CHAPTER SEVEN

THE vagaries of the British on (conducted) tour have been described elsewhere. ‘Gay ones, jolly ones, vulgar ones; refined ones looking down upon the jolly ones and hoping they wouldn’t shame them by whipping out funny hats.… Easy-going ones. Complaining ones. Experienced ones. Robust ones who drank Water out of taps and confounded the experienced ones by not going down with bouts of dysentery, anxious ones who refused all shell-fish, raw fruit and unbottled beverages and went down with dysentery before they had even started; neurotic ones, turning pale together at the sight of heaped dishes of death-dealing green figs and peaches, hearty ones calling loudly for lo nachurelle and assuring one another that a smattering of French would take one all over the world.… Pretty ones, plain ones, downright repellent ones.…’

The Major’s grouppa, aboard the Bellomare’s privately hired vaporetto, formed a fairly representative collection. They stood about in chatty little groups, for all the world, cried Mr Cecil, like the Noyades, bound together in bundles and spinning down the Loire to Nantes: only they were chugging, with much steaming and hooting, across the five-mile wide stretch from San Juan to the satellite island of Tenebros. There was a ponderous lady novelist in search of a setting for yet another volume of childhood dark doings and subsequent in-growing remorse: all written in language so obscure as to force even the most literate to read only between the lines. There were the inevitable half dozen widows whose husbands had overworked themselves to a premature death, apparently for no reason than to enable their relicts to console their loss with expensive trips abroad. There was the gentleman who, having cheerfully invested two hundred pounds in this outing of pleasure, now made himself miserable night and day, lest he be cheated out of a penny’s worth (he had a curious walk, the feet straddled widely apart and was known to the group as Fuddyduddy); and there were two ladies suffering from stomach trouble who always did suffer from stomach trouble when they went abroad but who went abroad religiously, year after year, and proudly boasted the capitals they had been sick in; and a spinster aunt with her handsome niece whose chances of marriage she was, from some obscure reasons of jealousy, though devoted to the niece, resolutely destroying: Grim and Gruff they were named—Mr Cecil had met them on a previous Odyssey Tour. And there were the Bilsons.

Mr and Mrs Bilson were known as the Back-Homes. He was a builder, back home in California, and they were on their first trip to the beautiful continent of Europe; but displeased to find so little poverty there, for it was well known that Europe was supported entirely by U.S. dollars and they could not approve the general air of well-being and bonhomie. The Major, ever anxious to oblige, was always on the lookout for a barefoot child for them but those they saw looked depressingly as if they went without shoes because they didn’t like shoes. Mrs Bilson was pledged to give a lecture to her Women’s Club back home and exercised exclusively with the collection of data for this assignment; Mr Bilson had not yet recovered from the lack of initiative shown by the Italians in the matter of the leaning tower of Pisa. They were happy, however, in the knowledge that everything they saw in the way of Art was either faked or frankly a copy, the real stuff being all back home in the U.S., centred largely upon the Forest Lawns Cemetery, California. They were tactful and courteous about it; but absolutely firm.

The hotel had put up a picnic lunch for its party and all was madly gay. Mr. Cecil, dressed to the nines in Juanese costume (modified to suit in the workrooms of Christophe et Cie.) was the very spirit of fiesta, darting from one group to another, retailing his joke about the eight-nooser, trying out his Restorationese before its London debut. The Major also was in splendid form, surrounded by his grouppa, the admiration of the six widows in his brass-buttoned blazer and a curious little round hat made of stitched white linen. He had intended locking himself into the ship’s excusado and hurriedly mugging up bits about Tenebrossa; but this proving impracticable, for the single apartment was available to ladies and gentlemen alike and not very agreeable to either, had contented himself with a couple of stiff Juanellos and a Quiet Talk with Hat who was apt to interrupt without ceremony. Thus fortified, he gathered his party about him—others might listen-in if they wished to, the Major was entirely complacent—and, balancing himself on a bollard above the heads of the crowd, began a little speech. “H’rm, h’rm. Few-words-’bout-today’s-expedition. Island of Tenebrossa, small island, five miles off San Juan el Pirata. Old custom, two hundred years old—go there, hang a lot of convicts: dare say you’ve read it all up in your guide-books? And the custom goes on to this day. They don’t really hang the fellers now,” added the Major reassuringly, respectful of the delicate nerves of the memsahibs. “Got a sort of harness now, worn round their middles, dangle up there quite comfy, just pretending. Jump about a bit, though, as though they were hanging. Disagreeable business, hanging.…”

“Back home in the States …”

“… nearly as disagreeable as electrocution, I wouldn’t be surprised,” said the Major, neatly. But it had thrown him. “Er—where was I?”

“You were going to explain about the hoods,” suggested Miss Cockrill in a voice of silk.

