Whispering (11 page)

‘You were brought here, father. Some wretch must have attacked you on your way home. You were found in an alley off the Cedofeita; of course they knew who you were, brought you home at once. Dr Blanco says there is no serious harm done, but you must rest, and not worry or try to remember what happened.'

‘Rest! How can I rest, when there is so much to do!' He made as if to rise, but slumped back. ‘I'm weak as a child.' He made it sound her fault.

‘You have had nothing to eat, father, for I don't know how long. I will get you something at once, a little chicken broth perhaps?'

‘A whole chicken would be better. I am starving, daughter. I begin to remember now, I had missed my dinner. I was on my way home …'

‘Don't think about it.' She had finished dressing the wound. ‘The doctor says you must not. I'll go to the kitchen and see what I can find for you.'

‘Quickly,' he ordered.

‘As quick as I can.' She had been amazed before at how much Father Pedro contrived to eat, fast and gluttonously, talking all the time, and still stay a gaunt wreck of a man. What did he do with it all? ‘I'll ask Miss Brown to come and sit with you,' she told him. ‘The doctor did not wish you to be alone today. Not until you feel more the thing.'

‘Tell her to bring her bible,' he said. ‘She can read aloud to me; I shall understand it well enough; I do not wish to converse with Miss Brown.'

Nor she with you, thought Caterina but did not say it. She was relieved when Father Pedro pronounced Harriet a surprisingly good reader and told her to stay and read to him while he dealt with the impromptu meal the cook sent up.

‘He ate the lot,' said Harriet, awestruck, afterwards. ‘And I truly thought he was going to ask for more. Soup, and some bacalhau, and a great plateful of that savoury stew, and sent the boy running back to the kitchen because there were no sweetmeats on the tray. And all the time I was reading the Epistles of St Paul to him, about the sins of the flesh. I do dislike St Paul, Caterina.'

‘I don't suppose he understood a word of it,' said Caterina. ‘His English is not nearly so good as your Portuguese is getting to be.'

‘You're such a good teacher,' said Harriet. ‘You make a game of it.'

‘I enjoy it too.' Something had changed in Caterina, Harriet thought, but lovingly refrained from questioning her.

Calling early next morning, Dr Blanco pronounced the patient well on the way to recovery. ‘No need for me to call again, unless you find any new cause for anxiety,
senhora
. And no need to stay with him all the time either. He says he would very much prefer to be alone with his thoughts.'

‘I am sure he would.' She did not add that the feeling was mutual. ‘In that case I think I will take Miss Brown for a well-earned outing this afternoon, doctor, if you think it is safe to leave Father Pedro. She has been reading to him devotedly and looks a little pale, I think.'

‘A delightful young lady,' said Dr Blanco warmly. ‘You are lucky to have her for a companion.'

‘I know it. Perhaps you would be so good as to tell my father that you have given us leave to go out.'

It got her a sharp glance. ‘I will most certainly do so,
minha senhora
. You, too, have earned your holiday, and I shall tell your father so. You could not have tended Father Pedro more devotedly if you had been his own child.'

Their eyes met in a glance of sympathy. The priest was not an easy patient.

Leaving the doctor at the door of her father's study, Caterina went straight to the cheerful chaos of the kitchen to order the nourishing food he had recommended for his patient. ‘I am taking the Senhora Brown out for a drive this afternoon; the doctor says she needs a breath of air, and I thought I'd take her to look at the view from the terrace of the Fonsa Palace, and maybe dine there
al fresco
. Could you put us together a little something?'

‘With the greatest of pleasure,
minha senhora
. An afternoon out will do you both good. The Senhora Brown is not the only one who has been working hard and looks pale.'

It was a useful reminder to Caterina that everything one said was listened to, passed on and discussed. She just hoped that some useful pair of ears had picked up the news that she was going to the Fonsa Palace that afternoon and passed it in the right direction.

