Authors: Geoffrey Household

Face to the Sun (19 page)

I turned to my bearers.

‘Can you lift me to that white rock below the fall?’

‘Easily, senor.’

It had a fairly flat top and the chair could be held steady with a hand on each side of it.

I waited until Mayne joined us to see what I was up to.

‘Take off my shirt!’ I ordered one of the bearers. ‘Turn my chair to face the setting sun!’

‘Excellency, the Punchao is yours,’ I said to Mayne. ‘Lift it from my shoulders and hold it up for your armies to see!’

Even Mayne was amazed at its power and beauty. He had never before seen the Punchao in its proper setting of black cliffs and sparkling sea. What had the sun and stars to do with savage human
disputes to the death on a hillside already fertilised by blood and scraps of meaningless paper? Well, to me, they gave a moment’s view of the eternal.

Juana was silent – from shame, I think. It was Mayne’s daughter who broke the sudden moment of silence by a cry, clear as the scream of a hawk.

‘CARA AL SOL!’

Face to the Sun. The war cry of the Spanish guerrillas when faced with certain death. The Retadores recognised it though it had seldom been heard since Heredia’s triumph and then only from
the ranks of rebels in arms awaiting execution.

I told them to drag me up to the brow of the hill, from which there was a view of the bay and of the rugged slope inland which the main body of Retadores were now climbing.

‘It is drama that the Punchao needs,’ I said to Mayne. ‘There is a path between the rocks which you cannot see. If you want to become a legend, lead the Punchao to the top.
When I last went that way there were a woman and her child searching for a beloved corpse.’

There could be no doubt who was in command of the advance guard of horsemen now descending the track to the beach. She was dressed in white and crimson and leading her men recklessly over the
pebbles.

‘Tell your men to escort the former President from the yacht,’ Mayne said to her.

‘What right have you to give me orders?’

‘The right of the Punchao, and of Hawkins its faithful guardian.’

‘Hawkins?’ She took another look at the hunched cripple in his basket chair. ‘They told me Heredia had killed him.’

‘Not quite,’ I heard myself squawk.

Even my voice was not immediately recognisable. She told me afterwards that it seemed to float between us until it settled.

She kissed my forehead. Her tears in some way relaxed me. I had no longer to be overwhelmed by pain. I think I must have let myself faint for when I was fully conscious again Heredia had been
escorted up from the yacht and was standing on the shingle a little below me – Heredia with set face and four lances a yard from his body. He showed no fear. It may be that he had long since
prepared himself for such an end. Hector had nothing but the word of a powerless friend to give him confidence. Evidently he had been asking of what he was accused. In his voice rang the
indignation of Daniel in the Lion’s Den. The vanished days of two empires came alive.

‘You are accused, my precious Lord McMurtrie or whatever you call yourself, of stealing and concealing the treasure of the nation and will be dealt with by due process of law as soon as
there is any. Take him away!’

‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ Hector exclaimed.

‘You certainly will be,’ Teresa told him. ‘Must I remind you that you have been found in arms against the legal President of the country? We shall not, I think, impose the
death sentence but be content with immediate expulsion.’

I had known that steely ring of her voice in earlier days; it did not now strike me as entirely convincing. The fire was prepared with great care but where was the flame from the match? Mayne
had never met Teresa before, and the only evidence that he had any experience of the depths beneath the Latin woman was the existence of his three daughters one of whom was at the moment comforting
Juana.

The Heredistas, deprived of action, were growing restless. The scattered units were calling to each other and joining comrades like hungry sharks, waiting in small bands to break the cease-fire.
They knew that somewhere between the cove and Jumilla their main body was halted until the track down to the sea was clear of vehicles. Even so, attack could be extremely expensive. The people of
Malpelo were not a patient breed, and it was very clear what would happen to their president if they moved. He was not so loved that it mattered, but they, the gallant Heredistas, could then march
home victorious.

