A Divided Inheritance (58 page)

Etienne struggled to release himself from the guards’ grip, but they would not let go. The grand house had been emptied of furniture but was full of men in full plate
armour. As he was dragged upstairs the only portrait still hanging on the wall was of Felipe III, and the face had obviously been used for target practice. Perhaps it had not been such a good idea
after all, to come to Don Rodriguez.

‘He says he has news of a rebellion. In Portugal – Tavira.’ The guards dropped him to his knees before Don Rodriguez.

‘Is this true?’ The big man loomed over him.

‘Yes. Alvarez and his men.’ He staggered to his feet.

‘Alvarez the fencing master?’

‘He has a party of swordsmen with him, and a group of Moriscos ready to stir up trouble in the villages.’

‘You said they would cause no trouble.’

‘I thought—’

‘Where is this? And how do I know this is reliable information this time?’

Etienne took the scroll he was supposed to deliver to the Quevedo family and passed it over. Rodriguez took a moment to read it through narrowed eyes.

‘And just what’s in it for you?’

‘For me?’ Etienne swallowed.

‘Yes. Why are you telling me this?’

Etienne felt a squirm of fear. ‘Because you pay me to keep you informed about what Alvarez is doing. How he trains. And because I’m a good Christian. Why else? It’s our duty to
report these things to the authorities, and—’

‘You are an untrustworthy little shit, aren’t you? Do you mean it’s because you were afraid to be caught with them? You’re a coward, Galen. Men I can’t trust are no
use to me. Take him away, have him sent to the San Jorge. A spell in there should help him to know his own mind.’

Etienne cried out, ‘No, not that! Not the San Jorge! I’ve done nothing wrong. Only what you asked, what any good man should—’ But the guards had already seized him and
were hauling him away. He saw the ornamental tiled floor with its gilded olembrillas pass under his eyes. ‘Wait,’ he cried, ‘I’ll do anything!’

Don Rodriguez watched him go. The grovelling Frenchman’s report had the aura of truth about it. It seemed more than likely that Alvarez could be negotiating with Moriscos from the
Portuguese villages. Alvarez was capable of mustering men, but it might take time – after all, he had no readily available army behind him, no discipline. Alvarez tried to keep his men as
individuals, and that was fine for duelling, but too unpredictable for war. Only one thing made a man obey orders, and that was if the fear of disobeying orders was equal to, or greater than, his
fear of the enemy.

Alvarez had never been able to see that. Now he knew why; the man was just Morisco shit like all the other vermin they were moving out of this city. Good thing Carranza was dead; he would have
been horrified to see how Alvarez had debased his art.

But if Galen was right . . . Rodriguez read the paper again. It seemed genuine enough, and promotion was in the air, he could smell it. He thought how fine it would look to the King if he
quelled such an uprising. He strode from the chamber and called for his sergeant.

Elspet peered out from the hood draped to hide the scar on her cheek. Next to her lay two razor-edged daggers. The hilt of the sword dug into her hip bone as the carriage
jolted down the road. She glanced at Luisa, and wondered if her stomach too was churning with fear.

She remembered Etienne asking her if she would fight. She shivered involuntarily. Pray God it would not come to that. Luisa stayed grim and silent in the seat opposite her. Elspet could think of
nothing comforting to say.

Near the city gate she heard a low murmur, and looked out to see the glint of armour, and white steam rising from a long snake of people – Moriscos from the neighbouring towns on their way
to the embarkation points. Trepidation filled her. Just outside the gates she felt the inevitable slowing of the wheels as Alexander tried to pull off to the side of the road.

Luisa seemed unperturbed, her oval face pale, the knit of her brows hardly changed, but Elspet wondered what she could be thinking. These were her people. She imagined Nicolao and Señor
Alvarez following in their wake and hoped they were close behind. There had been no sign of Etienne, though, he had not been back to warn them of this blockage on the road.

‘Are you ready?’ Elspet asked.

