AUTUMN SONATA

 

 

 

‘My adored love, I am dying and want only to see you.’ Ah, I have long since lost that letter from poor Concha. It was full of a yearning sadness, redolent of violets and old love. I read no further, I merely kissed it. She had not written to me for nearly two years and there she was entreating me, painfully, ardently, to hurry to her side. The three sheets of paper, each headed by a coat of arms, bore the traces of her tears, and bore them for a long time after. Poor Concha was dying in the seclusion of the old Palacio de Brandeso and was calling to me, sighing. Those pale, fragrant, ideal hands that I had loved so much, were writing to me as they had in other times. I felt my eyes filling with tears. I had always hoped for a resurrection of our love. It was a hesitant, nostalgic hope that filled my life with the perfume of faith. It was the chimera of the future, the same sweet chimera that lies sleeping in the depths of blue lakes in which the stars of destiny are reflected. Ours was such a sad destiny! The old rose tree of our love was about to bloom again only to drop its petals piously on a tomb.

Poor Concha was dying!

I received her letter while I was in Viana del Prior where I went hunting every autumn. The Palacio de Brandeso is only a few leagues away. Before setting out, I wanted to hear what Concha’s sisters, María Isabel and María Fernanda had to say, and so I went to see them. They were both nuns in a convent founded by one of the military orders. They came into the parlour and offered me their hands, the pure, noble hands of virgin brides. They both confirmed to me with a sigh that poor Concha was indeed dying. They both addressed me as ‘tú’ as they had when we were children. How often we had played together in the vast rooms of the old Palace!

I left the convent with my soul full of sadness. The bell was tolling, calling the nuns to communion. I went into the church and I knelt down in the shadow of a pillar. The church was still dark and empty. I could hear the footsteps of two ladies dressed in austere black who were visiting the altars. They looked like two sisters grieving for the same sorrow and pleading for the same grace. From time to time, they would murmur a few words and then, with a sigh, fall silent again. Thus, stiff and inconsolable, they visited each of the seven altars on either side of the church. The flickering, moribund flame from a lamp would alternately bathe them in its livid light, then plunge them into darkness. I heard them praying anxiously. In the pale hands of the woman in front, I could see a rosary. It was made of jet, and the cross and medallions of brilliant gold. I remembered that Concha had an identical rosary and remembered her unease whenever I used to play with it. Poor Concha was terribly devout and suffered because she believed our love affair was a mortal sin. Often, when I went into her boudoir at night, where she herself had arranged to meet me, I would find her on her knees, and I would sit down in an armchair and watch her praying. The rosary beads passed with pious slowness through her pale fingers. Sometimes, instead of waiting for her to finish, I would go over to her and surprise her. Then she would grow still paler and cover her eyes with her hands. I loved her sad mouth passionately, I loved those tight, tremulous lips, cold as the lips of a dead woman. Concha would nervously free herself from my embrace; she would get up and replace the rosary in her jewellery box. Then she would fling her arms about my neck, rest her head upon my shoulder, and she would weep out of a mixture of love and fear of eternal torment.

It was already dark by the time I got back from the convent. I spent the evening alone and sad, sitting in an armchair by the fire. I fell asleep and was awoken by loud knockings, which, in the silence of the early hours, sounded grave and terrifying. I jumped to my feet and opened the window. It was the same steward who had brought me Concha’s letter and who had come to fetch me so that we could set out together.

 

 

 

The steward was an old man from the village and wore a hooded reed cloak and wooden clogs. He remained mounted on his mule by the door, holding another mule by the reins. In the darkness, I asked him:

‘Is anything wrong, Brión?’

‘It’s nearly dawn, Señor Marqués.’

I hurried downstairs, not bothering to close the shutter that the wind was batting back and forth. We set off in all haste. When the steward had arrived, a few stars had still been shining in the sky. When we left, I could hear the cocks crowing in the village. We would still not get there much before nightfall, for the palace was nine leagues from there, along bridle-paths and across country. Brión went ahead to show me the way. We trotted through Quintana de San Clodio, besieged by the barking of dogs tethered beneath granaries, keeping guard on the threshing floors. By the time we got out into the open countryside, dawn was breaking. In the distance I saw some bare, sad hills, veiled in mist. Once we were past those, I saw more and still more. An ashen shroud of drizzle wrapped about them. They seemed never-ending, and the whole journey was the same. Far off, near La Puente del Prior, and despite the early hour, we saw a train of mules, and the mule driver, sitting sidesaddle on the nag bringing up the rear, was singing a Castilian song. The sun was just beginning to gild the tops of the mountains. Flocks of black-and-white sheep were scrambling up the slopes, and against the green backdrop of a meadow, we saw a huge covey of doves flying over the stately tower of a country mansion. Harried by the rain, we stopped at the old windmills in Gundar, and knocked boldly at the door as if that were our fiefdom. Two scrawny dogs appeared, which the steward shooed away; they were followed by a woman carrying a spindle. The steward greeted her in Christian fashion:

‘Hail Mary most pure!’

And the woman replied:

‘Conceived without sin!’

She was a poor, kindly soul. She saw that we were numb with cold, she saw our mules sheltering beneath the eaves, she saw the heavy sky with its dull threat of rain, and she humbly, hospitably ushered us in:

‘Come in and sit by the fire. It’s bad weather for travellers. This rain will flood the fields and they’ve only just been sown too. We’ve got a bad year ahead of us.’

We followed her in, but the steward immediately went outside again to get the saddlebags. I went over to the fireplace where a miserable fire was burning. The poor woman tried to get the fire going and brought in an armful of damp, green firewood that spat and gave off clouds of smoke. By an old door at the far end of the wall, the stone flagstones were white with flour; the door did not close properly and kept banging and banging. From behind the door came the sound of a mill working and the voice of an old man singing a song. The steward returned with the saddlebags slung over his shoulder.

‘Here’s our supper. My lady got up early to prepare it herself. With respect, sir, I think we should make the most of this break. If the rain sets in now, it won’t clear up until nightfall.’

The woman approached us, solicitous and humble.

‘I can put some trivets on the fire if you want to heat up your food.’

She did so and the steward began unpacking the saddlebags. He took out a great damask table cloth and spread it over the stone hearth. I, meanwhile, went and stood by the door. For a long time, I watched the grey curtain of undulating rain being buffeted by the wind. The steward came to me and said in a tone that was at once respectful and familiar:

‘When you’re ready, sir, you have a fine supper before you!’

I went back into the kitchen and sat down by the fire. I did not feel like eating and asked the steward simply to pour me a glass of wine. He obeyed in silence. He found the wineskin in the bottom of the saddlebags and poured some of the cheering red wine, grown in the palace’s own vineyards, into one of those small silver goblets that our grandmothers had had made from Peruvian coins, one goblet per coin. I drank the wine down in one draught and, since the kitchen was still full of smoke, I went out again and stood by the door, telling the steward and the woman to continue their meal. The woman asked my leave to call in the old man who was singing in the other room. She shouted to him:

‘Father! Father!’

He came in, all white with flour, his cap to one side, a song still on his lips. He was an old man with sparkling eyes and a shock of white hair, as cheerful and shrewd as a book of ancient proverbs. They drew up two rough, smoke-blackened footstools and, amidst a chorus of blessings, they sat down to eat round the hearth. The two scrawny dogs prowled about nearby. It was a banquet in which our every need had been catered for by poor, sick Concha. Those pale hands, which I so loved, were serving at the table of the humble like the anointed hands of saintly princesses! When he tasted the wine, the old man rose to his feet crying:

‘Here’s to the health of the good gentleman who has given us this wine. In years to come I hope to drink your health again in your noble presence.’

Then, equally ceremoniously, the woman and the steward drank too. While they were eating, I heard them talking in low voices. The man was asking where we were going and the steward told them that we were heading for the Palacio de Brandeso. The man knew the road, for he still paid an ancient levy to the lady of the palace – a levy of two sheep, three bushels of wheat and three of barley. The previous year, she had excused him the whole amount because the drought was so bad. She was a woman who took pity on the poor villagers. I listened from the door, watching the rain fall, and I felt touched and pleased. I turned and peered at them through the smoke. Then they lowered their voices still more and appeared to be talking about me. The steward got up.

‘If you’re ready sir, we could give some food to the mules and then set off again.’

He went out with the old man, who was eager to help. The woman started sweeping up the ashes from the hearth. At the back of the kitchen, the dogs were gnawing on a bone. While she swept, the poor woman kept up a stream of mumbled blessings, as if she were praying:

‘May the Lord grant you all the good fortune and health in the world, and when you reach the palace may you be very happy. May you find the lady well and with roses in her cheeks.’

As she walked round and round the fireplace, the woman was monotonously intoning:

‘May you find her like a rose on a rose bush!’

Taking advantage of a break in the rain, the steward came in to pick up the saddlebags from the kitchen while the old man untethered the mules and led them out to the road so that we could mount up. His daughter came to the door to watch us leave:

‘God grant the noble gentleman every happiness! May the Lord go with you!’

When we had mounted, she came out onto the road, covering her head with her apron to keep off the rain, which had started up again; she approached me in mysterious fashion. She looked like some millenarian shade. She was trembling and her eyes burned feverishly beneath the hood formed by her apron. She was clutching a handful of herbs and she gave them to me with a sibylline look on her face, murmuring:

‘When my lady the Countess is not looking, place these herbs beneath her pillow. They’ll make her better. Souls are like nightingales, all they want is to fly away. The nightingales happily sing in gardens, but in the palaces of kings they slowly die.’

She raised her arms as if to evoke a distant, prophetic thought, then let them fall again. The old man came over, smiling, and drew his daughter away to the side of the road so that my mule could pass.

‘Take no notice of her, sir. She’s a bit simple.’

I felt superstition pass like a shadow over my soul, and I silently took that handful of rain-soaked herbs. Ah, those holy, scented herbs that serve equally well as a cure for heartsickness and as a cure for the ailments of sheep, as an aid to increasing family virtues and to swelling the harvest … It would not be long before they were blooming on Concha’s grave in the green, sweet-smelling cemetery of San Clodio de Brandeso!

 

 

 

I had only a vague memory of the Palacio de Brandeso; I used to go there as a child with my mother. I remembered the old garden and the maze that had both frightened and attracted me. After many years, I was returning, answering the call of the same girl with whom I had so often played in the old flowerless garden. The setting sun touched with gold the sombre dark greens of the venerable trees – the cedars and cypresses that were as old as the palace itself. A stone archway led into the garden and, carved in the stone above the cornice, there were four shields bearing the coat of arms of four different lineages, those of the founder’s grandparents, who had all been of noble birth. When we came in sight of the palace, our weary mules broke into a brisk trot and approached the door on which they then knocked with their hooves. A villager dressed in rough serge, who was waiting there, hurried over to hold my stirrup for me. I jumped down and handed him the reins. Brimming with memories, I walked down the dark, leaf-strewn avenue of chestnut trees. At the other end, I could see the palace with all its windows shut and the window panes lit by the sun. Suddenly, I saw a white shadow appear at one of the windows, I saw it stop and raise two hands to its forehead. Then the middle window slowly opened and the white shadow leaned out to greet me, waving its ghost-like arms. It was only a moment. The branches of the chestnut trees blocked my view and I could no longer see. When I emerged from the avenue of trees, I again looked up at the palace. All the windows were closed, including the one in the middle. With my heart pounding, I went into the great, dark, silent hallway. My footsteps echoed on the broad flagstones. Sitting on the oak stairs, worn smooth with use, there were people waiting to pay some levy or other. At the far end, I could make out the massive old chests for storing wheat, the lids raised. When the tenant farmers saw me come in, they got to their feet, mumbling respectfully:

‘A very good evening to you, sir.’

Then they slowly sat down again, almost swallowed up in the shadow cast by the wall. I hurried up the magnificent staircase with its broad steps and roughly carved granite bannister. Before I reached the top, a door swung silently open and an ancient maidservant peered out; it was Concha’s old nursemaid. Carrying a large candle in her hand, she came down the stairs to meet me:

‘May God reward you for coming. My lady will see you now. She’s spent so long just waiting for you to come, sir. She didn’t want to write to you. She thought you would have forgotten her. I was the one who convinced her that you wouldn’t have. You hadn’t, had you, Marquis?’

I could only murmur:

‘Of course not, but where is she?’

‘She’s been lying down all afternoon. She wanted to be in her best clothes when you arrived. She’s like a child – well, you know what she’s like. She got to the point where she was shaking with impatience and had to lie down.’

‘Is she that ill?’

The old woman’s eyes filled with tears:

‘She’s very ill, sir. You wouldn’t recognise her.’

She passed her hand over her eyes and added in a low voice, pointing to the lit door at the other end of the corridor:

‘She’s in there.’

We walked on in silence. Concha heard my footsteps and called out in an anguished voice from the depths of the room:

‘You’re here, my love, you’re here!’

I went in. Concha was sitting up, reclining against the pillows. She gave a cry and, instead of holding out her arms to me, covered her face with her hands and began to sob. The maidservant put the candle down on the bedside table and left, sighing. Trembling, touched by her reaction, I went over to Concha. I kissed the hands with which she was still covering her face and gently pulled them away. She gave me a long look, but did not speak; her eyes, the beautiful eyes of one mortally ill, were full of love. Then she half-closed them and fell back in a languid, happy swoon. I watched her for a moment. She was so pale! I felt an anxious knot in my throat. She slowly opened her eyes and, then, cupping my head in her burning hands, she looked at me again with a look that seemed imbued with the melancholy of love and with the death that was now closing in upon her.

‘I was afraid you wouldn’t come.’

‘And now?’

‘Now, I’m happy.’

