A Divided Inheritance (35 page)

‘I had some business there, with a wine importer. I have a small vineyard. But the trade routes are too difficult at the moment, so in the end it all came to naught. But I remembered the
little English firebrand. He needs discipline, that’s all.’

Elspet could not have agreed more, though she was too polite to say so.

Señor Alvarez was still speaking. ‘What will you do now?’

‘I don’t know. Zachary will not listen so I might as well go back to England, I suppose. Though heaven only knows what I shall do, with no home to go to . . .’ She
swallowed.

‘Don’t rush. From the look of it your companion is not fit to travel. I would wait a few days until he is feeling better. It could be heat-sickness, or worse – the flux –
and these maladies can take a few days to come out. If you remain in Seville a few more days you are welcome to come back and try to speak to Mr Deane again. But I’m afraid I cannot help you
– it is up to the pair of you to resolve your differences.’

‘Thank you. Thank you for listening. It felt good to talk to someone.’

‘I’ll fetch Luisa, she’ll accompany you to a sedan.’ He stood then and went in through the kitchen door, emerging a few moments later with the Morisco girl carrying a
lantern. ‘Where do you live?’ Luisa asked.

‘Near the new Alameda de Hercules? Across the river.’

‘Goodnight, then,’ Alvarez said. ‘Luisa will see you safely to a sedan.’ He lifted his hand in salute and she lifted hers in reply before following the glow of the
lantern out into the twisting labyrinth that was Triana.

After Elspet dismissed the bearers and went upstairs, Martha’s anxious face appeared over the banister.

‘He’s bad, mistress. Been vomiting, and he can’t keep anything down – not even herb tea. I’ve put a house slave to fanning him, but he looks hot enough to set the
sheets afire.’

She followed Martha to his chamber. Mr Wilmot was shockingly thin, pale as a wraith, now that she saw him lying there in just his shirt. His hair was damp with perspiration. When they had set
off from England, he had seemed so solid and present somehow. Now he looked like he was melting to bones. He tossed and turned in a tangle of sheets and called piteously for Dorothy, his wife.

‘If he’s no better by the morning, we’ll have to find a doctor,’ Elspet said. Compassion for him washed over her. He had lost his livelihood because of her cousin. And
how must it feel to be ill in a place where you cannot understand even the simplest conversation?

She told the slave to fetch a damp cloth and Elspet sponged his face with a gentle touch over the skin still peeling from the sun. He groaned and pushed her away. After an hour or so she was so
tired that her eyelids kept closing and her chin nodded to her chest. Mr Wilmot, too, finally slept.

The following day, he was no better and, what was worse, Martha had succumbed to the same sickness. Both of them were abed, chamberpots on the sheets beside them.

She asked at the apothecary’s for the physician, Señor Morcillo, and he called and bled them, and told her they should rest now and drink plenty of warm, weak ale.

‘Be assured, señorita. They will soon regain strength now,’ he said. ‘All they need is rest. But the quicksilver and antimony – I’m afraid it is not cheap,
so . . .’ And he held out a bill for his fee.

Elspet fetched her purse. It was worrying how little was left inside.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘I have little coin today. Can you come back tomorrow?’

‘Very well. I’ll call and see how the señor does. They may need another draught, we’ll see.’ He bowed formally and left.

When she went to visit Mr Wilmot and Martha in their chambers they groaned and begged to be left in peace.

She needed money for the physician, and the week’s rent was due. Perhaps Señor Alvarez would have tried to persuade Zachary to see reason after all. A small bird of hope fluttered
in her chest. She could do nothing further here; Morcillo seemed to think rest was the best remedy, so she would go to the fencing school again. Besides, Señor Alvarez had been kind, he
would not turn her away. The thought of him produced a faint shiver of anticipation.

Her feet were roasting in the black leather bootees she had been wearing all the way from England, and the undersides were holed now from use. On impulse, on the way to the
fencing school she bought a pair of hempen sandals and, hoping her skirts would cover her naked feet, rid herself of the stiff boots.

Nobody seemed to notice her feet, or that she travelled alone, with no retinue. Everyone was too intent on their own business. She walked with a spring in her step. The sensation of the breeze
against her toes was cooling, and it felt a little wanton, even exciting.

At Señor Alvarez’s she positioned herself in the same spot in the courtyard, just as she had the day before. A silhouette moving at the window informed her that the hawk-eyed
swordmaster missed nothing. Luisa arrived with a basket of vegetables and bread balanced on her head and stopped to ask, ‘How is the señor?’

‘He is still poorly. My maid Martha too.’

‘Oh. They have seen a physician?’

‘Yes.’

‘Huh.’ She pursed her lips and shook her head dismissively, as though this had answered all her questions. With a smooth movement she hitched the basket on to her hip, pressed the
latch on the kitchen door, and disappeared into the gloomy interior.

The yard went quiet, the only sound the scratch of a broom being wielded somewhere in the house. A few moments later, Luisa passed again, minus the basket, waved her arm airily and was gone out
of the gate.

Elspet sat to wait, feeling strangely liberated in her bare feet. From habit she passed her rosary beads through her fingers but she had lost the will to pray. She was nervous, and the fact that
she had a few hours’ uninterrupted peace simply made her more restless. Her shoulders stiffened, she rubbed her temples and the back of her neck. But gradually the heat and silence soothed
her. Small things took her attention: the curl of a vine leaf, the lace of shadows swaying over her skirts. Finally, to make up for her lost sleep, she dozed a little.

A noise startled her awake.

‘Your companion is still ill?’ Señor Alvarez stood before her.

She gathered herself hurriedly. ‘I’m afraid so. As is my maid. And I need Zachary to advance me something for the physician,’ she said.

