The Flesh and the Devil (73 page)

         
'Only this!'

         
She snatched her hand from his trembling grasp and pushed
with all her might, catching him off-balance. He staggered and fell back, and
as she ran for the door Juana realized that her advantage was only momentary;
one wrong turning in this strange house and she would be trapped. And witches
were burned.

         
The sluggishness that the child had lent her limbs hampered
her as she ran, but Don Bautista was fat and clumsy. Through the adjoining
room, evidently de Castaneda's bedchamber, out into a passage beyond.... Her
shoes impeded her and she kicked them off, wishing that she could shed her
bulky skirts as easily. Past several doorways to a flight of steps leading
down. She could hear footsteps behind her now, and someone shouting, and took
the stairs with reckless haste; stumbling and falling, fending herself off the
wall at the turn of the stairs with hands that stung and running on, not daring
to linger for the giddiness that would swamp her if she let it.

         
Someone rushed out of a room to the left of the stairfoot,
and she veered right without stopping to see who it was. As she sped on she
could hear more shouting, two voices raised in argument, and hoped that Don
Bautista had had to slow down to get breath to answer.

         
Her heart sank as she saw a closed door ahead of her. In
the time it took to unlatch it she might be caught, but there was no other way;
she was running down a long, narrow passage, bare of furnishings and blank
walled, and the only way out was through the door or else back the way she had
come. With despairing energy she flung herself at the door, wrestling with the
latch, and felt it lift. Then the door swung open and she half-ran, half-fell
down a couple of steps and into pitch darkness.

         
CHAPTER 17

         
‘S a giant. Look, ‘s a giant. The freaks left town a month
ago, my friend!'

         
A shoulder jostled Tristán and he swayed, the muscles of
his good leg crying out in protest.

         
'Wass…wass a giant doing here? Wha‘ you doing here, filth?'

         
'Why doesn‘t he speak? I-is he drunk?'

         
'He stinks. Stinking filth. Le-let‘s leave‘m.'

         
'No.' Tristán managed to force out the word between
clenched teeth, his eyes screwed shut with the effort of speaking, and the
little group of topers paused, intrigued.

         
'Doesn‘t want us to go? Perhaps he‘s lonely.'

         
'Please.' A hand, pushing. 'Say please, giant.'

         
'Where are your manners?'

         
They were crowding, jostling. 'Won‘t stay if you don‘t
en-entertain us. Ask politely. Say please.'

         
Tristán prevented himself from falling by clinging to the
nearest wall. He dug his fingers hard into the brickwork so that the abrasion
would hurt him, distract him from the pain in his legs and dam that sulphurous
fever that threatened to sweep over him and drown the all-important presence of
these drunken men who might help him, Almost inaudibly he said, 'Please.'

         
There was a roar of laughter.

         
'Please! He sh-said it! Wha‘ you want?'

         
'Help.' The heat was ebbing, it was cold again, and dark.
Tristán could feel himself sagging, but had no more strength to stop himself;
he could not hear the question that they were asking him.

         
'Look at his leg.'

         
One of the men pointed, the wine-flush dying from his
cheeks. The others stared and fell silent, and then one of them retched.

         
'Shot. We want no part of it – leave him.' One of them
began to walk away, but the others protested loudly.

         
'You want his death on your conscience? Come back here!'

         
'Who did it? Ask him. It might be bandits…shot from
behind.'

         
'Who‘s
he
? Wha‘ did he do to get shot?'

         
Tristán began to slide down the wall, and the men seized
him and propped him up again. The man who had first noticed the wound said, ‗Le-let‘s
get him to a house. Where -‘

         
‗Luis Armendariz.‘ Tristán spoke before the last
vestiges of consciousness slid away from him. ‗Luis Armendariz.‘

         
Juana crouched low, trying not to breathe. The door through
which she had come was wide open again and someone had brought a lamp, spilling
light across the concealing darkness of Don Bautista‘s garden. He was standing
in the doorway with the lamp held high, swinging it so that the shadows broke and
dissolved and reformed, and she saw a glancing beam touch the hem of her skirt.
It took all her will not to cry out.

         
'She cannot have gone far. Search, you fools!'

         
Don Bautista seemed to have recovered from his fear with
the thought that a malefactor might be escaping him. The harshness of anger was
in his voice, but no longer that mindless, credulous terror.

         
Juana flattened herself to the ground, wishing that the
bush behind which was sheltering were twice its size. She could hear her pursuers
– two of them now

         
– trampling about in the dark and halting to peer round
them, fanning out across the garden. The branches of a nearby tree began to
swing; one of them must be close.

         
A shout from further away halted the man‘s approach and almost
made her cry out. 'Over here! The gate is open!'

        
Don Bautista swore, and the light went jauncing off towards
the voice. 'She must have found it straight away, as she found her way out of
the house – the luck of the devil! Hurry, then, after her – you that way, you
and I this way.'

         
Martinetti
, Juana thought as she raised herself
cautiously in the restored darkness. He must have taken that way and not stayed
to close the gate behind him. Without waiting to reason out her situation, she
scrambled to her feet and went towards the gate, hoping that the mayor and his
men were not too close. She knew that for safety she should wait longer; she
was risking discovery if they should return and meet her, but suddenly she felt
too exhausted to care. At least they would not hear betraying footsteps, for
she had no shoes.

         
She crept close to the wall like a shadow, careless of
mysterious movements and night-sounds around her; out of the dark garden into
the dark street, her head turning a little from side to side like a watchful
animal‘s. then she was hurrying blindly, heeding where she went only to seek
narrower turnings, deeper shadows, that would hide her while she put greater
distance between herself and the place from which she had come. Her pulse was
thundering, but mainly from the unaccustomed exertion of running; no wonder
Tristán despised aristocrats so, she thought with a trace of his contempt.

         
As if for comfort her cold hands clasped the curve of her
belly as she hurried on, shivering in the incongruously magnificent
blue-and-gold gown and her chilled, stockinged feet. She must not think of him
now or she would weep; her business was to make shift to survive and bear his
child, and there was no time for grief.

         
The pitch-black turning down which she had been limping
ended suddenly in a square which by contrast seemed as light as day, and Juana
blinked as she stared round her. If only she could recognize some landmark she
might be able to discover whereabouts in the town she was, and could prevent
herself blundering back into Don Bautista‘s clutches. Then she stood still, and
her heart raced; against the sky she could see the shape of San Pedro‘s tower,
different at night but still recognizable, directly in front of her.

         
She thought she remembered the way, but she had always
walked it in daylight, in company with Carlos or Elisabeta – or with Felipe.
Now the darkness distorted everything so that the turnings looked different,
and she could not tell whether she was taking the right road or whether her
memory had been blurred by the weeks she had spent with Doña Jerónima since she
saw them last. She refused to allow herself to think of what Luis and Elisabeta
would say when she presented herself at their door; it had seemed right to
allow them to blame her for deserting Felipe so as not to damage their belief
in him, but now she regretted the decision. They might well abuse her and turn
her from the door; but she had one argument, she thought, and they might let
her in for the babe‘s sake. She only knew that she had to go to them, because
she had no alternative.

         
A cat scurried across her path as she turned at length into
the familiar street, startling her, and she did not know whether to laugh or
cross herself. A good or a bad omen? She stopped, holding her breath; voices
were echoing thinly in the night air, and some men were busied about something
outside one of the house. Lamplight trickled out over the step, pale against
the beginnings of dawn, and daubed their straining figures with pale gold.

         
Instinctively Juana shrank back and waited for them to
finish whatever their task was – it looked as though they were delivering some
heavy, awkward load –