Three-Cornered Halo (20 page)

“It does make a difference. It shifts the responsibility away from you and on to the people.”

“God forbid,” he said, almost laughing, “that my people should have responsibility in any matter.”

“And that's just the point—they won't really have, of course. It's you that—already—have made the decision. But I don't see
why.
”

“You and many others.”

“And then this terrible business about the Archbishop.” She took a deep breath: it was for this, to speak this sentence, that she had come here. “You can't really have him—killed?”

“Executed,” said the Grand Duke. He elaborated: “And only if Juanita gives no sign to save him.”

“You know quite well Juanita will give no sign. Very well, then,” she said flatly. “
I
call that murder.”

There was a cold little pause. He said at last, quietly: “I have permitted liberties I otherwise would not permit—to the sister of my friend Inspector Cockrill.”

“Your friend Inspector Cockrill,” said Cousin Hat, “would call it murder too.”

“A judicial execution—for the crime of High Treason.”

“Is it treason to hope ones country may have an heir
?”

“In such terms, yes.” He leapt up so suddenly that the white cat, startled, shot off his knee and hid, trembling, under the bench; and stood towering above her, the cloak, like a black thundercloud flung over breast and shoulder, half concealing his face so that only his eyes stared down at her, dark with the cold, black, uninhibited rage of his violent ancestry. “The Hereditary Grand Dukes of San Juan el Pirata, Senorita, do not take kindly to public rebukes—nor to private ones either.” The little duchess also had risen and stood, frightened, gazing up at him with that quality of stillness which in his presence she wore about her like a colourless veil; and he threw out his hand towards her and roared, breaking into his own tongue in the extremity of his fury: “Look at her! What do you think
she
felt, stripped to the public gaze like a harlot, by that jabbering old fool? The Grand Duchess of San Juan el Pirata—La Bellissima, Felissima, Delicia, Rosa del Isla, Gran Ducesa di San Juan el Pirata—what do you think
she
felt?”

“Felt?” said Cousin Hat. “She didn't feel a thing. She couldn't understand a word the Archbishop was saying.”

He stared at her for one brief moment that seemed an eternity of terror: and burst into peal upon peal of laughter, as though he would never stop.

There was a diversion. The Little French Friends had been down in the arena mingling with the crowds, under the protection of half a dozen of the Juanese young gentlemen of the Grand Duke's court, and now returned, chattering and laughing, having evidently got on extremely intimately with the six young men, though neither could speak one word of the other's language. The Grand Duke stopped laughing at last. “Patriarca!”

“Exaltida?”

“Be good enough to remain here and help La Bellissima to entertain my guests. I am going to show Senorita Cockrill over the pavilion. Senorita Lorenna!”

“Exaltida?” said Lorenna, reverencing.

“Do you like cats, Lorenna?”

“Well—yes, Exaltida,” said Lorenna, doubtfully. Everyone in San Juan likes cats.

“Then rescue Cristallo from beneath the bench and comfort him with some of your cheesecakes. Make my apologies for having alarmed him. Wait upon my guests till I return.” He offered his arm to Miss Cockrill and, casting only one rather desperate glance at Mr Cecil as she passed him, she swept gloriously by. “How do you like our colonnades, Miss Cockrill: each column, you see, is an imitation curtain swept back by a couple of cherubs—don't you find them amusing.…?” But at the end of the terrace he handed her to a seat and stood, leaning back against a pillar, two marble cherubim posed above his head. “I owe you a debt of gratitude, Senorita. It never occurred to me—but what you say is true.”

“La Bellissima was quite ignorant that anything strange had happened. I discovered that this afternoon.”

“I was angry. I gave myself no time to think that of course she doesn't speak Juanese. She must have been somewhat bewildered,” he said thoughtfully, “at my subsequent lecture.”

“But now, anyway,” said Miss Cockrill, happily, “all that will be over.”

He bowed. “The Grand Duchess shall have another chance.”

“And ‘Jane Seymour' will be dismissed?”

“Oh, as to Jane Seymour, no. Jane Seymour speaks very eloquently by her mere presence here. I think she must stay.”

“But, if the Grand Duchess—?”

“Ah, but if the Grand Duchess does
not?
”

“The Grand Duchess cannot command nature,” said Miss Cockrill.