There was no need to go through the crowded centre of town, so she ordered the ponderous family carriage for their excursion. ‘Sedan chairs are so stuffy,' she explained to Harriet, ‘and anyway they only hold one person. One must use them for the opera, of course, but for today we will make old Francesco the coachman earn his keep. I want to talk to him anyway about
getting a gentle mule for you to learn to ride on. It's much the best way to get about here, and it will be a good excuse to make a few excursions before the winter rains start. It will get us out of the house a bit.' No need to say more. The brief respite of Father Pedro's absence over, his brooding presence would soon be felt once more throughout the house. It was hard to tell which was the more oppressive, Caterina thought, her father's occasional rages, or the friar's habit of appearing, soft-footed, where he was least expected. But the doctor had told him to stay in bed for a few more days, and had also delighted Caterina by telling him he had suggested she and Harriet go out that afternoon.

The carriage smelled of damp and old leather, but the two girls' spirits rose as it lurched out of the stable yard and down the lane that led out of town. Their progress was slow at first as the coachman cursed and sweated and forced a way through the home-going tide of ox-carts and mules and market women. Despite the curses, it all seemed wonderfully good humoured, and Harriet remarked on this.

‘Yes, they are a friendly lot, the Portuguese peasants, so long as you don't tread on their toes. And of course Francesco is one of them – and my family have a name for being good democrats, though you might not think it to meet my father.'

‘Democrats?' asked Harriet doubtfully.

‘Yes. Porto has always stood for liberty and the middle way. Our closest tie to the Braganzas is that Henry the Navigator was born here, but that was a long time ago. We Portonians have mostly preferred to keep royalty at arms' length. There is no royal palace here in Porto, you know. The Barons of Nevogilde hold the Carrancas Palace on the understanding that the royal family have the use of it when they think fit to visit us. But that was all before that shameful royal flight to the Brazils. I doubt if they would get a welcome now, if they were to come back, and anyway the palace has been taken over as military headquarters. It's where Lord Wellington sat down to eat Soult's dinner the day he retook Porto. And there, at last, it is.' She pointed out of the carriage window at a solid-looking granite building on their right.

‘It's vast,' said Harriet. And then, ‘It didn't get damaged in the French attack?'

‘No, they came in from the north, from Braga, though there was fighting all down the Foz road, I believe, as the defenders retreated. I suppose that was when the Fonsa Palace got attacked; someone must have made the mistake of holding out in it. There were pockets of resistance all over the city, sniping at the French from roofs and windows, and very savagely they were dealt with when they finally had to surrender. I've heard stories about that first day that I will spare you, Harriet. I think it does the servants good to tell me, so I let them. I cannot imagine how Soult ever thought he had a chance of becoming ruler here after the way his rabble of an army behaved.'

‘I suppose soldiers always do behave badly,' said Harriet. ‘They're men, after all, men on the loose.'

It had been another very hot day but the air was beginning to cool when the carriage lumbered to a stop outside a solid granite building rather like the Carrancas Palace but on the river side of the road. Here, signs of devastation leapt to the eye. The walls were pitted with bullet holes, downstairs windows had been roughly boarded up, and the heavy front door hung askew from the hinges off which it must have been forced.

‘But it's been more than two years –' said Harriet as the footman tugged at the heavy bell pull by the door. ‘Why has nothing been done to repair the place?'

‘The Fonsas have always been strong monarchists,' Caterina explained. ‘They prefer life in Lisbon where the court is. They were there when Dom John the Prince Regent fled to Brazil with his poor mad mother, the Queen. Of course they went too. Nobody loves them much, here in Porto. Ah, here is old Tomas.' The big door had opened with some difficulty, just a foot or so, to reveal a ragged, white-haired old man with only one arm.

‘Heaven preserve us.' He bowed low. ‘It really is the Senhora Caterina. A happy day to make up for all the wretched ones! I could hardly believe it when the message came! But come in,
senhora
, you and your beautiful young friend like two saints
straight from heaven. Come in and see what those French ruffians did to our house.' He tried in vain to push the door further open with his one arm.

