The Engagement 4 страница

Bending over the hull, I took leave of Don Julián. “I am going to get help, Sire.” Don Julián did not move, and when I touched him, I realized he was burning with fever. I did not want to leave him alone, so totally defenseless. And yet what else could I do? Praying silently to the ancient gods of the Xarens for their protection, I turned away and started the steady ascent toward the castle.

Once again I climbed the ramparts, my dirty clothes blending with the ivy, my hands and feet searching for the holes and grips on the weatherworn stones. When I reached the top, I crawled onto the walkway through one of the battlement crenellations. No one was in sight, which suited me fine. And yet the absence of sentries bothered me. If Don Julián had finished the bridge and attacked the castle, he would have found a poor resistance. I should have been happy knowing the danger was over. But it wasn’t so simple. Men had died. I had seen them die, and that had changed everything.

I took a deep breath and concentrated on the moment. When I was sure no one was guarding the closest tower, I stole inside and ran down the spiral stairway, across the baileys, and into the garden. On the second level of the keep, the windows into Mother’s chambers were closed. On my right, over the eastern wall, I could see the sun rising. I did not have a moment to lose. Mother’s ladies‑in‑waiting would soon be sweeping into her room, and my chance to talk to her alone would be ruined.

With the ease of long practice, I climbed the tree whose upper branches hung just outside Mother’s window–a maple tree, heavy with leaves that tickled my skin as I peered through a crack into the shadows of the room. As far as I could see, no one was there. To force the window open with my arrow took only a moment. Then I leaned forward and jumped inside, landing on bent knees.

Back on my feet, I ran toward Mother’s red canopy bed and pushed the curtains open. My hand in midair, I stopped. With her eyes closed and her face clean of make‑up, Mother looked so different from the fiery and commanding queen of my memory that I hesitated. Suddenly shy of touching her in her sleep, I only whispered, “Wake up, Mother. Wake up.”

Mother opened her eyes. “Princess Andrea? What are you doing here?”

“Mother, I have come to ask for your help. I–”

But Mother was not listening. Her back propped up against the pillows, she stared at my clothes in alarm. “What happened, Princess? Why are you bleeding?”

“I am not. It is...” To my embarrassment I broke off, almost in tears. “Mother, you have to help him. He is dying.”

“Who, Andrea? Who is dying?” By the fear trembling in her eyes, I knew she was thinking of Father.

“It is not... it is... Don Julián.”

A look of utter shock in her face, Mother threw back her covers and started for the door. Quickly I blocked her way. “Please, Mother, don’t call the guards. Don Julián is wounded. You have to help him.”

“Help Don Julián? And why should I do that, Princess?”

“Because Tío said you were... are a doctor. And because if he lives, I have a plan, a plan to stop this war. But nobody must know I am back. And nobody must learn Don Julián is here.”

“You are not making any sense.”

Clinging to her arm, I pulled her back. “Please, Mother, I will do whatever you ask from now on. I will behave like a princess. I will be perfect, just like Margarida. I promise, Mother. But please, please, do as I ask.”

Mother looked into my eyes for what seemed forever. Finally she nodded. “All right, Princess. As this obviously means a lot to you, I will see him. But remember, I am not agreeing to anything else.”

“I understand. But please hurry. Let me help you to get dressed.”

Mother glanced at my hands, caked with mud and blood, and at my ragged and filthy uniform, and the familiar expression–a mixture of disgust and annoyance–returned to her face.

Waving her hand toward the table where a jug full of water for the morning ablutions awaited, she ordered me to wash up. By the time I was finished, Mother was already dressed in a long black gown I had never seen before.

“I’ll go now and fetch Don Julián,” she said, “but first I’ll wake up Don Ramiro and send him to you. Wait here until he comes. Then do as he says. He will take you somewhere safe.”

