On the Monday while Alazar was out Burley brought back a woman and made love to her, with me in the room. It confused and frightened and troubled me as nothing else could have. This grabbing, tittering, grunting struggle between two half naked human beings almost made me sick. No one could have grown up in Arwenack ignorant of sex, but I had never seen it happen before. That this was all part of the same tender feeling that I had for Sue Farnaby, as it were the other side of a coin, seemed to darken and poison what I had thought of as true and good. The woman was stout and her flesh was white and flabby, her breasts heavy and sagging, her thighs colouredlike the underside of dead fish. They made bttle attempt to hide themselves from me, and at last I turned to stare out of the window trembling and breathless. What made the whole hour worse than insupportable was that while with part of myself I wanted to bludgeon them both to death, obliterate them as one does a disgusting slug turned up under a stone, another part of me was curious and lustful and fascinated.
I reabsed that day what the Puritans meant when they spoke of lust as an abomination and a secret blasphemy, a lechery put in men’s minds by Satan himself.
So on the Tuesday I was glad to be rid of them. Whatever the future, I was glad to see them go.
Señor Andres Prada had a small house at the corner of the great square with all the churches, the Puerta del Sol. I was put in the charge of a young man called Rodez who spoke English and I was given a garret room at the top of the house, but mercifully was to have it to myself. During the first weeks I used to look out of the window and think, well, this is one way, there is just room for me to squeeze through, and so long as I do not land on something that breaks my fall I shall die.
I learned much from Rodez; we talked much, and while he improved his English I began to pick lip a smattering of Spanish. Rodez was a nephew of Prada and was attached to the court as a page.
Prada was one of the two chief secretaries to the king. It seemed possible, Rodez said, that in time I too would become a page at the court. When I asked him why, he shrugged and said that had been decided, why should I quarrel? Would I rather have my bones stretched by the Inquisitor?
Prada spent most of his time at the Palace or escorting the King on long journeys of religious penance to the royal monastery of St Lawrence of the Escorial, a giant mausoleum to house his father’s remains which the King had just built on a spur of rock among the mountains 50 kilometres distant so Prada maintained but a small household for himself. Señora Prada was much younger than he, a tall dark, bold woman with a wanton way of speaking and dressing. Rodez also had two sisters in the household, Isabella, and Mariana, young women of twentyodd who aped Señora Prada in their manners. I had thought of Spanish women as strictly brought up, carefully chaperoned, discreet and demure. These were not; Mariana, the younger, in particular had a wild way of talking and looking and seemed to care nothing for convention or accepted behaviour. Even Father Rafael, the priest who lived with us, was unable or unwilling to curb her.
One day he called me into his little room on the second floor, which was half a study and half a cell, and began to question me as to my religious beliefs, but his English was too bad for us to make progress. After two hours, he gave me some books written in English which he said I must read and study within the week. He did not seem interested in his task, which was a relief. At table he ate and drank as heartily as the rest, and his clothes were of the finest.
Not so another priest who came three days later from the Holy Office. A man with a face like a vulture, his grimed hands folded behind him, sandals of hide-thong on bare grey feet, and smelling of decay, all the house even Mariana fell silent on his coming and remained so until he left. He too spoke little English, but I heard him questioning Rodez about me. His small rodent eyes kept looking me up and down. When he had gone I asked what he had said.
Rodez smiled quietly. “He says it is a dangerous heresy on our part to keep company with a Lutheran, even at the King’s command. So I would have you look to your soul’s wellbeing before others do it for you.”
“And if I do not, Rodez?”
“Our friend says you will burn everlastingly in hell.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Of course. But what I am more concerned for is that you should not burn temporarily on earth. Have you ever seen a man at the stake? It is an interesting sight. I believe there will be an auto de ye some time this spring. If you are still with us I will take you.”
Every morning I would be wakened at five by the sound of the city stirring to life in the great square. Often the first noises would be the clop-clop of tiny hooves as the first donkeys went past below driven on by the harsh “arre” of the drivers. Sometimes their loads brushwood or straw or piled crops would scrape and whisper against the sides of the house as they went by. Then the bells of the churches would begin. There was the church of Buen Suceso on the far corner between two streets, near it was the Convent of Victory. Opposite was the church of Our Lady of Solitude and the foundling hospital of La Inclusa, and, nearest to my bedroom and out of sight from it, the new church of San Felipe el Real.
The bells would start the tethered goats bleating; carts would begin to rumble in, and soon the whole square would hum with life and noise, while the first rays of the sun struck fire from the windows opposite.
We rose at six and washed in the icy water from the well; at seven we ate bread and syrup and drank steaming bowls of coffee, and so the day began.
For a week Mariana never spoke to me. She was a tall girl with a lovely skin; over-plump from eating too many sweetmeats, but attractively so. The heavy spectacles she put on and off at intervals were the fashion and did not indicate that she needed them to see though for a week she might have been blind where I was concerned. Then one day I came into the room where we dined and found her squatting cross-legged on the carpet telling her beads and muttering her prayers. Many women in Spain sat in this fashion. I was turning to go out when she said:
“Do not run away, pincho.”
I was startled at her English; until now I had thought only Rodez spoke it.
“I am sorry. I thought “
“That I was saying my prayers?” She tossed the long string of beads back so that they rattled against each other. “So I was. Do you dislike that?”
“No …”
“Spanish girls we tell them at many times. It is just as we fancy. We tell them for luck when we play at Ombre. We finger them for the ennui. We tell them even while we make love.”
I said: “I did not know you spoke English.”
“You think we are barbarians in Madrid? How old are you? “
“Sixteen.”
She whistled. “Digs mio. And very sick for home, eh? Why have they brought you here?”
“That is what I want to know.”
“My uncle will tell you in good time. All things he arranges in good time. No doubt he may find you useful.”
“You can come with me shopping and carry my basket. That is a beginning.”
“They will allow that?”
“Who is to stop us? You’ll not run away?”
“No.”
When we went out I did indeed carry her basket, but as her negro slave went with us, together with her usual duenna, this seemed an excuse. It was the height of the morning, and along our side of the square were rows of little booths where every trifle and foolish luxury could be bought. Gallants in rich clothes moved among cripples and beggars squatting on the uneven cobbles in poverty and squalor. Beyond was a long wall where painters were exhibiting their pictures. Small shops and coffee houses abounded.