“Ah, yes, hoods. These chaps brought over here by a special vaporetto—Vaporetto of Death, it’s called: say nine of ’em. All in hoods and sort of nightgowns; you know, à la Kloo Klux Clan. Nobody knowing who was who. Thing is, one of ’em was going to get off, only no one knew which—feller didn’t know, himself. Forced to do a dance, just sort of shuffling around, you know: and shuffling’s the word, because that’s just what they were doing, shuffling themselves like a pack of cards and the other fellers, the hangmen fellers, just strung up the next that came along and the next.… Bets going on like billy-ho, down in the arena below the hanging rock—who’ll get away with it? and relatives hopping like sandfleas, of course, as each one went up, wondering, Is that our Willie? Finally—say nine fellers, like I said: eight hanging there, one left. Poor chap wearing the hood and all that, still didn’t know what was happening: suddenly got hold of, shoved into a coffin, coffin fastened down, stood on end under the gallows—opened, hood pulled off, feller ‘rose from the dead.’ General sentiment of Don’t do it again, and he got off scot free. If,” said the Major with a rare moment of sentience, “you can call it scot free.”

A boy came round, piping mellifluously, with a tray of wares: limonado, Juanello, carafes of the filthy red wine made on the island which, to the amazement of the native, the touristi were apparently willing to pay for and drink; and snacks—biscotti and toasti, and pizzi of fresh-baked dough strewn with anchovy and herbs and tomato, the hot cheese bubbling over all. There was a sharp argument with Fuddy-duddy who thought the hotel should be paying out for this refreshment, ending as usual in the Major diving a hand into his own tight pockets with mutterings about anything-for-peace.… Fuddyduddy, having won his point and made everyone unhappy and embarrassed, then said he didn’t want any, anyway, it was the principle. Mr Bilson said that back home they would just drop into a drug-store and everything there would be covered in cellophane. Mrs Bilson made a note in her large black book, ‘Isl. Tennerbrozzer, people hung in old days, sandwiches on boat, flies.’ The woman novelist looked searchingly into the limpid eyes of the little boy carrying the tray. Miss Cockrill said that now perhaps Major Bull could go on?

“But that’s all,” said Major Bull.

“What about the dances?”

“Oh, well, yes, the dances.” He gave her a look of reproach. “Yes. Well. Lot of dancing on the island. Everyone dead keen.”

“I was reading last night,” said Miss Cockrill in a loud cool, determined voice, “that nowadays dances commemorate all these old customs the Major has described to us. The young people dress up and execute them; like our Morris dancing, for example—er—back home. There is a special dance from the landing-place to the rock, the ‘Dance to the Gallows’…”

“Come Haste to the Hanging,” suggested Mr Cecil.

Miss Cockrill bent on him a humorously appreciative eye. “Exactly. And then, of course, there’s the Shuffling Dance as the Major has called it.” She paused, looking at their bear-leader as though, so far prompted, he surely might take up the cue.

Major Bull did not fail her. “By Jove, yes. And the ‘Hanging Dance.’ Fellers jigging about in the air, you know, held up by these belts like I told you.…”

“Meanwhile, individual groups are doing dances on their own: supposed to be relatives of the different men.”

“Yes, by Jove, and then feller gets up out of the coffin and he does a dance. Relief you know. And then they all dance, everyone joins in, pleased as punch.” Pleased as punch himself after this dispensation of cultural knowledge, the Major climbed down from his bollard, adjusted the round linen cap and stumped off in pursuit of the boy with the drinks. The lady novelist had him pinned against a stanchion and was putting him through a third degree examination as to his feelings for his father. As the small boy, being an orphan, kept reiterating only ‘Innocento!’ which she took to mean that they had been innocent (most disappointing!), they were not getting on very fast. The Major bought a drink for himself and offered one to Gruff who happened to be standing by; but she refused it brusquely—she could just about manage to buy her own drinks, she said, and was warmly applauded by Aunt Grim, who overheard all. “Jolly good! Old brute, I suppose he’s After You,” said Grim. All men were beasts.

Tenebrossa is so called because of the darkness which envelopes, or long ago enveloped, the victims of the gallows; for the hoods were as blindfolding to the wearers as impenetrable to spectators. The island was doubtless chosen originally as being perfect for the purpose of a spectacle. Composed largely of rock, its western side is lightly wooded with oleander and wild olive, but to the south-east it is bare as the mountains of the moon, hollowed out into a natural amphitheatre with only one great, flat rock jutting out into the arena. On this the old gallows still gauntly stand: a line of stout upright posts, once vividly decorated; with eight metal pulleys of antique design through which a rope could be jerked by hand, leaving the victim to strangle slowly, dancing as he died. The whole, on fiesta day, is gaily beflagged and beflowered as in days of yore, a carpet of petals, intricately patterned, leads from the landing stage to El Exaltida’s private pavilion; every hummock is claimed as a picnic table, bright cloths are spread and soon piled high with colour—brown bread, red wine, pimientos scarlet and green, pale yellow folded omelettes, purple grapes. The women have abandoned the black cloaks and veils of the morning and both sexes in their fiesta costume are bright as humming birds: and indeed, the chatter and colour would outmatch the most crowded of tropical aviaries.