Her mouth, a rose drained of colour, was trembling. Again she closed her eyes with pleasure, as if to store up in her memory a beloved vision. My heart contracted, for I realised she was dying.

 

 

 

Concha sat up to reach for the bell. I gently caught her hand:

‘What do you want?’

‘I want to call my maid so that she can come and help me dress.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes.’

She leaned her head back and added with a sad smile:

‘I want to welcome you properly to the palace.’

I tried to persuade her not to get up. She insisted:

‘I’m going to order them to lay a fire in the dining room, a good fire. You’ll dine with me tonight.’

And her eyes, still wet with tears, in that palest of pale faces, were full of loving, happy sweetness.

‘I wanted to be up when you came, but I just couldn’t. I was dying of impatience and made myself ill.’

I still had her hand in mine, and I kissed it. We looked at each other, smiling.

‘Why don’t you call?’

I said in a low voice:

‘Let me be your maid.’

Concha removed her hand from between mine.

‘You do have some mad ideas!’

‘Not that mad. Where are your clothes?’

Concha smiled like a mother at a small child’s caprice.

‘I don’t know …’

‘Come on, tell me.’

‘I don’t know, really I don’t!’

At the same time, with a charming gesture of eyes and lips, she indicated a large oak wardrobe at the foot of the bed. The key was in the door and I opened it. The wardrobe exhaled a delicate, ancient fragrance. In it were the clothes that Concha had been wearing that day.

‘Are these the clothes?’

‘Yes, I just need that white dressing gown.’

‘Won’t you be cold?’

‘No.’

I removed the gown from its hanger; it seemed still to exude a perfumed warmth and Concha murmured, blushing:

‘You and your odd ideas …’

She swung her feet out of the bed, those white, childlike, almost fragile feet, in which blue veins traced paths made for kisses. She shivered slightly as she put on her sable slippers and said in an oddly gentle voice:

‘Now open that long drawer and choose some silk stockings for me.’

I chose a pair in black silk, embroidered with little mauve arrows.

‘These ones?’

‘Yes, whichever ones you like.’

To put them on, I knelt down on the tiger skin by her bed. Concha protested:

‘Get up! I don’t want to see you like that.’

I smiled and paid no heed. Her feet struggled to flee my hands, poor feet that I could not help but kiss. Concha trembled and exclaimed delightedly:

‘You don’t change, do you?’

After putting the silk stockings on her, I slipped on her garters, which were also made of silk – two white ribbons with gold fastenings. I dressed her with the religious, loving care with which devout ladies dress the images they serve as handmaidens. When, with tremulous hands, I had tied the ribbons of that white robe, like a nun’s habit, beneath her delicate, round, pale bust, Concha stood up, leaning on my shoulders for support. With the ghostly gait that some women acquire when they are very ill, she walked over to the dressing table and looked into the mirror to arrange her hair.

‘How pale I am! I’m nothing but skin and bone.’

I said:

‘I hadn’t noticed, Concha.’

She smiled mirthlessly.

‘Tell me honestly, how do I look?’

‘Once you were the princess of the sun, and now you are the princess of the moon.’

‘Liar!’

And she turned her back on the mirror to look at me. At the same time, she tapped a gong placed near the dressing table. Her old nursemaid came hurrying in.

‘Did you call, my lady?’

‘Yes, have the fire lit in the dining room.’

‘We’ve already put a brazier in there.’

‘Well, take it out again. Have them light the fire.’

The maid looked at me:

‘Do you really want to go down to the dining room with my lady, bearing in mind how cold it is along these corridors?’

Concha went and sat shivering at one end of the sofa, carefully wrapping the ample dressing gown about her. She said:

‘I’ll put on a shawl to walk down the corridors.’

And turning to me – since I said nothing, not wishing to contradict her – she murmured lovingly and submissively:

‘If you don’t want me to, I won’t.’

I said sadly:

‘It’s not that I don’t want you to, Concha, I just don’t want to harm you in any way.’

She sighed:

‘I didn’t want you to be on your own.’

Then, with the rough, kindly loyalty of old servants, Concha’s former nursemaid said:

‘It’s only natural that you should want to be together, and that’s why I thought you could eat at the table in here. What do you think, my lady? And you, Señor Marqués?’

Concha placed her hand on my shoulder, and replied, smiling:

‘You’re extremely clever, Candelaria. Both the Marquis and I are very impressed. Tell Teresina that we will eat in here.’

We were left alone again. Her eyes brimming with tears, Concha held out one hand to me and I kissed her fingers, as I used to do, making a pale rose bloom on each fingertip. There was a bright fire burning in the grate. Concha was sitting on the carpet, one elbow resting on my knees, and was stirring the logs with the bronze tongs. As the flames flickered and grew, they left a rosy glow on the eucharistic whiteness of her skin, like the sun on the ancient carved marble statues in Pharos.

 

 

 

She put down the tongs and held out her arms to me so that I could help her to her feet. We looked at each other; I could see myself reflected in her eyes, which shone with the happiness of a child bubbling with laughter after a now forgotten crying fit. The table was already laid with a cloth and so, still holding hands, we went over and sat on the chairs that Teresina had just drawn up. Concha said to me:

‘Can you remember how long ago it is since you were here with your poor mother, Aunt Soledad?’

‘Yes, can you?’

‘Twenty-three years ago. I was eight. That was when I first fell in love with you. How I suffered watching you playing with my older sisters. It seems incredible that a child can suffer so from jealousy. I’ve shed more than enough tears over you as a grown woman too, but then I’ve had the consolation of being able to tell you off.’

‘And yet you’ve always been so sure of my affection for you. Your letter makes that absolutely clear.’

Concha tried to blink back the tears trembling on her eyelashes.

‘It wasn’t your affection I was sure of, it was your compassion.’

She gave a melancholy smile, and two tears shone in her eyes. I made to get up and console her, but she stopped me with a gesture. Teresina came in. We started eating in silence. To hide her tears, Concha raised her glass and drank slowly; when she put the glass down on the table cloth, I took it from her hand and placed my lips where she had placed hers. Concha turned to her maid.

‘Tell Candelaria to come and serve us.’

Teresina went out and we smiled at each other.

‘Why did you ask for Candelaria to come?’

‘Because I’m afraid of you, and, besides, nothing shocks poor Candelaria any more.’

‘Candelaria is as indulgent towards our love as any good Jesuit might be.’

‘Now don’t let’s start!’ Concha shook her head in mock anger, at the same time placing a finger on her pale lips: ‘I won’t have you posing as an Aretino or as a Cesare Borgia.’

Poor Concha was very devout and the aesthetic admiration I had felt in my youth for the son of Alexander VI frightened her as much as if it were some cult of the Devil. With an exaggerated gesture that mingled good humour and genuine unease, she ordered me to be silent:

‘Be quiet now!’

Looking at me out of the corner of her eye, she slowly turned her head:

‘Candelaria, pour some wine into my glass.’

Candelaria was at that moment standing with her back to the chair, her hands folded over her starched, white pinafore; she hurried to serve her mistress. Concha’s words, which seemed perfumed with happiness, faltered into a groan. I saw her close her eyes with a look of anguish, and her mouth, that pale, sickly rose, grew paler still. I got up, frightened.

‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong?’

She couldn’t speak. Her head fell back against the chair. Candelaria ran into the bedroom and brought some smelling salts. Concha gave a sigh and opened her eyes, staring about her, vague and lost, as if waking from a dream peopled with monsters. Fixing her gaze on me, she murmured weakly:

‘It’s nothing. It’s just your fear I can feel.’

Then, drawing one hand across her forehead, she took a deep breath. I made her take a few sips of soup. She revived a little and, though still pale, managed a tenuous smile. She bade me sit down again and continued drinking the soup by herself. When she had finished, she picked up the glass of wine with delicate fingers and kindly, tremulously offered it to me. I took a sip to please her. Concha drank the rest and then drank nothing else all evening.

 

 

 

We were sitting on the sofa and had been talking for a long time. Poor Concha was telling me about her life during the two years in which we had not seen each other – one of those silent, resigned lives that watches the days pass with a sad smile and weeps at night in the darkness. I did not need to tell her about my life. Her eyes seemed to have been following it from afar and she knew everything. Poor Concha! Seeing her so ill and drawn, and so very different from the woman she had been, I felt a sharp pang of regret for having done as she had asked that night when she had knelt before me, weeping, and had begged me to go, to forget her. Her mother, a solemn, devout widow, had come to see us in order to put an end to our relationship. Neither of us wanted to remember the past, however, and we sat in silence, she resigned and I with a sombre, tragic look on my face – it makes me smile now to think of it. I had almost forgotten it, because women do not fall in love with old men, and it is a look that only suits young Don Juans. Were a young girl, a spiritual creature full of grace and candour, to fall in love with me with my white hair, my hollow cheeks, my august, senatorial beard, I would deem it criminal to adopt any other attitude with her than that of an old prelate – a confessor of princesses and a theologian of love. But that look, like a repentant Satan, excited poor Concha, made her tremble. She was so very, very good, which was why she was so very unhappy. A painful smile, like the soul of a languishing flower, flickered across her lips and she murmured:

‘How different our lives might have been.’

‘I know. I can’t understand now why I did as you asked. I probably couldn’t bear the sight of you crying.’

‘Don’t tell fibs. I felt sure you would come back. My mother was always terrified that you would.’

‘I didn’t come back because I was waiting for you to call me – that devilish pride of mine.’

‘It wasn’t pride, it was another woman. You’d been deceiving me with her for a long time. When I found out, I thought I would die. I was so desperate that I even agreed to go back to my husband.’

She folded her hands, looking at me intensely, her voice grown husky, her pale lips trembling. She said with a sob:

‘You can’t imagine how it hurt me when I guessed why you hadn’t come, and yet I’ve never borne you a moment’s malice.’

I did not dare deceive her then and, out of sentiment, I remained silent. Concha stroked my hair and, lacing her fingers together, placed her hands on my forehead. Sighing, she said:

‘What a stormy time you’ve had of it these last two years. Your hair’s almost white.’

I gave an equally pained sigh:

‘Too many griefs, Concha.’

‘No, that’s not why you’ve gone white. There must be some other reason. Your griefs can never equal mine, and my hair isn’t white.’

I sat up to look at her. She removed the gold pin holding her hair in place and which then fell to her shoulders like a black, silken wave.

‘Now your forehead shines like a star beneath your parted ebony hair. You are white and pale as the moon. Do you remember when I used to ask you to whip me with your hair? Cover me with it now, Concha.’

Loving and indulgent, she spread the perfumed veil of her hair over me. I breathed it in, my face submerged in it as if in a holy fountain, and my soul filled with delight and bloomed with memories. Concha’s heart was beating hard; with shaking hands I unlaced her robe and my lips kissed skin that was anointed with love as if with a balm.

‘My love!’

‘My love!’

Concha closed her eyes for a moment, then, getting to her feet, she gathered up her long hair.

‘Please, for God’s sake, go!’

I smiled at her.

‘Where exactly do you want me to go?’

‘Just go. All this emotion is killing me. I need to rest. I wrote asking you to come precisely because there can be nothing between us now but a kind of ideal affection. You must understand that, in my state of health, there couldn’t possibly be anything more. It would be too terrible to die in mortal sin!’

Looking paler than ever, she folded her arms and rested her hands on her shoulders in a resigned, noble pose she often adopted. I moved towards the door.

‘Goodnight then, Concha.’

She sighed.

‘Goodnight.’

‘Would you mind calling Candelaria to guide me along the corridors?’

‘Ah, of course, you don’t yet know the way.’

She went over to the dressing table and beat on the gong. We waited in silence, but no one came. Concha looked at me uncertainly.

‘Candelaria’s probably gone to bed.’

‘In that case …’

She saw me smile and, looking sad and serious, she shook her head.

‘In that case, I will guide you.’

‘You mustn’t catch cold.’

‘I’m all right.’

She picked up one of the candlesticks from the dressing table and hurried out, dragging behind her the long train of her gown. At the door, she turned, calling to me with her eyes, then, white as a ghost, she disappeared into the darkness of the corridor. I followed and caught up with her.

‘You’re mad!’

She chuckled to herself and leaned upon my arm. At a point where two corridors met, we came upon a large, bare, round anteroom full of ancient chests and hung with pictures of saints. On one wall, a nightlight cast a pale circle about the livid, lacerated feet of Jesus. Then we saw the shadowy form of a woman huddled in one corner of the balcony window. She was sound asleep, her hands folded in her lap, her head on her chest. It was Candelaria, who woke, startled, at the sound of our footsteps.

‘I was waiting to show you to your room, Marquis.’

Concha said:

‘I thought you’d gone to bed.’

We continued in silence until we reached the half-open door of a room in which a light could be seen. Concha let go of my arm and stood there trembling and very pale. In the end she came in. This was my room. On an old console table stood a silver candelabra with the candles burning. At the far end I could see the bed hung with ancient damask curtains. Concha inspected everything with maternal care. She paused to smell the fresh roses in a vase and then said goodnight.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

I picked her up in my arms as if she were a child.

‘I won’t let you go.’

‘You must.’

‘No, I won’t.’

And my eyes smiled into her eyes, and my mouth smiled upon her mouth. Her Turkish slippers fell from her feet and I carried her over to the bed, where I lovingly lay her down. Then she happily submitted. Her eyes shone and two roses bloomed on the white skin of her cheeks. She gently removed my hands and, slightly embarrassed, began unlacing her white robe that slipped away from her pale, trembling body. I pulled back the sheets and she slid between them. She began to sob and I sat beside her, consoling her, until, at last, she appeared to fall asleep. Only then did I lie down too.

