A Divided Inheritance (40 page)

He was transfixed. She was strong but graceful. The fabric of her dress flowed around her knees as if she stood in a stormy sea. By now the bar man and three or four more slapped their hands
together in staccato
palmas
, the handclap.

‘More ale?’ asked Gabriel.

But Zachary shook his head impatiently, eyes fixed on Luisa.

She arched backwards from the waist as the guitar strummed into a crescendo, her heavy hair fell from its comb, the belt rattled as the vibration moved upwards through her hips and exploded in
an almost Dionysian ferment of stamps and snaps. The final posture was with her arms flung outwards. Her eyes sought his in a look of defiance and disdain.

He was gripping so tight to the chair that his fingers were rigid. He exhaled, and she swept away, back to the bar where a number of men crowded around her with expressions of appreciation.

‘She’s something, isn’t she?’ Maria said.

He could do nothing but nod.

‘She has caught what we would call
duende
– the spirit. She was made to dance. There is something about the Arabic blood, it sings of the stars and the desert, and the men,
well, they feel it. They all do – look at them.’

He allowed himself to glance over. Luisa sat unperturbed amid a crowd of three or four men.

‘It transforms her somehow,’ Maria said. ‘Shall I get her to come over?’

Zachary looked to Gabriel. He feared that she would come and join them, and he feared that she would not. His discomfiture was absolute, and he knew Gabriel had seen it. Maria did not wait for
an answer but hurried over to talk to Luisa.

‘Have a drink, my friend,’ Gabriel said, to distract him from the women at the bar.

Zachary supped the warm yeasty liquid gratefully, bringing himself to calm. Never had a woman affected him so. He had gone with a few women in his time, but all of them on his terms. One look at
this woman dancing was enough to show him that she would make her own conditions. He saw now that his view of her as just a servant was mistaken. But he had hardly ever seen her smile, her gravity
was part of her mysterious attraction.

He pretended to be engaged in conversation as they approached, by asking Gabriel about Guido, and whether he was making any more weapons for the men of the Inquisition. But Gabriel hadn’t
time to answer before the women were upon them.

‘Good evening,’ Zachary said, rather too formally.

They ignored him and sat down. Maria leaned over towards Gabriel, whispered something, and took hold of his hand. He squeezed her fingers and traced the back of her hand with his thumb. Zachary
knew Luisa had seen it too, but Luisa looked icily over Zachary’s shoulder.

‘That was beautiful. I mean, you dance wonderfully,’ he said, attempting to open the conversation.

‘Thank you.’ She looked away.

‘Will you dance again? I mean . . . I would like to see you dance again.’

‘And I suppose you will offer to pay me?’ She spat out the words.

Zachary saw Maria watching, and felt as if a knot was tying itself in his guts. ‘No, no. I didn’t mean that. I just thought it was the most intoxicating thing I’ve ever seen.
I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘Does no one dance where you come from?’

‘No. I mean yes, they do, but not like that.’ She frowned and opened her mouth but he leapt in to rescue himself before she had time to speak. ‘I mean the dancing is not so
–’ he searched for the word – ‘so impassioned.’

‘Perhaps tomorrow it will not be. It is different every time. That’s the beauty of it. It is never the same.’

‘Ah,’ he said, latching on to something he could tell her, ‘in England the dances are fixed, and everyone knows where to step and where to move. The patterns are all thought
out beforehand.’ He blundered on, unthinking, ‘And no woman would think of dancing without a partner.’

‘It sounds dull.’

‘Have you ever danced with a partner?’ He could not stop himself, although his words hung between them as if they hovered on the edge of an abyss.

She did not answer. The words waited as if cut from the air. Then she stood abruptly, and gestured to one of the young men over at the bar. His mouth split into a smile. He swaggered over to the
tiny space where the guitarist waited, who at his approach burst into a torrent of song. Luisa stalked towards them and stamped her feet.

