“My mistress promised me,” she said in her lilting Caribbean accent, “. . . that if I got the key for her she would give me my freedom certificate so that I’d no longer be a slave and could go wherever I liked with him. But that if I didn’t, when we got back to Cuba she’d send me to the coffee plantation, where she herself would tie me to the capstan and have the overseer flog me with twenty-five lashes.”
Enough. For the moment, that was all he needed to know. Sagrario, horrified at this sinister threat, put her arm around the girl’s shoulders to comfort her. Still catching his breath after his run, Santos Huesos did not lower his gaze, acknowledging in silence the colossal mistake he had made.
No point insisting on what could not be altered, thought Larrea.
“Come on, lad,” he said. “Let’s go and look for her; you and I can talk some other time. Let’s be off without losing another second.”
When they were out in the street, the first thing Mauro did was to send his servant to Plaza del Cabildo Viejo to inform Sol, just in case it had occurred to her cousin’s wife to go there. She had said Sol was the cause of all the misfortunes in her marriage. And in his mind’s eye he saw once again the heart scratched into the wall in his house. The G for Gustavo. The S for Soledad.
Next, he hired a carriage to take him to visit guesthouses and inns, just in case Carola Gorostiza had taken it into her head to rent a room while she was deciding what to do next. He tried the places in Calle Corredera, the Calle de Doña Blanca, and Plaza del Arenal, but none of them had any news of her. As he rushed from one to another, he also went into the notary’s office on Calle Lancería, hoping to be able to put out a feeler that could reach where he could not go. “An old female friend who’s just arrived from Cuba has got lost, Don Senén,” he lied to the notary. “She’s rather disturbed, and is capable of saying the most complete nonsense. If by any chance you come across her, for heaven’s sake, keep her with you and let me know.”
He was about to leave when his gaze fell upon the nosy clerk with whom he had had that rather extraordinary meeting a few days earlier. The poor fellow was trying to pretend he was not there, head buried in a leather-bound tome as he furiously scribbled something to escape the threat from the Mexican miner. Mauro came to a halt in front of his desk and said something to him that the others could not hear but was clear enough: Come outside at once.
“Find a way to get out of your obligations here. You must scour the town for any person in authority to whom someone could present a formal or informal complaint. Or anyplace where someone could say too much to a person in power, if you follow me. Whether they are civilians, military officers, or churchmen.”
His stomach churning, the clerk simply muttered, “Whatever you say, sir.”
“Find out if a lady going by the name of Carola Gorostiza de Zayas has been in any of these places and whether she said anything about me. If the answer is no, put a guard on every door to watch if she appears later. I don’t care if they are a crippled beggar or an army officer, just so long as they keep their eyes open and if necessary stop an elegant lady with jet-black hair and an accent from abroad.”
“Yes, yes, yes . . .” stammered poor skinny Angulo, twisting his fingers nervously.
“If you find her, there’s three silver sovereigns in it for you. If on the other hand I hear that any word of this has got out, I’ll send my servant to pull out your wisdom teeth. And I wouldn’t trust the instrument he chooses for that kind of surgery.”
He turned his back on the clerk, and left. Santos Huesos was waiting for him on the street corner.
“Let’s go back to Calle de la Tornería; it’s unlikely, but perhaps she decided to go there.”
Angustias and Simón said neither of them had seen any lady of that description.
“Go out and look for her, will you? And if you find her, do your best to bring her here, even if you have to drag her. Then keep her shut up in the kitchen for me. If she puts up a fight, threaten her with a poker so that she doesn’t leave.”
Abandoning their carriage at the start of Calle Larga, they continued their search among lines of orange trees and the busy morning activity. Taking each side of the street, they entered shops, grocery stores, and cafés. Nothing. Larrea thought he glimpsed her in a gray skirt turning a corner, then in a black hat, and again in the silhouette of a woman in a short brown cloak leaving a shoe shop. But none of these was her. Where on earth could that blasted woman have gone?
He consulted his watch. Twenty minutes to eleven. Quick, back to Dr. Ysasi’s house. By now he must have returned from the inn with news of Alan Claydon.
To his bewilderment, there was no carriage visible outside the house. Neither the doctor’s aged phaeton, nor the English carriage that had brought Soledad’s stepson to Jerez: no one had arrived yet. He checked the time again: the morning was advancing with the implacable beat of a military charge. The doctor was missing and the Mexican woman had still not appeared.
“You asked in Plaza del Arenal whether anyone hired a carriage, didn’t you?”
“While you were looking in the taverns, patrón.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
“Of course. Where would that lunatic go on her own, without her slave or her baggage, and without settling the questions she thinks we still have to sort out?”
“Well I’m inclined to think yes, she did.”
“Yes, she did what?”
“That the lady has flown from Jerez. That she’s more scared of you than if she’d seen a ghost, as they say in these parts. To my mind, she’s done everything she can to put some distance between you, so that she can deal with things more safely from there.”