“But I, on the other hand, can command Jane Seymour.”

“I see,” said Miss Cockrill. She was silent for a moment. She said slowly: “And the Arcivescovo?”

“His offence is after all no less because it did not succeed in distressing La Bellissima.”

“So if Juanita gives no sign—and of course she will not—the old man dies?” She paused. She said: “And a little later, perhaps—La Bellissima too?”

The Grand Duke leaned back against his marble pillar, his arms folded under the cloud of black cloak. “La Bellissima?”

“The old man prays for a sign. None comes—and so he dies. La Bellissima is to pray for a son: so, also, if none comes …” Her hands began to shake a little but she said steadily: “If the Grand Duchess gives you no heir, you must marry again. But you can't do that while the Grand Duchess lives. So … And once again Juanita must take the blame.”

A silence. “You are a brave woman, Miss Cockrill,” said the Grand Duke.

“No, I'm not. I'm just not afraid of
you,
” said Cousin Hat, thrusting her hands between her knees to disguise their uncontrollable trembling.

“Very well then. Continue. If you dare.”

“Oh, I dare,” said Miss Cockrill jauntily. She continued accordingly. “I've only just understood it; but I understand it now. This whole thing is a plant. It's a plot. It's a plot to get rid of your wife.”

He half raised his hand; but he lowered it again. It lay heavy with its weight of diamonds against the black embroidered cloth of his knee. Cousin Hat rushed on.

“La Bellissima refuses to give you an heir: she believes that she knows what will happen all too soon if she does. And so—La Bellissima must go. But this is the twentieth century and even in San Juan you can't just execute her out of hand; like La Madre and El Bienquisto ‘she would be missed.' So Juanita is to be consulted—in public. I don't think you really care two hoots, Exaltida, about the Archbishop. He's just a sort of—forerunner: to soften the people up, to accustom them to the idea that if Juanita is appealed to in vain, it means that she countenances an execution. La Bellissima will appeal for a son and heir. Juanita will not answer. And so … On Juanita's shoulders falls the responsibility for another ‘judicial execution.'”

There was a long, long silence, broken only by a tiny, dry scaly sound which Miss Cockrill at last identified as the chafing of her own shaking fingers. What would happen now?—for one could not hope to inspire a second burst of laughter. Could judicial execution be extended to visiting foreigners? There'd be a fuss at home, she thought, and it was odd how comforting that was; she had a fleeting glimpse of the Major hawking his red face and white moustache from Consulate to Embassy, from Foreign Office to—to War Office, even? But life was a little weary, anyway, and not so very much to offer for that young and lovely life. As to the San Juan gaol—she would rather not. Her brother had spent a few hours as its involuntary guest and reported
most
unfavourably. She wished the Grand Duke would speak.

He spoke at last. He was dangerously mild. “The matter would appear to be in the hands of the Grand Duchess. Why is she so obstinate in the matter of having a child?”

Cousin Hat shrugged hopelessly. “She imagines she will lose her looks.”

“What nonsense! Women nowadays don't lose their looks.”

Cousin Hat thought back to the sunlit afternoon, to the slender figure in the flower-starred green satin, sitting with her hands full of flowers on the flower-starred grass. ‘La mère m'a dit.…' “Her mother seems to have given a very urgent warning.”

“Her mother is a ridiculous woman. Why should La Bellissima lose her looks? And if she did—she would be still my wife.”

“Not for long, however,” said Cousin Hat, with temerity.

He considered it. He said at last: “I see. So either way … But to have had a child would at least have been to—postpone matters?”

“No doubt.” She looked him in the face. “La Bellissima, however, Exaltida, has a foolish preference. If she must die, she would rather die a little sooner—still lovely at least, in your eyes.”