There is no such thing on the Domenica di Boia, as reserving a picnic pitch; but the Diretore of the hotel, by dint of sending a dozen of the heavier-built members of his staff, had held off all invaders of a site in the arena chosen by himself, and by one o’clock the party had taken possession; the grouppa (with Miss Cockrill, Winsome and Mr Cecil associate members) keeping themselves to themselves, the rest of the hotel guests as rigorously excluding them. At two o’clock, El Exaltida arrived.

The grand ducal barge drew up at the landing stage, resplendent in white and gold, with a gay, striped awning, and at once, as though a great flock of coloured birds arose from the ground, everybody stood up. After the sermon that morning, there was a great craning of necks to see if La Bellissima had come: and she was there, walking remote and cool, a little behind her husband with a grave face and downcast eyes. The Grand Duke was in fiesta dress: black knee-breeches, tremendously embroidered down the outside of the thigh, silk stockings, buckled shoes, and the great black cloak, the right corner taken up and thrown across the chest and over the left shoulder. La Bellissima too wore the national dress, adapted like Mr Cecil’s in sophisticate circles: narrow, pale green satin embroidered all over with little white flowers, a veil of embroidered net hanging over her head and falling in two straight panels in front, to the hem of her dress. Behind them crept El Exaltida’s secretary, a little grey jackal of a man, nicknamed by the Grand Duke ‘Tabaqui’ and so called throughout the island, though nobody else there had ever read any Kipling. The little French friends wriggled and giggled their way behind them, in anything but Juanese garb. In the rear of the procession came the court dignitaries, and El Patriarca in his white serge soutane, blessing everyone, right, left and centre with a fine nonchalance as he passed; and El Obispo (but more moderately), doing the same. Of El Arcivescovo, there was no sign.

El Gerente was in splendid form that afternoon, dashing hither and thither in the official gym. shoes, cloak flying, sabre rattling, barking out orders to the confusion of all. Tomaso di Goya had come ashore with him but made no attempt to follow in his erratic wake, strolling about instead, looking Byronic, surrounded by a group of anarchistic young men, all talking eagerly but with a determined air of secrecy. He wore fiesta dress, brightly embroidered, but his pale face with the long nose and sharp black eyes was sombre and intent. When he saw Miss Cockrill and Winsome, however, he allowed it to brighten and, dismissing his followers, came towards them, bowing and hand-kissing with a wealth of graceful flourishes. Miss Cockrill asked after the snuffboxes.

Winsome had not kept a tentative appointment she had made with Tomaso di Goya on the previous evening. Awaking ill at ease in body and mind, she had in the cold light of morning viewed with something approaching horror the gay extravagances of the night before; and an all too rewarding search through Vol. I., for an undertaking, in Juanita’s authentic, thin, sloping, purple hand, to send up a cloud of rosy incense on the forthcoming Fiesta di San Juan—which is also the national Day of Roses—did absolutely nothing to allay her anxiety. She sent round to the Joyeria a casual note: she had greatly enjoyed all their fun and nonsense (tremendously underlined), but perhaps a joke could go too far, and now they really mustn’t be naughty any more! Meanwhile, her cousin insisted (most tiresomely!) upon some expedition, so she wouldn’t be free, after all, to see the Cathedral treasures he had kindly offered to show her.… In pursuance of this resolution she had forced Cousin Hat to a day of mortification in the San Juan Museum, poring with passionate intensity over a vast number of objects of no virtue whatsoever except that they occupied her time; and on the evening ramble through the town, kept to Major Bull’s side with so firm a resolution as to make that great lover for the first time wonder whether, by any chance … But no, no. One or two of the older young things at the Heronsford tennis club made sheeps’ eyes at him still, it was true; and several of the unattached ladies in his party had been flatteringly kind. But … An old buffer like him, grown white (not to mention red) in the service of his country, overseas.… It was impossible. And besides there was Hat.

Miss Cockrill, unaware of the inner uncertainties of her companions, meanwhile pursued idly the matter of the snuff-boxes. “Alas, Senora—who shall buy!” Unloaded now, and unpacked, they were stacked away, thousands of tiny crystal boxes crowding out all the storage place in his little shop; and no interest had been shown in the one in the window, none at all, though it had been priced at a figure hardly covering its cost, let alone the cost of the thousands that must remain unsold: no interest even from the touristi, even though for once they would really have been getting a bargain, even though the legend SMUGLED had been doubled in size, even though the inscription ‘Mad in San Juan’ had been copied out in five different languages on pieces of cardboard, and dotted all about. The end of the season and his profits all gone in this one undertaking.… “Alas, Senora—no buone, my poor snuff-boxes.” He produced one, however, from his pocket, done up in a twist of tissue paper. “But I have brought one—for the Senorita.” He handed it to Winsome looking into her face with limpid eyes.

