Elixa, page 16
part #0.50 of The Torcal Trilogy Series
‘He can disagree.’
‘He cannot! This man will provide well for you. And not just for you. Right now you are young and healthy and protected, so you do not know fear, but how will it be when Brother Luis and I are gone, and you may have to care for children of your own?
‘If the hidalgo does not crush me in the bed in the making of them!’
‘Elixa!’
‘You said yourself that he is a horrible looking man.’
Although she suspected Mamá hid the hint of a smile, her mother retorted, ‘I did not say―’
‘I shall never let him lay a hand on me!’
‘He has promised to keep and protect you’ Mamá stifled a sob. ‘And he has promised―’
‘I swear on the Bible, Mamá, if you try to make me marry that man, I shall run away.’
‘Elixa, please, let us be calm when we talk of this. As much as you, I do not like to think of you leaving.’
Although Elixa tried to remain calm and composed, as Mamá had taught her was best in times of distress, she could not. She did not want to hurt Mamá, but she had to make her understand.
In spite of Mamá’s entreaties, Elixa stood her ground and forced her pulse under control. The time had come to make clear her rejection of the hidalgo and instead announce her choice, her one, true husband. ‘Mamá, I have something to say. Enrique has just told me he will ask for my hand. He wants me for his wife.’
Mamá sighed, so deeply and with so much sadness that it tugged at Elixa’s heart. ‘He is a handsome man, perhaps the best man to look at in all of Torcal, and I know the affection you have for each other. But, my Elixa, as you grow older, and when hard times and illness come, he has nothing to fall back on. Your life with him would be one of toil and uncertainty that would break your spirit.’
‘No Mamá! He has much to offer. He and his family have been building a home. For us. But even had he nothing more than the clothes he stood in, he would be the choice made with every bone in my body.’
Mamá spluttered and then muttered. ‘Well…well. …’
‘Well indeed!’ Elixa interrupted her, ‘And I have agreed. …’
‘You cannot promise yourself! You have no say in such things.’
Tears, of both frustration and sadness, were building behind her eyes. Despite the painful blisters from long days of gardening, they had planted most of this vegetable plot together. She had hoped to one day do the same with her own children, but she would be far away. Maybe, when the hidalgo came for her, she would never see the vegetable garden again. Or even Mamá.
‘Mamá, how can you not see that living my life close to you, and the abbey, would be better for us all?’
Mamá rolled her eyes and threw her head back. A deep groan escaped her throat. After a moment, her voice cracked as she groaned, ‘I wish you knew―’
‘What?’ Elixa shouted, exasperated. ‘What do you know that I do not know?’
Mamá’s expression crumbled. She grimaced and shook her head, turning to hide her glistening eyes. ‘My child, this pains me as much as it does you, but you have been promised to Señor Mendoza. Even were Brother Luis and I to reconsider, I fear that he is a man who would not take rejection lightly. Señor Mendoza holds sway.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He has great power and influence over the community. Even those in authority. Even the church.’
‘Not over the abbot―’
‘No, daughter! Over the abbot too.’ Mamá was also angry now. ‘This is what you do not realise. The abbot must be responsible for all the people in this community. How do you think we would survive without the donations from the wealthy whose sick relatives we hide away and nurse here? We would not last one winter! Just as the hidalgo encourages those donations, so he could prevent them and ruin us all. It is not just about you!’
Elixa stamped her foot. ‘Then you shall not reject him, but I shall run away! And you will never see me again.’ With tears streaming down her face and sobs catching in her throat she marched off, stomping through the rows of vegetables without a care which ones she crushed.
‘Wait!’ Mamá cried out.
As Elixa slammed the gate behind her, she flung one more hurtful barb at Mamá, ‘And you will never know if I am alive or dead!’
31
Brother Grigori
Brother Grigori watched the kitchen woman drag her daughter away. Her precious flower, as he had heard her call Elixa.
Of course, Grigori could see why the abbot could not resist his wench. And he could see from whence Elixa received her beauty.
Adi must have been little more than thirty years old, and in her bearing, Grigori could see that she had known pain and hardship during that time. But despite toiling day and night to look after the monks, grow vegetables, wake early to bake dozens of loaves of bread, milk the cow and goats, and, of course, cook all their meals, she always seemed to glow with an inner vitality.
He had noticed her as soon as he had arrived at the abbey. Her hands were often, as today, caked in soil. Her hair filled with dust, and her face set and worried. And yet her luminous beauty had shone through.
Once he had worked out the shambling routines of the abbey he had begun to spy upon its various parts, to learn its weaknesses.
At first he had been naïve enough to accept the abbot’s façade of holiness, but eventually he had made the connection between the occasional expressions of slightly bewildered loving tenderness, the sense that, for a while at least, their burdens were lifted, that he perceived in the faces of the abbot and the kitchen wench.
They always occurred at the same time.
He had followed the abbot to the stables during the siesta hour of one hot, summer’s day. Finding a spot in which to loiter and observe in the goat pens, even knowing what he would see he had been somewhat startled to witness their union.
