Wolves in Winter (5 page)

I left my dress in the resting room and followed Adara’s naked behind to the bath. I couldn’t help comparing my own thinness to the luxurious roundness of Adara’s body, her
heavy, conical breasts, the rich curve of her dark belly with a furze of tightly curled hair at the fork of her legs. After we sat awhile in the delicious heat, Adara helped me to use the soap and
pumice, then we went to the washing room and poured bowls of water over ourselves until our skin was sparkling and polished. Adara took a long time massaging almond oil all over her body and showed
me how to do the same, then she used her own silver comb to work through my hair and spread a muslin cloth over my shoulders so the oil should not stain it as it dried. I felt a strange mixture of
happiness and sorrow as she tended to me. This was what my mother would have done, we would have walked to the bathhouse together each week with our fresh clothes in a cloth bag, and she would have
washed me and combed out my hair.

‘Come,’ she said, handing me a clean white tunic. ‘Now for your visitor.’

‘Papa!’ I cried out, and knew as soon as I did that my swift flash of joy was mistaken.

‘No, little one, not your papa,’ she said soothingly. ‘Someone who wants to meet you.’

There was a lady waiting in the courtyard, seated on a settle by the fountain. From the evidence of the silk cushions that had been brought out, and the respectful way in which the maids served
mint tea from the finest chased silver jug, I thought that she must be very important indeed. I curtsied and said good evening as politely as I knew how, mindful of what my papa had taught me, and
cast my eyes down meekly as the lady and Adara spoke of the weather and the busyness of the city and the problem of maids, in that way that all ladies do, everywhere. I peeked up at her from under
wisps of my floating hair. She was black skinned, like Adara, but where Adara’s skin was so smooth and tight it looked set to split, her face was pouched and marked with black pocks. She was
so fat she wheezed like a lapdog and the heavy jewels that covered her fingers seemed to ooze from her flesh like resin from a tree trunk. She stuffed a whole plateful of pastries into her mouth,
one after another, as she chatted and nodded, brushing the crumbs from the precipice of her black silk bosom. When the pastries and the polite remarks were done she told me to stand.

‘So this is she? The little changeling?’

‘Quite so.’

Her fat hands reached towards me, the flesh of her finger-pads moist on my collarbones. I tried not to wrench away.

‘Just slip your little tunic off a moment for me, dearie.’

I did as she asked, though I was old enough to feel ashamed, there in the courtyard, with the twilight air chilly on my bare limbs. She peered at me.

‘Hmmm. Special. Not for everyone, that’s for sure.’

‘You can go to our room, Mura. Supper will be ready. Say goodnight nicely.’

Like all children, I loved to hear myself talked about, but Adara’s room was too far away for me to catch the rest of their conversation. The other ladies returned as they were speaking,
and through a chink in the shutters I watched them gathering round the fat lady, smiling at her remarks and dipping their heads as she reached those questing hands to pinch a cheek or pat a haunch
appraisingly. Adara followed her to the porter’s lodge, and I could hear better.

‘She won’t turn then?’

‘No, the father thought not. That’s why he begged me to keep her.’

‘She might do very well then, very well. There’s them as likes that sort of thing.’

‘Worse luck for us!’ Adara laughed.

‘In a while then.’

Adara accompanied our visitor respectfully to the street door and I turned to my supper, feeling tired and deliciously clean, and safe in the knowledge that Adara would take care of me, as she
had promised, as my papa had wished.

The lady came again at the end of the spring.

Even in the city we could smell the almond blossom in the valley. The maids brought baskets of pear-shaped loquats from the market; their creamy yellow flesh sherbety and delicious. I was
scooping one out with a spoon when the lady came into our room with a bundle in her hands.

‘Well, Mura, look what I’ve brought you! Now you just put these on and we’ll fix you up a bit. Come along now.’

Adara was standing behind her and the two of them watched me appraisingly as I struggled into a pair of soft plum-coloured breeches and a delicate lawn shirt. The clothes were not new – if
I looked closely I could see they had been carefully mended – but they looked very smart, for all that they must have come from a rag-seller’s cart.

‘The hair,’ said the lady.

Adara held out a pair of iron tongues.