Curiosity saved us. An armed car crashed through the layer of cinders and drew up in a shower of sand and pebbles. A sergeant got out and opened the door as formally as if the car had returned
to the palace from a shopping expedition. Proud and upright, Lady McMurtrie looked at the scattered pockets of troops. Simply looked. It was enough. Officers called them to attention and presented
arms. I thought she was going to wave the lances which threatened her father to one side, but that was too much to expect. She stood – deliberately I am sure – in a pool of blood.

‘Who is in command here?’ she asked.

Mayne gave the only possible reply.

‘I am,’ he said coldly. ‘Your parents are leaving Malpelo now. Do you wish to accompany them?’

‘They will not leave Malpelo.’

‘Yes, yes, we must, Carlota,’ her mother sobbed, ‘or they will kill Cayetano here and now.’

Nothing would have given me more satisfaction than to see one of those four lances driven home and Heredia wriggling like a hooked fish just hauled from the water.

But there was another loyalty ready to be tested. One of the four stepped back a pace and lowered his lance. His comrade spotted in time what he intended, parried the thrust and drove home his
own. The effect was what I had seen in my own fevered imagination. Carlota leaped forward, drew out the lance and stood between her father and the growing pool of pumping blood. By God, the courage
of it! There was a sort of hiss, a hoarse hiss, between the hills and the sea. Father and daughter formed a bond more sacred to Latin culture than to ours. There was a straggled cheer from the
Heredistas which picked up volume and suddenly died. I could imagine the reaction of a company sergeant major from the disciplined north. Two arrests. Close of play.

It was the Church which rescued us from mutual massacre. The same priest who had been present in the mess when I was invited to join the officers of the Retadores at their supper strode out to
the dead lancer. He had ridden with Teresa in the certainty of being needed. He raised his hand to extinguish the last of the sparks creeping in his hair, knelt by the dead guard and called on God
with what, at a less emotional moment, I should have called a conventional Letter of Introduction. I don’t think the dead lancer needed one. He had obeyed his heart.

Oh God, protect us from our loyalties! The killer had been true to his military oath of obedience: the victim to requital of some outrage committed upon his family or perhaps some single woman.
What is our duty?

Mayne, owing no allegiance to either, showed his power of command. He withdrew the remaining three guards, leaving Heredia alone to the judgement of his people. It has been disputed whether or
not he turned to me for advice. His eyebrows, raised in swift question, could only have been detected by a few and they were watching the priest.

‘Viva Carlota!’ he shouted.

He took off the Punchao, carried it to Carlota and hung it round her neck.

‘Subject to the approval of the army, I propose the Lady Carlota as your President.’

The cove rang with approval. Nobody wanted to fight it out. Carlota herself was amazed, but did not show it. After all, she was a reasonable alternative. She must have known that her election
could not endure but no one was in a mood to say so. Then came her most brilliant touch. She took off the Punchao and invested Hector.

‘To the museum,’ she cried, ‘where it belongs.’

There were too many interests alive to start another civil war. Heredia could never recover his power. Mayne was only too thankful to gather up his daughters and return to his beloved Jumilla.
Even Donna did not wish to declare herself. She had discovered Pepe was in the crowd and she wanted no other. God, how I envied her!

The rest of my story you know except, perhaps, the last moments of a man and woman measuring, as I thought, the end of a beginning.

‘Do you remember Nueva Beria,’ Teresa asked, ‘where you stole for me a wedding dress?’

‘Yes. It was too large.’

‘But I still have it.’

‘It won’t be smart enough for you to wear.’

‘It will if I have the Punchao as well. Hector, can I borrow it for the day?’ ‘Yes, of course, if you give me sufficient notice.’

‘I will ask the
curandera
how long she needs. She has had practice enough under that devil – more experience than any army doctor.’

‘How long she needs for what?’

‘For us to ride or march forever so long as you are by my side.’

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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978-1-4532-9353-9

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