 

 

 

All night I felt the presence beside me of that poor body burning with fever, like a sepulchral light in an opaque white porcelain vase. Her head rested on the pillow, framed by a wave of black hair that emphasised the matt pallor of her face; her mouth, drained of colour, her hollow cheeks, her drawn forehead, her waxen eyelids, her eyes set in dark, hollow sockets, gave her the spiritual appearance of a lovely saint consumed by penitence and fasting. Her neck bloomed upon her shoulders like a sickly lily, her breasts were two white roses perfuming an altar, and her slender arms, delicate and fragile, were like the handles of an amphora circling her head. Leaning on the pillows, I watched over her exhausted, sweat-drenched sleep. The cockerel had crowed twice and the whitish light of dawn was seeping in through the closed balcony doors. On the ceiling, the shadows obeyed the flickering of the candles, which, having burned all night, were sputtering out in the silver candelabra. Near the bed, on an armchair, hung my hunter’s cape, still damp from the rain, and sprinkled over it were those herbs whose secret properties were known only to the poor mad woman at the mill. I slid out of bed and gathered them up. With a strange blend of superstition and irony, taking care not to wake her, I concealed that mystical bunch of herbs beneath Concha’s pillows. I lay down, placed my lips on her perfumed hair and gradually slipped into sleep. For a long time, the vision of that day floated in my dreams, with its faint taste of tears and smiles. I woke once, I believe, and saw Concha sitting by my side; I think she kissed me on the forehead, smiling a vague ghostly smile and placing one finger on her lips. I closed my eyes helplessly and plunged back into the mists of sleep. I woke up to see a ladder of bright dust motes reaching in from the balcony at the other end of the room. Concha was no longer by my side, but soon after that, the door slowly opened and Concha tiptoed in. I pretended to be asleep. She came closer, not making a sound; she looked at me, sighed, and placed in a vase the bunch of fresh roses she had brought me. She went over to the balcony and adjusted the curtains to keep out the light. Then she left as silently as she had come. I called out to her, laughing.

‘Concha! Concha!’

She turned round.

‘So you were awake, were you?’

‘I was dreaming of you.’

‘Well, here I am.’

‘And how are you?’

‘I’m fully recovered.’

‘Love is the best doctor.’

‘But we’d better not overdo the medicine.’

We lay in each other’s arms, laughing happily, our mouths pressed together, our heads resting on the same pillow. Concha had the delicate, sickly pallor of a mater dolorosa, and she was so beautiful, so thin and wan, that my eyes, lips and hands found pleasure in the very things that saddened me. I confess I do not remember ever having loved her as madly as I did that night.

 

 

 

I had not taken a servant with me, and so Concha, imitating one of those princesses in picaresque stories, placed a page at my service, to do me greater honour, she said, laughing. He was a young boy whom Concha had taken in. I can see him now, peering round the door and removing his cap, asking in respectful, humble tones:

‘May I?’

‘Come in.’

He entered with his head bowed and a little white cloth cap clutched in his two hands.

‘My lady says to ask if you need anything.’

‘Where is she?’

‘In the garden.’

And he stood in the middle of the room, not daring to take a step. I think he was the eldest child of the people who tended Concha’s land in Lantañón and one of her uncle’s one hundred godchildren; her uncle, Juan Manuel Montenegro, was the generous, visionary gentleman who lived in the great house at Lantañón. It still makes me smile to think of it. Concha’s favourite was neither blond nor melancholy like the pages who appear in ballads, but with his dark eyes and bright cheeks honeyed by the sun, he too could have won a princess’s heart. I ordered him to open the balcony doors, and he obeyed at the double. The cool, scented breeze blew in from the garden, making the curtains flutter gaily. The page had left his cap on a chair and he came back to pick it up. I asked him:

‘Do you work in the palace?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Have you been here long?’

‘Nearly two years.’

‘And what do you do?’

‘Whatever I’m asked to.’

‘Do you have no mother and father?’

‘I have, sir.’

‘And what do they do?’

‘They don’t do anything. They just dig the earth.’

He gave the stoical replies of the downtrodden. In his serge clothes, with his shy eyes, his visigothic speech, his shock of hair chopped into a straight fringe, his almost monkish tonsure, he looked like the son of a former bondsman.

‘And was it your lady herself who told you to come?’

‘Yes, sir. I was down in the courtyard teaching the new blackbirds a song – because the old ones already know it – when the mistress came down to the garden and told me to come.’

‘Are you in charge of training the blackbirds here?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And now you are also my page.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Important posts!’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And how old are you?’

‘I think … I think …’ The page thought hard and stared down at his cap, passing it slowly from one hand to the other. ‘I think I must be about twelve, but I’m not sure.’

‘Where were you before you came to the palace?’

‘I served in the house of Don Juan Manuel.’

‘And what did you do there?’

‘I trained the ferret.’

‘Yet another courtly post!’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And how many blackbirds does your mistress have?’

The page boy pulled a scornful face.

‘None!’

‘Who do the birds belong to, then?’

‘They’re mine. When I’ve trained them up, I sell them.’

‘And who do you sell them to?’

‘To my mistress, of course. She buys every one of them. She only wants them so that she can set them free again. She wants them to fly around the garden singing, but they end up miles away. One Sunday, in the month of San Juan, I was walking with the mistress and we had just passed the Lantañón meadows, when we saw one of my blackbirds perched high up on the branch of a cherry tree, singing its song. I remember what my lady said then, she said: ‘Just look what a long way that gentleman has come.”

The ingenuous tale made me laugh out loud, and when he saw me laughing, the page boy laughed too. He may not have been blond or melancholy, but he was worthy of being the page of a princess and the chronicler of a whole reign. I asked him:

‘Which is the more honourable occupation, training ferrets or blackbirds?’

After considering for a moment, he replied:

‘It’s all the same really.’

‘And why did you leave the service of Don Juan Manuel?’

‘Because he already had a lot of servants. Don Juan Manuel is a great man, you know. All the servants were afraid of him. Don Juan Manuel is my godfather and he was the one who brought me to the palace to serve my mistress.’

‘And where did you get on best?’

The page boy fixed me with dark, childish eyes and said, very gravely, still holding his cap in his hands:

‘If you know your place, you get on well anywhere.’

It was a reply worthy of Calderón. That page certainly had a way with aphorisms. There was no doubting what his destiny would be. He was born to live in a palace, to train blackbirds and ferrets, to be the servant to a prince and to shape the heart of a great king.

 

 

 

Concha was calling to me cheerfully from the garden. I went out onto the balcony, which was warm and golden in the morning sunlight. There was something about the countryside – the yoked oxen, the grape harvests, the ploughed fields – that seemed very Latin. Concha was standing underneath my balcony.

‘Have you got Florisel there?’

‘The pageboy?’

‘Yes.’

‘He was obviously christened by the fairies.’

‘And I’m his fairy godmother. Will you send him down to me?’

‘What do you want from him?’

‘I want him to bring you these roses.’

And Concha held out her skirt which was full of gathered roses losing their petals, still covered in dew, in joyous plenitude, like the imaginary fruit of a love that flowers only in kisses.

‘They’re all for you. I’m stripping the whole garden.’

I had a vague memory of that ancient garden where, around an abandoned fountain, centuries-old myrtle bushes had been clipped into the shapes of the founder’s four coats of arms. The garden and the palace belonged to a noble, melancholy age in which people had led pleasant lives filled with gallantry and romance. Laughter and madrigals had once blossomed beneath the canopy of leaves in the maze, on the terraces and in the salons, when the white hands which, in old portraits, merely clutch lace handkerchiefs, were busy plucking the petals from daisies that guard the innocent secrets of people’s hearts. Such beautiful, far-off memories! I too evoked them one distant day, when the golden autumn morning enveloped the garden still damp and green from the constant rain of the previous night. Beneath the clear, azure sky the venerable cypress trees seemed lost in a dream of monastic life. The caressing light trembled on the flowers like a golden bird, and on the velvet lawn the breeze traced imaginary, fantastical footsteps as if invisible fairies were dancing there. Concha was standing at the foot of the steps, absorbed in making a huge bouquet of roses. Some had dropped their petals in her lap and she showed them to me, smiling.

‘Look, isn’t it a pity!’ And she pressed their velvet coolness to her pale cheeks. ‘They have such a wonderful perfume!’

I smiled and said.

‘It’s your own divine perfume!’

She looked up and took a deep, delicious breath, closing her eyes and smiling, her face covered in dew, like one more rose – a white rose. Against that backdrop of graceful green shade, swathed in light as if in a diaphanous gown of gold, she looked like a Madonna as imagined by some seraphic monk. I went down to join her. As I came down the steps, she showered me with the fallen rose petals gathered in her skirt. Together we walked about the garden. The paths were covered in dry, yellowish leaves that sighed as the wind swept them along before us. The snails, motionless as arthritic old men, were enjoying the sun on the stone benches. The flowers were beginning to fade in the Versaillesque baskets embroidered with myrtle, and they gave off an elusive aroma redolent of sad memories. In the depths of the maze murmured a fountain surrounded by cypress trees, and the murmur of the water seemed to plunge the whole garden into a peaceful vision of old age, seclusion and neglect. Concha said to me:

‘Let’s stop here.’

We sat down in the shade of the acacia trees, on a stone bench covered with leaves. Opposite us was the entrance to the mysterious, green maze. Above the keystone of the arch were two moss-covered chimera, and a single, shady path wove through the myrtles like the path of a solitary life, silent and unknown. In the distance, Florisel walked by amongst the trees, carrying his cage of blackbirds in his hand. Concha pointed him out to me:

‘There he goes!’

‘Who?’

‘Florisel.’

‘Why do you call him Florisel?’

With a happy laugh she said:

‘Florisel is the name of the pageboy with whom a certain inconsolable princess falls in love; I read about them in a story.’

‘Whose story?’

‘Stories don’t belong to anyone.’

Her moody, mysterious eyes stared off into the distance and her laughter sounded so strange to me that I felt cold, the cold that comes from understanding all perversities. It seemed to me that Concha too was shivering. We were, after all, at the start of autumn and the clouds were beginning to cover the sky. We returned to the palace.

 

 

 

Although it had been built in the eighteenth century, the Palacio de Brandeso was designed almost entirely in the plateresque style of the sixteenth. A palace a la italiana with balconies, fountains and gardens, commissioned by the Bishop of Corinth, Don Pedro de Bendaña, a Knight of St James, a Commander of the Cross, and Confessor to Queen María Amelia de Parma. I believe that Concha’s grandfather and my grandfather, Marshal Bendaña, were involved in a legal dispute over who should inherit the palace. I am not sure, though, because my grandfather was always involved in law suits, even with the Royal House itself, which is why I inherited a whole fortune in dossiers and files. The history of the noble house of Bendaña is the history of the crown court of Valladolid.

Poor Concha adored memories, and she wanted us to walk around the palace recalling the old days when I used to visit with my mother and when she and her sisters were still pale little girls who would greet me with a kiss and take me by the hand so that we could play together, sometimes in the tower, sometimes on the terrace, at others on the balcony that looked out over the road and the garden. That morning, as we were climbing the crumbling steps, the doves flew up and alighted on the carved stone coat of arms. The windows were golden in the sun, old wallflowers bloomed amongst the cracks in the wall and a lizard strolled along the balustrade. Concha smiled languidly.

‘Do you remember?’

And I could sense the whole past in her subtle smile, the way the precious perfume of faded flowers brings with it a happy confusion of memories. That was where a sad and pious lady used to tell us stories about the saints. Sitting with me in a window seat, she had often shown me the holy pictures in The Christian Year, open on her lap. I still remember her noble, mystical hands slowly turning the pages. The lady had a lovely old-fashioned name: she was called Águeda. She was the mother of Fernanda, Isabel and Concha, the three pale little girls with whom I used to play. After all those years, I saw again the salons reserved for special occasions and those other familiar rooms, cold, silent rooms with walnut floors, rooms that smelled all year round of the sour, autumn apples left to ripen on the window sills, the salons with their ancient damask curtains, tarnished mirrors and family portraits: ladies in full skirts, prelates with learned smiles, pale abbesses, grim captains. In those rooms our footsteps echoed as in deserted churches, and each time we gingerly opened another door decorated with florid ironwork, the dark, silent depths exhaled the distant aroma of other lives. Only in one room, the floor of which was laid with cork, did our footsteps awaken no echo at all – like the silent footsteps of ghosts. In the mirrors the salon disappeared into a dream-like distance as if in an enchanted lake, and the people in the portraits, those founding bishops, those sad damsels, those desiccated eldest sons, seemed to live forgotten in an ancient peace. Concha stopped at the point where the two corridors met and opened out into a round anteroom where, day and night, an oil lamp lit a dishevelled, livid Christ figure. Concha murmured:

‘Do you remember this anteroom?’

‘The round one?’

‘Yes, it was where we used to play.’

An old woman was sitting in the window seat spinning. Concha pointed to her.

‘It’s Micaela, my mother’s maidservant. The poor thing is blind. Don’t say anything to her.’

We continued on. Sometimes Concha would stop at an open door and point silently in at the room, saying to me with that vague smile of hers that also seemed to be dissolving into the past:

‘Do you remember?’

She remembered things that had happened years ago. She remembered when we were children and used to jump up and down in front of the console tables to make the ornaments on them tremble: vases laden with roses, bell jars placed over ancient arrangements of gilded branches, the silver candelabra and the daguerreotypes full of starry wonder – the days when our mad, happy laughter had disturbed the stately silence of the palace and now died away in the large, bright anterooms, along dark corridors flanked by narrow mullioned windows in which doves were cooing.

 

 

 

When it grew dark, Concha felt terribly cold and had to lie down. I was so alarmed by her shivering, by her deathly pallor, that I wanted to send for the doctor in Viana del Prior, but she wouldn’t let me, and after an hour, she was smiling up at me again, loving and languid. Lying motionless on the white pillows, she murmured:

‘Can you believe that being ill seems a blessing to me now.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re here taking care of me.’