Zachary could barely watch. It was both humiliating and exciting. The man had a roughness to his movements and an attitude that was both coarse and sensual. Luisa seemed to taunt him with her
swaying hips and twirling wrists. They played out a drama of passion, their eyes locked together as they circled each other, he beating out the rhythm with percussive steps and flicks of his heels,
she inciting him with lowered brows, her lips pressed together in a scowl.

‘
Eh, asi se baila! Agua!
’ called someone. The fire between them was unmistakeable. Zachary could not drag his eyes away.

The thrum of the guitar built in intensity until Luisa’s bare feet hammered the ground in a kind of frenzy; the gitano lifted his chin and pushed out his chest, staring down on her as she
paraded before him. He took hold of her shoulders as if he would kiss her. Zachary saw her glance momentarily his way. A feeling rose up in him, the urge to break the table before him to pieces, to
take a chair and smash it into that ugly gitano’s face.

He leapt to his feet and blundered out of the courtyard, down the road towards the river, blood beating at his temples. After he had walked for a quarter-hour or so, he slowed to look out over
the water at the lights of the city, and then up at the winking stars above his head. He was panting, not from exertion, but from emotion.

He leaned up against a fence by the shore, put one foot on the rail. He could not go back to the city yet, it felt as though his chest had been cut open. He wondered fleetingly what on earth
Gabriel would be thinking of him.

‘Bloody woman,’ he cursed, but he knew it was more than that. It was the old feeling of powerlessness he could not stomach. He was afraid. That was why he liked to fight. He was not
afraid of death, but he was afraid of love.

All Elspet wanted when she returned home after the long day at the fencing school was to bathe and rest. She slept well for the first time in months, but awoke groggy and
listless. She knocked gently on Mr Wilmot’s door, but he did not answer. She creaked it open and eyed the miserable heap of bedding with horror. He lay still and white, his breath hoarse in
his throat; his cheekbones protruded through his flesh. Martha too was not up, but lay in bed moaning.

She did not dare go out whilst they were both so ill. She must do something. Could she afford the physician? She took her purse and fingered again the paltry amount of money before pulling the
cords tight and tucking it away. Not enough.

All day she watched them, like a mother hen. The following evening they seemed no better and she knew she would not sleep for worrying. She found her way down to the kitchen by the smell of
burnt rice. Several hostile pairs of eyes swivelled towards the door as she entered. The kitchen workers were all dressed in Moorish dress. She paused awkwardly on the threshold before addressing
them, ‘I am looking for . . .’ But then she realized she had never even asked the house slave’s name.

Fortunately, at the sound of Elspet’s voice, the girl stood up from where she had been wiping something from the floor.

‘They’re worse. I’d like to know where I can find – where I can find the woman you spoke of.’ Elspet addressed her directly.

The girl nodded and said, ‘Come. I’ll show you.’ She dumped the cloth back in the pail and rubbed her hands dry.

‘Tell me your name.’

‘Gaxa,’ she said.

What a strange name, she thought, but then she pointed to herself and said, ‘Mistress Leviston.’

‘Yes. I know.’ She did not blink.

‘Elspet,’ she said. Gaxa nodded.

Elspet followed her and was surprised to find that they were heading back towards Triana.

‘In Triana?’ she said, breathless, trying to keep up with her.

‘Yes,’ Gaxa said.

‘Oh, I wish I’d known,’ Elspet mumbled, but then gave up the conversation to concentrate on weaving through the narrow streets. Her legs had stiffened from the previous
day’s wrestling with the sword, and her feet were sore. It was all she could do to keep up.

They passed down narrow alleys where the houses were simply built of local stone or clay, plastered with a mud render. Some of them had glowing ovens built on the outside; from others smoke came
from inside the house through a hole in the roof. She stepped around a pool of vegetable peelings and a dark patch of what could have been blood on the pale earth.