Grigori could not see what attracted her to the abbot who was short, round and old, whereas Adi was younger, taller, slim with rounded hips and handsomely full breasts. He supposed that it must be the allure of the man’s authority. Perhaps, he speculated, some money changed hands too. The woman was nothing more than a common prostitute; although, when it came down to it, weren’t they all.
Sinful and vulgar as he had judged her, he still found himself craving her body.
He had approached her, with subtle care and with plenty of room to backtrack, offering a similar arrangement without letting on that he knew what she did with the abbot. Once she had cottoned on to the true meaning of his suggestion she had tried to hide it, lest she had misinterpreted, but he had seen without doubt that Adi had been appalled and disgusted.
Grigori had reasoned that she was playing coy and would gradually relent. A typical female game.
Her rejection could not be a physical thing, for if one were to compare Brother Luis’ rotund body to Grigori’s slender frame, or the abbot’s greying nest to his own generous, black masculine beard, he was, without doubt, the better of the two illicit suitors.
So it must, after all, be money. He had wondered with what Luis bribed her, but had never been able to find out, because the only thing the abbot seemed to take in excess from the abbey was wine, and that he consumed himself.
Not prepared to risk an outright proposition, Grigori had watched and waited, trying to better understand this situation that eluded him. And in watching, with increasing bitterness, both Adi and Luis, he had found that he was also watching another.
Elixa.
The whore’s daughter possessed the same ensnaring beauty as her mother, but she was fresh and young, innocent.
As he had just recently started to find in the farmhouse with Rosa, there was considerable pleasure to be had in the dismantling of innocence.
The kitchen whore he now reviled for her inexplicable refusal of him. The abbot he resented for the slowness of his decline, his fat little frame a boulder on Grigori’s path. And in Elixa, when he attempted to guide her in the ways of Biblical righteousness, he suspected both her mother’s revulsion of him and the abbot’s stubbornness.
How peculiar to hate something so, and yet also lust after it, all the more as it grew and blossomed into womanhood.
When the hidalgo had named his third victim Grigori had been unsure how he could spirit this one away from so many watchful eyes. Yet also he had been reluctant to give her up, even though he only had her in the strangest of ways. As he had considered the idea more fully, though, it had inflamed him and he had had to disappear, again and again, to the cellar. And there, habit pulled above his knees and groans rasping from his throat, he had imagined the punishment, the pain that could be inflicted upon her.
Grigori was an excellent winemaker because he perceived the different qualities in the crops of grapes and combined them to exquisite effect, and because he was patient and thorough in his planning. Those skills had their uses in his pursuit of power at the abbey too, and this year’s vintage in that arena would surely be the crowning achievement of his life.
The whore, rendered spiritless by the loss of her daughter. Once the abbot had gone, he might even allow her some comfort from his body, although with suitable debasement to make up for her rejection of him. And without the knowledge that he compared mother and daughter.
And then the abbot. Grigori had finally brought the blackmail into the open and showed that the man’s reputation lay under his control. Between his breach of celibacy, and the fate of his favourite following, his failed attempts to protect her, the rotund monk would be broken and could easily be packed off elsewhere to drink away the rest of his days.
And Elixa. When he had her helpless before him he would take his pleasure not just physically, but also in watching her face as he regaled her with the full tale of his ascendency to becoming abbot of Abadía del Torcal. Again and again.
Or even, perhaps, in one glorious, final act of total fulfilment that would give him pleasure for the rest of his days.
The hidalgo would be angered, but that could be survived.
And soon, so blessedly soon.
Mendoza would not understand how a young girl could be seen as such a powerful threat to him and his plans. A wealthy man of his family position in the community could never understand where a man like Grigori had come from and how hard he had toiled to execute his plan.
No, his primary mission was to disrupt the lives of the abbot, his wench and her strong-willed daughter. Having her married off to the hidalgo would leave them all bereft. And he could continue unhindered with his plans.
Grigori reached for parchment and quill. If the message went now with the utmost speed then this could start on the morrow.
With fire in his eyes, Grigori licked his lips and began to write.
32
Elixa had lain awake all night wondering at her fate. Many thoughts had plagued her. Brother Grigori must have learned Brother Luis and Mamá’s secret. Perhaps he had threatened to tell the Church the abbot was not celibate, and was in fact having sexual relations with a woman in his community. Brother Luis would surely be expelled, and that would put Mamá in an extremely perilous position.
And worse than that, would the monk also pursue his terrible accusations of her being a heretic and a thief? What consequences those charges could have she dared not consider.
Ever since the stones had fallen from the moon, her world had turned upside down. Everything had changed.
The dreadful fate of becoming the hidalgo’s wife that had been ordained for her by the two people she cared for the most. The fall into the cave. Her ankle being healed by the Luna stones that had landed inside the cavern. The hidden library. The wolf attack. Healing Enrique’s leg. Restoring Abu’s sight.
And then, just when the world had seemed to be opening up wonderfully before her, giving her a purpose, being called a heretic.