“For me?” She stammered and lost colour. “Why for me?”

Tomaso had spent half the night poring over tiny sketches, no sooner perfected and memorised than destroyed; and now his plans were advanced and he had need of a fellow conspiritor again; had need also of one so far implicated that she would keep ever silent, not for his sake but for her own. He looked back at her blandly. “A gift, Senorita. For the Senorita del Opale—to keep her opal in.”

“To keep my … But I couldn’t.…” She explained, stammering wretchedly: “Senor di Goya has fallen in love with my ring.”

“And would like to see it happily housed—when it has not the greater happiness to be on the Senorita’s finger.” He bowed and flourished and, tearing the last wrapping from the box, pressed it warmly into her helpless hand. “Accept it, Senorita. It is alas! of no value to me—except to give to the Senorita for her opal.” And by the way, he added, and this time looked directly into her face and permitted himself an infinitesimal wink, she would not forget that she had expressed a desire to see the thurible—the Collini thurible—before it was put away after its fiesta appearance this morning. He had arranged with the Archbishop, all was in readiness. Tomorrow? At eleven, perhaps? He would see to it, make a definite appointment: would see her later this evening and confirm it.… No trouble at all, a pleasure, a happiness: only, having put the Arcivescovo to some little exertion on her behalf, he must beg that the Senorita would keep the appointment, she would not let him down. …? Smiling and flourishing, he kissed hands all round, and with a last naughty glance from the sloe-black, gipsy eyes, drifted off again. “These people will go to any lengths,” said Cousin Hat, lost in wonder, gazing after him, “to get one to go into their shops and buy.”

Meanwhile, mention of the censer had raised in the Major a thirst to dispense further knowledge. “H’rm, h’rm. If-I-could-have-y’r-attentions-one-moment.” He leapt agilely on to a small rock hummock that formed the centre of the picnicking group and stood there looking like a mountain goat crowned with the white linen hat. “Ought to have told you. ’Bout that thurrible. Gold, you know. Made by feller called Bellini.”

“Cellini,” said Miss Cockrill.

Major Bull took a dekko at the book of the words and by Jove, there was a Bellini. “Yes, we all know that, Dick, but the thurible was made by Cellini. And you don’t pronounce it thurrible.”

“To say thurrible,” said Mr Cecil, “is turrible.” Of course to say thorrible, he added thoughtfully, would be even more horrible.…

Miss Cockrill caught the infection. “And to say thorible——”

“Deplorable!”

“In fact, to be endurable——”

“You have to say thurible.”

The Major privately considered that if anything were deplorable it was that before embarking on the subject, he had not taken the precaution of another Quiet Talk with Hat. “Yes. H’rm. Very amusin’. Thing is, this thing was made by this feller Cellini, Bellini, whoever it was, for old Jewan himself.”

“My dear Dick!”

“It being well known,” said the Major hastily and for once correctly, “that old Jewan erected the cathedral to his own honour, years before he died.”

“But not two hundred years before. Cellini.…”

“All right, Hat. Well, there you are,” said the Major, puffing and blowing, “ ’s all I wanted to tell you. Interestin’ bit of history, what?” He climbed down from his eminence and was immediately set upon by the Back-Homes with the claims of the Forest Lawns cemetery to all thuribles made by Cellini and by Bellini too; and released only by the demands of the two suffering ladies to be shown the way without delay to the excusados. Mr Cecil had christened them D. and V.

After the collatione, the siesta; even in September, the afternoon sun is fierce and nothing really begins before five o’clock. Picnic baskets ringed the family pitches in the arena, as the people made for the woody grove; soon everyone was asleep, sprawled unashamedly in the shade of oleander and olive, the children lying like litters of puppies, their heads pillowed comfortably on their mothers’ humped, rounded thighs. Up in the pavilion, a little miracle in itself of polished white marble, the only man-made thing (except for the painted gallows) on the island, El Exaltida lay, magnificent in sleep as in waking, the splendid head with its curling black hair on a pillow of embroidered silk, the great limbs relaxed on a cool marble couch covered with cloth of gold; a girl playing a zither very softly on the floor at his feet. Outside, Tabaqui, the grey secretary, was in a fever of activity, organising the pink champagne, sugared almonds, sweet chestnuts, green figs and innumerable gelati, any or none of which the Grand Duke might demand upon waking—nothing elaborate, mind, for the whole thing was a picnic and simplicity the keynote. “Suppose he asks for the dogs? Has anyone brought the dogs?” Nobody had brought the dogs but mercifully a small boy was spotted, curled up in sleep with a creature of the same breed as El Exaltida’s, and if necessary this animal could be produced: the Grand Duke asked for his dogs very seldom and then only through caprice, and would never know the difference. “And Cristallo, is someone looking after Cristallo?” Cristallo was currently the favourite cat, inevitably white but wearing a collar of pearls with his blue ribbon bow. Being a cat, he was very efficiently looking after himself.

