The Flesh and the Devil (38 page)

         
The priest was motioning her to step forward, and she
obeyed; then there was nothing but the chant of Latin, the swift, deft
movements of the old priest, and the spell of unreality that gripped her as she
met Tristan's eyes. She heard her own voice, low and breathless, responding;
his, quiet and firm, echoing the determination she saw in his eyes. He had not
lied, she thought — whatever he might be now, he had spent many years as a
Catholic, and the marriage would be a true marriage. She was wedded to Felipe
Tristan; and she had not heard a single word of the ceremony.

         
'There, it is done.' He spoke to her almost reassuringly,
as if she were a child he had compelled to take physic. 'What troubles you
now?'

         
The green eyes scanned her face and she lowered her lashes.
She longed to retort that being coerced into marriage troubled her, but the
words would not come; instead she said, 'I — it seems unreal, all of it. I
cannot make myself believe it.'

         
'Your husband will soon find means to convince you,
senora.'

         
The priest was beaming as he spoke. He was visibly relieved
now that the ceremony was over, and regarded the couple benignly as he took off
his vestments and laid them aside. Such a fine couple, he thought contentedly,
even though the groom was sadly disfigured and the bride had looked about to faint.
'I wish you good fortune when today's work is known, but I am sure your parents
will soon be reconciled to it — you have chosen a man of great resource.'

         
Juana smiled as Tristan drew her back against him, his
scarred cheek resting against her temple with an apparent tenderness that
sickened her.

         
The movement of her lips felt like a grimace. 'I have no
doubt of that, Father,' she answered softly.

         
It was over an hour later that Juana, safely back in her
room, heard the pattering of the nuns' feet as they busied themselves with the
first offices of the day, and later still that the convent began to stir in
earnest. Until she was summoned to Mass she sat tensely, her thoughts circling
like a trapped animal's as she turned the lion ring ceaselessly on her finger.
It was ironic, she thought, that when Tristan first possessed her she had
thought that taking her virtue was the summit of a man's cruelty to a woman:
now she understood that he had taken everything she owned, simply by repeating
a form of words before a priest, and had robbed her of every right in law
against him. And for that he would be applauded, for by marrying her he had
restored her honour in the eyes of the world.

         
But it was not of his calculated theft — all the more
despicable for being so cold-blooded — that she was thinking as she sat
twisting the ring on her wedding finger, longing to tear it off. It was of her
own subjection. A wife, she knew, was her husband's chattel, his property, as
much as any purchased slave; Felipe Tristan
owned
 
her, together with everything that she called
hers. He could not have chosen a better revenge if he had considered it for a
lifetime.

         
He was at Mass that morning, and she realized bitterly that
he was taking care to play out his role for the sake of the priest's belief,
even in a thing that he had declared was distasteful to him. Leaving the
chapel, and over the spare meal provided by the nuns, she stayed close by
Jaime's side; he did not seem to notice any alteration in her, and she could
only feel grateful that he did not. He seemed to have thrown off the sullenness
that had held him silent for most of the day before, and she let him chatter,
smiling at him, while her brain could not rid itself of the memory of Tristan's
threat. She thought of the laughing voice stilled, the handsome face touched by
violent death, and a little of the coldness went from her heart as she felt
him, living, so close to her. He, at least, had not had to die for her sake.

         
The priest came to bid the travellers goodbye when the
carriage was ready, and for a few moments Juana's heart was in her mouth; but
he only uttered his blessing over them all and beamed though it was clearly an
effort for him to hold his peace. She saw him glance at her right hand and nod his
approval as he turned to say something to Tristan, and she knew that he was
commenting on the concealing glove that hid the ring. Tristan had been standing
with his back to her, adjusting one of the bay's stirrups, but at the priest's
words he glanced round, as suddenly as if she had called his name, and his eyes
met hers. It was only for an instant, and then he turned back to the horse, but
something made her break off her conversation with Jaime and climb quickly into
the carriage.

         
Her mind was a blank as she sat back against the seat, and
she stared out at the landscape with unseeing eyes. Between the flanks of her
escort's horses there was little to see but hills and rocky scrubland after the
convent buildings had fallen away behind; everything was harsh and bleak, as
barren and frightening as the future that loomed ahead of her. Tufty
olive-trees twisted their roots into crevices on the slopes, forcing a tortured
passage to the sky, while on the plain the coarse grass petered out amid wastes
of sandy earth. Life would be cheap in this wilderness, she thought suddenly;
if Tristan - if her
husband
 
chose
to rid himself of any or all of them in the midst of such a desert, there was
nothing to prevent him - and he would have her dowry without the curb of a
wife.

         
'You look pale, Juana.' Jaime had urged his grey horse
close to the carriage and was leaning down to speak to her. 'Did you not sleep
well last night?'