‘Stand still, now,’ she said as the room filled with a smell of scorching. I felt the bounce of curls on my shoulders.

‘That’ll do. There, look. A proper little angel.’ They both laughed, but I didn’t feel happy. I felt scared.

‘Now you go along with Adara, and mind you do just as she says.’ The lady settled herself comfortably on Adara’s bed with her cracked heels scratching in the counterpane.

Adara held my hand as we crossed the courtyard, but we did not go into the big room on the first floor, which was already full of the sounds of music and laughter. We went upstairs again, to a
smaller chamber, where there was a table nicely set with a figured cloth, wine and fruit, and a wide bench with yellow silk cushions. There was a gentleman waiting. He was quite an old gentleman,
with a grey, flabby face showing over a dark cloak. When he smiled his teeth were greenish stumps.

‘Here we are, just as I promised!’ Adara had pushed a laugh into her voice, though her fingers were tight and damp around mine.

‘Now, Mura, I’ll be just along outside. Mind and be nice to the gentleman.’

She left us. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, no idea of anything except that I did not want to be alone here. He stood up, a big man, sloppily built. He reached out and took one of the
curls that hung around my face, fingering it. I tried to keep still.

‘Would you like to sit down?’

I sat on a cushion and he seated himself next to me. He put an arm round my shoulder. I could smell him, the rich stink that hid under his arm. I felt the loquat rising acidly in my throat.

‘Look, I’ve brought you something.’

He handed me a top, a wooden spinning top with a little red leather whip.

‘Thank you,’ I said flatly.

‘Wouldn’t you like to play? Try it.’

Obediently, I squatted down on the floor and tried to remember the trick of the game. The silence behind me was thick. After a few strikes I had it turning, I concentrated on the flash of the
red whip. There was a rustling sound.

‘Very good, very good.’

The top clattered to the floor as I turned. His hands were buried in the cloak, moving in a strange jerky way. He looked very silly.

‘Sir? Should I . . . should I carry on, sir?’

‘Come here,’ he gasped.

Then those arms were round me and he was pushing me down among the cushions. I turned my face from his breath and tried to struggle free as he fumbled at the breeches, trying to pull them off. I
felt something against my bared thigh, a hard, wet thing, I was crushed by his weight, he was pushing against me. I tried to cry out but my mouth was stopped with yellow silk. His hands had found
my bare flesh, probing and squeezing, and when I tried to wriggle free he panted, ‘Yes, good, good.’

Then a sudden razor-slash of pain, as though he were ripping at my skin. The dust in the cushions was choking me, he was grunting and writhing. A foul drop of thick drool crawled into my
ear.

I didn’t know what he was trying to do, but I would not let him do it, I would not. Behind my eyelids came the memory of my dream, of my mother and the wolves running, free, savage. So I
turned my head and bit his hand, as hard as I could, gagging as my teeth met over the bone and my mouth filled with his filthy blood. He screamed, I staggered up, gasping and retching as his boot
caught my knee and I fell, hitting my head against the table. I heard the bang of the door, and then the floor came up to meet me, where the little top lay on its side.

When I awoke I was a prisoner. The fat lady was gone, our room was dark. I tore off those hateful clothes and threw them in a corner, then pulled and banged at the door, but no one came.
Eventually I put myself to bed, not caring to look any more at the lights across the courtyard. They left me like that for some days, only two whispering maids unlocking the door to pass in a plate
of food and take away the pot. I wondered what Adara would do to me now. Would she turn me over to the men who had taken my father? Would I be beaten again and sent back to another gentleman, now
that I knew what was wanted of me? The thought of it made me retch. What had that bulging hag called me? ‘Changeling’.

All I wanted was to sleep, so that the dream would come to me again. In the dream I was strong and free and fearless, but awake I was just myself, skinny, pitiful, abandoned me. I thought then
that I must be cursed. My father had spoken to Adara about me. He had said that I would not change. Was I to blame for what had happened to him?
Maligno
. The startled look on the face of the
slave, the steaming water spreading towards me like a pool of evil. Was that me? I scrabbled for my little charm under Adara’s bed, but it was gone. Had the maids swept it up with the dust
and hairballs? Or had Adara taken it, to show to the Spanish queen’s priests so that they would burn me? Would they believe me, if I told them what the man had tried to do to me? It was not
my fault, none of it was my fault, but then why would I be treated like this if I was not to blame? I was ill-wished, I thought, bad luck, and I could not escape it.