Without waiting for my answer, she walked to the door and left. Exhausted, I collapsed on one of Mother’s reclining chairs, and trying not to think of her wrath when she found the stains on its beloved red velvet, I closed my eyes. The next moment, Tío was shaking my shoulders. “Come on, Andrea. You have to get up.”

Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I stumbled after him, out of the room and down the silent corridors, until we reached the last door at the end of the hall. Wide awake now, I stared at the closed room–the mystery room I used to call it when I was a child–the only one in the entire castle that had resisted my attempts to break in. I waited, trembling in anticipation at the marvels soon to be unraveled before my eyes, while Tío fidgeted with the key. Finally with a heavy crack, the door opened.

Once more the reality didn’t measure up to my dreams. The room was just a plain‑looking room with bare walls and a bed, a table and chair, and a cedar trunk as its only furniture. An iron pot was hanging above the fire burning on the hearth.

“Who needs a fire in the middle of the summer?” I wondered aloud.

“We need it to boil water,” Tío said sharply. Then he opened the low door that opened into the servant’s room, and pointing to a frock that was lying on the bed–the plain brown type worn by maids–he told me to go in there and change.

When I returned,Tío was pushing the bed toward the window. Without bothering to ask him why, as I did not want to risk getting another of his enigmatic answers, I helped him in silence.

We had just finished setting the chair against the same wall when I heard heavy footsteps outside. As the door swung wide open, Mother’s voice filled the room. “Leave him on the bed. And if you value your life, forget you ever saw him.”

I pressed myself flat against the wall, my eyes on the floor so as not to be recognized. I waited. As the steps got closer, I saw boots, soldiers’ boots, and the trim of Mother’s dress covered in mud. Then I heard the noise of a body being dropped on the bed and my mother’s majestic voice ordering them to leave.

Once the door closed behind the soldiers, I ran to the bed. Mother was already there, holding Don Julián’s wrist.

“Mother, is he...?” I bent as I spoke, reaching for his other arm. But before I could touch him,Tío Ramiro pulled me back.

Mother did not seem to notice. Her eyes still on Don Julián, she let go of his hand and put two fingers to his neck. For an interminable moment, no one spoke. Finally Mother looked up. “He’s alive,” she said to Tío, “but barely so. We must hurry. Get Princess Andrea to sit by me and bare her left arm.”

I jumped back. “Why?”

“Because Don Julián needs blood,” Mother said matter‑offactly. “As we don’t know his blood type, and since you are O, you are the perfect choice.”

How do you know? I wanted to ask, but Tío Ramiro had already taken me to the chair and was rolling back the sleeve of my dress. Then Mother came over. I felt a sharp pain in my arm and my blood started pouring into the tube hanging between my arm and Don Julián’s. After a while my eyelids felt heavy, and I drifted to sleep.

When I woke up, my sister Margarida was smiling at me. “Drink this,” she said as she helped me to do so. “It will make you feel better.”

Silhouetted against the window, I saw Mother bending over the bed. Behind her,Tío Ramiro, standing by the trunk covered now with a white cloth, was handing her a sharp metal object. The whole scene had a dream‑like quality, and yet it seemed vaguely familiar. I knew I had seen all this before–the table, the instruments. Of course–on the TV, in my uncle’s world. “Needle, gauze!” Mother was saying and then, just as I slipped again into sleep, she whispered, “Hold it, Raymond! We are losing him!”

Slowly I opened my eyes. I could tell I was lying in bed, but where the bed was I didn’t know. The room was not mine. Although it was still day, the long shadows crawling on the wooden floor already announced the sunset.

“How are you, Princess?”

I turned toward the voice. By the side of the bed my mother was looking at me, her eyes full of concern, a pale smile on her strained face. “Mother?” I said, and at the sound of my voice, my memories returned. Wide awake, I sat up and searched the room for the bed where Don Julián had been. But the bed was gone. And the window was in the wrong place, too. Of course, this was the maid’s room where I had changed before.

