Free Circles of Fate by Anne Saunders Page B

of dark mystery, and the bangles on her arms caught the light and jangled softly as she moved.
    Cathy, after watching her feeble efforts with a mascara wand, had insisted on applying Anita’s make-up for her. Now, viewing her reflection, Anita conceded the other’s artistry. Cathy had used light and dark tones to good effect, narrowing her childishly full cheeks, exaggerating and emphasizing the point of her chin. She had lifted her eyes at the outer corners and given her mouth a fullness that was sensuous. Anita was at once shocked, repulsed and excited by her new, seductive appearance. She knew, even at risk of hurting Cathy’s feelings, that she wouldn’t have dared to go out without covering her friend’s handiwork. She submitted herself happily and was docility itself as Cathy added the finishing touch and fixed the face-concealing yashmak in position. Her features were a subdued blur, only her eyes showed, which were not her eyes but the eyes of a temptress, full of dreams and sorcery.
    Even so, in comparison she felt flat, unbitten by the fiesta fever which gripped Cathy and the others they met as they walked along the street. Sober, when everyone else was more than a little merry. The bullfight was the apéritif to the evening’s festivities, the appetiser, the social mixer, the mood setter. It had been a good fight and the mood was light and joyful.
    The people who gathered in the street were all wearing fancy dress, as Cathy had said they would. More people joined the throng. As they walked down the street, doors opened on all sides, expelling demons and dragons and clowns wearing huge papier-mâché heads, ancient Greeks and Romans, men in loincloths, women in hooped farthingale skirts, ducks and dwarfs and, because it was as much the children’s day as anybody else’s, baby horses and Saracens. A diminutive Arab chieftain walked with a charming baby mermaid, matchstick legs thrust through the scales, carrying her tail over her arm.
    Practically everybody masked their features. Cathy’s mask was a flattering scrap of velvet. Several feminine profiles were hidden in black silk domino cloaks with deep hoods. Some of the men seized the opportunity of wearing masks which covered the whole head as well as the face. There was an abundance of comic masks with twisted, out-of-shape features. And more than a smattering of tragic masks, evil, leering, sly, jeering.
    Anita decided to stay close to Cathy’s side. But when she looked round she discovered it was too late. They had already become separated by the crowd. She didn’t know where all the people had come from to turn a peaceful island into a place of bedlam.
    The procession had already begun and people pressed forward to get a better look. Mindlessly, she found herself being carried along. Arms, legs, voices enveloped her and, pounding above the jarring music, she heard her own wildly beating heart and the small, pitiful cry of inner desperation as she was swept along, running to keep up, stumbling, feeling the crush of elbows as, on a welter of panic, she lost her balance.
    A hand clamped protectively round her waist. Felipe’s voice said:
    â€œI’ve always wanted to capture a slave girl.”
    She was held captive until her trembling subsided, and the musical instruments which had tortured her brain now poured out notes of sweetness as she drew calm and reason from his steady strength. As the honey-glow of early evening wrapped them in its tender golden light, it touched, with Midas fingers, the white stone houses, turning them into a soft pinky yellow – the colour of peace and calm and tranquillity of the mind.
    â€œThat’s better,” he said. “What were you afraid of?”
    â€œI don’t know exactly. It was a turbulence that washed through me. I was at odds with the gaiety and I suppose it jarred.”
    â€œI shouldn’t have said you were the frightened gazelle type. What