I smiled but said nothing and she, with great sweetness, insisted:

‘You have no idea how much I love you, do you?’

In the half-light of the bedroom, Concha’s soft voice had a deep, sentimental charm that infected my very soul.

‘Ah, but I love you more, princess.’

‘No, before, you really did love me. However innocent a woman might be, that’s something she always knows, and you know how innocent I was.’

I bent over to kiss her eyes, which were veiled with tears, and said, to console her:

‘You don’t honestly think I could have forgotten, do you, Concha?’

She exclaimed, laughing:

‘You are an old cynic!’

‘I’m just rather forgetful. It all happened a very long time ago you know.’

‘How long? Tell me.’

‘Don’t make me sad remembering all the years that have passed.’

‘But I was very innocent, wasn’t I?’

‘As innocent as any married woman can be.’

‘I was much more innocent. You taught me everything.’

She almost sighed the last words and placed one hand over her eyes. I looked at her, feeling the voluptuous memory of the senses stir into life. Concha still retained for me all her former charms, only purified by the divine paleness of her illness. I had indeed taught her everything. As a child, married off to an old man, she had all the innocent awkwardness of a virgin. Some marriage beds are as cold as tombs, and some husbands sleep in them like recumbent granite statues. Poor Concha! On her lips perfumed by prayers, my lips were the first to sing the triumph of love and its glorious exaltation. I had to teach her the whole cycle, line by line, of Pietro Aretino’s thirty-two sonnets. That lovely, white, unopened flower of a child bride could only mumble the very first. There are husbands and lovers who are not even useful as precursors and, God knows, the bloody rose of perversity, has never bloomed in my love affairs. I have always preferred to be the Marquis of Bradomín rather than the divine Marquis de Sade. Perhaps that is the reason why some women considered me proud, though Concha was never one of them. We had fallen silent and she said:

‘What are you thinking about?’

‘About the past, Concha.’

‘I’m jealous of your past.’

‘Don’t be such a child. I was thinking about our past love.’

She smiled and closed her eyes as if she too were calling up some memory. Then she murmured in a tone of gentle resignation, sweet with love and melancholy:

‘I have only ever asked Our Lady for one thing and I believe she is going to grant it to me – to have you by my side at the hour of my death.’

We again fell into a sad silence. After a while, Concha sat up amongst her pillows. Her eyes were full of tears. In a very low voice she said:

‘Xavier, hand me the jewellery box that’s on my dressing table. Open it. That’s where I keep your letters too. Let’s burn them together. I don’t want them to survive me.’

It was a silver box, made with all the decadent lavishness of the eighteenth century. It gave off a sweet smell of violets, which I breathed in, closing my eyes.

‘Haven’t you got anyone else’s letters in here?’

‘No.’

‘Ah, so your new lover doesn’t know how to write.’

‘My new lover? What new lover? I suppose you’ve dreamed up some dreadful atrocity?’

‘I believe I have.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not telling you.’

‘And what if I were to guess?’

‘You can’t.’

‘What enormity have you invented?’

Laughing, I exclaimed:

‘Florisel.’

A shadow of anger passed over Concha’s eyes.

‘How could you even think that?’

She plunged her fingers into my hair, ruffling it.

‘What am I going to do with you? Shall I kill you?’

She laughed to see me laughing, and on her pale lips her laughter was fresh, sensual, joyous.

‘You can’t possibly have thought that.’

‘Tell me it’s impossible.’

‘Did you really think that?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t believe you. How could you even imagine such a thing?’

‘I remembered my first conquest. I was eleven when a lady fell in love with me. She was very beautiful too.’

‘My Aunt Augusta.’

‘Yes.’

‘You told me about that once. But weren’t you handsomer than Florisel?’

I hesitated for a moment and almost besmirched my lips with a lie. In the end, though, I had the courage to confess the truth.

‘No, Concha, I was much less handsome.’

She gave me a mocking look and closed the jewellery box.

‘I’ll burn your letters another day, not today. Your jealousy has put me in a good mood.’

And leaning back on her pillows, she burst out again in peals of fresh, rapturous laughter. We never did burn those letters. I have always resisted burning love letters. I have loved them as a poet loves his poetry. When Concha died, her daughters inherited them along with the family jewels in the silver box.

 

 

 

Ailing, enamoured souls are perhaps those who weave the loveliest, most hope-filled dreams. I had never seen Concha happier, more joyful. That rebirth of our love was like a pleasant, melancholy autumn afternoon of golden skies – afternoons and skies that I could contemplate from the palace balconies, when Concha, feigning a romantic weariness, would lean upon my shoulder. The road wound away through the damp, green countryside beneath the dying sun. It was a bright, deserted road. Gazing into the distance, Concha sighed.

‘That is the road we must both one day take.’

And she raised one pale hand to indicate the distant cypress trees in the cemetery. Poor Concha spoke of dying, though without really believing in it. I said jokingly:

‘Now don’t make me sad, Concha. You know perfectly well that I am an enchanted prince held captive in your palace by a spell. In order for the spell to remain unbroken, you have to make my life into a happy tale.’

Forgetting her twilight sadness, Concha was smiling again.

‘It’s also the road that brought you here.’

Poor Concha tried to look happy. She knew that all tears are bitter tears and that a sigh, even the gentlest and sweetest of sighs, should last only as long as a gust of wind. Poor Concha! She was as pale and white as those Madonna lilies which, as they fade, fill chapels with their delicate perfume. She again lifted her hand, diaphanous as the hand of a fairy.

‘Can you see a rider over there in the distance?’

‘I can’t see anything.’

‘He’s just passing Fontela.’

‘Yes, now I see him.’

‘It’s my uncle, Don Juan Manuel.’

‘The magnificent lord of Lantañón manor!’

Concha pulled a sad face.

‘Poor thing. I’m sure he’s coming to see you.’

Don Juan Manuel had stopped in the middle of the road and was standing up in his stirrups and doffing his wide-brimmed hat to greet us. Then, in a powerful voice that received a distant echo, he cried:

‘Niece! Tell them to open the garden gate!’

Concha raised her arms to indicate that she would, then, turning to me, she said, laughing:

‘Tell him they’re on their way.’

Cupping my mouth with my hands, I roared:

‘They’re coming!’

But Don Juan Manuel pretended not to hear me. The privilege of making oneself heard at that distance was his alone. Concha put her hands over her ears.

‘Shh, he’ll never admit that he can hear you.’

I continued roaring:

‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’

In vain. Don Juan Manuel leaned forward to pat his horse’s neck. He had resolved not to hear me. Then he stood up in his stirrups again.

‘Niece! Niece!’

Concha leaned on the window, laughing like a happy child.

‘Isn’t he magnificent!’

And the old man kept shouting from the road:

‘Niece! Niece!’

He really was magnificent. He obviously judged that the gate was not being opened to him with sufficient speed, for he dug his spurs into his horse and galloped off. From afar, he turned and shouted:

‘Can’t stop, I’m off to Viana del Prior. There’s a scrivener there who needs to be taught a lesson.’

Florisel, who had run down to open the gate, stopped to watch this elegant departure. Then he came back up the worn steps, overgrown with ivy. As he passed us, he said in solemn, learned tones, without looking up:

‘He’s a great man, Don Juan Manuel, a very great man indeed.’

I think he meant it as a criticism of us, because we were laughing at the old man. I called out to him:

‘Hey, Florisel!’

Trembling, he stopped.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Do you really think Don Juan Manuel is such a great man?’

‘Present company excepted, sir.’

And his childish eyes, fixed on Concha, begged forgiveness. Concha made an indulgent, queenly gesture, only to spoil it all by laughing like a mad thing. Florisel moved off in silence. We kissed each other joyfully and, as we kissed, we heard the distant singing of the blackbirds, led by Florisel on his bamboo flute.

 

 

 

It was a moonlit night and, in the depths of the maze, the fountain was singing like a hidden bird. We were sitting in silence, holding hands. In the middle of that meditative quiet, we heard the sound of slow, weary footsteps coming down the corridor. Candelaria came in carrying a lamp and Concha cried out as if she had been woken from a dream.

‘Take that light away!’

‘Do you mean you want to be in the dark? You shouldn’t sit in the moonlight, you know, it’s bad for you.’

Concha asked, smiling:

‘And why is that, Candelaria?’

The old woman lowered her voice:

‘You know perfectly well why, señorita … because of witches.’

Candelaria took the lamp away again, crossing herself repeatedly, while we went back to listening to the song of the fountain which was telling the moon of its imprisonment in the maze. A cuckoo clock, which had belonged to the founder of the house, struck seven. Concha murmured:

‘It gets dark so early now! It’s only seven o’clock.’

‘Winter’s on its way.’

‘When do you have to leave?’

‘Me? When you allow me to.’

Concha sighed.

‘When I allow you to indeed. If I had my way, you would never leave.’

And she silently squeezed my hand. From our place on the balcony we could see the garden lit by the moon, the faded cypresses crowned with stars against the blue night sky, and a black fountain with silver water. Concha said:

‘I received a letter yesterday. I must show it to you.’

‘A letter? From whom?’

‘From our cousin Isabel. She’s coming here and she’s bringing the girls with her.’

‘Isabel Bendaña?’

‘Yes.’

‘Has Isabel got daughters then?’

Concha said shyly:

‘No, they’re mine.’

I felt an April breeze blow over the garden of my memories. Once, those two girls, Concha’s daughters, had been very fond of me and I of them. I looked up at their mother. I had never before seen such a sad smile on Concha’s lips.

‘What’s wrong? Are you all right?’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Do they live with their father?’

‘No, they’re being educated at the Convento de la Enseñanza.’

‘They must be nearly grown up.’

‘They’re certainly very tall.’

‘They used to be very pretty. I don’t know what they’ll be like now.’

‘Like their mother.’

‘No, they could never be like their mother.’

Concha smiled that same sad smile and sat looking thoughtfully down at her hands.

‘I have to ask you a favour.’

‘What?’

‘If Isabel comes with my daughters, we have to put on a little act. I’ll tell them that you’re in Lantañón hunting with my uncle. You will just happen to come over one afternoon and, either because there’s a storm or because we’re afraid of intruders, you can stay on at the palace, as our knight.’

‘And how long must I be exiled in Lantañón?’

Concha exclaimed quickly:

‘No time at all. Only on the actual afternoon they arrive. You’re not offended, are you?’

‘No, my love.’

‘I’m so glad. I’ve been worrying about it since yesterday, not daring to tell you.’

‘Do you think we’ll deceive Isabel?’

‘I’m not doing it for Isabel’s benefit, but for my two little girls, who are almost young women now.’

‘And what about Don Juan Manuel?’

‘I’ll talk to him. He has no scruples about such things. He’s another descendant of the Borgias. He’s your uncle too, isn’t he?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps I’m related to him through you.’

She replied, laughing:

‘I don’t think so. I have an idea that your mother used to call him cousin.’

‘Oh, my mother knows the story behind the whole family tree. Now, we’ll have to consult Florisel.’

‘He will be our king-of-arms.’

A smile trembled on the pale rose of her mouth. Then she grew pensive and sat looking out at the garden, her hands folded in her lap. In their bamboo cage hanging by the balcony door, Florisel’s blackbirds were whistling an old song. In the silence of the night, that bright, country melody evoked memories of happy Celtic dances danced in the shade of ancient oak trees. Concha began to sing too. Her voice was soft as a caress. She got up and wandered about the balcony. Then, standing at the far end, all white in the moonlight, she began to dance one of those jolly pastoral dances, only to stop, breathing hard:

‘Ooph, I get so tired. You see, I’ve learned the song as well!’

I laughed and said:

‘So you’re one of Florisel’s pupils too?’

‘I am.’

I went over to help her. She put her hands on my shoulders and, resting her cheek on my chest, she looked up at me with beautiful, fevered eyes. I kissed her and she bit my lips with her pale lips.

 

 

 

Poor Concha! Though drawn and pale, she had the noble stamina for pleasure of a goddess. That night the flame of passion wrapped its golden tongue about us for a long time, first dying down, then blazing up again. I fell asleep in Concha’s arms, listening to the singing of the birds in the garden. When I woke, she was sitting up against the pillows, with such a look of pain and suffering on her face, that I went cold. Poor Concha! When she saw me open my eyes, she smiled though. Stroking her hands, I asked:

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t know. I feel really ill.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t know, it would be so shameful if I were to be found dead here!’

When I heard her say that, I felt an immediate desire to keep her by my side.

‘You’re shivering, poor love!’

I held her in my arms. She half-closed her eyes. They closed like that when she wanted me to kiss them. She was trembling so much that I tried to warm her whole body with my lips, and my mouth moved conscientiously along her arms to her shoulders and placed a necklace of roses about her neck. Then I looked up at her. She folded her pale hands and looked at them sadly – poor delicate, bloodless, almost fragile hands. I said to her:

‘You have the hands of a mater dolorosa.’

She smiled.

‘I have the hands of a dead woman.’

‘As far as I’m concerned, the paler you are the more beautiful.’

Joy flashed in her eyes.

‘Yes, you’re still very drawn to me; I still move you.’

She put one arm about my neck and with her other hand lifted her breasts – snow roses consumed by fever. I held her close and, even in the midst of desire, I was gripped by the terror of being there at her death. When I heard her sigh, I thought she was dying. I kissed her, trembling, as if I were about to suck the life from her. With a sad voluptuousness, such as I had never known before, my soul grew drunk on that perfume, the perfume of a dying flower from which my devoted, impious fingers tore the petals. Her eyes opened and looked lovingly up into mine, but there was still great suffering in them. The following day Concha was too ill to leave her bed.

