The Flesh and the Devil (72 page)

         
He was panting, and Juana realized in horror that he had
tottered to his feet, clutching the chair, and was coming towards her with
slow, shuffling steps.

         
'I not so infirm that I cannot. . . concern myself with a
lady's wants, and this time . . . there will be no Bartolome to fright you. And
no Felipe.'

         
The shawled shape lurched against her, blotting out the
scar on the opposite wall, and Juana wondered why the scream that tore her
throat did not choke her, why she could not die before de Castaneda touched
her. But the near-fleshless, still square-shaped hand thrust roughly amongst
the folds of her gown, tracing the almost unnoticeable swelling, and she heard
him utter a creaking sound, an echo of his harsh crow of delight; then his
brusque fingers moved upwards, squeezing her breast with an old man's
impatience, plucking at the blue silk. He peered avidly into her face, visibly
delighted by her uncontrollable shiver of revulsion.

         
'Senor!' Riccardo Martinetti's voice was sharper as it came
from the door, and carried a tinge of curtness. 'Senor, stop.'

        
'She can stop me, mmn? . . . My dear niece? She has only to
protest. . . say that she does not want me to . . . touch her like this. Or
like this . . . you see? It should not offend you when she . . . allows it
freely. Or are you concerned for my welfare?' De Castaneda dragged himself
round with a look of venomous enjoyment on his face. 'If you have done as I
bade you . . . see her carried down. Get someone to help you.'

         
'Not tied like that, senor. She will choke on that gag if
you do not let her breathe.'

         
'You are very concerned . . . for my poor nephew's
betrothed!' It was a sudden snarl. 'Tend to your business and I shall . . . see
to mine.'

         
'I dislike the course you are taking now, Senor de
Castaneda.' There was a telltale tremor in the Italian's slim fingers as he
spoke, but the other man only grunted.

         
'You need not be so . . . damnably cautious, Riccardo. I
have too much . .

         
.care to let her die, but she deserves, . . to suffer a
little for this corpse the pair of them have . . . made of me. But take off the
gag if you will . . . only be ready to silence her if she should ... try to
call out.'

         
He stumbled back to the wheeled chair unaided and slumped
down in it, breathing heavily, while Martinetti removed the gag.

         
Juana sat gasping with relief, trying to moisten her cracked
lips with an equally dry tongue, while from behind her she could hear the
Italian speaking still, an almost menacing note in his light, metallic voice.

         
'It is not only your care for her health that I mislike,
senor - it is that I think you exceed any just revenge in what you mean to do.'

         
A chill ran down Juana's back, and she saw de Casta-neda's
head jerk up abruptly.

         
'What do you say?'

         
'If you took the child and let the lady go I would condone
it. Now that you have had the man killed, you are quit for your nephew's death,
and the child is better restitution than you would have had from any court of
law in Spain. But to keep her as you intend - no.'

         
'Must I. . . account to you, then, for what I . . . do? I
must please your notions of what ... is just, before I can proceed?' The
twisted mouth opened in a snarl. 'You need not stay to see it. I shall. . .
discharge you if it irks you to see her

         
... in state, and you can batten on . . . another man's
fortunes, little bloodsucker.'

         
The man behind Juana's chair was silent, then he said
almost flippantly, 'As you will it, then, senor,' and bent over her.

         
She said in a voice that was cracked and dull, 'Earn your
gold, signor,' and then stared in sheer incredulity up into his face.

         
He had drawn a knife from somewhere, a thin-bladed
stiletto, and behind the barrier of his own body he was slicing the ropes that
bound her to the chair. His free hand tightened warningly on her shoulder and
she nodded, folding her lips, but de Castarieda had already seen her expression
change.

         
'What are you . . . doing? Riccardo, come here to me.'

         
'Of course, senor, at once.'

         
As Martinetti moved forward, Juana saw him palm the
stiletto deftly, holding it so that the needle-sharp blade was hidden again in
his sleeve.

         
De Castaneda was eyeing him with a mixture of doubt and
suspicion, but suddenly his face cleared and he chuckled, 'So that is what you
want, your. . . share, mmn? You should have said. . . . Never mind this talk
of. . . codes, or pretending you . . . care for her. If you are tractable, it
may be that. . . What are you about?'

         
'My trade, senor.' Martinetti's smile was almost seraphic.
'Sucking blood.'

         
Juana's cry was one of astonishment, a broken little sound
that seemed to hang in the air between the quick upward movement of
Martinetti's hand and the moment when the stiletto-blade found its mark. At one
moment the Italian was still moving towards his master in answer to his
summons; in the next his hand jerked upwards, freeing the blade with the ease
of long practice, and stabbed down in a motion as light and
inconsequent-looking as a bee's sting, at the back of de Castaneda's neck.

         
The sick man gave a gurgle, the bright eyes glazing even
before the sound had died away, and his body crumpled down in its nest of
shawls. Juana had no need to ask whether or not he was dead, for what had been
a threatening force in the room a moment before was nothing but a husk, dry and
empty. She could recognize the dead, she thought, although it was the first
time that she had seen death itself.

