The Flesh and the Devil (82 page)

         
'I wonder you need confirmation.' She forced scorn to her
voice, driven to fight back with the old weapons against the weakness that
threatened to engulf her. She could no longer see Tristan, for her eyes were
tightly closed, but the probing questions stabbed like knives. 'Why should I
care for the fortunes of an encroaching devil of a
servant
?'

         
He held her for a moment longer before his grip eased, and
as she gave an involuntary gasp of relief he said evenly, 'I hope you will tell
me one day,' and lay back against the cart-side, breathing as though he had
been running.

         
Juana was hugging herself as she turned away, not daring to
look down at him; the show of weakness undermined her resolution more swiftly
than any assertion of strength, and she longed to take him in her arms and pour
out her final, humbling confession of love. But she was too raw from all that
she had undergone in the past two months, and her soul shrank at the thought of
his contempt; even the nagging of a known torment seemed preferable, in her new
cowardice, to the unexplored agonies of a new one. This, she knew she could bear,
whatever the cost, but the other –

         
Her mind shied away from the thought, and she scrambled
down from the cart and went in search of Placido. Tristan had counted more
accurately than she, living from hour to hour as she did, she had forgotten that
they were, so close to Cadiz. Unless, of course, they had been delayed or
diverted and no one had troubled to tell them. But now, she knew, she must
close with Placido for the price of their passage, in case he should claim more
than she could afford in the last hurried minutes before they parted.

         
She found him kicking dust over the remains of last night's
fire and whistling tunelessly under his breath. Once she would have demanded
his attention peremptorily, but now she had learned discretion and simply
waited while he went through the pretence of not seeing her and then of seeing
her. He gave a grunt that she took for an enquiry, and she moved closer to him.

         
'Do we come to Cadiz soon, senor?'

         
He grunted again, stamping the earth beneath his feet. 'Two
days.'

         
'I - we owe you for carrying us with you from Villenos.' He
hunched his shoulders. 'No. Luis Armendariz will pay me.'

         
Juana braced herself, her still slender body straight and
proud beneath her shapeless garments; despite her dishevelment, her dirty,
ragbound feet, she looked like a queen. 'Luis Armendariz is not a rich man, and
we have taken too much charity from him already,' she responded straightly.
Tell me what is owed, and do not trouble him.'

         
The mule-drover eyed her sidelong, spat ruminatively, and
answered,

         
'Nought.'

         
'But you-'

         
'You have got your own fare and tended to your own wants,
which is more than I ever expected. I thought you would come troubling my men,
delaying the mules, wanting help for you and your man. Well, you have not.'

         
He started to turn away as if that ended the matter, then
added sourly as she still lingered, 'The cart would have come with us in any
case-we load it on the return journey, and old Rafael has to drive it - so you
owe me nothing. Keep the money to buy yourself a pair of shoes.'

         
As he stamped away Juana gave a little laugh that sounded
like a sob. An unexpected kindness could sometimes be as startling as cruelty.
She was tempted to run after the black-avised man and tell him of her
gratitude, easing her sore heart with the relief of tears and thankful words,
but he would hate it; the resentful hunch of his shoulders told her so. Instead
she shrugged in the gesture she had caught unconsciously from Tristan, dashed
away her tears with the back of her hand and set off to where the train was
beginning to move forward, away from its camping-place.

         
As she walked she was wondering rather wildly whether any
gift she had ever received could compare with the price of a pair of shoes for
her poor feet, churlishly given by a sullen mule-drover. One, perhaps; the only
gift she still carried with her from the scores she had brought from the
Castillo Benaventes.

         
Late that afternoon, when the weariness was at its worst -
for the animals made too much noise for anyone but the hardened drovers to
sleep during siesta - Juana noticed one of the men passing down the line on
horseback, saying something first to one and then another. She was too far from
the ox-cart driven by Rafael to get back to it in time, and so ran instead to
the nearest with a quickening sense of apprehension. It did not need an oracle
to know that the increased pace of those who had heard the tidings presaged
trouble. Surely, she was thinking as she ran, they had not come so far only to
be overtaken by Don Bautista's men
now?

         
'What is it?'