“Don Julián. Where is he?”

“Don Julián is in the other room, Princess. And yes, he’s all right. At least he’s alive, and that is more than I would have guessed last night.”

I fell back against the pillows and closed my eyes.

“Although the arrow didn’t pierce any major organ,” Mother continued, “he had lost a lot of blood. Actually he needed more blood than you could give, so I had to call Princess Margarida. I didn’t want to bring her into this, but I had no choice.”

I looked up. “Thank you, Mother.”

“You are welcome, Princess. As you see, I have kept my word. Now it is your turn. I will listen to you as promised. But first I want you to know I have already written a letter to Don Andrés, telling him you are safe and that Don Julián is our prisoner. I was only waiting for you to wake up to send it to him.”

“But you cannot do that, Mother. Don Julián is not my prisoner. He saved my life. He stepped in front of me to protect me from the arrows. And then when we fell into the river, I would have drowned without his help. Don’t you see, Mother, that is why I couldn’t let him die. That is why I brought him to you.”

Mother stared at me for a long time. “You did the right thing,” she said at last.

It was the first time, ever, that Mother had approved of me. I felt warm inside, and the pressure of tears built up behind my eyes. I pushed them back. “But Mother, if you tell Father that Don Julián is here, I have saved him for nothing. For my debt to him to be repaid, he must go back to his kingdom as a free man.”

Mother frowned. “Princess Andrea, to let Don Julián go would be a terrible mistake. I don’t think you understand how much he means to his people. Under his command, his men will die to the last, and the losses to our troops will be on our conscience. But if Don Julián remains our prisoner, with Don García’s help the war will be over soon and the victory will be ours.”

“Don García?” What had Don García, my sister Sabela’s forbidden captain, to do with the war?

Mother nodded. “Yes, Don García. He is the one responsible for the attack on the bridge. A pigeon came this morning with a message for Princess Sabela. Apparently it was not the first. But this time she shared the news with me. According to the letter, Don García heard of the impending war and came from the east with his troops. He was spying on Don Julián’s camp when he discovered the bridge. They attacked and destroyed it. Now he is on his way to join Don Andrés’s army. The battle seems imminent.”

Just as I was asking, “Did the letter mention whether Don Alfonso was among the dead?” the door into the next room opened, and my sister Margarida appeared in the doorway.

Mother, who had her back to the door and had not seen her yet, answered my question. “No, it didn’t. Why do you ask, Princess?”

Margarida, her face as pale as the moon of my uncle’s world, stumbled inside. Mother turned toward the noise.

“Don Julián is awake, Mother,” Margarida said with a curtsy.

“Tell His Majesty I’m coming,” Mother said, as if she were referring to a king. It took me a moment to realize this was actually the case.

Already at the door, she looked back at me. “Princess Andrea, we will finish this conversation later.”

Letting out a sigh of relief, I fell back against the pillows. Mother had not sent the letter to Father yet. At least for the moment, Don Julián was safe.

I was almost finished with my toilette when I heard the door open. My hand still on the brush stuck in my tangled hair, I looked back from the mirror and saw Mother leaning on the threshold. Against the black of her dress, her face, usually unreadable, seemed weary to the point of exhaustion, and wrinkles I had never noticed had formed around her eyes. I frowned. But before I could ask the reason for her concern, her eyes met mine. Immediately her back straightened, and her face hardened once more into a mask.

“If you are ready, Princess Andrea, you must come with me.”

I nodded and, dropping the brush, jumped to my feet.

Mother did not move. “Just a moment, Princess. There is something I must tell you first. I know you didn’t mean this to happen. But things don’t always turn out the way we think they will. I want you to come and see, so you understand that your actions may have consequences you had not anticipated, and that for those, too, you will be held responsible. Come now, Princess, and see for yourself.”

Her words wrapped around my shoulders like a cloak of impending doom, I followed Mother through the open door.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-31