‘Yes.’ Señor Alvarez merely stated the fact. ‘If you are set on waiting still, you could use the library where you will be out of harm’s way. The men will be out
here soon with their rapiers. Mr Deane will be busy until six o’clock. You may wait to speak with him, but you understand, I do not want the work interrupted.’ He said the word
‘work’ as if it had a capital letter. ‘Only at the midday siesta, or after we are finished in the evening. My apologies – we train long hours, it is necessary to build
stamina.’

‘Of course,’ she said, embarrassed that she was causing a nuisance. ‘Thank you for letting me wait here.’

He smiled. ‘You are welcome. But come, we will go up. It will be cooler there, and you will find something to occupy you. This way – I’ll show you.’

He set off up the stone steps and she followed. At the top of the stairs they passed through the upper chamber with its strange circle and cross pattern painted on the floor. She would have
averted her eyes, but two young men were fencing there, nimbly stepping from one point to the next, their swords just touching and then moving apart. The cardinal points of the circle were
inscribed with Roman letters and the young men repeated the same exercise over and over. She could not help but slow, to stare at what they were doing.

Señor Alvarez stopped too, and the two men’s movements became more precise, more concentrated. His very presence seemed to intensify what was happening in the room.

‘Better,’ he said to them, before beckoning to her. One of the men flushed furiously red.

What kind of a man was this Señor Alvarez, she wondered, who could fluster a grown man so?

He moved her through into a corridor with two doors off it. One of the doors stood ajar and with his gentle push it opened silently and they were plunged into cool darkness. As her eyes became
accustomed to it, she took in that it was full of books. Many many volumes – open on the polished wood tables and others in trunks below. Spread out on the table were old maps, and a book
open at a page with the same circle as was drawn on the floor below, but with the addition of a spreadeagled man drawn over it.

‘Ah,’ she said, understanding, ‘the Vitruvian, like on your sign. My father described this to me.’ She moved in for a closer look.

‘Ah, yes. You know of Vitruvius. But this is the circle of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. Not just the circle, but how to square the circle, that is the secret. The circle is the foundation
of our training, we use it as the map of our science of arms.’ Seeing her lack of comprehension he added, ‘Just as sailors use a compass to avoid the reefs and banks of the sea, so we
use our circle to order our movements, protect ourselves against attack.’

She let out another ‘ah’ of understanding. So the diagram was not a pagan symbol, but more like lines on an archery court where the men could train direction. She pointed to the
illustration before her. ‘It is beautiful, this engraving,’ she said.

‘Harmonious order
is
beautiful,’ he said. It was an awkward moment, as if he had forgotten she was not one of his students to lecture and instruct. He softened his tone.
‘You can sit here. No one will interrupt you, morning study is finished. When you hear the men lay down arms in the yard you will know it is time, and you can speak to Mr Deane.’

He bowed formally and left her alone in the room. He was an attractive man, she thought, yet she had seen no sign of wife or family, just the servant women, and an old nearly blind man who
tap-tapped with his stick across the yard.

The light filtered in yellow as butter through the grille of the small window. There was a curved iron balcony that threw black shadows across her feet. The room was larger than Father’s
study but had the same familiar aroma of paper and leather, except here the tables were buffed to a high sheen and there was no patina of dust, no reek of stale tobacco. Here the books looked like
exhibits.

She turned a few more pages of the Agrippa. Numerous pen drawings of the human form were captured there, annotated with faintly engraved captions and numerals. Next to the open book stood two
other matching volumes upholstered in vellum; they were closed. She gently lifted the covers to read the title pages and realized that it was a set of three volumes, ‘
De Occulta
Philosophia
.’

Occult philosophy. Father would turn in his grave. It was his own fault, she thought. But for his obsession with Zachary Deane, she would still be safe at home in West View House.

Father’s voice came back to her, ‘Devil worshippers, heretics, most of them.’ If anyone ever mentioned Agrippa he’d snort and dismiss it scornfully as ‘a lot of old
horsefeathers, mystification for mystification’s sake’.

But here it was, and the lure of it was like forbidden fruit. Soon she was drinking in the words, amazed at the new ideas held between the pages.

Agrippa, this man from Germany who lived a mere century ago, this learned man who could quote Ovid and Virgil, who was so well-read, was no grizzled old sage – he was only twenty-three
years old when he wrote this. Her own age! His dates of birth and death were engraved on the fly leaf. His voice spoke to her over the years, she sensed his enthusiasm for the task, his feverish
writing to fill these books with everything he thought he knew or understood in his short lifetime.

She read of the four elements – earth, air, fire and water, and a fifth that joined all that existed in heaven and earth. She paused, raised her eyes from the pages, puzzling over this
mysterious fifth element.

As she pondered this, her heart jumped, a wave of heat suffused her face. The strange thought came to her,
but I know this diagram already
. She pressed the backs of her hands to her
burning cheeks to cool them, unsure what had occurred. The diagram looked exactly as it had a few moments ago, except that now she realized it was familiar to her. Was this magic? She shivered.
This Cornelius Agrippa – he was reaching out to touch her, even though long dead. The thought persisted, would not let her go.

She looked over her shoulder, as if to catch his presence in the room, but there was nothing. Intensely alert, she kept on reading, possessed by his words.

By the end of the afternoon, she had devoured most of Book One. She was so engrossed that it was a little while before she realized that the yard had filled with young men sparring under
Señor Alvarez’s tutelage. The tang of their clashing blades called her to the window.

Six men arranged in two lines. Zachary was practising at the far side of the yard. He was clad only in his shirt and looked smaller still from up here, but fierce, like a terrier. His tall
friend fought opposite, perspiring in the heat, a stiff ruff round his neck. His movements were sharp and staccato, well-controlled. In comparison, Zachary’s leaping looked wild and
erratic.