and she wished she had learnt more French.

“In San Juan, the people are very backward, few of them read or write; they learn very much still by parables and signs. I think that my husband has spoken to me today in a parable. Mademoiselle, after Mass, he was angry, he was in one of his rages and his rages are—a little frightening. He handed me into the carriage, at the Duomo door; and as we drove back to the palace, he recited to me, without preamble, the history of your Anne Boleyn. This parable, you have interpreted for me. Anne Boleyn gave her husband no heir; therefore he must marry someone who would; therefore she died.”

Of course in the case of Anne Boleyn, insisted Miss Cockrill, uncomfortably, the business of the heir had been something of an excuse; there had already been a Jane Seymour at hand.

“In my case there is—as yet—no Jane Seymour.”

“And no heir either?”

“Nor will there be. If I am to die, I will not die ugly and worn out, having served my turn.” She tossed the last of her flower boats into the stream and watched it borne away on the ripples to be lost at last in some miniature tempest, far, far out to sea; and, dusting her pale hands of the pollen that exactly matched her bright hair, she repeated: “There is so far no Jane Seymour, Mademoiselle; but I think you will find it is only a matter of time.”

“Now, you listen to me, my child …” said Cousin Hat.

The long, hot afternoon wore on. Up in the marble pavilion, the Grand Duke slept and the girl played softly on the zither at his feet; down by the stream the Duchess sat with eyes like saucers on the flower-starred grass and listened to Cousin Hat; decorously composed with their backs against olive tree trunks the Major and his flock reposed, disturbed only by the sudden sorties of D. and V.: a little apart, Winsome Foley huddled in dismay and tried to make light to herself of the follies of the evening before. ‘
You will not forget, Senorita, that you have an appointment with the Archbishop, to see the thurible: you will not let me down
?' I must have been insane, she thought. I must have been insane.…

Beneath opposing oleanders, Pepita Bussaca and Innocenta lay, drowsing in the heat, two full-blown roses each in her court of lesser flowers. To Innocenta came a messenger, stepping delicately among the recumbent forms. She rose, startled, hurriedly composed her dress and went off with him. They returned twenty minutes later and she woke Lorenna in her turn and sent her off with the messenger. Here and there a sleepy eye opened, observed with hazy interest, these goings on, and heavily closed again. Pepita, however, disturbed by Lorenna's going and perceiving her friend to be awake, left the sleeping Gerente and their daughters and beckoned Innocenta to join her for a chat. She was in great trouble about her Giulietta who wanted to go on the stage.…

“On the stage?” said Innocenta, incredulous.

“She wants to learn Italian, have a training in Milano, and finally go on the stage.”

“Impossible, my dear. Unthinkable. The stage is no life for a girl.”

“Ah, if you would but have taken her last year, Innocenta!”

“It would not have done, Pepita, she was too—was too …” Was too knock-kneed, poor child, thought Innocenta, whose kind heart had bled at having to turn her down. But the stage! “Perhaps, after all, when I get rid of Inez …”

“It is too late now, her heart is set on it; and what's more, I believe she has infected Manuela. Poor Guido, he is beside himself with anxiety.” Pepita looked over proudly to where the huge heap of the Gerente de Politio snored dreamlessly amongst his vexatious daughters. “But you, Innocenta—you do not look happy either.”

Innocenta was not only not happy, she was seriously alarmed and she longed for a confidante. “If I tell you, Pepita, you will not repeat it to a soul? But then, you couldn't—for your Guido also is involved.”

“My Guido?”

“Listen, Pepita. Half an hour ago, a messenger came for me: from—guess! But you never could guess. From the Grand Duke himself.”

“Innocenta!”

“I went to the pavilion. Imagine how I felt, Pepita! He was there with Tabaqui. He said nothing, just bowed his head.”

“He never speaks, not to ordinary people like us.”

“Tabaqui said that the Grand Duke wished me to send a girl to the palace; he would keep her there some time, some weeks perhaps. He asked who I would suggest. Well, you know, Pepita, I'd been thinking of letting Inez go. This seemed the opportunity. I suggested, ‘Inez Canillo.' The Grand Duke wrote on a piece of paper. Tabaqui read it and said: ‘El Exaltida wants a well-behaved young woman, not such a one as Inez Canillo.' Imagine, Pepita!—what these people know! They know everything.”