He bent his head sharply and sharply glanced away from her; and there was a look on his face that lit in her breast a sudden bright blaze of hope. It's only that they're—lost, she thought. They don't understand one another—that's all it is: they've lost their way. And her chill heart lifted with joy within her and she thought: ‘Behind all this façade of terror and misunderstanding, these two marvellous creatures are in love!' If only—if only one could find a way to help them. If only it could be she, plain, practical Harriet Cockrill, living her one brief hour against this magical tapestry, half sombre, half star-bright, of mystery and romance—if only it could be she who might be inspired to find the right moment and so speak the right word.…! And she had a vision suddenly, an old maid's vision of the fairy-tale ending, a picture of happy-ever-after at the end of a story book: he tall and fine and handsome—she gentle and lovely, sitting beside him in their fairy-tale palace, looking up into the face of a beautiful boy. And with them, benevolently beaming, a little old lady, plain, unimportant and yet much loved, for ever valued: because it was she who had brought all this about.…

Where had she, very recently, seen this picture before? A picture so grouped: the two of them, the Duchess holding a child by the hand; an old woman looking on.…

And she looked at her picture again; and now the shadows shifted and changed and she saw that the face of the child was not the sweet, handsome, frankly smiling face of a fairytale boy, but a pudgy, white lardy-cake face with black boot-button eyes; and the face of the old woman was not her own face but a much older face, a much, much older, a terrible, a malevolent old face: which, far from being benevolently beaming was not beaming at all.…

“La Madre! What fools we've been!” said Cousin Hat.

An old, old woman; and in her life, one love, one only passion of interest left—a little boy. And the boy is heir to great possessions and in their way stands nothing but one frail vessel, which yet may hold the seed of—another little boy. La Madre!—mother of Juanita, whom a French girl in her own language called ‘La Mère'—looking on while the heir to the Dukedom of San Juan talked to the woman who must not be allowed to dispossess him of his rights.

“And El Bienquisto speaks French,” said Miss Cockrill, “and could translate between them. I remember now that I saw him speaking to her—to La Bellissima. And she was friendly and kind to him, it was evident that they saw at least something of one another. In La Madre's apartments, I dare say?”

“The boy has tutors,” admitted the Grand Duke. “La Bellissima has been helping him with his French.”

“
In
La Madre's apartments?”

He agreed slowly. “It may be so.”

She was suddenly exhausted. It had been a strain. But she made one more effort, striving for coherency, for power to convince. “You speak French with the Grand Duchess, Exaltida. I don't know about your French—mine is not very good. I misunderstood her; I caught only half of what she said to me. And if there could be misunderstanding between her and me, don't you think that you and she, also, might have got things wrong?” And she burst out suddenly: “How could she tell you, how could she explain to you?—what horrors was that old woman filling her up with? and all passed on, all translated, by that dreadful child.” He remained silent. She said, despairingly: “You can't forgive her for believing such things of you?” Still he did not answer and she tried for the last time. “Your own mother, Exaltida—forgive me for asking; but how did she die?”

“She died in childbirth,” said the Grand Duke. “I was a boy but I remember it very well. She died when my brother, Don Isidro's father, was born.”

“Yes. Well, the Grand Duchess has been taught otherwise,” said Cousin Hat. “And what your father is supposed to have done, she may be forgiven for believing you might do too.” To her horror, two great tears had gathered in her eyes and now fell, slowly rolling down her weathered cheeks. It was a long time since Cousin Hat had shed a tear.

Two guards stood, cloaked and sabred, at a little distance from them, their round, black-mackintoshy hats like jet in the moonlight. The Grand Duke, not answering her, roused himself from his pillar and snapped his fingers. He spoke but she did not listen, she was too weary to battle with sharp commands in a foreign tongue. The man departed and in a moment came back with Lorenna. Lorenna was carrying Cristallo, the white cat. El Exaltida said: “Come here, my child.”

“Exaltida?” said Lorenna, bobbing a reverence.

“Give me the cat.” He took the cat into his arms and it clawed its way up the black cloak to his shoulder and clung there, its shining white head against his dark cheek. He put up his hand and pulled the pearl collar from its neck. “Hold out your hand.”

Lorenna held out her little hand and he slipped the collar over it to her wrist. “You have performed your duties very prettily, my child, but now they are ended, sooner than we expected. Go back to the Senora Innocenta and tell her this. Tell her that I have said it is no fault of yours. She will hear from me.” He held out his hand and she curtseyed and caught his hand and held it for a moment to her lips, for a moment laid her soft cheek against the backs of his fingers; and crept away. It was bitterly disappointing. One might say that for handing round a few cakes and glasses one had been richly rewarded with a bracelet of pearls; but had the duties been otherwise, thought Lorenna as with her escort of guard she went away along the cool colonnade and out of the pavilion and back to the workaday world, she would not have cared one bit about the bracelet of pearls.…