*

One night, Adara came in earlier than usual. She stumbled as she passed inside and let out occasional giggles as she relieved herself in the pot and flopped onto her bed. There
was a knock at the door and Adara fumbled up again, poking a taper at the stove to light the lamp.

‘Oh, what now?’

‘Gentleman for you,’ the porter’s voice.

‘Tell him he’ll have to come back tomorrow,’ Adara chuckled. ‘I’m indisposed.’

‘May I speak with you, madam? I can pay.’

A stranger now, a foreign voice, speaking Spanish with an odd, jerky accent. Adara opened the door, putting her hand to her hip and looking out into the darkness with a scornful expression.

‘What do you want?’

‘I want news of Samuel Benito.’

I knew that if I was to learn anything I must keep very, very still. I pushed the air slowly out of my lungs, although my heart was leaping in my chest.

‘What do you know about Samuel Benito?’ hissed Adara, opening the door wide and pulling the stranger towards her by his cloak. I was desperate to look, but I knew even a twitch of my
eyelids would betray me.

‘Don’t be afraid, madam. I’m not from the Holy Office, I’m just a bookseller.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I think you do.’

I heard the bedsprings squeak as Adara sat down. ‘Go on.’

‘I come from Genova, madam. I had business with Benito, for many years. I come to Toledo every year, and this time I found his shop gone, destroyed. As you know. Don’t trouble how I
found you. People talk. Samuel was good with medicines, was he not? You bought mercury from him.’

Adara’s voice changed. She was respectful, even wheedling. ‘If you like, sir, you can see for yourself that I have never needed such things.’

‘You are kind, madam, but I haven’t come for that. I want what Samuel left with you. Don’t worry, I’ll give you a fair price.’

‘I know nothing about any books.’

‘Did I speak of books, madam?’ Adara’s breathing quickened. She had made a mistake. ‘You have the child.’

‘I took her in out of the kindness of my heart, an orphan.’

‘Very commendable. But I heard about what happened that night. A pretty piece of conjuring. The description is in Solomon, the
Almandal
if I remember.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘No, perhaps not. But the Holy Office will, if I choose to tell them that you assisted the necromancer Benito to spirit – hah, a good joke – to spirit away his
child?’

‘What do you want?’ Adara’s tone was surly.

‘As I said. Samuel’s remaining merchandise. But I imagine you are much occupied, madam, with your-er-profession. I will take the books as well as the child.’

After that, the world changed again. The next day, Adara woke me early and told me I was going on a journey, a long journey, with a kind man who would take care of me. I tipped up my chin and
looked her in the eye. I knew all about her ‘kind gentlemen’. She fussed around me guiltily, tying up my little chest, wrapping a warm shawl around my shoulders, tucking a twist of
candied orange peel into the pocket of my robe, but I could hardly bear to look at her. My papa had trusted her to take care of me. I did not speak a single word to Adara, or to the book
merchant.

I was perfectly, perfectly silent through the days and days of journeying to the coast, jolting along in the cart next to my papa’s trunk, through a countryside filled with the soft air
and heavy green of summer. I did not speak even when I saw the sea at Valencia and the huge ships my father had told me about, nor during the voyage, which ate a season on the waves with the dull
blur of land to one side and the shifting glass of the ocean to the other. I did not speak when we came to Savona which the book merchant said was in Italy, and the tongue around me was strange and
not strange, sometimes like Spanish and sometimes like nothing I had ever heard. I did not speak when I was taken to a house on the wharf and a woman bathed me, dressed me in my red dress and
combed out my hair. They took me to a long hall where groups of scared-looking women stood, whispering to each other in our old tongue as brightly dressed men considered them and made marks on
slates. I did not show that I understood their words, because I knew what was happening; and when I was told to put back my shawl before one of them, I gazed at him with all the fury I could
summon, so that he stepped back from me and muttered something to the bookseller. I watched my price pass between their hands, and took no leave of him.