‘Yes,’ said Luisa. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘Just keep quiet, don’t say a word.’

The tramping of soldiers’ boots. A man in a plated helmet and breastplate jutted his head through the window. ‘Where are you going?’

Alexander appeared behind him. ‘I am Dutch. Here are my papers. I am escorting this English lady to Sines. This is her maid. When we heard the proclamation we were trying to get out of the
city. We wanted to get out of Seville and to her brother’s before you brought in the Moors, but we see we left it too late.’

‘You shouldn’t be on this road at all. We’ve two thousand Moriscos to bring down to the port. You’ll have to turn back.’

‘He advises we turn back,’ Alexander said to her.

‘Quite impossible,’ she said in her best English. ‘I have to be in Sines by the end of the week for my brother’s wedding. Tell him to move his people off the
road.’

Alexander widened his eyes as if she had taken leave of her senses, but the guard smiled. ‘Women!’ he said. ‘I think the señorita would not thank you, if you continue on
this road,’ he said. The two men laughed, complicitly. ‘I am sorry, señor, but you must move. No one goes out of the city today. The road ahead will be blocked too. Wait until we
pass, then return home. Tell the womenfolk to come out and stand off to the side.’ He gestured them out of the carriage with the point of his musket.

They stood in the drizzle by the side of the road, which was already a thin slime of yellow mud. Alexander and the boy dragged the pair of horses off to the side of the road, the carriage
spattering them with water from the wheels. She caught Alexander’s eye and they exchanged worried glances. His face was taut and drawn, and despite his height he struggled to control the
horses which trampled over his feet. Finally, he had them standing quietly.

‘You are armed,’ said the guard. He had found her daggers in the carriage and now eyed her sword-belt.

‘Would you have a lady travel abroad without some protection?’ she retorted. ‘I have had to leave my Moorish servants, and now I have only this stupid Dutch woman. And
she’s been dumb since birth. What else was I to do?’

He grunted. Luisa stood, head bowed, thankfully still silent. The guard’s eyes shifted to the procession coming towards them. Four or five armoured men marched in front; columns of
soldiers were ranked to the side with muskets and pikes. Boxed in by them shuffled a wretched bunch of people with barely any baggage, only sagging haversacks and tied bundles. They looked to be
wearing all the clothes they possessed, but their backs were sodden with wet, their hems dripped, the men’s hair and beards hung in rat’s tails.

Elspet could do nothing but stare. There were women there, nursing mothers and children. Old people who limped with a stick and shivered, despite the fact that others were steaming with the
exertion of walking. Many were barefoot. As they passed, their feet made footprints in the mud, but these were quickly blotted out by the people walking behind. As they walked, the women sang
mournfully in an ululating lilt. They paid no heed to Luisa and Elspet standing there as they passed; their eyes were blank, or fixed on the city ahead.

The sound of the women singing had a creaking quality as if it had been long buried. When Elspet looked at Luisa she saw her cheeks were wet with rain. That was until Luisa brought her sleeve up
to wipe her eyes, and Elspet realized with a jolt it was tears. She dare not go to comfort her, it would look too intimate to behave so with a servant.

‘Wait a while after we pass,’ shouted the guard. ‘We move slow, no point in you being right on our tail.’

‘Yes, sir, we will,’ called Alexander.

It took perhaps one quarter-hour for the procession to pass. The guard trotted to catch up with the back of the party, and as the rain fell dark and heavy Elspet watched them grow smaller as
they headed to the city.

Alexander put the horses back in traces.

‘We go on,’ he said. ‘Not back, as the soldier ordered. You all right?’

She nodded and they waited as he hauled the horses and carriage back on to the track. They climbed inside, wet running from their shoulders. Elspet reached out to Luisa.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Señor Alvarez and his students will look after your family.’

‘I hope Mama doesn’t see that,’ she said.

To her surprise, Luisa did not pull her hand away but gripped it tight as the carriage moved off again. Eventually she said, ‘Those soldiers, do you think they’ll let them
pass?’