 

 

 

The afternoon was slipping away amidst a shower of rain. I had taken refuge in the library and was reading A Florilegium for Our Lady, a book of sermons by the Bishop of Corinth, Don Pedro de Bendaña, the founder of the palace. Sometimes I amused myself listening to the roar of the wind in the garden and the whisper of dry leaves tumbling along the avenues of ancient myrtle bushes. The bare branches of the trees scraped against the panes of the leaded windows. A monastic peace reigned in the library, as in some canonical, learned dream. In the air could be felt the breath of old folios bound in parchment, the books on the humanities and on theology that the Bishop had studied. Suddenly, I heard a loud voice calling from outside in the corridor.

‘Marquis! Marquis!’

I placed the book face down on the table, to keep my place, and stood up. Just at that moment, the door opened and Don Juan Manuel appeared on the threshold, shaking the wet from his cape.

‘Terrible afternoon, nephew!’

‘Terrible, uncle!’

And thus our kinship was sealed.

‘What are you doing shut up in here reading? You’ll ruin your eyesight.’

He went over to the fire and held out his hands to the flames.

‘It’s snowing out there now!’

Then he turned his back to the fire and, standing before me, exclaimed in his affected, lordly voice:

‘Nephew, you have inherited your grandfather’s mania. He used to spend all day reading too. That’s why he went mad. And what great fat tome is that?’

With his sunken, greenish eyes he gave the book a look of utter scorn. He left the fireside and took a few steps about the library, making his spurs ring. Then he stopped.

‘Marquis, has the palace’s supply of Christ’s blood entirely run dry?’

Realising what he meant, I got to my feet. Don Juan Manuel stretched out an arm, holding me back with a sovereign gesture.

‘Don’t move. I imagine there must be a servant somewhere in the palace.’

And from the far end of the library he started bawling:

‘Arnelas! Brión! Anyone! Come at once!’

He was just beginning to grow impatient when Florisel appeared at the door.

‘Do you need anything, sir?’

And he went and kissed Don Juan Manuel’s hand, and Don Juan Manuel, in turn, stroked Florisel’s head.

‘Bring me up some of that red wine from Fontela.’

And he began pacing up and down the library again. From time to time he stopped to hold out his hands to the fire; he had the pale, gaunt, aristocratic hands of an ascetic king. Despite the years, which had left his hair completely white, he was still as erect and arrogant as he had been in his prime when he served in the royal guard. He had retired many years before to his manor house in Lantañón, leading the typical life of the eldest son of any rural, land-owning family: haggling at fairs, gambling in towns and, at every fiesta, sitting at the priests’ table. Since Concha had been living at the Palacio de Brandeso, he had been a frequent visitor there too. He would tether his horse at the garden gate and stride up to the house, shouting. He would call for wine and drink himself to sleep in his armchair. When he woke, regardless of whether it was day or night, he would call for his horse and ride back home, nodding in the saddle. Don Juan Manuel had a great liking for the red wine of Fontela, kept in a huge cask that dated back to the days of the French. Growing impatient because they were taking their time in bringing it up from the cellar, he stood in the middle of the library and bawled:

‘Where’s that wine? Or are they still picking the grapes?’

Trembling, Florisel appeared with a jug, which he placed on the table. Don Juan Manuel removed his coat and sat down in an armchair.

‘I can promise you, Marquis, this Fontela wine is the best wine in the region. Do you know the wine from Condado? Well, this is better. And if they were more careful in their choice of grapes, it would be the best in the world.’

He was saying all this while pouring out some wine into a cut-glass goblet with a handle, and the cross of Calatrava engraved in the bottom. It was one of those heavy, antique glasses that remind one of convent refectories. Don Juan Manuel drank the wine down in one long, slow draught, then refilled his glass.

‘If my niece drank a few more glasses of this, she wouldn’t be in the state she’s in now.’

Just then, a smiling Concha appeared at the door of the library, dragging behind her the train of her monastic dressing gown.

‘Don Juan Manuel wants you to go back with him, did he tell you? Tomorrow is the big fiesta there: San Rosendo de Lantañón. My uncle says you will receive a royal welcome.’

Don Juan Manuel nodded magnanimously.

‘As you know, for three centuries it has been the privilege of the Marquises of Bradomín to be received thus in the parishes of San Rosendo de Lantañón, Santa Baya de Cristamilde and San Miguel de Deiro. If I’m not mistaken, the three curacies are in the gift of your family. Or am I wrong, nephew?’

‘No, you’re quite right, uncle.’

Concha interrupted, laughing.

‘There’s no point asking him. Sad to say, the latest Marquis of Bradomín doesn’t know a thing about such matters.’

Don Juan Manual shook his head gravely.

‘Surely he knows that – at least he should.’

Concha dropped down into the armchair that I had been sitting in shortly before and, with a learned air, opened the book I had been reading.

‘I don’t think he even knows the origin of the house of Bradomín.’

Don Juan Manuel turned to me and said in a gracious, conciliatory tone:

‘Take no notice. Your cousin is just trying to provoke you.’

Concha insisted:

‘He doesn’t even know the coat of arms of the noble house of Montenegro.’

Don Juan Manuel knit his brows.

‘Even little children know that.’

Concha murmured, with a smile of sweet, delicate irony:

‘After all, it is the most illustrious of Spanish lineages.’

‘Spanish and German, niece. The Montenegros of Galicia descend from a German empress. It is the only Spanish coat of arms to have metal on metal: golden spurs on a field of silver. The Bradomín line is equally ancient. But of all the titles in your family: the Marquisate of Bradomín, the Marquisate of San Miguel, the Earldom of Barbanzón and the Lordship of Padín, the last is the oldest and most distinguished. That goes back to Roland, one of the twelve peers. As you know, Roland did not die in Roncesvalles, as the history books say.’

I knew nothing about this, but Concha nodded. She was doubtless aware of that family secret. After downing another glass of wine, Don Juan Manuel went on:

‘I know about these things because I too am descended from Roland. Roland managed to escape and he boarded a ship that took him as far as the Isle of Sálvora, where he was shipwrecked, lured onto the beach by a siren. That siren bore him a son, who, being Roland’s son, was called Padín, which means paladin. And that is why, in the church of Lantañón, a siren is shown embracing and supporting your coat of arms.’

He got to his feet and, going over to the window, looked out to see if the weather was improving. The sun could only be glimpsed through dense clouds. For a while, Don Juan Manuel remained gazing up at the sky. Then he turned back to us:

‘I’m just going up to inspect my mills over there, then I’ll come back to get you. Since you’re so keen on reading, when we get to my house, I’ll give you an old book to read, one with nice, large, clear print, in which all these stories are recounted in full.’

Don Juan Manuel drained his glass and left the library, his spurs jingling. When the sound of his footsteps had disappeared down the long corridor, Concha, leaning heavily on the arms of her chair, got up and came over to me. She was white as a ghost.

 

 

 

In the depths of the maze, the fountain was singing like a hidden bird, and the setting sun was gilding the windows of the balcony where we were waiting. It was warm and fragrant there. Graceful arches, filled by stained-glass windows, flanked the balcony doors with the consummate artifice of the gallant century that created the pavanne and the gavotte. In each arch, the stained-glass windows formed a triptych and through them one could see the garden in the middle of a thunder storm, in the middle of a snow storm and beneath a shower of rain. That evening, the autumn sun was piercing the central window like the weary lance of a hero of old.

Standing motionless in the doorway, Concha was watching the road and sighing. Doves fluttered about her. Poor Concha was annoyed with me because I had laughed at her story of a heavenly apparition that had come to her while she was asleep in my arms. It was a dream such as saints have in those stories told to me when I was a child by the sad, pious lady who then lived in the palace. I vaguely remember that dream. Concha was lost in the maze, sitting at the foot of the fountain and crying inconsolably. At that moment, an archangel appeared. He was carrying neither sword nor buckler. He was as pale and melancholy as a lily. Concha realised that this adolescent had not come in order to do battle with Satan. She smiled at him through her tears and the archangel spread his wings of light above her and guided her out of the maze. The maze was the sin in which Concha was lost, and the waters of the fountain were the tears that she would have to cry in Purgatory. Despite our love, Concha would not be damned. After guiding her past the still, green myrtles at the archway on which the two chimera stood face to face, the archangel flapped his wings in order to fly away. Concha knelt down and asked him if she should enter a convent; the archangel gave no answer. Wringing her hands, Concha asked if she should tear the petals from the flower of her love and cast them to the winds; the archangel gave no answer. Dragging herself across the flagstones, she asked him if she was going to die; the archangel gave no answer, but Concha felt two tears fall on her hands. The tears rolled between her fingers like two diamonds. Then Concha understood the mystery of that dream. When she told me the story, she sighed, poor thing, and said to me:

‘It’s a warning from Heaven, Xavier.’

‘Dreams are never anything more than dreams, Concha.’

‘I’m going to die. Don’t you believe in apparitions?’

I smiled because at the time I did not, and Concha walked slowly over to the balcony door. The doves fluttered above her like a happy omen. The lush, green countryside smiled in the peace of the afternoon, with the scattered houses of the villages and the distant windmills half-hidden behind the vine trellises at their doors, and with the blue mountains topped by the first snows. Beneath the pleasant sun that shone between the showers, the village people were out walking along the roads. A shepherdess wearing a red shawl was leading her sheep towards the church of San Gundián, women were returning from the fountain singing, a weary old man was goading on his yoke of cattle which had stopped by the fence to graze, and white smoke seemed to curl up from amongst the fig trees. The glorious, magnificent figure of Don Juan Manuel appeared at the top of the hill, his cape fluttering behind him. At the foot of the stairs, Brión, the steward, was holding by the reins an old horse which was as prudent, thoughtful and grave as a pontiff. The horse was white with a long, venerable mane, and had been in the palace since time immemorial. It neighed proudly and, when she heard it, Concha wiped away a tear that made her mortal eyes seem even more beautiful.

‘Will you come back tomorrow, Xavier?’

‘I will.’

‘Do you swear?’

‘I do.’

‘You’re not angry with me?’

Smiling slightly mockingly, I said:

‘No, I’m not angry with you, Concha.’

And we kissed each other in the romantic way of other times. I was the crusader leaving for Jerusalem and Concha was the lady left weeping in her castle in the moonlight. I must confess that as long as I wore my hair long like Espronceda and Zorrilla, in the style of the Merovingian kings, I could never bring myself to say goodbye in any other way. Now that the years have left me with a tonsure more befitting a deacon, I can only allow myself to murmur a melancholy farewell. A happy time, the time of youth. If only we could be like that fountain which, in the depths of the maze, still laughs its crystalline laugh, soulless and ageless.

 

 

 

From behind the glass panes of the balcony door, Concha was saying goodbye to us, waving one white hand. The sun had still not set and the graceful crescent of the moon was already beginning to shine in the sad, autumnal sky. It was two leagues to the house at Lantañón, and the bridleway was stony and full of large pools, before which our horses would pause, twitching their ears, whilst, on the other side, some village lad would stand watching us in silence, placidly letting his weary oxen drink. The shepherds returning from the hills, driving their flocks before them, waited at the passing places and kept their sheep to one side in order to let us through. Don Juan Manuel went first. He kept lurching about on his horse which seemed restless and unaccustomed to the saddle. It was a wild dapple grey, not many hands high, with fierce eyes and a hard mouth; its master seemed to have punished it by cropping its tail and mane. Don Juan Manuel rode it mercilessly. He dug his spurs in, at the same time pulling on the reins, causing the horse to rear up, though it never managed to unseat its master, because the old nobleman showed remarkable horsemanship.

We were still only halfway there when night fell. Don Juan Manuel continued lurching this way and that in the saddle, but that did not stop him booming out orders to me whenever we came to a rough patch in the road, telling me to rein in my nag. We reached a junction where three roads met and where a small altar had been built. A small group of women were kneeling there in prayer and they suddenly stood up, startling Don Juan Manuel’s horse, which wheeled about and threw off its rider. The women cried out and the horse, rushing past them, broke into a gallop, dragging Don Juan Manuel with it, his foot trapped in the stirrup. I raced after him. There was a dull thwack as the brambles on either side of the road beat against Don Juan Manuel’s body. The stony slope led down to the river and in the darkness I could see the sparks thrown up by the horse’s shoes. At last, by actually riding over Don Juan Manuel, I managed to get in front and position my horse across the road. His horse stopped short, covered in sweat and neighing, its sides heaving. I jumped down. Don Juan Manuel was smeared with blood and mud. When I bent over him, he slowly opened sad, glazed eyes. Without a word of complaint, he closed them again and I realised that he had fainted. I lifted him up, placed him across my horse and we set off back down the road. Near the palace I had to stop because Don Juan Manuel’s body kept sliding off and I had to position him better on the saddle. The coldness of his hands hanging inertly down frightened me. I again took up the reins of my horse and we continued on to the palace. Despite the darkness, I could see three young men on mules riding out on to the road through the garden gate. From some way away, I shouted:

‘Have you just delivered some guests to the palace?”

The three chorused:

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Who?’

‘A youngish lady and two little girls. They arrived in Viana this very afternoon on the boat from Flavia-Longa.’

The three men held their mules in check by the side of the road, to let me pass. When they saw Don Juan Manuel’s body slung over my horse, they muttered to each other. They did not, however, dare to question me. They must have presumed that it was someone I had killed, for I would swear that all three were shaking in their saddles. I stopped halfway along and ordered one of them to jump down and hold my horse, while I went up and warned the palace. He did so in silence. When I handed him the reins, he recognised Don Juan Manuel.

‘Holy Mother of God, it’s the lord of Lantañón.’