In her apartment next door to the Grand Duke’s in the little pavilion, La Bellissima, however, was wide awake. She arose and went to the doorway and looked out at the groves of olive trees. “Senor Tabaqui!”

“Bellissima?”

She said in French: “I wish to walk down through the trees to that little stream. Must I take a guard?”

He went even greyer than usual. “But, Bellissima——!”

“Who would harm me?”

He shifted his eyes. “No one, of course, Bellissima Bienquista—Most Lovely and Much Belovéd.… But it is due to your position, you cannot go without a guard.”

“And a woman?”

“At least two of your ladies.”

“Tell them to keep back, then,” she said. “Tell them not to press round me. I want to be alone a little.” Without further ado, she walked quietly away from him, down through the olive groves and the sleeping groups to the little stream. Her guard sprang to arms, shuffled their feet hurriedly into their sand-shoes and slouched down after her. The secretary spoke to the women and they followed, keeping their distance. These foreigners, they said among themselves, who had no respect for the siesta hour!—nor did they trouble to subdue their voices for she could not understand a word.

A woman was sitting at the edge of the stream, who did not move as she approached; such commoners as had awakened to see her pass, had scrambled hurriedly to their feet and humbly taken themselves off. Her guard ran before her. “Go! Depart! You can’t stay here.”

She was an elderly lady with a squashed straw hat and carrying a large green-lined parasol. “Go?” she said. “Certainly not.”

“You must leave at once, you cannot be allowed to remain.”

“Nonsense,” said the elderly lady. She added loudly: “English. Inghlesi. No comprendo.”

“But you must go. La Bellissima is coming: be good enough, Senora, to retire immediately.”

“Oh, well, that’s different,” said Miss Cockrill, reverting immediately to quite fluent Juanese. She looked past the guard and for the first time saw the Grand Duchess. “I beg your pardon,” she said, getting up to her feet and doing a little bob. “If I’d known it was your Highness … Milles—er—milles regrets.…”

La Bellissima stood staring at her for a moment. “Madame—un moment, s’il vous plait. Vous parlez-Français?”

“Ern per,” said Miss Cockrill; an overstatement.

“Vous etes Anglaise?”

“Onglaise, oui, certainmong.”

“Et bien …” She thought it over and made up her mind. “Ayez la gentillesse, Madame, de vous assesoir un petit moment; et parler avec moi.” Her small hand waved imperiously, the attendants melted back thankfully into the shade of the olive trees, and she sat down, all in her satins and laces, on the grass beside the stream. “Asseyez vous, Madame, je vous en prie.”

“Mademoiselle,” corrected Miss Cockrill, obediently sitting down too.

“Pardon: Mad’moiselle.” She sat for a little while, looking down into the water, her hands very still in her silk-embroidered lap. She said at last, always in French: “May I ask your name?”

“My name is Harriet Cockrill, Bellissima.”

“Miss Cockrill? But was not that …?”

“The inspector, yes: he’s my brother.”

“El Exaltida thinks highly of Inspector Cockrill.”

Cousin Hat bowed as gracefully as is possible for a middle-aged lady sitting on the ground, and struggled to convey that her brother had a deep respect for El Exaltida: which in fact was not strictly true.

“And you, Mademoiselle—do you know the Grand Duke?”

Miss Cockrill had not the honour of a personal acquaintance with His Highness.

“In that case …” She paused for a moment, pondering, “Mademoiselle—if you should later meet my husband—you would have the great goodness not to repeat what I may say to you?”

“Si vous voulez parlez un petit peu plus lontimong?”

The Grand Duchess repeated it slowly. But it seemed an odd request, for all that she wanted, apparently, was a little grounding in English history: the Tudors especially. “Your King Henry VIII.…”

“Honry weetiaime?—oh, yes, the eighth. Yes, him?”

“He had a wife called Anne?”

“Unn?” said Miss Cockrill. “Oh, Anne. Oui. Unn Boleyn.”

“She—died? She had her head cut off by her husband? But, Mademoiselle—why?”

On the whole Miss Cockrill supposed, it was because of Queen Elizabeth. Being a girl, she meant: or rather, not being a boy.

“This is what my husband told me, yes. But—only because it was a baby girl her husband chopped off her head?”

Of course, said Miss Cockrill hurriedly, in defence of her country, that couldn’t happen nowadays.

“Not in England,” said La Bellissima.

So that was it! After the sermon, a little connubial chat between husband and wife. Embarrassed at having so easily penetrated the gossamer veil of the Grand Duchess’s reticence, Cousin Hat essayed to repair the damage with a thread of a different hue. “Of course that may have been only an excuse of the King’s. There was another girl mixed up in it.”

