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In this extract from A Turning Wind, part two of The Chosen Man Trilogy, the wily merchant, secret agent and one-time corsair Ludo da Portovenere is in a mule cart escaping from the consequences of an accident he orchestrated during a religious festival involving the Spanish court in El Escorial, in the Sierra de Madrid. Ludo has been injured, opening up a knife wound he received earlier. With him are two young men, Marcos Alonso, and Kit Windebank, an English diplomat, and the feisty, ambitious Alina, also known as Maria de los Angeles, Baroness Metherall. Alina is the daughter of an impoverished Spanish grandee and married to an English nobleman. (Ludo sold her to him in Plymouth.) Ludo and Alina have a longstanding love-hate relationship – and a powerful mutual attraction.
Chapter
26
They stopped
twice on a journey that took them along a high ridge with a sheer drop. The
first time to check Ludo’s shoulder wound, which was bleeding copiously; the
second, for Alina to remove another length of petticoat to be used as a
bandage. When they finally came to a halt at a smithy on the edge of a hamlet
it was well into the afternoon and Ludo was close to fainting.
The farrier
came out at their approach and exchanged words with Kit, then helped Ludo out
of the cart while Marcos assisted Alina, who was also close to dropping. The
mule was taken from its traces and led into a stall; the cart up-ended against
a wall with Marcos and Kit’s help, to look as if it hadn’t been used. All four
then followed the farrier up a set of outdoor steps to a cramped dwelling above
the horse stalls. A rosy cheeked housewife raised her hands in surprise and
rushed to greet Kit.
“Brought us more trouble, have you?” the farrier demanded, jabbing the air at Kit with a forefinger the size of a hammer head.
“Leave the
boy alone,” the wife shouted. Turning back to Kit, she said, “Who’s this fine
lady, dear, your mother?”
Alina’s jaw
dropped. “Su madre!”
“Oh, beg
pardon I’m sure,” the wife huffed. “You’re not English then?”
Before Alina
could say another word, a heavy male foot trod none too gently on her summer
slippers. “The lady is my wife, señora,”
Ludo explained. “We have been in a carriage accident and this young man has
very kindly saved us. I regret I’m bleeding rather a lot. Do you mind if I sit
down?”
“Siéntese, siéntese,” the woman gushed, noticing the red stain spreading
across Ludo’s farmer’s smock then turning to take a second look at Alina, who
was far too well-dressed for a farmer’s wife, even for a fiesta. “I’ll get some water and cloth.” She said and disappeared
into another room.
The farrier
stood arms akimbo, staring from Kit to Marcos to Ludo, then at Alina.
Addressing Ludo he said, “Carriage
accident, was it? You’re not dressed like a gentleman as befits this lady. Had
to borrow some clothes, did you?”
“Yes, as a
matter of fact, but – if anyone stops by to ask after my health, do you mind
saying you haven’t seen us?”
“Thought as
much,” the farrier replied drily.
“Would it be
possible,” Marcos began hesitantly, “for Don Lorenzo and his wife to stay here until the evening?”
Alina’s
hands and eyebrows shot up in unison. “Here, why?” she demanded.
Ignoring
her, Kit said, “We think it would be better for Don Lorenzo to rest and
give his wound a chance to heal before returning to El Escorial. I’ll ride back
into town with my friend and return with a better conveyance for him this
evening. If that is all right? I’m sure Don Lorenzo will reward you –
handsomely.”
Alina turned
to study the Englishman called Kit, wondering how a young man working with the
British ambassador knew a country blacksmith, then stopped worrying. It was
none of her business; she really didn’t care who anyone was as long as she
could wash her face and get a drink of clean water, or wine, or small beer or
anything at all, right this moment, because she was going to faint if not.
Sometime
later, slightly refreshed from a wash in cool well-water, Alina returned to the
kitchen from the farrier’s surprisingly clean outdoor wash-house, and paused at
the door to listen. Marcos had evidently said something to irritate Ludo, who
was saying, “I’ll be with her, you fool. I’ve got a cut in my shoulder and
couple of broken ribs but I’m not dead yet. You and Kit drive back into town,
like he suggests. Get me some decent clothes and return in my carriage. I need
to get away tomorrow.”