With trembling hand he took the reins and said in a low voice, full of awed respect:

‘Has some misfortune happened, Marquis?’

‘He fell off his horse.’

‘It looks as if he’s dead.’

‘It does indeed.’

At that moment, Don Juan Manuel raised himself wearily up.

‘Only half-dead, nephew.’

He sighed with all the fortitude of a man suppressing a groan, gave the men an inquisitorial look and then, turning to me, said:

‘Who are these people?’

‘The muleteers who brought Isabel and the girls.’

‘Where are we then?’

‘Near the palace.’

As we talked, I took up the horse’s reins again and we walked down the ancient avenue. The muleteers said goodbye:

‘A very good night to you!’

‘Have a safe journey!’

‘May the Lord be with you!’

They moved off at a stately pace on their mules. Don Juan Manuel gave a sigh and turned round; then, resting both hands on the pommel of the saddle, and even though the men were already some way off, he shouted to them in his usual commanding tones:

‘If you find my horse, take him to Viana del Prior.’

A voice lost in the silence of the night, fragmented by the buffeting wind, replied:

‘Don’t worry, sir, don’t worry!’

Beneath the familiar shade of the chestnut trees, my horse, scenting the stable, neighed again. In the distance, keeping close to the walls of the palace, two servants were talking in dialect. The one in front was carrying a lantern that swayed, slow and rhythmic. Behind the dew-misted glass of the lantern, the smoky flame from the oil lit up the wet earth and the villagers’ clogs with tremulous clarity. Speaking in low voices, they stopped for a moment at the steps and, when they recognised us, came forward with the lantern raised high to light our way from afar. They were the two shepherds in charge of filling the mangers with the night’s ration of damp, fragrant grass. They approached – clumsily, tentatively respectful – and lifted Don Juan Manuel down from my horse. They had placed the lantern on the balustrade of the steps, and from there it illumined the scene. Don Juan Manuel climbed up the steps, leaning heavily on the shoulders of the two servants, and I went ahead to warn Concha. She was such a good soul that she seemed always almost to be expecting some disaster.

 

 

 

I found Concha at her dressing table with her two daughters, engaged in combing the long hair of the youngest of them; the other was sitting on the Louis XV sofa beside her mother. The two girls were very similar; indeed, with their blonde hair and golden eyes, they looked like two young princesses painted by Titian in his old age. The elder of the two was called María Fernanda and the younger María Isabel. They were both talking at once about the events of the journey, and their mother smiled as she listened to them, delighted and happy, her pale fingers lost amongst the gold of their childish hair. When I went in, she started slightly, but soon controlled herself. The two young girls were looking at me, blushing bright red. The mother exclaimed in a somewhat shaken voice:

‘How lovely to see you. Have you come from Lantañón? You probably heard that my daughters had arrived.’

‘I heard about it when I got here. I owe the honour of seeing you to Don Juan Manuel, who fell off his horse going down the hill from Brandeso.’

The two girls asked their mother:

‘Is that our uncle in Lantañón?’

‘Yes, children.’

Concha left the ivory comb in her daughter’s hair and, removing her pale hand from amongst the golden threads, silently held it out to me. The children’s innocent eyes never left us for a moment. Their mother murmured:

‘Good heavens, a fall at his age. And where were you coming from?’

‘From Viana del Prior.’

‘How is it that you didn’t meet Isabel and my daughters on the way?’

‘We came across country.’

Concha looked away so as not to laugh and continued combing her daughter’s unplaited hair, the hair of a Venetian matron falling over the shoulders of a child. Shortly afterwards, Isabel came in:

‘Cousin, I knew you were here!’

‘How did you know?’

‘Because I saw Uncle Juan Manuel. It really is a miracle he wasn’t killed.’

Concha got up, leaning on her daughters, who staggered a little under her weight and smiled as if it were a game.

‘The poor man! Let’s go and see him, my dears.’

I said to her:

‘Leave it until tomorrow, Concha.’

Isabel went over to her and made her sit down.

‘The best thing for you is to rest. We’ve applied vinegar poultices to his bruises, and Candelaria and Florisel have put him to bed.’

We all sat down. Concha told the eldest of her daughters to call Candelaria. The little girl jumped to her feet and ran to the door. When she got there, her mother said:

‘Where are you going, María Fernanda?’

‘Didn’t you tell me to …’

‘Yes, my dear, but you just have to bang the gong next to the dressing table.’

Slightly embarrassed, María Fernanda obeyed swiftly. Her mother kissed her tenderly and then, smiling, kissed the youngest, who was looking up at her with great topaz-coloured eyes. Candelaria came in unravelling a piece of white cloth, the threads of which would be made into balls for cleaning wounds.

‘Did you call?’

María Fernanda stepped forward.

‘I did, Candela. Mama told me to.’

And the girl ran to meet the old maidservant, taking the cloth from her hand so that she could continue unravelling it. María Isabel, who was sitting on the carpet with her head resting on her mother’s knees, looked soulfully up:

‘Candela, give it to me so that I can do it.’

‘First come first served, my dear.’

And Candelaria, with the kindly smile of an old family servant, held out her empty, wrinkled hands. María Fernanda went back to sit on the sofa. Then my cousin Isabel, who favoured the youngest, took the piece of linen, which still smelled of the countryside, and tore it in two.

‘Here you are, my dear.’

Shortly afterwards, María Fernanda, placing thread upon thread on her lap, murmured, as grave as a grandmother:

‘Spoiled little madam.’

Candelaria was still standing in the middle of the room awaiting orders, her hands folded over her crisp white apron. Concha asked after Don Juan Manuel.

‘Have you left him alone now?’

‘Yes, my lady. He’s dozed off.’

‘And where have you put him?’

‘In the garden room.’

‘We must prepare some rooms for the Marquis too. We can’t have him going back alone to Lantañón.’

And poor Concha smiled at me with that ideal smile, the smile of the invalid. Her former nursemaid blushed scarlet to the roots of her hair. Then she looked tenderly at the children and murmured with all the old-fashioned severity of a devout, scrupulous duenna:

‘The Bishop’s rooms have already been prepared for the Marquis.’

She withdrew in silence. The two little girls continued to unravel the piece of cloth, casting furtive glances at each other to see who was doing most. Concha and Isabel were talking in whispers. The clock struck ten, and in the children’s laps, in the luminous circle cast by the lamp, the threads were slowly forming a small white clump.

 

 

 

I sat down near the fire and passed the time stirring the logs with a pair of old, intricately carved, bronze tongs. The two girls had fallen asleep, the eldest with her head resting on her mother’s shoulder, the youngest in my cousin Isabel’s arms. Outside you could hear the rain beating against the windows and the wind gusting through the dark, mysterious garden. Ruby-red embers glowed in the fireplace, and, from time to time, a light, vivid flame licked about them.

So as not to wake the girls, Concha and Isabel continued talking in low voices. Not having seen one another for such a long time, both had their eyes turned to the past and were remembering far-off things. There was a long, whispered commentary about ancient, forgotten clan members. They spoke of the various aches and pains suffered by devout, ancient aunts, of pale cousins who had never married, of that poor Condesa de Cela who fell madly in love with a student, of Amelia Camarasa who died of consumption, of the Marquis of Tor who had fathered at least twenty-seven bastard children. They spoke of our noble and venerable uncle, the Bishop of Mondoñedo, that charitable saint who had taken into his palace the widow of a Carlist general, the King’s aide-de-camp. However, I was barely listening to what Isabel and Concha were saying. From time to time, though, after ignoring me for long intervals, they would ask a question.

‘Perhaps you’ll know. How old is our uncle the bishop?’

‘He must be about seventy.’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘I’d have said he was older.’

And the warm, easy murmur of female conversation would start up again, until they asked me another question.

‘Can you remember when my sisters took their vows?’

Concha and Isabel took me for the family chronicler. And so the evening passed. At about midnight, the conversation gradually died down, like the fire in the grate. After a long silence, Concha sat up with a weary sigh and tried to waken María Fernanda, who had gone to sleep on her shoulder.

‘Come on, my love, I’m going to have to move you.’

María Fernanda opened her eyes, heavy with the innocent, adorable sleep of children. Her mother bent over to pick up the watch that she kept in her jewel box, along with her rings and the rosary.

‘Gone midnight and the children are still up! Don’t go back to sleep, my dear.’

And she tried to get María Fernanda to sit up, but the child was now resting her head on one arm of the sofa.

‘We’ll have you in bed in a minute.’

And with the smile fading on the withered rose of her mouth, Concha sat there looking at the youngest of her daughters sleeping in Isabel’s arms, her long hair loose, like an angel buried in waves of gold.

‘Poor little thing, it seems such a shame to wake her.’

And turning to me, she said:

‘Would you mind calling Candelaria, Xavier?’

At the same time, Isabel tried to get up, still holding the child.

‘I can’t, she’s too heavy.’

She smiled, admitting defeat, her eyes fixed on mine. I went over and carefully picked the little girl up without waking her. The wave of gold spilled over my shoulder. At that moment, we heard the slow steps of Candelaria coming down the corridor to carry the children off to bed.

When she saw me with María Isabel in my arms, she came over and said with a kind of familiar respect:

‘I’ll take her, Marquis. Don’t you bother.’

And she smiled, with the kindly, placid smile one finds on the toothless mouths of old ladies. Silently, so as not to wake the little girl, I gestured to her to stop. My cousin Isabel got up and took María Fernanda by the hand; she was crying because her mother was putting her to bed. Her mother kissed her and said:

‘You don’t want to upset Isabel, do you?’ And Concha looked at us hesitantly, wanting to please her daughter: ‘Now do you?’

The little girl turned to Isabel with pleading, sleepy eyes.

‘Are you upset?’

‘I’m so upset that I certainly wouldn’t stay here to sleep.’

With earnest curiosity, the little girl asked:

‘Where would you go and sleep then?’

‘Where else but in the priest’s house!’

The little girl knew that the only possible place for a lady of the Bendaña family to stay was in the Palacio de Brandeso, and so, with sad eyes, she said goodnight to her mother. Concha remained alone at the dressing table. When we returned from the room where the children were sleeping, we found Concha crying. Isabel said to me in a low voice:

‘She’s more in love with you every day.’

Concha suspected that she was saying something else to me and she looked at us through her tears with jealous eyes. Isabel pretended not to notice. Smiling, she went in ahead of me and sat down on the sofa next to Concha.

‘What’s wrong, cousin?’

Concha did not reply, she merely dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief and then tore at it with her teeth. I gave her a subtle, knowing smile and saw the roses bloom in her cheeks.

 

 

 

As I was closing the door of the room that served as my bedroom, I noticed a white shadow walking slowly along at the far end of the corridor, keeping close to the wall. It was Concha. She approached noiselessly.

‘Are you alone, Xavier?’

‘Alone with my thoughts, Concha.’

‘That makes for bad company.’

‘How did you guess? I was thinking of you.’

Concha paused at the door. Despite the look of fear in her eyes, she still managed a feeble smile. She glanced back along the dark corridor and trembled, terribly pale.

‘I saw a black spider running across the floor. It was huge. It may still be caught up in my robe.’

She shook her long white train. Then we went into my room, silently closing the door. Concha stopped in the middle of the room and held out a letter that she drew from her bosom.

‘It’s from your mother.’

‘For you or for me?’

‘For me.’

She gave it to me, covering her eyes with one hand. I saw that she was biting her lips in order not to cry. Finally, she burst into sobs.

‘Oh my God, oh my God.’

‘What does she have to say?’

Concha pressed her hands to her forehead, which was almost obscured by a lock of black hair, tragic and austere, spreading like the dark smoke from a torch in the wind.

‘Read it, read it! She says I’m the worst of women, that I live a scandalous life, that I’m damned, that I’m stealing her son from her …’

I calmly burned the letter in the flame of one of the candles. Concha groaned:

‘I wanted you to read it.’

‘No, my dear. She has such appalling handwriting.’

Seeing the letter reduced to ashes, poor Concha dried her tears.

‘It’s so awful that Aunt Soledad should write to me like that, when I love her and respect her so. That she should hate me, curse me, when all I want is to care for her and serve her as if I were her daughter. God, why am I so punished! Fancy saying that I bring you nothing but misfortune.’

I did not need to read my mother’s letter, I could imagine it, I knew her style – desperate, furious clamourings, full of biblical references, like the curses uttered by a sibyl. I had received so many similar letters. The poor woman was a saint. The only reason she does not appear on any altars is because she was the first-born child and felt it her duty to perpetuate the family coat of arms, which was as illustrious as that of Don Juan Manuel. Had she had an elder brother to lay claim to the title, she would have entered a convent and become one of those peculiarly Spanish saints, an abbess and a visionary, a warrior and a fanatic.

For many years my mother – María Soledad Carlota Elena Agar y Bendaña – had led a devout, reclusive life in the Palacio de Bradomín. She was a very tall, grey-haired woman, charitable, credulous and despotic in the extreme. I used to visit her every autumn. She was full of aches and pains, but the sight of me, her eldest son, always seemed to revive her. She spent her days spinning for her servants, sitting in the window seat of a great balcony on a chair upholstered in crimson velvet with silver studs. In the afternoons, the sun would penetrate the depths of the room, tracing golden paths of light like the wake left behind by the holy visions she had experienced as a child. In the silence you could hear, day and night, the distant murmur of the river flowing into the millpond that served our mills. My mother spent hours and hours spinning on a distaff made of fine, perfumed lignum vitae. There was always the vague tremor of a prayer on her dry lips. She blamed Concha for all my troubles and held her in horror. She remembered as an eternal affront to her grey hairs the fact that our love affair had begun in the Palacio de Bradomín, during one summer that Concha had spent there, keeping her company. My mother was her godmother and, at the time, loved her dearly. After that, she never saw her again. One day, when I was out hunting, Concha left the palace for ever. She left alone and weeping, with her head covered, like the heretics expelled from ancient Spanish cities by the Inquisition. My mother stood at the other end of the corridor, hurling curses at her, and beside my mother stood a pale maidservant, with down-cast eyes – the betrayer of our love. Perhaps the same lips had told my mother now that I was at the Palacio de Brandeso. Concha kept saying over and over:

‘Why am I so punished … why am I so punished!’