Santos could be right. Why not? Carola Gorostiza knew that in Jerez he was bound to find her sooner or later. She had nowhere to hide there, she didn’t know anyone linked to Cuba, and it was only a small town. She also knew that, as soon as he found her, he would shut her in again. And not for anything in the world was she willing to let that happen.
“Let’s go to the railway station.”
When they arrived, there was just one train in the station, and it was already empty.
Only one of the passengers who had got off the train was still on the platform. A young man surrounded by trunks. Tall, lithe, handsome, his hair tousled, and dressed with all the elegance of a great capital. Half hidden behind a sallow-skinned employee who only reached to his shoulders, he was listening intently to the man’s instructions.
“Santos, swear on your mother’s grave that I’m not also losing what little reason is left to me.”
“You’re still in your right mind as far as I can tell, Don Mauro. For now, at least.”
“Well, then, do you see what I see?”
“With these eyes that one day will be eaten by worms, patrón: at this very moment I am looking at the boy Nicolás.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Their embrace was heartfelt. Nicolás, the cause of so many sleepless nights over his childhood measles and scarlet fever, the creator of such problems and such laughter, as unpredictable as a revolver in the hands of a blind man, was standing there on the station platform in Jerez.
Questions came gushing out from both their mouths. Where? When? How? Then they hugged each other again. There was a knot in the pit of Mauro Larrea’s stomach. So you’re alive, you young devil. Safe and sound, and grown into a man. A feeling of infinite relief swept over his body.
“How did you find me, you scoundrel?”
“This planet is growing smaller all the time, Father. You wouldn’t believe how many discoveries there are. Daguerreotypes, the telegraph . . .”
Santos Huesos gave the boy of the family another huge hug, then set about organizing the two porters who started to load the young man’s copious baggage.
“Don’t give me all that nonsense, Nico. We can
talk later about how you got away from Lens and the awkward position you left me in with Rousset.”
“When I was in Paris,” replied Nicolás, neatly sidestepping his father’s implied threat, “one evening I was invited to a residence on Boulevard des Italiens. It was a reunion of Mexican patriots who had fled like chickens from Juárez’s regime and were now plotting, surrounded by Houbigant perfume and bottles of chilled champagne. Just think of that.”
“Concentrate, my boy.”
“There I met some of your old friends: Ferrán López del Olmo, the owner of that big printer’s on Calle de los Donceles, and Germán Carrillo, who was traveling in Europe with his two young children.”
Mauro frowned.
“And did they know where I was?”
“No, but they told me that our commercial attaché had informed them that if they ever ran into me, there was a letter waiting for me at the embassy.”
“A letter from Elias, I imagine.”
“That’s right.”
“And when you ran out of money, you went to collect it. Except that you were disappointed: there wasn’t much money along with it.”
By now they had left the platform and were heading for their carriage.
“Not only did he ask me to perform financial magic with what little he sent,” Nicolás confirmed, “but he also ordered me not to even think of returning to Mexico before you arrived. He told me you were settling some business in the mother country, and that if I wanted news of you I should contact someone called Fatou in Cádiz.”
“Contact him by letter, I suppose, is what Andrade meant. I don’t think he would ever imagine you coming here yourself.”
“But that’s what I preferred to do. Since I couldn’t pay for a decent passage, I embarked at Le Havre in a coal boat that called in at Cádiz and here I am.”
Mauro glanced at him out of the corner of his eye as they walked and talked. Conflicting feelings between heart and head overwhelmed him. On the one hand, he was immensely relieved to have alongside him someone who had been a fragile little tadpole but was now a self-confident twenty-year-old with cosmopolitan airs and an astonishing savoir faire. On the other, his son’s untimely arrival upset the precarious balance that had existed until that moment. And as things stood that morning, the worst of it was that he had not the faintest idea what to do with him.
Nico jolted him out of his thoughts with a hearty slap on his shoulder.
“We need to have a long talk, Monsieur Larrea.”
Despite the jocular tone, his father detected a note of unexpected seriousness.
“You have to tell me what on earth you are doing in this far corner of the Old World,” he went on. “And there are things about me that I’d like you to know as well.”
Of course they had to talk. But at the right time.
“Naturally, but, for now, accompany Santos and get settled. I’ll take another carriage and go sort out something I need to deal with. We’ll meet again as soon as I possibly can.”
He left his son protesting behind his back.
“To Calle Francos,” he told the driver of the first carriage he came across outside the station.
Nothing had changed in the scene outside Ysasi’s house. No vehicles apart from a rag-and-bone man’s cart and two water sellers’ mules. He looked at the time: twenty past twelve. Too late for the doctor not to have returned, with or without the Englishman. Something must have gone wrong, he muttered to himself.
He renewed his search for the Gorostiza woman, in case in the end she had not left Jerez. “Take a turn in that direction,” he instructed the driver. “Now down here; then turn this way, carry straight on, stop, wait, go on, stop again.” His imagination played tricks on him once more: he thought he saw her coming out of the San Miguel church, then going into San Marcos, then coming down the steps at La Colegiata. But no: not a sign of her, alive or dead.