“Do you
think you will be arrested?” Marcos’s
voice admitted the possibility. “Don’t come back in that case. Stay here, I’ll
bring you all our goods and we can leave from here.”
“That is
tempting,” Ludo tried to lean back in his chair in his accustomed manner but it
was too painful. “Except what do we do about milady here? I can’t sneak off
without making my farewell to people in high places, anyway. Not after the
preference I have been shown.” As he said this Ludo looked directly at Alina.
She met his
gaze and raised her eyebrows. “Are you trying to tell me something?” she asked.
“Yes, but we
can discuss it later.”
“I look
forward to it,” Alina countered, trying to still the flutter in her chest that
Ludo had been offered a title, and what difference that would make – could make
– to their relationship.
Lost in
possibilities, Alina came back into the conversation as Ludo was saying, “. . .
given the next stage of my journey or one of its possible outcomes,” and put a
hand to her throat. Was he planning to
take her away with him – again? Would she go this time?
“Besides,”
Ludo continued, “I particularly need the Conde Duque de Olivares to know I wasn’t playing a double game and
actually trying to kill him. After all I’ve gone through to gain his trust and
get him to sign my blasted documents for Leonora in Goa –”
“Goa –
where’s that?” Alina demanded.
Ludo sighed. “Can we discuss this later as
well? Or better still, never. I need to rest so the bleeding stops.”
It wasn’t
the first time Alina had taken her siesta in a hay loft (although she didn’t
tell anyone that) so she remembered to ask for a blanket to go under her to
prevent straw prickles. The farrier’s wife was horrified that a ‘proper lady’
should rest in straw but the husband had no reservations and showed them to the
ladder above the smithy stalls with undisguised amusement.
Lying
separately from her improvised and heavily bandaged husband Alina gazed at the
sky through a crack in the rafters and said, “You were trying to kill the Olivares
today without telling me.”
“Not true.”
“Then why
are we hiding in a hayloft?”
“Because I
abducted him so no harm would come to him.”
“Riddles:
why can you never be serious, never be straight?” Alina was getting angry.
“A riddle,
but not of my making: the man in question knew – knows – his life is
threatened; we used the event today to sink an evil-wisher. Many of the things we do – most even – can be interpreted as illogical by another. Take my foolish
longing for you, milady. Could you not say but a few kind words to me now and
again? Why so much hostility? What is past is past. Regrettably.”
“Is it?”
Alina’s voice was a whisper. “I don’t think it will ever be over for me.”
“Do I hear
Baroness Metherall, lady-in-waiting to the Queen of England speaking? I cannot
believe it.”
Alina huffed
and rolled onto her side. Ludo tried to shift into another position and grunted
with pain.
“Does it
hurt very much?” Alina asked, contrite.
“Yes. A
straight answer.”
“Can I do
anything to help?”
Ludo slowly
lifted himself onto an elbow and looked at her. “Yes, you can,” he said.
“Soften to me, Alina. Soften and forgive me. I should not have done what I did
in Plymouth. I should not have returned expecting you to give up your new home
and title for an uncertain life with me. I have thought on it greatly, and I
see I was wrong from start to finish. But the truth is that I love you: have
loved you since you bit my hand on a Santander quayside, although I would not
accept it then. I have loved you since I found you asleep on a pile of unwashed
fleeces in a stinking cargo hold; have loved you since I walked with you in the
moonlight, in a country we neither belong –”
“I do,” Alina interrupted, tears in her
voice.
There was a
pause then Ludo whispered, “Love me or belong?”
“Both,”
Alina sighed. “And that is also wrong. A woman may not love two men: she must
choose.”
Ludo was
silent. Eventually he said, “You chose to accept security.”
“I did not choose
that, remember? But is it so wrong – security? You have met my father; have
you any idea what it was like looking after him with no money and caring for
five brothers in a house falling to bits? I used to make bread and feed the
hens for heaven’s sake. You cannot imagine what it is like to live such an
uncertain life and not yearn for comfort and security.”