         
'Well enough.' She moistened dry lips. 'Where are we?' 'I
do not know - that fellow leads.' Jaime cast a darkling look towards the tall
figure astride the gigantic bay. "Sdeath, but he prides himself on his
office! And I do not like the way he stares at you when he thinks it is not
seen. Did you know that when I tried to come and speak with you, the night
before last, it was in his name and not the Duque's that I was denied?
"The
pellinajo will
 
hot
allow
it" -
 
and I was turned away!
What is he, that he can give commands so absolutely?'

         
'He was Duque Bartolome's nearest servant. Most people -'
Juana hesitated -

         
'most people obey him.' Briefly, she wondered what he could
do if she told him the truth from beginning to end - Bartolome's death, her own
dishonour, that strange, unreal celebration of marriage. Tristan was right, she
thought in a flash of clarity. Jaime would never understand why she had behaved
as she had, why she had lived on in her shame. In his eyes she should have
killed herself after Tristan had lain with her, and left behind the memory of
outraged purity.

         
Musing, she found herself studying Jamie with a clear
perception that she had not experienced before, and seeing how her image of his
present self had become entangled with her memories of him as her childhood
hero. Now his fulllipped mouth was set hard with resentment, a wholly adult
anger; the soft brown eyes were no longer boyish but dark with brooding. She
recognized with a shock the fierce intolerance that characterized her father
and his, and all the other proud landowners of Navarre.

         
'Jaime,' she spoke suddenly and urgently, 'I have to know —
could you forgive a misdeed that was committed under enforcement?'

         
He looked down quickly with the smile that had always made
her heart beat faster; now she felt nothing. 'You mean your agreeing to wed the
Duque? It is forgiven already. I told you, I knew that you could not disobey
your father in such a great matter.'

         
For a moment Juana stared numbly, then her temper flared. A
moment ago she had been ready to plead pardon for the sins he did not know she
had committed, but his forgiveness of a fault so unimportant that she herself
had almost forgotten it nearly betrayed her. He was still smiling down at her,
expecting a repentance that she would not feign, and when she did not answer
his dark brows drew together. He steered his mount closer to the carriage,
almost forcing the animal's flank against the panels, and was bending lower to
speak again when a crisp voice rapped above the rumble of wheels and the clop
of hooves, 'You are endangering your mount, senor.'

         
Jaime jerked upright, snatching at the reins, and his horse
veered away from the threatening wheels in an ungainly sidle. The old, boyish
sullenness was back in his face as he glared at Tristan. 'I have told you
before to keep your place, sirrah. If you —'

         
`So I do. I am charged with preserving your safety, senor.'
There was a gleam of mockery in the green eyes as they flickered to Juana, then
back to the young man's infuriated face.

         
'So you say, but you are leading us leagues out of our way!
After two days'

         
travel we should have crossed those hills yonder, but we
are journeying parallel to them — are you misleading us on purpose to eke out
your fee, you dog?'

         
'I take the safest way, senor,' Tristan returned patiently.
‗We have too few men to guard both the senorita and her treasure if we
should be attacked, so I am taking another route to avoid the risk of ambush.
It is less direct but less dangerous.' His eyes held Jaime's steadily, and it
was the younger man's gaze that wavered first.

         
'I bow to your fears, then — though I confess I do not
share them! I would welcome the chance to protect the senorita.'

         
Tristan doffed his broad-brimmed hat and bowed, a gesture
of respect so subtly exaggerated that Jaime did not notice the satire as he
spurred his grey horse forward. Juana found that she was letting out a sigh of
relief as the deadlock was broken, but in the same moment Tristan glanced
towards her. Beneath the blazing hair his scarred face was as calmly impassive
as ever but his eyes held the dangerous glint of a lion rousing to prey.

         
That day's rest, when the heat of the sun became too fierce
for humans or animals to go further, was taken by an abandoned well, its vanes
skeletal against the humming sky. There were one or two deserted buildings
crumbling nearby, left presumably when the well began to fail. Abandoned, the
untended mechanism had continued to pump up tainted water to lie in marshy
puddles round the mouth of the bore.

         
Juana longed to get out of the carriage and walk to stretch
her cramped legs, but Tristan advised her shortly that she would go ankle-deep
in mud if she set foot on the ground.

         
'I do not care! I shall stifle if I stay here.'

         
She heard the childishness of her own voice and knew that
it was because she felt suddenly shy of him — as if, because he was now her
husband, he had become a stranger, one she no longer dared to cross lightly.
She had begun to scramble down, but his hard grip prevented her descent; then,
under the surprised looks of the watching servants, he swept her up in his arms
and carried her towards one of the ruined houses. Too astonished to struggle,
she lay unresisting in his light, almost impersonal hold until he set her on
her feet in one of the empty doorways.

         
'There — one of the farmers hereabout must have thought
well enough of his wife to lay a brick floor in his kitchen. You may walk about
here without soiling your dainty shoes.'

         
'I thought you only cared for dragging me deeper in the
mire,' she retorted sharply, and felt a tingle of half-frightened satisfaction
as she saw the words strike home.