“Another daughter?”

No, no, anything but that: another jeune fille, a jeune fille trés jolie, one of the ladies-in-waiting on the Queen, as once Anne herself had been. Catherine Howard, her name had been—or was it Jane Seymour? Anyway, she herself had in turn been beheaded for having an affair with a page: or was that the other one?

“Une ‘page’?”

“Les petits garçons avec des boutons,” said Miss Cockrill, making a series of rapid little dabs down the front of her dress (a most incomprehensible business, she had always thought, and surely Henry must have been misinformed …?)

The Grand Duchess could be seen to be mentally reviewing the young ladies in attendance on herself: what she saw did not visibly discourage her further, but she was plainly still puzzled. “Mademoiselle—let me confide in you a little, let me ask you to help me, to explain something to me: and give me your word, which I know to an English lady is sacred, that you will say nothing to anyone of what I may tell you.”

Miss Cockrill licke her finger, crossed her heart and wished to die, all in French.

“Well, then, this morning … But no, I will go further back than that. Mademoiselle, at home in Paris, my family is well born; rich enough, well placed in the world—but not extravagantly so. And this is important for two reasons: it means that the Grand Duke had no material reason to choose me as his wife: he chose me—I must say it with simplicity—only for my beauty. He saw me at a reception, he went at once to my father, merely walked across the room to my father and said, ‘Sir, you have a very beautiful daughter. Have I your permission to pay my addresses to her?’ My father of course agreed. He said afterwards that the Grand Duke seemed so large, suddenly appearing towering over him there—though my father himself is a very big man—that he dared not say anything else; but of course he would have agreed anyway, it was a great match for me. But … You see what this means? He married me because I was beautiful, because I came of a tall and generally handsome family—and it is his business to produce tall and handsome heirs; and once I have produced his heirs for him, there is no one very much to enquire what becomes of me; just a middle-class family, no great power of aristocracy, of politics, of wealth.” Her nervous lingers cropped at the yellow flowers in the green grass all about her, she tossed a handful of them into the stream and watched them, like little gilded boats, float merrily away. “I do not speak too fast? You have understood?”

Miss Cockrill had understood perhaps one quarter. The Grand Duke had married her only because she was beautiful: well, men did that kind of thing. And whatever arrived to her, her family could do nothing about it. As to what might arrive—there were further rapid and only half-comprehended explanations. Her mother, or ‘la mère’ as La Bellissima appeared to prefer to call her, had apparently warned her daughter of what she might expect once her function was fulfilled. The same thing, after all, had happened to the last Grand Duchess once Juan Lorenzo himself had been born and a couple of supporting brothers to insure the inheritance; and before that to no less than three of the Grand Duke Pedro’s wives; and before that again … Despatched: mysteriously dead, as soon as the succession had been established; with a harem of pretty dancing girls to take their place.

“But—murdered?” said Miss Cockrill, absolutely aghast.

What else? The little Duchess threw up her hands and a shower of grass and petals fell all about her. This was not twentieth-century England or France: this was San Juan el Pirata where life was held cheap and no one enquired very closely into Palace affairs, and after all, what Lorenzo’s own father had done, that surely he might do too …? “One child, Mademoiselle, perhaps two—and then, when my figure is ruined, my skin is coarse, I have ugly veins in my legs …”

“My dear child, who has been talking to you?”

The Grand Duchess shrugged. These truths were self-evident. Her mother had said …

It seemed very odd to Miss Cockrill that a mother, whose convictions apparently amounted to an almost certain pre-knowledge of the Grand Duke’s intentions, should have encouraged so exceedingly parlous a match; she appeared, at any rate, zealous in advising her daughter against premature maternity. “The day a son is born to me, Mademoiselle, that day my death warrant is signed.”

“And, on the other hand—if you don’t have a child?”

“I suppose,” said the Grand Duchess wistfully, “that that is where your Jane Seymour comes in.”

“I see,” said Miss Cockrill. But she did not see very clearly; and she wished she had learnt more French.

“In San Juan, the people are very backward, few of them read or write; they learn very much still by parables and signs. I think that my husband has spoken to me today in a parable. Mademoiselle, after Mass, he was angry, he was in one of his rages and his rages are—a little frightening. He handed me into the carriage, at the Duomo door; and as we drove back to the palace, he recited to me, without preamble, the history of your Anne Boleyn. This parable, you have interpreted for me. Anne Boleyn gave her husband no heir; therefore he must marry someone who would; therefore she died.”

Of course in the case of Anne Boleyn, insisted Miss Cockrill, uncomfortably, the business of the heir had been something of an excuse; there had already been a Jane Seymour at hand.

“In my case there is—as yet—no Jane Seymour.”

“And no heir either?”