‘It's all right, Tomas, don't trouble yourself, we can manage well enough.' The two girls slipped past him into the cool damp of the front hall and looked about them, appalled. Even in the half light filtering through cracks in the boarded windows they could see the devastation around them. Oak banisters on the stone stairway hung drunkenly, this way and that. Great damp patches on the walls and sodden carpet underfoot suggested that it had been a long time before the windows had even been boarded up. There was no furniture, no pictures, the cord of a vanished chandelier hung limply from a central boss in the blackened ceiling.

‘Oh, Tomas!' exclaimed Caterina. And then, ‘What happened to your arm?'

‘Those French bastards of course.' He swore and spat on the dirty floor. ‘We held out for two hours,
senhora
, potting them like rabbits, Manuel and José and I – and a few others. All dead, all gone, tortured, horrible … I'd already got my wound, my right arm of course, when they broke down the door.
Senhora
, I'm ashamed! I hid – you remember the secret room? I couldn't fight; I hid. I heard it all; sometimes I wish I had died with the others. It would have been easier –'

‘But you have looked after the house for the family, Tomas. Who else could have done that?'

‘Looked after! Call this looking after? And much they care!' A despairing gesture led their eyes from the ruined staircase and a few broken bits of furniture to a pile of sodden tapestries in a corner. ‘What could I do? Not a word; not a
scudo
from that day to this. At first I waited for orders, for help. In the end, we did what we could, my friends and I. I know how shocked you must be,
senhora
, after all those happy times when you were children here … But what more could we do? And just you wait until you see the gardens –' He turned to lead them to the back of the house, down a corridor which showed more signs of systematic looting. ‘The French called them enemies of the people,' he
explained, ‘the masters. Because they had gone to the Brazils with the poor old Queen, God bless and keep her. They took everything that had not been destroyed. The pictures – all the family pictures that had not gone to the Lisbon house. Anything they fancied, they took. And now it is all lying rotting, somewhere in the mountains on the way to the border. They had to abandon everything,
senhora
, all their loot, even their treasure chests, some people say. There, look at that!' He had thrown open a door at the end of the corridor to reveal a terrace crazily overgrown by vines. ‘I'm ashamed to let you see it.'

‘Well, at least it is cool for us, Tomas.' She moved over to a marble table where Gomez servants, sent on in advance, had set out a lavish cold collation. ‘And I hope you have somewhere fairly snug of your own where you can entertain my people. You are to be our guest, of course. And no need to trouble yourselves about us. My friend and I will wait on ourselves.' Desperate, now to be rid of him, she concealed her impatience as best she might as he made her a long speech of thanks.

‘Harriet, dear,' she plunged straight in when they were alone at last. ‘Will you forgive me if I leave you here, to keep watch for me? If someone comes for orders, pretend I'm just gone for a moment – on a necessary errand. That will silence them.'

‘Of course,' said Harriet. ‘He's here, is he? Waiting for you?'

‘Oh, God, I do hope so. Harryo, I'm ashamed. I know I should have told you more, but how could I? I promised, you see. I have to talk to him first.'

‘And get his permission?' asked Harriet, putting her finger on it as usual. ‘Caterina, love, I do beg you to be careful. What kind of an assignation is this he has summoned you to? You are walking a knife edge already, here in Porto, and he asks you to put your reputation still further on the line for him? What would your father say?'

‘I don't even dare think about that. But I have to see him, you know that as well as I do. To tell him, if nothing else –'

‘Think hard before you do,' said Harriet. ‘Listen to him first, let him explain. I'm not entirely in the dark; of course I know
who it is, why we are here, of all places, why he has to meet you in secret like this. He risks his life as you do your reputation. Fair enough. But if he is a traitor, Caterina, as they say, sold out to the French – what are you going to do?'

‘I won't believe it,' said Caterina. ‘I don't for a minute believe it. Of course he will explain; that is what I am giving him the chance to do. Oh dear, if only I had known you knew … I promised him. I solemnly promised I would never tell.'

‘And you have kept your word,' said Harriet. ‘Well, now, love, promise me you will listen to him before you tell him anything.'

‘I promise.' Caterina snatched up some food from the loaded platters and started down the vine-hung steps. Harriet watched her go in silence, then loaded food on to two plates, filled two glasses with wine, drank a little out of each and began philosophically to eat.