“I can. But
I chose uncertainty, I chose not to be named or tied down – for fear of . . .”
Ludo swallowed whatever he was going to say next.
Alina waited
then said, “Ludo, who are you?”
“I am, I
believe, Ludovico Janszoon di Doria, son of Jan Janszoon and Gabriella Doria.”
“I’ve heard
those names before.”
“No doubt. Jan
Janszoon, a Dutchman by birth, also goes by the name of Murat Reis, infamous
leader of Berber pirates. Gabriella Doria is of the Genoese Doria clan. My
grandfather, Agostino, was Doge of Genoa. A doge
and a pirate leader – powerful men – and my pretty Doria mother caught between
them.”
“How is that
possible?”
“Because my
mother, as a young, unmarried woman, was captured by Berber corsairs, just as
you nearly were, except when Janszoon discovered who she was he actually tried
to protect her. While seeking a vast ransom payment, of course. The messages
and payment took their time in arriving; and during this time . . .”
“He used her!”
“Oh, no,
nothing like that.”
“You mean,
they fell in love, and you were conceived: how romantic.” Alina’s voice was
edged with a scorn she did not entirely feel. “Did you ever meet the Doge?”
“Agostino
Doria?” Ludo moved too fast, “No! Aagh
. . . He died two years after my mother brought shame on his name. The family
acted against her as they believed he would have wanted, though.”
“Poor woman,
I feel sorry for her.”
“Do you? I
don’t know if that surprises me or not. I go back to Genoa now and again – to
Portovenere. I love the place like a . . . I don’t know what I love it like.
One day I will have a house there, a home.”
“But,” Alina
paused and rephrased what she wanted to say: it was awkward and she wasn’t
altogether sure about what she was asking herself. “But . . . how do you come
to be who you are now?”
“Neither
fish nor fowl? Because I am not welcome among the respectable Doria clan, and
because I find no pleasure in the corsair life of Salé. I heartily dislike
violence, carina, or have you never
noticed?”
Alina rolled
onto her back and stared up at the bright scars of sunlight through the gashes
in the roof. “What a pair we are,” she said at last.
“What a pair
we would make. Alina, stay with me now. I cannot bear to lose you again.”
Sitting up,
Alina smiled across at the man she’d loved from the moment he saved her from
pirates on a Santander quay then inched across the itchy straw and snuggled
into his side. Ludo tried to put his arm under her shoulders but gasped in
pain. “Ssh,” she said. Placing a finger on his lips she began to untie the neck-laces
of his peasant smock. “Let me see if your wound is closing.”
Her fingers
traced the open scar, still sticky with half-dried blood. “They stitch up men
like cushions in Flanders with wounds like this,” Ludo said.
“Stitch
them? How? No, don’t tell me.” Alina bent over him and kissed around the
puckered red skin, ran her fingers down his throat to the start of his chest
hair. “Am I softening to you, do you think?”
“You are,
you are,” Ludo said, kissing her head, “but beware, I’m not a total invalid and
most definitely not softening.”
“Prove it,”
Alina whispered in his ear.
It was an
awkward yet gentle coming together. The slowness of their moves and their
laughter at the discomfort told each of them this was a grown-up romance. There
was no need for frantic scrambling; no desperate scratching or biting, just a
long, joyous, calm acceptance that they belonged with each other, and this was
the start of a new phase in their love and their lives.
Later, after
they had dozed a while, Alina said, “What will your house in Portovenere be
like?”
“A pretty
house painted pink, coral perhaps, in keeping with the area. Overlooking the
sea. There are terraces full of flowers and trellises. On one sits a beautiful
Spanish woman combing her golden hair in the morning sun . . . Would you come?
No, let me rephrase this: please, Alina, come live with me and be my lady in
Liguria.”
Sitting up
again, Alina spread her loosened hair over her shoulders and started picking
out bits of straw. Then she laughed out loud with joy and snuggled back into
their rustic bed to whisper. “When?” But Ludo had fallen asleep.
Waking much
later, stiff and uncomfortable, Alina wondered how this afternoon would affect her position at the English court.