“Nor will there be. If I am to die, I will not die ugly and worn out, having served my turn.” She tossed the last of her flower boats into the stream and watched it borne away on the ripples to be lost at last in some miniature tempest, far, far out to sea; and, dusting her pale hands of the pollen that exactly matched her bright hair, she repeated: “There is so far no Jane Seymour, Mademoiselle; but I think you will find it is only a matter of time.”

“Now, you listen to me, my child …” said Cousin Hat.

The long, hot afternoon wore on. Up in the marble pavilion, the Grand Duke slept and the girl played softly on the zither at his feet; down by the stream the Duchess sat with eyes like saucers on the flower-starred grass and listened to Cousin Hat; decorously composed with their backs against olive tree trunks the Major and his flock reposed, disturbed only by the sudden sorties of D. and V.: a little apart, Winsome Foley huddled in dismay and tried to make light to herself of the follies of the evening before. ‘You will not forget, Senorita, that you have an appointment with the Archbishop, to see the thurible: you will not let me down?’ I must have been insane, she thought. I must have been insane.…

Beneath opposing oleanders, Pepita Bussaca and Innocenta lay, drowsing in the heat, two full-blown roses each in her court of lesser flowers. To Innocenta came a messenger, stepping delicately among the recumbent forms. She rose, startled, hurriedly composed her dress and went off with him. They returned twenty minutes later and she woke Lorenna in her turn and sent her off with the messenger. Here and there a sleepy eye opened, observed with hazy interest, these goings on, and heavily closed again. Pepita, however, disturbed by Lorenna’s going and perceiving her friend to be awake, left the sleeping Gerente and their daughters and beckoned Innocenta to join her for a chat. She was in great trouble about her Giulietta who wanted to go on the stage.…

“On the stage?” said Innocenta, incredulous.

“She wants to learn Italian, have a training in Milano, and finally go on the stage.”

“Impossible, my dear. Unthinkable. The stage is no life for a girl.”

“Ah, if you would but have taken her last year, Innocenta!”

“It would not have done, Pepita, she was too—was too …” Was too knock-kneed, poor child, thought Innocenta, whose kind heart had bled at having to turn her down. But the stage! “Perhaps, after all, when I get rid of Inez …”

“It is too late now, her heart is set on it; and what’s more, I believe she has infected Manuela. Poor Guido, he is beside himself with anxiety.” Pepita looked over proudly to where the huge heap of the Gerente de Politio snored dreamlessly amongst his vexatious daughters. “But you, Innocenta—you do not look happy either.”

Innocenta was not only not happy, she was seriously alarmed and she longed for a confidante. “If I tell you, Pepita, you will not repeat it to a soul? But then, you couldn’t—for your Guido also is involved.”

“My Guido?”

“Listen, Pepita. Half an hour ago, a messenger came for me: from—guess! But you never could guess. From the Grand Duke himself.”

“Innocenta!”

“I went to the pavilion. Imagine how I felt, Pepita! He was there with Tabaqui. He said nothing, just bowed his head.”

“He never speaks, not to ordinary people like us.”

“Tabaqui said that the Grand Duke wished me to send a girl to the palace; he would keep her there some time, some weeks perhaps. He asked who I would suggest. Well, you know, Pepita, I’d been thinking of letting Inez go. This seemed the opportunity. I suggested, ‘Inez Canillo.’ The Grand Duke wrote on a piece of paper. Tabaqui read it and said: ‘El Exaltida wants a well-behaved young woman, not such a one as Inez Canillo.’ Imagine, Pepita!—what these people know! They know everything.”

“No wonder you said just now that you would get rid of Inez.”

“Yes, and what a reference she will take with her!—dismissed because her deportment has been such as to attract the attention of El Exaltida himself. It’s in church, you know, they’ve seen her ogling the touristi.”

“Well, so anyway, the Grand Duke would not have Inez?”

“Exactly. And so … Pepita, what I did was innocent, I thought only of what girl I best could spare …”

“Lorenna?”

“Well, of course. It seemed to settle all my problems. And the Grand Duke agreed at once, he bowed his head—really Pepita, near-to he is magnificent!—and snapped his fingers and a guard came and I made my reverence and came away. Tabaqui said that he would arrange terms with me later and tell me when Lorenna would be wanted at palace; and meanwhile to send her back with the messenger.” She looked at her friend, her round face quite haggard with terror. “She has gone—it is too late to draw back; and now, Pepita, I realise what I have done.”

Pepita looked blank.

“Tomaso,” prompted Innocenta.

“Tomaso di Goya? He will not like it, I suppose …”

“Will not like it: he will be delighted with it. And so,” said Innocenta, heavy with direful significance, “will your Guido.”

“My Guido? What has he to do with Lorenna?”

“Say, rather, what has he to do with Tomaso di Goya? Ah, Pepita, you don’t hear Tomaso holding forth, evening after evening, in the salon, up at the Colombaia.…”

“Certainly not,” said Pepita, primly.

