Only after shaking her head and wiping her soaked sleeve across her eyes – a foolish mistake on her part because the salt water made them sting even more – did she realize that he was still there, and that by all reason, and not least the paleness of his face, he wasn’t her brother.
Still Constanza had refused to leave the rocks. Eventually Cachorra had grabbed her mistress by the edge of the stupid mantilla that Constanza had put on aboard the San Juan, determined to die a bride, if only in her dull little head. Then she had dragged Constanza bodily off the rocks. Even without wearing a waterlogged bridal grown, Constanza was not exactly the lightest jewel in the Escorial court.
When, at last, they waded ashore, the boy on the bluffs had stared at them as if they were magical sea creatures. He had turned out to be a rebel, keeping watch on the movements of a troop of English horse. And he had had enough wits about him to hurry them away to a safe hiding place. For that alone, Cachorra knows she will be for ever in his debt – if only because he had stopped her stumbling away towards the adjacent cove and seeing for herself the horrors that have festered in her darkest thoughts ever since.
The door to the mean little byre opens, and Cachorra’s memories flow out into the grey light outside like the retreating surf of her childhood.
‘Are you rested, Mistresses?’ the lad-who-is-not-her-brother says in lilting English. ‘We are going to move you again. We cannot risk an English foraging party stumbling across this hiding place. The sooner we are on our way, the sooner we can deliver you into the safekeeping of the Earl of Tyrone.’
Cachorra nods to show her understanding. In the time since they waded ashore, she has had frequent cause to be glad that she, at least, had the curiosity to pay attention while her mistress received her English lessons from Father Persons. Indeed she had proved so adept at learning that Don Rodriquez arranged for Father Persons to give her additional tuition. ‘Extra studies in religious devotion,’ he had pretended to his daughter, lest she take offence at her maid being favoured. For his part, Father Persons had seen it as his mission to bring Christian learning to a benighted savage. Cachorra had had to beg Don Rodriquez to prevent the Jesuit from parading her before his companions at the seminary like a performing dog. But the effort is paying off now, because Constanza has so far resolutely refused to address anyone she considers of inferior position in anything but Spanish.
True to form, Constanza pipes an irritating whine:
‘When are we going to Antwerp? My husband-to-be will be pulling his hair out. We must go to Antwerp. Where is my father?’
At least, thinks Cachorra, she’s not complaining about the food again. She seems never to notice the look of shamed regret on the faces of those who bring them small bowls of oatmeal and hunks of bread. She seems wholly unaware that these people are sharing with them their own meagre provisions. Cachorra wonders how hospitable they would be if they were to learn the true reason why Don Rodriquez had come to Ireland. But that is something Cachorra is determined they must not learn. In the meantime, she can do nothing but wait for God – or her own cunning – to contrive a way of meeting the man her master has brought her and Constanza to this cold and dismal isle to meet.
And so once again, as she has done often since the wreck of the St Juan de Berrocal, Cachorra reverts to her role of servant – a role she has played since Don Rodriquez plucked her from the warm sand of a Hispaniola beach – and does her best to get the plump and resisting backside of Constanza Isabella Maria Calva de Sagrada off her bed and out into the rain.
19
To be alive but so unreachable – to Bianca it seems little more than just another form of death. To survive the ocean, only to drown in one’s own invisibility. She holds the lace mantilla against her face, trying to catch a hint of perfume. All she can smell is dried salt water.
It is late evening. They have eaten pigeon pie at the Jackdaw, gossiped casually with friends as though the meeting with Cecil and Spenser had never happened, and returned home across the frosty Paris Garden to find their house now haunted by the imagined ghost of a young Spanish woman.
‘Would you go back?’ Bianca asks Nicholas speculatively as they sit together beside the fire. ‘Would you try to find her?’
He thinks about this for a moment, elbow on knee, chin in hand. ‘Even if I wanted to, how could I? If she’s alive, the rebels probably have her. Even if they don’t, Ireland is a big place.’
Slowly Bianca shakes her head, surprised by the hurt she feels for a woman she has never met and who at present exists only in her imagination. ‘How frightened she must be,’ she says, ‘to have survived such a trial as a shipwreck… to fall amongst strangers in a land at war – to be so… so lost. I wonder if her husband-to-be has the slightest notion of what has befallen her?’
‘Well, one thing is certain: judging by the way Constanza’s presence has become known in at least some rebel circles, she hasn’t told them Don Rodriquez came to Ireland to offer the chance of peace to the English.’
‘What if she did?’
‘They might throw her back into sea.’
‘Nicholas! That’s uncharitable.’
‘The rebels need Spain’s help to prevail against us. Even more so, now that Essex is appointed Lord Lieutenant. It looks very much as though, in Ireland at least, Spenser will get what he wants.’
‘But you would try to find her – I know you too well.’
Her assumption brings a small, sad laugh to his lips. ‘It will never happen. Hundreds will have perished in this rebellion already. There will likely be thousands more when Essex takes his army to Ireland. To save one lost woman amidst so much confusion’ – a nod towards the window and the night beyond – ‘why, it would be easier to save one of those snowflakes falling out there.’
‘Robert Cecil could try, if he really wanted to,’ Bianca suggests.
‘How? He may have a few informers in the larger towns, places like Dublin, Waterford and Cork, but Ireland is a large and wild land. Much of it is now inaccessible to English forces. If Cecil attempts any kind of search, he’ll give away his hand to Essex; and Essex is not partial to olive branches, certainly not Spanish ones. Besides, no one’s going to risk sticking their heads into the wasps’ nest in search of one Spanish maid.’
‘Constanza could still stumble into English hands,’ Bianca says plaintively. ‘Then at least she might be ransomed.’
Nicholas dismisses the idea with a grunt. ‘It happens, yes. But more likely is that she will simply disappear, swallowed up in the chaos. If she lives, she’ll probably become someone’s maid, or wife, or possession. Remember the European captives I told you about when I went to the Barbary shore? A few will still be hoping against hope that, one day, someone will ransom them. But the majority will have given up all hope of ever seeing home again.’ He watches the snowflakes dashing themselves to destruction against the window, leaving only a glistening memory of their brief existence. ‘No. The thought of it is just a fancy. Even Robert Cecil must admit that the chance Don Rodriquez was offering has been lost – along with him and his daughter.’