Um…
It was a big ask expecting a New Englander to entertain so much as a scintilla of sympathy for the House of Hapsburg!
But even so…
The journalist sighed, put down his paper.
There was a jovial commotion at the door to the café signifying that Albert Stanton’s suitors had arrived!
Chapter 11
Saturday 18th March
Sierra de Guadarrama, North of Madrid
The two old cars had rumbled and jolted over narrow twisting mountain roads and then tracks before finding still more precipitous, barely maintained, ribbons of crumbling, ice-ruptured tarmac still deeper into the high country most of the day before finally giving up the unequal struggle and discharging Don Rafael, a pair of young toughs hefting hunting rifles and the two women in a narrow canyon leading still higher between grey, sun-dappled looming peaks.
They watched the vehicles coughing and wheezing away and then, at Don Rafael’s signal began to march, wearily◦– well, Henrietta and Melody, at least◦– into the rubble-field of fallen rocks and alpine-type shrubs◦– which almost immediately hid them from the dusty track the cars had, with no little difficulty, just traversed.
After perhaps, thirty minutes◦– although it seemed like hours to the exhausted women◦– the group halted to rest beneath an outcrop of granite. The three men were all carrying heavy packs, from which canteens of brackish water, biscuits and dried fruit were forthcoming.
“We ought to be carrying our share of the load,” Melody remarked, pointing at the over-burdened rucksacks.
The younger men thought this was hugely amusing.
Don Rafael, who seemed the freshest of them all despite his years, shook his head and grimaced whimsically.
“My Lord would never allow of that,” he retorted gently, proudly, in that marvellous intonation of pure old-fashioned Castilian which Melody had decided as a teenage girl had the capacity to make the best love poetry of that ancient language so exquisitely… erotic. “I am honoured in my duty to you both,” Don Rafael continued. “It is the greatest tribute that My Lord could bestow upon me, and,” he eyed the two younger men, “my sons.”
Melody felt very silly, and not a little unworthy.
“Besides,” the man guffawed softly, “if the worst happens you Ladies must run like the very wind. That is not a thing to be done with a soldier’s baggage upon your fair backs!”
Don Rafael’s sons chuckled, the women smiled and blushed.
“Where are you taking us, Don Rafael?” Henrietta asked quietly.
“A place that has been in the debt of the House of Medina Sidonia for a hundred years…”
Melody raised an eyebrow.
“Won’t the authorities, or whoever is looking for us,” she had worked out a lot of things as the journey had progressed. She was, after all, a professional detective and therefore, deductive reasoning was what she had been doing for a living for many years now. “Head straight for Ducal houses and lands?”
“Yes. And no. Remember, Señora Danson, that this is Spain,” Don Rafael re-joined. “There are places that are barred even to the Inquisition.”
Melody absorbed this.
“Okay, so you’re not going to tell us where we are going?”
“Regretfully, no,” the man apologised. “However, from the moment we arrive you must cease to be Lady Henrietta De L’Isle and Special Emissary Melody Danson. I respectfully suggest you become Señorita Marija,” he put to Henrietta, “and perhaps, Señorita Carmen.”
“Okay…”
“Actually, the names do not matter it is just that you cannot be who you are while you are en santuario.”
In sanctuary…
Melody threw a glance at Henrietta which in other circumstances might have been mischievous.
“I might have been wrong about what I said about being a nun,” she observed ruefully.
“A nun?” Don Rafael echoed, shaking his head. “No, that is not our intention although much will be at the discretion of the Mother Superior, a most redoubtable woman…”
The man thought his thoughts for several seconds.
“Please, I mean nothing that I say now with malice. I am an old man who has had my day, I have seen many things and witnessed things better not witnessed, but I must speak without dissembling to you both, My Ladies.”
Henrietta did not think that sounded like good news but then she and Melody were, apparently, fugitives on the run for their very lives so it was hard to tell what exactly constituted good news on a day like this.
She opened her mouth to speak only to think better of it when Melody shook her head. That was spooky the way Melody could read her…
“Your names en santuario mean little because those into whose hands I shall be entrusting you think you to be,” Don Rafael hesitated, distaste twisting at the corners of his mouth, ‘women of the lowest kind. Harlots, or rather, courtesans fleeing from the troubles in Madrid, Segovia and Toledo. The majority of your custodians will assume that you are favourites of my master…”
“I suppose being a mistress is better than being a whore,” Melody decided dryly.
“Inevitably, it may be that your custodians will treat you with little dignity. They will almost certainly require you to serve penance. I apologise in advance but…”
Melody shrugged.
“If we’re going to do this thing it has to be done properly.”
Okay, Don Rafael planned to hide them in more or less plain sight and if that was going to work it was going to have to look as good as they could make it look.
“I believe you speak French, My Ladies?” Don Rafael checked.
“Yes,” Henrietta confirmed. “And other languages…”
“French will suffice. I advise you to affect to be hard of hearing or unfamiliar with any Spanish tongue, except perhaps, Catalan because French ‘ladies’ who find their way into the Royal Courts of Madrid often previously frequented the, er, fleshpots of Barcelona and the towns close to the border…”
“So, we’re high-class girls from Paris?” Melody inquired, rhetorically.
“Yes, just so, My Lady.”
“What sort of penance, Don Rafael?” Henrietta inquired.
Melody smiled philosophically: “We shall find out soon enough, Hen.”
They walked, stumbled, groped up the canyon and then hiked across a grassy, otherwise barren rocky plain for some miles before with nightfall the men erected a low canvas awning and laid blankets on the ground for the two women before the group settled to sip from their half-drained canteens and munch more biscuits and dried fruit.
Returning from relieving herself behind some rocks Melody discovered Don Rafael’s sons were nowhere to be seen.
“There are only two paths by which our enemies can approach this place unseen,” the old man explained phlegmatically. “My boys watch each.” Involuntarily, he glanced to the sky which was dark and cold all the way to the stars filling the heavens. “I was afraid we might be hiding all day long from eyes in the sky. Perhaps, the Air Force is not involved in the coup.”
Melody had a hundred questions.
The old man shook his head.
“I know very little other than that my Duke’s sword stands at the service of his Queen in Aranjuez. I know that there is fighting in Madrid, that probably the Army is behind the conspirators, and that the Inquisition must be involved. It is involved in all things in Spain, therefore it must be at the heart of this thing, whatever it is. Because this is Spain, to be a foreigner caught outside ‘protected’, or diplomatic grounds, will be a dangerous thing particularly for those associated with whoever loses this contest for the soul of my country. That is all I know. All that I would swear to, My Lady.”