A witch.
And now also a thief.
And as these accusations brought her into danger, so they made perilous the positions of Brother Luis and Mamá. For him, not only because of their secret liaison, which was now being used by Brother Grigori for blackmail, but because the church would not tolerate an abbot harbouring either a heretic or a thief. And for Mamá because her cottage and her living were the gift of the abbot, and if Brother Grigori were to rise to that position he could, and Elixa had no doubt would, throw Mamá out without a second thought.
This thought distressed her more than any other.
When Brother Grigori, who she now guessed held all the strings, had seemed displeased with her in the past, she had got back on his good side by offering him bigger plates of food, making sure he got the freshest cut of meat when Enrique’s hunting party roasted a new boar or buck. Or she would persuade Mamá to make that special herb bread that Brother Grigori loved.
She wondered whether these tricks would work again, whether, in the little time she had left, before the hidalgo claimed her, they could convince the sour monk to at least allow Mamá her living at the abbey. Even as she had turned the idea over during the sleepless night, though, she had known that things had moved beyond this. None of them were safe from whatever dreadful revenge it was that she had seen in Brother Grigori’s eyes.
There was only one option. She had to find Enrique and convince him to run away with her this very day.
Leave the abbey.
Only a short time ago, the very notion of not living at the abbey had cast dread in her heart.
But go she must.
They could hide in another town until the hidalgo forgot about her and married another. Until Brother Grigori, who she was sure would be contented by the abbacy, forgot this stupid notion that she was a heretic and a thief.
She could not be sure it would be safe for Brother Luis and Mamá, because maybe Brother Grigori would continue his blackmail to depose the abbot, but perhaps Mamá could come and live with her and Enrique…
As her thoughts tumbled, finding new problems at every turn, she realised that there was no turning on this path that could lead back to Abadía del Torcal, her beloved home. Nor to the cottage that Enrique had worked so hard to build for their life together.
As the chasm of despair opened in front of her, she forced herself to remember her declaration to Mamá the previous day; that she would marry Enrique even had he to his name nothing more than the clothes he stood in. She had meant it then and she still held true to it. And she no longer doubted in any way his love for her.
As she thought of him, Elixa realised that what she wanted more than anything now was to be with him, to feel his strong, protective arms wrap about her.
Mixed amongst her other thoughts, Elixa had spent the night wondering what the abbot had said to Enrique’s proposal of marriage. She had waited here in the cottage so that he would know where to find her if he had any good news to share, but she had seen no sign of him since the previous day’s scene in the courtyard.
She sighed, knowing that there could be no good news, and decided that now she had to take action, go and find him so that they could make their plans together. With a heavy heart, she stepped out of her home and closed the door behind her.
33
Elixa hurried the short distance to the cloister where groups of monks huddled, whispering after their morning worship.
They scattered as she came into sight.
She stopped and asked one of them, ‘What is happening?’
He wouldn’t meet her gaze, but instead turned slightly and bowed his head in silence.
‘Brother, please tell me.’
He ran for cover and slipped through an arched doorway, out of sight.
She turned to another monk. He did the same.
A quiver snaked down Elixa’s spine.
These monks, who she had grown up with, could not face her today.
Why? What was happening?
In the silence she could just make out the distant thundering sound of horses’ hooves rising from the road up out of the valley.
Elixa hesitated for a moment. Then, she raced towards her look-out point in the church garden.
People were coming towards the abbey. It was always an exciting occasion when visitors, even just new patients to be nursed, rode up the mountain. And this sound, now echoing up from the valley, indicated a large party of people who were riding fast.
As she lay on a huge boulder where she could crane her neck out over a steep fall that gave views across the valley, she gazed down the mountain. A band of men were galloping up the hill towards the abbey. Their horses were kicking up a large cloud of dust, as they raced up the track.
Raising her head again she looked beyond the mountains to the distant line of shimmering sea. But there was no time now for her dreams of one day going to that place where the land met the ocean.
The usual sense of excitement at seeing visitors washed over her, but with it came a vague discomfort, a foreboding. More than anything, she had to find Enrique as soon as possible, so she scrambled to her feet and raced back towards the abbey.
At the arched entrance to the courtyard, she stopped dead.
Two monks held back Brother Luis, his face purple with rage, while he shouted at Brother Grigori, ‘What have you done? What have you done?’
Brother Grigori snapped back at him, ‘It is too late. They are coming for her!’ He spun around and disappeared inside the abbey.
Brother Luis suddenly spotted Elixa hovering nearby and shouted at her, ’Go Elixa, run and hide!’
* * *
Inside, Grigori ordered Brother José to fetch Adi.
‘But what is happening? Something is afoot and everyone is fearing for their lives.’
‘You have nothing to fear. Just do as I say. Fetch that God-forsaken harlot now!’
Brother José recoiled at the words.
Grigori pointed his finger towards heaven. ‘The hour for her repentance is at hand.’
Obeying the other monk, although with confusion written all over his face, Brother José hurried away.