Round tears slid down her cheeks, bright and calm as the glass beads from a broken necklace or bracelet. Her voice faltered. My lips drank the tears from her eyes, her cheeks, from the corners of her mouth. Concha leaned her head on my shoulder, sighing; she was icy cold.

‘She’ll write to you as well. What will you do?’

I murmured in her ear:

‘Whatever you want me to do.’

She fell silent and stood for a moment with her eyes closed. Then, opening them again, her eyes heavy now with a loving, resigned sadness, she sighed:

‘If she does write to you, then do as your mother bids …’

She got up to leave. I stopped her.

‘You’re not saying what you really feel, Concha.’

‘Yes I am. You see how I offend my husband every single day of my life. Well, I swear to you that, at the hour of my death, I would rather have your mother’s forgiveness than his.’

‘You will have everyone’s forgiveness, Concha. And a papal blessing too.’

‘If only God could hear you, but God can hear neither of us.’

‘We’ll get Don Juan Manuel to speak to him; he’s got the loudest voice.’

Concha was at the door, catching up the train of her dressing gown. She was shaking her head with displeasure.

‘Oh, Xavier!’

I went over to her and said:

‘Are you leaving?’

‘Yes, I’ll come back tomorrow.’

‘And tomorrow you’ll do exactly the same as today.’

‘No, I promise I’ll come.’

She reached the bottom of the corridor and called to me in a low voice:

‘Come with me; I’m terrified of spiders. But keep your voice down, that’s where Isabel is sleeping.’

And her hand, which, in the shadows, was a ghost’s hand, indicated a closed door which we could make out in the darkness because of the faint line of light underneath it.

‘She sleeps with the light burning.’

‘Yes.’

Then, stopping and pressing her head to my shoulder, I said:

‘You see, Isabel can’t sleep alone either. Let’s follow her example.’

I picked her up in my arms as if she were a child and she laughed silently. I carried her to her bedroom door, which stood open onto the darkness, and there I set her down on the threshold.

 

 

 

I went to bed exhausted, and all morning my dreams were permeated by the sound of the two little girls running about, laughing and shouting on the terrace. Three of the doors of the room which I was using as a bedroom opened onto that terrace. I slept little and during that state of vague, anxious consciousness – in which I noticed whenever the girls paused outside one of the doors or called out from one of the balconies – the fat green botfly of nightmare flew round and round, like the constantly turning spindle of the spinning witches. Suddenly, it seemed to me that the children had moved off, running past my three doors. A voice was calling them from the garden. The terrace was suddenly deserted. In the middle of that torpor, which somehow painfully trammelled my will, I sensed that my thoughts were becoming lost in dark labyrinths; I heard the dull buzz of the hornet’s nest that breeds evil fantasies and tormenting, capricious, distorted ideas dancing to fantastic rhythms. In the midst of the silence, the cheerful barking of dogs and the tinkle of bells rang out on the terrace. A grave, ecclesiastical voice, that seemed to come from a long way away, was calling:

‘Here, Carabel! Here, Capitán!’

It was the Abbot of Brandeso, who had come over to the palace after mass to pay his respects to my noble cousin.

‘Here, Carabel! Here, Capitán!’

Concha and Isabel were saying goodbye to the abbot from the terrace.

‘Goodbye, Don Benicio!’

And as he went down the steps, he was saying:

‘Goodbye, ladies! Go in now, there’s a cold wind out here. Here, Carabel! Here, Capitán!’

I could vaguely hear the dogs frolicking about. Then, in the midst of a great silence, I heard Concha’s languid voice:

‘Don Benicio, don’t forget that tomorrow you’re celebrating mass in our chapel.’

And the grave, ecclesiastical voice replied:

‘I won’t forget, I won’t forget.’

And it rose like a Gregorian chant from the depths of the garden amongst the tinkling of bells from the dogs. Then the two ladies said goodbye again. And the grave, ecclesiastical voice repeated:

‘Here, Carabel! Here, Capitán! Tell the Marquis that I was out hunting with the chaplain a few days ago and we came across a covey of partridges. Ask him if he fancies going hunting for them sometime. Don’t say anything to the chaplain though if he comes by the palace. It’s our little secret.’

Concha and Isabel walked past the three doors. Their voices were a cool, gentle murmur. The terrace grew quiet again and in that silence I came completely awake. Unable to get back to sleep, I rang the silver bell, which had a noble ecclesiastical glow about it in the half-darkness of the bedroom, standing as it did on an old table covered with a crimson velvet cloth. Florisel came to help me as I dressed. Time passed, and again I heard the voices of the two little girls returning from the dovecote with Candelaria. They had brought with them a pair of doves and were talking excitedly. Candelaria was saying to them, as if recounting a fairytale, that if they clipped the birds’ wings, they could let them loose in the palace.

‘Your mother loved to do that when she was your age!’

Florisel opened the three doors that gave onto the terrace and I leaned out to call to the girls, who ran to kiss me, each bearing a white dove. When I saw them, I was reminded of the heavenly gifts given to the little princesses who adorn the Golden Legend like azure lilies. The girls said to me:

‘Did you know that our uncle from Lantañón left at dawn on your horse?’

‘Who told you?’

‘We went to see him and found everything open, the doors and the windows, and the bed was all unmade. Candelaria says she saw him leave, and Florisel did too.’

I couldn’t help laughing.

‘Does your mother know?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what does she say?’

The little girls looked at each other hesitantly, exchanging smiles, then both exclaimed at once.

‘Mama says he’s mad.’

Candelaria called to them, and they ran off to clip the doves’ wings and to let them loose in the rooms of the palace – the game that poor Concha had so loved as a child.

 

 

 

In the bright torpor of the afternoon, with all the windows golden in the sunshine and the doves fluttering above our heads, Isabel and the children were talking of going with me to Lantañón to find out if Don Juan Manuel had arrived safely. Isabel said:

‘How far is it, Xavier?’

‘No more than a league.’

‘Then we can go on foot.’

‘Won’t the little ones get tired?’

‘They’re great walkers.’

And the girls, their faces shining, rushed to confirm this, both exclaiming at once:

‘Last year we climbed all the way up Pico Sagro and we weren’t in the least bit tired.’

Isabel looked out into the garden.

‘I think we’ll have good weather.’

‘Who knows. Those clouds look like rain clouds.’

‘But they’re going in the other direction.’

Isabel trusted in the gallantry of the clouds. The two of us were sitting talking in a window seat, looking out at the sky and the fields, while the girls kept clapping and shouting to frighten the doves and make them fly. When I turned, I saw Concha. She was standing at the door, looking terribly pale, her lips trembling. She looked at me and her eyes seemed quite different – in them I saw longing, anger, supplication. Raising her two hands to her forehead, she murmured:

‘Florisel said that you were out in the garden.’

‘We were.’

‘Are you hiding from me?’

Isabel replied with a smile:

‘Yes, in order to plot against you.’

She took the two children by the hand and led them out of the room. I was left alone with poor Concha who walked about languidly before sitting down in an armchair. Then she sighed as she had on other occasions and declared that she was dying. I went over to her cheerily, and she grew indignant.

‘Go on, laugh. You’re quite right to leave me alone and go off with Isabel.’

I picked up one of her hands and closed my eyes, kissing her fingers which were caught in a pale, pink, perfumed beam of light.

‘Don’t be so cruel, Concha!’

Her eyes were full of tears and she murmured in a low, remorseful voice:

‘Why do you want to leave me all alone? I know it’s not your fault, it’s her, she’s still mad about you, she’s after you.’

I dried her eyes and said:

‘The only one here who’s mad is you, poor Concha. But since you’re so beautiful, I never want to see you cured of your madness.’

‘I’m not mad.’

‘Yes you are, mad about me.’

She said with mock anger:

‘No, I am not!’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘You’re so vain.’

‘In that case, why do you want to have me with you?’

Concha threw her arms around my neck and kissed me, then exclaimed, laughing:

‘If it makes you so vain to be loved by me, then it must be because my love is very valuable.’

‘Extremely.’

Concha ran her fingers through my hair, in a slow caress:

‘Let them go, Xavier. As you see, I prefer you to my own daughters.’

Like an abandoned, submissive child, I laid my head on her breast, closed my eyes and, with sad delicious longing, breathed in her perfume – the perfume of a flower whose petals are about to fall.

‘I’ll do whatever you want, you know that.’

Looking into my eyes and lowering her voice, Concha murmured:

‘So you won’t go to Lantañón, then?’

‘No.’

‘Do you mind?’

‘No. I’m sorry for the girls, though; they were all ready to set off.’

‘They can go with Isabel. The steward can go with them.’

At that moment, a sudden shower of rain beat against the windows and the trees in the garden. The clouds covered the sun, and the afternoon acquired a sad, soulful, autumnal light. María Fernanda came in, looking very upset:

‘What bad luck, Xavier! It’s raining!’

Then María Isabel came in.

‘You’ll let us go if it clears up though, won’t you, Mama?’

Concha replied:

‘If it clears up, yes.’

And the two girls went and sat by the window, pressing their faces to the glass, watching it rain. Heavy, black clouds were gathering above the Sierra de Céltigos, creating a watery horizon. Calling to their flocks, shepherds were hurrying along the paths, the hoods on their capes up over their heads. A rainbow arched over the garden, and the dark cypress trees and the green, damp myrtles seemed to tremble, caught in a ray of orangish light. Holding up her skirts, clattering along in her clogs, we saw the bent figure of Candelaria walking beneath a great blue umbrella, gathering roses for the altar in the chapel.

 

 

 

The chapel was dank, dark, echoing. Above the retable stood a coat of arms with sixteen quarters, in gules and azure, sable and vert, or and argent. It was the coat of arms given by the Catholic kings to Captain Alonso Bendaña, founder of the Brandeso dynasty, for his great achievements. A terrible tale is told about that captain in the book of genealogy of the noble titles of Galicia. They say that when he captured his enemy, the Abbot of Mos, he dressed him in a wolf-skin and set him free in the mountains, where the abbot was savaged to death by dogs. Candelaria, Concha’s nursemaid, who, like all old servants, knew the histories and genealogies of the house they worked in, used to tell us the legend of Captain Alonso Bendaña, just as it was set down in the books of genealogy that no one reads any more. Candelaria also knew that two black dwarves had carried the captain’s body down into hell. It was a tradition in the Brandeso family that the men should be cruel and the women pious.

I still remember the time when there was a chaplain in the palace and my Aunt Águeda, in accordance with the venerable custom, would hear mass accompanied by all her daughters, from the dais set aside for them next to the priest. The seat was covered in crimson velvet and had a high back crowned by two coats of arms, but only my Aunt Águeda, because of her age and her many ailments, had enjoyed the privilege of sitting there. Captain Alonso Bendaña was buried to the right of the altar along with other knights of his family. Next to his tomb was the statue of a warrior at prayer, and to the left was buried Doña Beatriz de Montenegro, with other ladies of different ancestry. Beside her tomb was the statue of a nun praying, wearing the white habit of the convents founded by the Knights of St James. Like a small, kingly jewel, the lamp in the sanctuary burned day and night before the carved retable. The golden branches on the evangelical vine seemed laden with fruit. The tutelary saint was the pious king who had offered myrrh to the baby Jesus, and his gold-embroidered silk tunic glittered with the devout splendour of an oriental miracle. The light from the lamp, hung on silver chains, fluttered timidly like a caged bird, as if eager to fly up and join the saint.

Concha wanted to be the one to place the vases full of roses at the feet of the king, as the offering of a pious soul. Then, accompanied by her daughters, she knelt before the altar. From the dais, I could hear only the murmur of her voice faintly reciting the Hail Mary, but when it was the children’s turn to respond, I heard all the ritual words of the prayer. Concha got to her feet, kissed the rosary, and traversed the chancel crossing herself and calling her daughters to say a prayer before the tomb of the warrior, where Don Miguel Bendaña, Concha’s grandfather, was also buried. He was dying when my mother took me to the palace for the first time. Don Miguel Bendaña had been a despotic, hospitable gentleman, faithful to the noble-cum-peasant tradition of his whole lineage. Straight as a lance, he never once surrendered to plebeian values – a fine and noble madness! When he died at eighty, he still had a proud, gallant soul, as well-tempered as the hilt of an ancient sword. It took him five days to die, stoutly refusing to be confessed. My mother swore that she had never seen anything like it; the gentleman was a heretic. One night, shortly after his death, I heard someone say in a low voice that Don Miguel Bendaña had once killed one of his own servants. Concha was right to pray for his soul.

The evening was slowly dying and the prayers echoed round the silent darkness of the chapel, as deep, sad and august as an echo of the Passion. As I dozed on the dais, the girls went to sit on the steps of the altar, their dresses as white as the linen altar cloth. I could just make out a shadow praying beneath the lamp in the presbytery. It was Concha. She was holding a book open in her hands and was reading, her head bent. From time to time the wind shook the curtain at one of the high windows. Then, in the already dark sky, I saw the face of the moon, pale and supernatural, like a goddess who has her altar in woods and by lakes. Concha closed the book with a sigh and again called to her daughters. I saw their white shadows walk across the chancel and assumed that they had knelt down by their mother’s side. The flame in the lamp shuddered, giving out a feeble light that fell on Concha’s hands still holding the open book. In the silence, I heard her reading in slow, pious tones. The girls were listening and I could just make out their loose hair on their white clothes. Concha was reading.