Not to mention your precious husband, thought Innocenta, nettled; but true to a strict code of etiquette, said nothing aloud. “And you know very well that your Guido and Tomaso di Goya are thick as thieves.”

“They are together in a business deal.”

“Business deal—nonsense!” said Innocenta. “That Tomaso is a firebrand of the very worst sort and he has your stupid husband on a piece of string. And Lorenna, too, silly girl, filling up her head with nonsense about taxes and tyranny and the rights of the people. The rights of the people! What rights have people got? To breathe, that’s all.”

“And to eat and drink, Innocenta, and to be happy, to dance and to sing.…”

“All this we may do if we work. Does the Grand Duke stop people from working?”

The Grand Duke not infrequently stopped people from breathing but fortunately for the duration of this high political argument, the fact did not occur to either lady. “In any event, what has this to do with my Guido?”

“Your Guido is plotting and scheming with Tomaso, day and night. The Joyeria is left to a boy to look after, El Gerente’s ships he idle at the quay, his men have nothing to occupy them but their police duties. And what,” said Innocenta darkly, “is the object of their plotting?” Her sweet round face screwed itself into an expression of angry foreboding, her bright eyes stared accusingly into the eyes of her friend. “It is my belief, Pepita, that Tomaso di Goya and your Guido are doing nothing less than plot the assassination of the Grand Duke.”

Every vestige of colour drained from Pepita’s face. “The assassination …? Of the Grand …?” She looked round her in terror as though the very olives might suddenly sprout green ears and tongues and scuttle off piping out the news. “Per Dios, Innocenta, don’t speak such words out loud!”

“I tell you, Pepita, it is true: a revolution.”

“Innocenta, my Guido is Chief of the Police!”

“Who more able to promote a revolution? He commands the only trained men in the island. Not,” said Innocenta, loftily, “that your Guido will promote the revolution or anything else, either. He will be permitted to assist; it is Tomaso di Goya who will lead, my dear, and place himself, when your Guido has done the work and taken the risks, in the Grand Duke’s place: and a fine ruler we shall have then, thanks to your Guido—Tomaso di Goya, a no-good malcontent whose mother was an unmarried gipsy from the mainland; descendant of a tuppeny painter on the run from Spain. But this Tomaso has a tongue, Pepita, they say even the Arcivescovo listens to him, with his talk of the good of the people and equal wealth.… And your Guido is under his thumb. And so, also,” said Innocenta, ready to faint at the recollection of it, “so, also, is Lorenna.”

“Lorenna! At the palace …!”

“Tomaso di Goya is plotting to assassinate the Grand Duke,” said Innocenta. “And Lorenna will do whatever Tomaso tells her. And I have recommended Lorenna to the Grand Duke.”

Lorenna approached them, walking down softly through the twisted olive trees, under the misty veil of their silver leaves. She was very lovely, slender as a reed, her mouth like geranium petals, her eyes bright and dark as the eyes of all Juanese girls: her hair was pulled sleekly against her head and caught into a great knot at the nape of her neck, ringed with tiny red flowers. Innocenta started up and caught at her wrist. “It is arranged?”

“Si, Senora.”

No respite then. “You saw the Grand Duke himself?”

“Yes. And Tabaqui. Tabaqui spoke. He said I should be some weeks at the palace. He said he would arrange things with you; but I also should be well paid. He said I should speak to no one of where I was going.” A great tear gathered, teetered, spilled over and rolled down a cheek of ivory. “Oh, Senora Innocenta—what will my Tomaso say?”

Evidently no thought of playing Charlotte Corday had as yet, at any rate, penetrated Lorenna’s charming head; which also was of ivory, reputed solid right through. “If the Grand Duke has told you to tell no one …”

“Of course I must tell Tomaso.”

“But El Exaltida, himself …”

“It was not El Exaltida himself, only Tabaqui. The Grand Duke said nothing. Or only at the end. It was very odd. He looked me up and down when I came in, he listened for a moment while I replied to Tabaqui; but after that he seemed not interested, he had a cat there and he was playing with it. The cat had a collar of pearls, Senora Innocenta, better than anything Tomaso has at the Joyeria … And then … Tabaqui called to the guard, the guard came back, Tabaqui stood up and said good-bye to me, and I made my reverence to the Grand Duke. And then the Grand Duke spoke at last, he said, ‘Your duties will be light. You will be in attendance …’ I cannot have caught it aright, Senor Innocenta, it sounded as though he said, ‘on the Grand Duchess.’”

“You certainly cannot have heard aright,” said Innocenta.

“And then he said, ‘Arrivaderci,’ and a name. Not my name; not even a Juanese name. I’m not even sure it was a name, except for the way he said it. It sounded,” said Lorenna, as though he said, ‘Arrivaderci, Jane Seymour.’”