The Flesh and the Devil (69 page)

         
'Leave him,' Francisco rapped, half strangled with
breathlessness and selfdisgust. 'See if he is dead.'

         
One of the others knelt. 'A wound in the leg, a bad one,'
he said after a moment. 'A pity you did not aim higher, Agostin.'

         
'And hit him in the back? Yes, that was of course a pity.'
Francisco's voice was unusually bitter. 'Now we must think how to dispose of
him before anyone comes -that shot will have roused half the town. Is he
conscious?' ! He ran a weary hand through his dishevelled hair and bent to pick
up his hat.

         
'He was, but not now. He will give no more trouble.' One of
those who had been hit by Agostin's flying body stirred Tristan's limp left arm
with his toe. 'Shall we finish him here, then hide the body? It would be less
trouble.'

         
'Yes-'

'NO!'

         
The de Fronteneras' voices sounded in unison, and after a
brief pause Francisco said, 'We are not cut-throats - let us keep what little
honour we can. If he dies, let it be -' he grimaced-'from the wound he got in
fight.'

         
Agostin scrambled up, his face chalk-white, his forehead
already distorted by a massive bump that dragged one eyebrow down over his eye.
His voice was sharp as he challenged his elder brother.

         
'But you said that he did not deserve honourable
consideration. You said that a foreign cur should be treated as the dog he is!'

         
'That was before I fought with him.'

         
Thwarted, Agostin turned to his companions; he had known
that note in Francisco's voice from boyhood and disliked its consequences. 'In
that case we cannot leave him here, or someone may find him and succour him -
it is no part of
my
 
plans that he
should live. Take him up -' his confidence grew as Francisco did not speak -
'and bestow him somewhere fitting-a dunghill, perhaps, where he will die as he
was born. Does that content your squeamish honour, brother?'

         
Francisco opened his mouth to protest, then stiffened.
'Here comes the watch. Do as you will. I shall go and wait for Elena, and tell
her what has chanced when she comes home. Perhaps I shall advise Inigo to whip
her, I do not I know. And, Agostin-' his eyes were hard as he met those of his
younger brother-'if I should learn tomorrow that a corpse has been found with
more than one wound upon it, you shall answer to me. Do you understand?'

         
Agostin nodded sullenly, and Francisco slipped rapidly
away. The others were pulling Tristan's body upright, dragging the limp arms
round their necks; the red head hung forward, and the toes of the soft leather
boots scraped the ground. Agostin watched his brother out of sight and then
turned, smiling, to assure a little group of suspicious townfolk that they too
had heard a shot, from a couple of streets away - they would have investigated
but were too concerned to take their poor friend home; he had just become a
father, and had celebrated too well. A clink of coins accompanied the words,
and by the time the watch had departed, at least partly pacified, Francisco was
well out of earshot.

         
Agostin was silent until the last footsteps had faded into
silence, and then he drew a deep breath. 'Now for
our poor friend
'
 
He cuffed the lolling head viciously. 'I did
not think he would put us all to such labour, gentlemen, but if you will help,
I can end this business finally, in spite of my brother's conscience.'

         
'You will kill him? But Francisco said -'

         
'Not kill him, Juan, only help him to die more surely and
speedily. I said throw him on a dunghill, and I meant it; no one will find him
in such a place, and with luck he will drown or suffocate with the sewage and
stink before he bleeds to death,'

         
Juana woke with a jerk that hurt her neck. She had been
dozing from sheer exhaustion, worn out with struggling against the ropes that
held her, and the realization that she had done so made her heart race with
panic. She might have slept for hours or minutes, she did not know, and this
fresh ignorance frightened her. She looked round her more carefully, trying to
breathe deeply, while her pulses subsided.

         
The light in the room had not altered; it was still night,
a bluish luminosity filtering through one high window, throwing into deeper
relief the shadowy shapes that crowded the walls. All about her was that
uncanny stillness that had persisted since Martinetti had tied her here and
left her alone. She could not have been asleep for longer than a few minutes.

         
There was no way of knowing where she was, except that the
house could not be far from Dona Jeronima's; the journey had been too brief for
calculation, and before she could overcome her first feelings of incredulity
and fright she had been dumped in this room and the blinding folds of cloak
that were over her head had been removed. Riccardo Martinetti was strong, for
all his deceptive slightness; her struggles had been unavailing against his
muscular wiriness, and he had tied and gagged her before leaving her alone.
Humiliation at her own helplessness brought angry tears to her eyes.