 

 

 

It was midnight. I was sitting writing when Concha, wearing a loose monastic robe, came noiselessly into the room I was using as a bedroom.

‘Who are you writing to?’

‘To Doña Margarita’s private secretary.’

‘To tell her what?’

‘I’m telling her about the offering I made to the Apostle in the name of the Queen.’

There was a moment’s silence. Concha, who was standing with her hands resting on my shoulders, bent over me so that her hair brushed my forehead.

‘Are you writing to her secretary or to the Queen herself?’

I turned round slowly and said coldly:

‘I’m writing to her secretary. Don’t tell me you’re jealous of the Queen as well.’

She protested warmly:

‘No, no, of course I’m not!’

I sat her down on my knees and, stroking her, said:

‘Doña Margarita isn’t like the other Queen …’

‘Much of what they said about the other Queen was untrue anyway. My mother always said so, and she was one of her ladies-in-waiting.’

Seeing me smile, poor Concha looked away, blushing adorably.

‘You men are always determined to believe anything bad you hear about women. Besides, a Queen is always surrounded by enemies.’

Seeing that a smile still lingered on my lips, she tweeked my black moustaches with her pale fingers and exclaimed:

‘You’ve got a very wicked tongue on you!’

She stood up, intending to leave. I caught her hand and held her back.

‘Stay, Concha. Go on, stay.’

‘You know I can’t, Xavier.’

I said again:

‘Stay.’

‘No, no. I want to go to confession tomorrow. I’m afraid of offending God.’

Then, rising to my feet, I said with icy, scornful politeness:

‘So, I have a rival already?’

Concha looked at me pleadingly.

‘Don’t torment me, Xavier.’

‘I will torment you no longer. I shall leave the palace tomorrow morning.’

She burst out tearfully, angrily:

‘You won’t!’

And she almost tore off the white, monastic robe that she usually wore to visit me at that hour and stood there naked and trembling. I folded her in my arms.

‘My poor love!’

She looked at me through her tears, distraught and pale.

‘You’re so cruel. Now, I won’t be able to go to confession tomorrow.’

I kissed her and said by way of consolation:

‘We will go to confession together the day that I leave.’

I saw the flicker of a smile in her eyes.

‘If you hope to win your freedom with a promise like that, you’re very much mistaken.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you are my prisoner here for ever.’

And she laughed, putting her arms about my neck. Her long hair came unpinned and, taking the sombre, perfumed wave of black hair in her hands, she began beating me with it. I sighed:

‘Ah, the scourge of God!’

‘Be quiet, you heretic!’

‘Do you remember when that used to make me almost faint away with pleasure?’

‘I remember all the mad things you said and did.’

‘Whip me, Concha, whip me as if I were a holy Nazarene. Whip me till I die!’

‘Be quiet, be quiet!’

She glanced away, her hands trembling as they gathered up her dark, fragrant tresses.

‘You frighten me when you say such ungodly things, yes, frighten me, because it isn’t you saying them: it’s Satan. Even your voice is different. It’s Satan’s voice!’

A shudder ran through her and she closed her eyes. My arms wound lovingly about her. It seemed to me that a prayer still hovered on her lips and, as I sealed those lips with mine, I mumbled, laughing:

‘Amen! Amen! Amen!’

We were silent. Then her mouth moaned beneath my mouth:

‘I’m dying!’

Her body, imprisoned in my arms, trembled as if shaken by a mortal spasm. Her deathly pale head rolled back on the pillow. Her eyelids half opened and I watched as her eyes grew anguished, lightless.

‘Concha! Concha!’

As if fleeing from my kisses, her pale, cold mouth curled in a cruel grimace.

‘Concha! Concha!’

I sat up and cold-bloodedly, prudently removed her arms from around my neck – they were like wax. I hesitated, not knowing what to do.

‘Concha! Concha!’

Somewhere in the distance, dogs were barking. I slid silently to the floor. I picked up the candle and gazed on that now lifeless face and, with tremulous fingers, I touched her brow. The cold stillness of death terrified me. No, she could no longer answer me. I thought of running away and I cautiously opened a window. I peered out into the darkness, my scalp prickling, whilst on the other side of the room, the curtains round my bed flapped and the flames guttered on the candles in the silver candelabrum. Far off, the dogs were still barking; the wind sighed in the maze like a lost soul and, like our lives, the stars above flickered on and off.

 

 

 

I left the window open and, making no noise, as if I feared that my footsteps might awaken pale spectres, I went over to the door which, only moments before, she had opened with hands that then had trembled with passion and that now lay stiff and still. I peered warily out into the black corridor and stepped into the darkness. Everything in the Palace seemed to be asleep. I felt my way along the wall. My steps were so light as to be almost inaudible, but in my mind they seemed to set up fearsome echoes. At the far end of the anteroom, I saw the feeble glow of the lamp that lit the image of Jesus of Nazareth day and night. His holy face, deathly pale and partly covered by his matted hair, filled me with fear, more even than Concha’s mortal face. I was shaking by the time I reached her bedroom and I stood there for a moment. I had noticed a line of light on the floor on the opposite side of the corridor which marked the door of the bedroom where my cousin Isabel was sleeping. I was afraid she might suddenly appear at her door, terrified, startled by the sound of my footsteps, and that her cries would raise the alarm throughout the palace. Then I decided to go into her room and tell her everything. I tiptoed over and, from the threshold, I called softly:

‘Isabel! Isabel!’

I stopped and waited. Nothing marred the silence. I took a few steps and called again:

‘Isabel! Isabel!’

Again no reply. Inside the vast room, my voice faded to nothing as if frightened of itself. Isabel was asleep. In the dim light of the candle flickering in its glass jar, in the dark depths of the room, I could just make out a wooden bed. In the silence, I could hear the slow rise and fall of my cousin Isabel’s regular breathing. Her body was just a soft shape beneath the damask bedcover and her hair lay like a shadowy veil across the white pillows. I called again:

‘Isabel! Isabel!’

I had reached the head of the bed and my hands happened to touch her warm, bare shoulders. I felt her shudder. In a voice thick with emotion, I shouted:

‘Isabel! Isabel!’

She sat up with a start.

‘Don’t shout, Concha might hear.’

My eyes filled with tears and, bending low, I murmured:

‘Poor Concha cannot hear us now!’

A lock of my cousin Isabel’s hair brushed my lips, soft, tempting. I think I kissed it. I am a saint who always loves when he is sad. Poor Concha would have forgiven me up there in Heaven. Here on Earth, she knew how weak I was. Isabel murmured passionately:

‘If I thought she could, I would lock the door.’

‘What door?’

‘The bedroom door, idiot, my door!’

I did not wish to arouse my cousin Isabel’s suspicions. It would have been so painful and so ungallant to disabuse her. Isabel was very pious and knowing that she had misunderstood my intentions would have caused her immense suffering. All the Holy Patriarchs, all the Holy Fathers, all the Holy Monks could triumph over sin more easily than I! Those lovely women who went to tempt them were not their cousins. Fate plays some very cruel jokes! When Fate smiles on me, it always does so as it did then, with the macabre leer of one of those bandy-legged dwarves who gambol about in the moonlight amongst the chimneypots on the roofs of old castles. Her voice muffled by my kisses, Isabel said:

‘I’m afraid Concha might appear at any moment.’

When I heard the poor dead woman’s name, a shudder of fear ran through me, but Isabel must have thought it was simply passion. She never found out why I had come to her!

 

 

 

When my mortal eyes saw Concha’s contorted, waxen face again, when my feverish hands touched her cold hands, I was filled with such terror that I began to pray and once more I was gripped by the temptation to flee through the open window out into the dark, mysterious garden. The silent night air shook the curtains and ruffled my hair. In the pallid sky, the stars were beginning to grow faint and the candles had gradually burned down, leaving only one alight. The old cypress trees growing outside the window lightly bent their withered tops and the white moon fled amongst them like the soul of a poor, pale wretch in torment. The distant call of a cockerel broke the silence, announcing the dawn. I shivered and looked with horror at Concha’s inanimate body stretched out on my bed. Then, pulling myself together, I lit all the candles in the candelabrum and placed it at the door so that it would light the corridor. I went back into the room and, still terrified, I gathered that pale ghost up into my arms, she who had so often slept with my arms about her. I left the room bearing that sad burden. At the door, one of her hands, hanging limply down, collided with the candles and knocked over the candelabrum. On the floor, the candles continued to illumine my path with a sad, sputtering light. For a moment, I stood stock-still, listening. All I could hear was the bubbling water of the fountain in the maze. I continued on. There, at the far end of the anteroom, glowed the lamp illuminating Christ and I was afraid to walk past that livid, dishevelled image. I was afraid of those dead eyes! I retraced my steps.

To reach Concha’s bedroom without going through the anteroom, I had to walk round the whole Palace. I did not hesitate. I walked through room after room, along pitch-dark corridors. Sometimes, the deserted corners of certain rooms were lit by moonlight. I slipped like a shadow past that long succession of shutterless windows with their worm-eaten frames, dark, mournful windows with leaded lights. I closed my eyes whenever I walked past a mirror, so as not to see myself. Sometimes, the darkness in the rooms was so dense that I got lost in them and had to feel my way ahead, stiff and frightened, holding Concha’s body in one arm, the other stretched out in front of me so as not to stumble. Her sad, loose hair got caught on one of the doors. I felt about in the darkness trying to disentangle it, but I couldn’t. It just became more and more entangled. My fearful, clumsy hand was shaking with the effort and the door kept opening and closing, creaking loudly. I was horrified to see that day was already breaking. I panicked and gave a tug. I thought Concha’s body would slip out of my arms. I clung desperately on to it. Beneath her taut, sombre brow, her waxen lids were beginning to open. I had to pull fiercely and tear her beloved, fragrant locks.

At last, I reached her bedroom, the door of which stood open. The darkness there was mysterious, perfumed, warm, as if it were the keeper of the gallant secret of our assignations. What a tragic secret it would have to keep now! I lay Concha’s body carefully down on her bed and crept away. At the door, I hesitated, irresolute, breathing hard. I wondered if I should go back and place one last kiss on those icy lips. I resisted the temptation, with all the scrupulousness of a mystic. I was afraid there might be something sacrilegious about the melancholy overwhelming me. The warm fragrance of her bedroom awoke in me, like a torment, voluptuous, sensual memories. I longed to savour the sweet pleasures of chaste fantasy, but I could not. The holiest things often suggest the strangest of devilish fancies, even to mystics. Still today, the memory of Concha dead evokes in me a depraved and subtle sadness. It scratches at my heart like a bright-eyed, tubercular cat. My heart bleeds and writhes and, inside me, laughs the Devil who knows how to turn all sorrows into pleasures. My memories, lost glories of the soul, are like a pale, ardent music, sad and cruel, to whose strange rhythms dances the forlorn ghost of all my loves. Poor, white ghost, the worms have eaten its eyes, and tears roll from the sockets. In the midst of a youthful ring of memories, it dances, not touching the floor, floating on a wave of perfume, the perfume that Concha used on her hair and that lives on after her. Poor Concha! All she left behind of her sojourn in life was a trail of perfume. But, then, perhaps not even the whitest and most chaste of lovers has ever been anything more than a lovely, enamelled bottle filled with aphrodisiac, nuptial perfumes.

 

 

 

María Isabel and María Fernanda announced themselves first by beating on the door with their childish hands. Then they shouted out in cool, crystalline voices that had the charm of fountains speaking to the grasses and the birds.

‘Can we come in, Xavier?’

‘Come in, my dears.’

It was already late morning and they had come at Isabel’s behest to ask if I had had a good night, a sweet question that stirred feelings of remorse in my heart. The little girls stood next to me at the balcony window looking out onto the garden. The wild, green branches of a fir tree scraped against the sad, mournful panes. The fir tree shivered in the mountain wind and its branches scratched at the window as if the old, shady garden were sighing with longing for the children’s games to commence. A flock of pigeons was fluttering about near the maze; then out of the cold, blue sky came a hawk with broad, dark wings.

‘Kill it, Xavier! Kill it!’

I fetched my gun which was lying gathering dust in a corner and hurried back to the window. The little girls were clapping and shouting:

‘Kill it! Kill it!’

At that moment, the hawk dropped down on the flock of pigeons which flew off, startled. I put my rifle to my eye and when the way was clear, I fired. A few dogs in nearby farms barked a response. The hawk plummeted to earth and the little girls ran out and brought it back, carrying it by the wings. Blood was staining its breast feathers. They bore off the hawk in triumph. I called to them, suddenly filled by a new anxiety.

‘Where are you going?’

They turned at the door, smiling and happy:

‘Mama will get such a fright when she wakes up!’

‘No, don’t!’

‘It’ll be such a lark!’

I did not dare to stop them and I remained alone, my soul plunged in sadness. Such a bitter wait, such a timeless moment on that joyful morning all clothed in light, until, from the depths of the palace, came innocent moans, heartrending cries and terrible sobs! Faced with the cold ghost of death scything through all the dreams in my soul’s garden, I felt a dumb, desperate anguish. Ah, the lovely dreams that are love’s enchantment! It was a strange sadness as if evening had fallen over my life which, like a sad winter’s day, had ended only to begin once again with a sunless dawn. Poor Concha was dead. That dream-flower to whom my every word had seemed beautiful was dead, that flower to whom my every gesture seemed sovereign. Would I ever find such another pale princess with sad, spellbound eyes, someone who would always think me magnificent? The thought that I might not made me weep and I wept like an ancient god at the death of the cult that once worshipped him.