         
When she looked at Martinetti he was gazing at her with a
look of rueful resignation, the very last thing she had expected, and there was
a smile in his grey eyes. 'You had better go, Senorita de Arrelanos, before
anyone comes. My chivalry astonishes me, especially when I cannot afford it,
but it seems you have the trick of inspiring poor men to kill for you.'

         
Juana rose unsteadily to her feet, absently chafing the
blood back into her numbed hands. 'Did you kill him for my sake?'

         
He read the look of horror in her dark eyes, then shook his
head lightly, smiling. 'Oh, and because I detested him, too. And he would have
discharged me, you heard him; I would have had no more advancement from him. In
truth I am grateful to you for provoking me to it. It has saved me the tedious
trip back to Andalusia in his uncleship's charming company, and now I think we
two might go our separate ways in peace before our host decides to -' He broke
off, his sharp face suddenly alert. 'Too late, I think. He is coming.'

         
Juana glanced up at the high window, then squared her
shoulders. 'You must escape, then - quickly, through there. Can you reach it?'

         
'Easily. But you -'

         
'No matter for me. I shall try to trick my way out.'

         
And if she could not it did not matter, she thought, if de
Castaneda had succeeded in killing Felipe.

         
Martinetti had been pulling the walnut chair under the
window, but at her words he paused abruptly. 'Have I wasted my noble impulse,
then?' he demanded.

         
She shook her head gravely. 'No, for I could not have borne
- what he planned, but I only care to live so as not to cheat my child of its
life; I owe it so much, and I shall pay that debt fairly, no matter what
becomes of me. They do not execute pregnant women until after their babies are
born.'

         
With a fleeting sense of absurdity she thought suddenly of
Tia Beatriz and how she had insisted that all her nieces should be delicate and
reticent when speaking to men; she would have been horrified to hear her speak
such words, even to another woman. Martinetti, however, only stared at her with
a searching expression, as though he were trying to see what lay behind the
smile that did not touch her eyes.

         
She said in an altered tone, 'Hurry! I owe you a life, too,
and it will go by default if you do not go at once!'

         
Still he lingered, and she regarded him impatiently. Why
did he not move?

         
'Senorita —'

         
'Senora,' she corrected crisply. 'Senora Tristan.'

         
The sound of footsteps approaching the door made them both
freeze, then Martinetti swarmed up the wall and over the sill like a lizard
without uttering another word. Ignoring the pounding on the locked door, Juana
waited until the window was shut behind him before she turned, She must delay
as long as she could, she thought, while maintaining her front of innocence by
seeming meek and obedient to Don Bautista. The longer he was hindered, the
further Martinetti would have travelled before pursuit began.

         
Silently, she slid the key from the lock and stood beside
the door, staring almost detachedly at her own whitened knuckles as she grasped
the cold metal. Don Bautista was calling out to de Castaneda, beating at the
door now.

         
'Wait, I cannot find the key.'

         
The noise outside ceased abruptly, and she waited. Then, as
it began again, she thrust the key back into the lock and turned it slowly.

         
'Senor! Senor, open! Open -' The bellow died on the mayors
lips as he saw the slender blue-clad girl in the doorway. All the vitality in
her seemed to have drained into her shining mass of blue-black hair; her face
was colourless and her dark eyes unlit as she stared at him, looking as though
she hardly recognized him.

         
'Don Bautista! The - the senor is ill.' She had played this
scene before, Juana thought dully, and now it was simple to inject the right
note of distraction into her voice; she knew what she should say. 'We were
talking, and suddenly he-he choked and fell sideways. I am afraid that he may
be dead.'

         
'
What?
'
 
Don
Bautista stared past her into the room, and then his podgy fingers engulfed her
wrist. 'Stay by me - if you have harmed him, too, it will be the gallows for
you.'

         
'I have harmed no one! He had me kidnapped and brought here
against my will!'

         
Juana let her voice rise frantically as she was dragged
across the room while part of her brain was thinking with abnormal detachment
that if her captor knew she had been told of his part in the affair, he would
be sure to hang her; better to pretend that she believed him innocent of it.
'He wanted to . . . take me away from here, and we were . . disputing about it,
when he fell! I did not even touch him!'

         
Don Bautista was gazing down at de Castarieda's dead face
with a ferocity that changed to awe as she spoke. The dead man's look of
shocked surprise had settled into rictus, like a skull, and the tiny, welling
hole in the back of the neck did not show. He turned to stare at Juana with a
face full of horror, his fingers slackening on her wrist.

         
'Then you are a witch. To kill by ill-wishing - was that
what you did to Jeronima?'

         
'You talk like a child!' she cried impatiently. He shook
his head, licking his lips in apprehension.

         
'A witch . . . it must be witchcraft. Persuading Jeronima
to take you in, drawing men to you like wasps to honey. She never found out
where you came from, she said, although she often asked, but then she told me
it did not matter. Was that what you willed her to think, witch?'

         
'How could I will her to think anything? I did not even
know that she meant to sell me to the highest bidder until last night-'

         
'And last night Jeronima died because she angered you.' In
spite of her own slowly-growing terror, Juana could see the terrible, perverted
logic behind his obviously genuine belief. This man truly feared witches, truly
believed her to be one. 'Then this,' he pursued, 'killing a sick man - without
laying a hand on him, you say
-
what have you planned for me?'