Free Lola Montez Conquers the Spaniards by Kit Brennan Page A

difficult?”
    â€œHe is on the other side. It is abominable to be so far away, to hear only rumors! And now this!” He poked moodily at an ear with the tip of his shoe, and I tried not to gorge.
    â€œWho was he?” I asked. I feared the answer.
    Grimaldi looked at me with a faraway expression, then sat heavily upon the bed. “The best of my agents. They are Tristany’s, of this I am sure. There is a mole, small but distinctive, inside the left pinna as it leads to the ear canal. He used to laugh and say it was his mole, his own personal spy, and it made him invincible.”
    â€œHow terrible.”
    â€œNothing else arrived in the package, which means he was tortured, and in all likelihood it was a long, miserable dying. Spanish vengeance is not something to take lightly, Rosana.”
    How had the room become so tiny and cramped?
    â€œThe war has been obscene for its atrocities. We thought nothing could be worse than the war of independence, after Napoleon, but . . . Memories are long. Terrible old men; terrible young men. Murdering women and children, exacting vengeance—one kills the other’s mother in broad daylight by firing squad, the other kills the first’s son with extreme savagery in retaliation. Unstoppable. Unspeakable.” His face looked grey. “Just three years ago, all of Catalonia was under the sway of the count of España and his reign of terror. He was only stopped bybeing outwitted; a junta invited him to a council meeting, overpowered him, and took him prisoner. Then, with the junta’s knowledge, he was strangled and his body was thrown into the river with a stone tied to it. Good riddance. But others leap up where one has gone down: General Maroto in Estella killed his fellow generals after inviting them to take chocolate with him. Maroto has now surrendered and sworn loyalty to the Cristinos, but who can believe him? Who would trust him? Turncoats for expedience. It is dangerous, the new prominence that has been given to—been seized by—Spain’s military leaders. No good will come of it.”
    I had never seen Grimaldi look so old; the skin around his eyes was pouchy, and his cheeks were hollow.
    â€œTristany was a friend?” I put my hand on his arm. I’m not sure he even felt it.
    â€œThe son of a friend, yes. A fine, brave, aristocratic family. What will I tell his father? Yet, he must already know.”
    â€œBut what did Tristany do to warrant such . . . ?” What I needed to know was, what did Grimaldi make him do that would prompt such retaliation?
    â€œWe must start.” He stood quickly and shook his head, as if freeing it of horrible visions. “We have come too far for you to be deflected, Rosana. No one would hurt a young foreign woman; no one would dare.” I didn’t know about that, not if the stories he’d just related were true. Grimaldi picked up a clump of the sawdust and with that as shield replaced the ears in the box. “Get dressed. Cristina has summoned us and we must not keep her waiting. Everything is accelerating; everything must happen now. No, before now: yesterday!” He strode to the door, opened it and called for Concepción, and then returned to the window, clasped his hands behind his back and glared out.
    He wasn’t going to leave me alone to dress. This was also new, and frightened me a little bit. I swung my feet out of the bed to stand, still dizzy from the illness.
    His wife entered on the run, closed the door behind her and locked it again.
    â€œNever mind the underthings, make haste,” she snapped, rifling through my dresses and pulling out the soft pink one with all the frills and furbelows dancing down the front of it. I felt it made me look babyish, but maybe that’s what they wanted, to emphasize my youth for the meeting with royalty. Certainly Concepción had no intention of letting me choose another one. She yanked the laces until I