It was close to nightfall, it was as if a dark cloth had been thrown over the streets, and she began to fear she might never find her way home again. Finally, they arrived at the back of a row
of larger houses. They had yards with pots of herbs growing and she could hear goats bleating in the fields behind. Gaxa hammered at the shutters of one of the windows. A yelp of surprise came from
within, but no one came to open up. Gaxa knocked again, but the house stayed silent.

‘Wait,’ she said. She went around to the side of the house and called softly, ‘Ayamena! It’s Gaxa. Only me.’ A pause, and then, ‘Look and see, just
Gaxa.’

She came back to where Elspet stood. ‘They won’t open the door.’ She pointed. ‘Looks bad. Blood on the ground up there. That’s why. We’d better
leave.’

But just then the wooden door in the bleached double gates opened a hand-width and the frightened eyes of a woman looked out.

‘Gaxa,’ the woman whispered, ‘it’s late. What is it? What’s the matter?’

‘There’s a woman very sick. Needs your help.’

She looked past Gaxa to where Elspet stood. ‘This woman?’

‘No,’ Gaxa said scornfully, ‘her servant. But she can’t pay.’ She said this accusingly, indicating Elspet with a wag of her head.

‘I know her.’

Elspet took a better look at the woman on the threshold. At first she wondered if her Spanish had let her down and she must be mistaken, but she came out further into the light, and recognized
the woman from the fencing school.

‘Oh, yes,’ Elspet said. ‘You work for Señor Alvarez. Señora Ortega, is it? I am sorry to disturb you, but my friend Mr Wilmot and my maid are very
sick.’

She looked around, and realized with embarrassment that they were outside the fencing school, just that this was the back door. The servants’ entrance, where goods and pack-mules came and
went. She was chastened by her own stupidity.

Ayamena was speaking. ‘I’m not sure, Gaxa, there’s trouble enough. I don’t want to treat any white woman. If she dies, they’ll accuse me of sorcery.’

‘She’ll die if you don’t.’ Gaxa stated it as a fact, and planted her brown-toed feet firm in the dirt.

Elspet could think of nothing to say, so she waited.

Ayamena looked from one of them to the other, then beckoned them in. ‘Quick, quick. Before someone sees. In this world gone mad, the least I can do is offer tea.’

Elspet followed Gaxa over the threshold and through a wooden door into the gloom of a chamber. Immediately, a man was there in front of her, asking, ‘Who is it?’ but before he even
finished his question Ayamena said, ‘Only Gaxa, and the Englishwoman, the friend of Señor Alvarez, who needs some help.’

By the light of the smoking candles Elspet took in that all their possessions were in a pile in the middle of the room. Cooking pots, rolled-up rugs, a stick cage with a squawking bantam inside.
The man in front of her looked familiar, and she realized she’d seen him coming and going in the yard with his stick. He always had his head forward, looking at the ground as if he could not
see properly, and carrying a bundle of books wedged under his arm.

‘Who is it, Ayamena?’

‘Good evening, señor. It is Mistress Leviston. Elspet Leviston, Mr Deane’s cousin. I am sorry to disturb you. But Gaxa thought you might be able to help my . . .’ She
paused. She could not think of a way to describe Mr Wilmot and his relationship to her.

Gaxa finished the words for her. ‘The Englishman who was here. He’s worse. And the maidservant. I think it’s the sweating sickness. Will you come?’

The man turned to his wife who hovered at his arm, her eyes wary. ‘It’s not safe to treat them. Not wealthy foreigners. If it fails, it will draw attention to us. We need to stay
hidden, if we can, from rich men.’

‘You should both go,’ he said to her. ‘Do not let them change us, my love. That’s what they want. We should still have compassion, do as we would have before all
this.’

She looked at him doubtfully. ‘I don’t want to leave you. What if something happens while we’re away?’

‘Nothing will happen. I’ll carry on sorting the rest of our things.’

Just then Luisa appeared from the curtain to the back yard, carrying a basket of clothing on her hip. She stopped as soon as she saw them. She recognized Elspet straight away, and set the basket
down.

‘Mistress Leviston,’ she said. Her eyes shied away.