The person he did see as he drove past the stall on Calle de la Pescadería was the notary clerk. A fine drizzle was falling that soaked everyone, but Angulo was waiting at the corner of Plaza del Arenal where he thought the Mexican miner might eventually appear. A shake of his head was enough for Mauro to understand without having to descend from his carriage. Nothing for now. The gossipy clerk’s searches had yielded nothing as yet. “Drive on,” Mauro told the coachman.
His next destination was Plaza del Cabildo Viejo. To his surprise, he found the studded doorway wide-open. He leapt from the carriage before the horse had even come to a standstill. What the devil is going on? he wondered.
Palmer came out to meet him with his undertaker’s air. Before he could say anything in his tortuous Spanish, Dr. Ysasi came rushing up behind him. He appeared utterly disconsolate.
“I’ve just arrived and now I’m off again. It was all in vain. Edward’s son obviously changed his mind. He left the inn before daybreak, heading south, according to the owner.”
Mauro preferred to stifle the curses that rose to his lips.
“I rode several leagues without catching up with him,” the doctor continued. “All I can tell is that for some reason he changed his plans and decided not to come back to Jerez. Not for the moment, at least.”
“It seems that misfortune really never does come alone.”
“Sol has just told me: Gustavo’s wife has flown the coop. I’m going there now.”
Mauro wanted to give him the details, but the doctor interrupted him.
“Go into the study at once.”
Rather than ask why, Mauro knitted his brow. The explanation was not long in coming.
“Your potential buyers have arrived.”
“The ones Zarco mentioned?”
“We ran into them in the entrance, and to judge from their expressions they’re not exactly pleased to be here. But you must have offered Zarco a fat slice for being your intermediary, because he’s capable of going without bacon for a month rather than allowing his clients to go back to Madrid without seeing you. And our beloved Soledad has no intention of letting them leave until she knows you’re here.”
The stepson, disappeared. The Mexican woman, flown the coop. Nicolás, dropped from heaven in the middle of the railway station. And now his possible saviors—the only ones who might be able to help him return to Mexico—had been dragged in at the worst possible moment. My God, sometimes life is such a treacherous bitch.
“Each of us has to cover a flank,” said Ysasi. And despite his lack of religious beliefs, he added: “And may God help us.”
Three men were waiting for Mauro in the same reception room where a few days earlier he had pretended to be the deceased Little Runt. Except that on this occasion they were not foreigners but Spaniards. One, the agent from Jerez; the other two were from Madrid. Or at least that was where they had come from and where they were in a hurry to return: two obviously distinguished gentlemen who rose to greet him with the required courtesy. The lord and his minion, it seemed to Mauro: one who put up the money and sought advice; the other who offered him that advice and made suggestions. Zarco had no need to get up, because he was already standing, his face red and his jowls flopping down over his shirt front.
In the middle of the three men stood Soledad. Calm, mistress of the scene, radiant in an ice-gray taffeta dress. Like a fairground magician, she had somehow managed to make all signs of fatigue and tension disappear from her face. Unlike during her meeting with the Englishmen, her look was no longer that of a cornered beast. Now she showed only a steely determination. Heaven only knew what she was telling them.
“Here you are at last, Señor Larrea. Fortunately you have arrived at the perfect moment, just when I have finished explaining to Señor Perales and Señor Galiano the characteristics of the properties we have on offer.”
She spoke firmly, assuredly, almost professionally. The cause of and accomplice in his most reckless mistakes, the woman wh
o by merely coming close sent uncontrollable primal waves through his body; the loyal wife, protector, and guide of a man who was not him—this woman had given way to a new Soledad Montalvo that Mauro Larrea as yet did not know. The one who bought, sold, negotiated, and competed as an equal in a male world of finance and transactions. This exclusively masculine world into which she had been thrown willy-nilly and in which, driven by a naked instinct for survival, she had learned to navigate with all the agility of a trapeze artist who is aware that sometimes one has to work without a safety net.
As if she had any real wish to help these strangers lay their hands on what she had always thought would be hers! thought Mauro as he exchanged formal greetings without any real enthusiasm. “Charmed, I’m sure. Welcome.”
“To fill you in, Señor Larrea, I have just told these gentlemen about the magnificent acres we possess in the Macharnudo area for the cultivation of vines. I have also detailed for them the various features of the mansion that would be part and parcel of any sale. And now it is time for us to be on our way.”
“Where to?” he asked with a barely perceptible gesture that she immediately understood.
“We are going to show them the winery, the origin until a few years ago of our famous soleras that were so appreciated in international commerce. Be so kind as to follow us, would you, gentlemen?”
While Zarco was exchanging a few words with the potential buyers on their way to the door, Mauro seized her by the elbow and forced her to come to a halt for a moment. As he leaned down to whisper in her ear, he was yet again assailed by her perfume and the beguiling warmth of her skin.
“Gustavo’s wife has still not appeared,” he muttered between clenched teeth.
“All the more reason, then,” she murmured, scarcely moving her lips.
“Reason for what?”
“For you to take these two imbeciles for all they’re worth, so that you and I can get out of here before everything comes crashing down.”