Her thoughts drifted into a vague future of sunshine and eternal romantic love
and she turned and met Ludo’s beady, sea-green gaze.
“You are the
loveliest woman I have ever met,” he said.
“Do you still like my hair – straggly and full of straw?” Alina shook her mane of golden waves a second time and made another start on removing bits of straw. Outside a wooden bucket thudded to the dry ground. A dog howled – kicked for stealing milk perhaps. She turned back to Ludo, “Were you really not doing what Queen Henrietta Maria asked you to do - assassinate Olivares – in that accident?”
“No. I mean,
she assumed I would do it and I let
her think that because it was a way of seeing the old devil in a relative
position of safety. Being on a mission from the British royal family would, I
hoped, give me a degree of security to pursue my own interests. I was in a
difficult situation.”
“What
situation?”
“I acquired
a new galleon belonging to the Spanish armada by slightly devious means in
Lisbon, and kept it. It is now fundamental to my new enterprise so I can’t risk
having it re-possessed either loaded at sea or empty in dock. Especially not
loaded at sea.”
Alina
sighed. “So, you thought . . . what?”
“That this
was a way of showing whose side I was on so Count Duke Olivares would endorse King
Felipe’s investment in my new East Indies trade. I was doing what the mad Count
Duke wanted in the hope he would confirm his involvement in my new enterprise,
if you like.”
“But
Henrietta Maria and Queen Isabel think you are here to kill him – the Count Duke
– for them!”
“Yes, he
knows that as well, which is why you need to get away. He’s been intercepting
their letters. Alina, he has spies in every nook and cranny in Christendom, you
really must be careful.”
Alina took a
deep breath, “And what about these documents you mentioned – for Leonora in
Goa.”
Ludo froze
then very slowly kissed her forehead. “Nothing for you to worry about, I
promise.
A doubt
crept around Alina’s heart, her face flushed hot with her with fear and
foolishness: had she misinterpreted Ludo’s words about their future together?
Could she trust him? No! Ludo da Portovenere was never to be taken at his word.
“What did you have to mention England for!” she snapped. Jumping to her feet
she began brushing frantically at her skirt.
Ludo lay
back in the straw with an exaggerated sigh. “You are still playing at life,
aren’t you? Facts have to be faced; choices have to be made. I choose you and
take the consequences of that choice, which will mean a very great change for
me.”
“How? Why?”
Alina’s tone was curt.
“Because, as
I have just been trying to explain, I have been setting up a new business for a
merchant fleet sailing to the East and returning with all manner of riches. If
we go to Genoa, I will have to change all that, which I am very happy to do,” Ludo added hastily, “but if we go, we have
to go very soon. I can’t risk getting caught up in the Count Duke’s
machinations again. Not if I have to worry about you as well.”
“Oh, you
will be making sacrifices. I see,” Alina said tartly, putting a foot on the
first rung of the loft ladder. “Can you manage to get down on your own? Check
your bandages when you get into the yard. I’m going to find something to
drink.”
“What?” Ludo
replied. “What have I done to upset you this time?”
Alina glared
at him in the musty, dusty light then backed down the ladder and opened the
heavy door into the yard. What had he
done? Exactly what she hoped he would.
Then spoiled it all with reality.
Confused and
angry, she hoisted her skirts as she had done when she was younger and strode
purposefully across the yard to drink directly from the water pump.
There was a smell of damp straw, the sweet, summer barley odour that comes to dry land before a downpour. “There’ll be a storm before we get back,” she said to the dog.
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| Read our reviews The Chosen Man By Force of Circumstance Local Resistance Private Lives Courting Danger |
FICTION
YAY! I guessed it! - No, I am lying, I didn't, but I did enjoy the excerpt very much.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Judith. I hope you enjoyed the duet as well. I do miss writing about the couple in the extract, they were such interesting people, if you know what I mean?
DeleteThoroughly enjoyed this series - and enjoyed finding the pics to go with this excerpt!
ReplyDeleteWe ought to find a way to get Jesamiah and Ludo on the same stretch of water. That would be fun.
DeleteI can imagine feathers flying LOL ... maybe we need to work on a short story or something?
Delete