         
The horseman had ridden up to the cart as she approached
it, and her shout made the rider glance down in surprise. 'Brigands,' he
replied tersely,

         
'following us through the hills. They've been on our track
for about three hours now, and there's no telling how many of the bastards
there are hidden in the rocks - Placido says push on as hard as we can and get
within sight of the city - that may frighten 'em off.'

         
The driver of the cart shook the reins, and the beasts
broke into a lumbering trot. The rider veered away to carry his message up the
line, and the driver threw a glance at the breathless Juana. 'Best come up,
lass; you'll never keep up this pace on foot!'

         
She hesitated, but it was true; even over easy ground,
which this was not, she would never manage to stay level with the rest for
long. With a final spurt, she ran level with the cart and hauled herself up on
it. For a moment she thought she would fall, but the driver put out a hairy
hand and dragged her up beside him with ungentle despatch. She slid, panting,
Into the cart and sat crouched on top of the bales and bundles that loaded it,
and as soon as she could speak she demanded,

         
'No brigand would dare to attack us, surely? What would
they steal? None of us are rich.'

         
'Anything and everything.' The driver glanced at her
eloquently. 'Food, clothing, the beasts themselves - and as for daring, some of
them would attack the King himself if he ventured far enough from the cities.
Our country is taxed to despair-another year and I shall be joining them in the
hills.'

         
Juana clung fast to the bouncing timbers of the cart and
tried to see the shallow slopes on either side of them through the veiling
dust. 'You mean you would become abrigand - rob people?'

         
'It's a better life than a beggar's, which is what the
King's
alcabala
 
makes of honest
men who try to pay it - but now we must try to outrun these.' The whole train
was moving faster now, and the driver laid his lash across the animals' backs.

         
'If there are enough of them they could take all we have,
cargo and all.'

         
He did not expect a reply, nor did she offer one but only
clung on with her teeth gritted against the familiar rising nausea as the cart
jolted over the uneven ground. With a sense of utter despair she thought of
Tristan's, wound -what would two or three hours of this bumping, tearing
progress do to the newly-healed tissues? Impetuously she rose to her feet just
as the cart slowed to swing round a fallen boulder, and heard the driver give a
startled cry as she jumped.

         
She landed, staggering, in the shale and called back, 'Go
on, I shall wait for Rafael's cart!'

         
He waved a hasty acknowledgement and a moment later the
cart had disappeared into the dust.

         
Juana pressed herself back against the boulder to wait for
the old ox-cart, her heart pounding. At last it came; near the tail of the line
as usual, with only one other vehicle behind it and a few yelping, half-wild
dogs following. The oxen were old and clearly disinclined to do more than lumber
along at their usual pace, and it was easy to swing up and aboard as it rolled
past her. Old Rafael ignored her presence, and she scrambled back into the body
of the cart, braced to combat its noisy swaying as the oxen negotiated the
boulder and broke, goaded by Rafael, into a faster pace that matched the rest.

         
She heard Tristan swear, quietly and sharply. He was
half-sitting, half-lying on the floor of the cart, his long arms outspread to
grasp the wooden uprights and lessen the jarring; it was the first time she had
come near him while the cart was in motion, and she was appalled to see what he
had been enduring in the course of each day. The strained, crucified attitude
looked practised, each muscle tensed as of custom to resist the constant stress
of the jolting movement. His face was ashen, and his teeth, bared like an
animal's against the pain, gleamed shockingly white through the red beard. She
slid to her knees beside him, trying to quell the useless ache in her heart.

         
'They are hurrying for fear of brigands.' She had to shout
to be heard above the noise of the wheels. 'They mean to keep up this pace to
Cadiz.'

         
She saw his whole frame stiffen as he took in her I
meaning, then he nodded curtly. 'I can bear it.'

         
'Perhaps you can, but I cannot.' She did not wait to see
his reaction to her shouted words, but straightened at once. The cart rocked
and righted itself as one of the wheels passed over a partially buried boulder,
and she waited until the way ahead seemed clear to shout to Rafael. He jumped,
then leaned back so that his ear was only inches away from her mouth.

         
'What was that?'

         
'I said you must get down and ride on the cart behind while
I drive this one!'