‘Señor Alvarez trained his men well. Your family could not be in better hands. Never fear, they’ll get to Tavira somehow.’

They had to make a detour into a derelict farmstead as Alexander saw yet another smaller group of Moriscos on the road, and they held their breath as they passed. But as night
fell there were no more hold-ups and the roads became rutted and uneven. They travelled through the blur of rain until they could no longer make out any trace of Seville on the horizon. Finally,
the lights of a small fishing port twinkled in the distance. The carriage stopped by a group of gnarled olive trees; the branches rattled in the wind.

‘I’m going to walk on ahead,’ Alexander said to them through the window. ‘Etienne was supposed to meet us to show us the way, but there’s been no sign of him.
Perhaps I’ve missed him somehow. Wait here until I come back for you. I’ll go and find the Quevedo family and check it’s safe.’

He disappeared into the darkness. From here they could hear the moan of the wind, and the crash of waves breaking against rocks.

‘Are you afraid?’ Elspet asked into the black cave of the carriage.

‘No.’ A short laugh. ‘I am angry, that is all. I am Spanish and a good Catholic. I am being made to flee my homeland for no good reason. What sort of a man is he, that would do
this to his people?’

‘I don’t know. In England our king will not allow us to worship in the Roman Church. Señor Alvarez says it is easy to have an opinion when you have no power, but when you have
power, when you are a king, then your opinion will uphold some and exclude others. Señor Alvarez says it is better not to have opinions at all.’

‘Huh.’ The voice was disparaging. A short silence and then, ‘I don’t understand what you are doing in Spain. Why do you wait for Zachary Deane before you go home to
England? He is not interested in you, that much I know.’

Elspet laughed. ‘I know he’s not interested in any sort of suit with me, nor I with him. He probably despises me. It’s complicated. I thought he was my half-brother, but now .
. . I’m not sure what he is.’ It was the first time she had admitted the truth. ‘But I think I am financially reliant upon him. We are tied together through my father.’

‘How?’ Luisa’s voice was curious.

Elspet told Luisa the truth. And telling her, she found she was not nearly so emotive about it as she had been before. Next to these people who had already been stripped of their possessions and
were fleeing for their lives, her own concerns seemed petty and insubstantial.

At the end of her tale, Luisa said, ‘So I think you do not want to marry Mr Deane?’

Elspet laughed. ‘He would be the last person on this earth I would choose. Besides, I have a feeling he has his heart set on someone else.’

Luisa was silent.

Elspet listened to the wind rattle the branches, the rain smatter down on the carriage roof.

At length Luisa said, ‘You need not have helped me and you did. You have changed. When you came to fetch my mother to your English friend I thought you were just another lazy white woman
with too few skills and not enough common sense.’ Elspet opened her mouth in indignation; she did not know whether to be flattered or insulted, but Luisa went on, ‘I saw how you trained
in the yard with the men. I was wrong. You are not afraid of hard work. I don’t know how things will turn out, but I won’t forget your kindness.’ And from the dark a thin, cold
hand found her, and she found herself pulled into a tight embrace.

When Alexander returned he said, ‘Bad news. Etienne never got there and Señora Quevedo was not expecting us. I told her the situation and I think I’ve
persuaded her not to turn us away.’

He drove them to a group of small farm cottages up an unmade track. The wind was even fiercer here, and the noise of the sea closer. A boy was standing there with a palely glowing lantern at the
only cottage that looked habitable. Señora Quevedo, a leather-skinned woman of about forty years, beckoned them inside under the low beams and sat them to steam before the fire.

Luisa thanked her for their hospitality and shyly told the señora of the crowds on the route. Alexander said if they did not mind he would leave the women at the farm and ride back to
show the others the way, since there was still no sign of Etienne Galen. Elspet hoped Galen was all right. Though she had never liked him, she could not help but hope he was lost somewhere and not
dead at the side of the road.