         
She knew that she ought to use her wits, to try to work out
why she should have been brought here, but she felt too dazed and sick with
unhappiness to reason out her plight. Her thoughts kept darting into futile,
nightmarish speculation until she could no longer distinguish likelihood from
fantasy; only the loss of Felipe Tristan had any reality, like the nagging of a
wound through a fever-dream. Leaning her aching head on the wall behind her,
she struggled to ignore the choking gag and the ropes that cut into her through
her silken sleeves while she marshalled her rambling, painful thoughts. What
was Riccardo Martinetti doing in Villenos? Why should he kidnap her? And had he
come here in search of her, or by chance? Surely the only importance she had
had for him was as the bride of the Duquede Valenzuela, and Bartolome was
dead....

         
A sound from outside the door made her stiffen and turn her
head. There was the rattle of a key, and then a thin line of light appeared
round the edge of the door and slowly broadened; she remembered, with a sick
little jolt of the heart, how the wall of the little chamber in the Castillo
had gaped open upon darkness. But it was Martinetti who entered, his grey eyes
bent studiously to the candelabrum he carried, and as he set it down the
flickering flames illuminated Juana's prison.

         
She almost laughed hysterically. Her mind had painted some
noxious dungeon from the featureless pattern of blacks and blues, but what she
saw was almost ridiculously ordinary. She was in a square salon, ornately
decorated and slightly too full of furniture; what had seemed sinister patches
of shadow on the walls were pictures, and the chair on which she sat, for all
its discomfort, was no more than an ordinary chair of polished walnut. The
light winked on the gold and silver braid on the skirts of her gown, and she
thought inconsequently that it seemed like years since she had put it on.

         
Martinetti turned, still carefully avoiding her eyes, and
went back towards the door. Juana tried to protest, straining against the
ropes, but he did not respond, only swung the door wide and went out. For a
moment she sat Still, her dilated eyes narrowing painfully as she stared into
the lighted room beyond, and then widening in disbelief as she understood what
she was seeing.

         
It was a wheeled chair, high-backed and piled with shawls,
and from it the white, twisted face of Eugenio de Castaneda grinned at her. The
malice in his eyes was so intense that she insensibly recoiled.

         
'What a pleasure to see you . . . again, my dear niece.'
One wasted hand signalled to Martinetti, and the chair was pushed forward into
the room. 'Shut the door and lock it.'

         
The Italian obeyed and without prompting put the key in de
Castaneda's hand. The fingers closed greedily round the wards, and the twisted
figure seemed to relax slightly.

         
'We meet on . . . equal terms, mmn?' The key gestured from
his chair to hers. 'I do regret the gag. I have always . . delighted in your
ready tongue . . . but although Don Bautista is still... not back, his wife
might be disturbed.. if you should call for help.'

         
Fascinated, Juana watched the effort it cost him to speak, how
the labouring chest and newly-ponderous tongue struggled to shape the dragging
sentences. She thought with a stab of compassion of de Castaneda's once busy,
bustling figure, bis quick and acid tongue, and knew now intolerably the burden
of his stricken flesh must irk his impatient spirit. Then she remembered him as
she had last seen him on the patio, a mute, helpless lump that she had thought
would be speechless and impotent for the rest of his life; when Tristan had
told her the news of his recovery, she had not dreamed of this. She thought
sharply,
Felipe -
 
and closed her
eyes in pain.

         
'My recovery does not seem...to delight you. Strange... my
wife was the same.' De Castarieda's voice jerked her eyes open again, its
ghostly relish making her nerves tingle. 'When she knew that I would . . .
recover, she . . . took poison. To break my claim to ... the stewardship. She
forgot that all the rest are . . . dead, and there is no one else now... to
take it.' Triumph pulsed in the slurred voice.

         
'And it will be months before . . . Gaspar can come from
Portugal. Too many months.' He smiled at her.

         
Juana saw the way his gaze travelled over her, slow and
gloating, and felt a sudden formless dread. It was the look she remembered from
the time when all his plans were on the brink of success, before Bartolome was
found to be missing. Men could not come back from the dead as well as from the
gates of death, she told herself firmly. She had seen him dead with her own
eyes. . .

         
'Fortune favours me now. I had hope for no more than . . .
a little revenge in catching you. You and the good Felipe. He killed the boy,
mmn? For you. But I wanted him alive, Felipe knew that... to keep control of
the castillo. And the fortune. If the direct descent was broken, the . . . King
could take back the land ... he only gave it to Esteban for . . . fathering his
son. So there had to be an heir before ... the idiot could die. You both robbed
me of my livelihood . , . but now not irrev-irrevocably.' He was grinning
horribly now, his. eyes bright pinpoints of venom in his distorted face. 'I am
glad to have ... a reason to let you live.'