C. Sansom - Winter in Madrid

‘Not very. I’ve got the car, one of the old Fords. It’s outside. You?’

‘Good.’

‘Did you get away all right?’

‘Enrique is cross at having to stay home with Paco. I told him we were having a day out and he wanted to bring him.’ She shook her head. ‘I hate lying to them.’

He took her hand. ‘No more lies after today. Come on, we should eat.’ He carried plates of scrambled egg through to the salón.

‘How is Barbara?’ Sofia asked as they ate.

‘All right.’ The previous evening, after collecting the car from the embassy, Harry had driven round to Barbara’s house. He had told her the news of the fake gold mine had reached Franco himself; it was likely the authorities would be hunting Sandy now.

There were footsteps on the stairs. They both tensed. ‘I think it’s her,’ Harry said.

Barbara was carrying a large rucksack and her face was strained and pale.

‘Sorry I’m a bit late,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Some people came at six, I was still in bed. A couple of civiles and someone from the government. I was terrified they’d found out about this. They wanted to know all about Sandy. I played the little woman, said I didn’t know anything.’ She sat down and lit a cigarette. ‘Told them he’d walked out a couple of days ago. It was easy to take them in. They don’t think women are capable of anything. They took everything away from his study, even his fossil collection. I almost felt sorry for him.’

Harry took a deep breath. ‘He brought it all on himself, Barbara.’ He found he felt nothing for Sandy any longer. He was just a blank.

‘Yes.’ Barbara nodded. ‘Yes, he did.’

‘We should go now if we have everything,’ Sofia said. She went to her coat and pulled out a heavy German pistol, a Mauser. She held it out to Harry. ‘You take it.’

‘OK.’ He checked it. It had been cleaned and oiled and the chambers were full. He slipped it in his pocket. Barbara shuddered slightly and looked at Sofia, who met her gaze evenly. Harry stood up. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s check over everything, then go.’

OUTSIDE IT WAS so cold it hurt to breathe at first. They had to scrape frost from the windscreen of the Ford. Harry worried the engine wouldn’t start but it leapt into life at once; the British embassy maintained their cars well. Barbara and Sofia got in the back and they set off along the Valencia road. They were quiet; the issue of the gun seemed still to be a barrier between them. After a while Sofia spoke.

‘I have been thinking about what we should say if anyone asks why we have come to a remote town like Cuenca. We could tell them you are bringing me to find out about my uncle. That would be a reason for going to the cathedral too, to look at the list of priests killed during the war.’

‘Do you think your uncle’s name might be there?’ Barbara asked.

‘Yes, if he was killed.’ Sofia turned her head away and in the mirror Harry saw her blink back tears. Yet she was still willing to use her family’s tragedy to help them. He felt a choking sensation of love and admiration.

They drove all morning. In many places the road was in poor condition, slowing their progress. There was very little traffic and few towns; this was the dry heart of Castile. In the early afternoon the ground began to rise, steep hills breaking up the brown landscape. Frozen streams ran down the sides, thin slashes of white against the brown landscape. Key-cold, Harry thought, key-cold.

Towards three they saw a line of low mountains with rounded summits on the horizon. The countryside began to change; there were more cultivated areas, patches of bright green where the land was irrigated. A large town came into view in the distance, a jumble of grey-white buildings climbing a hillside so steep they seemed to be built one on top of another, up and up to the sky. They came to a sign telling them they were about to enter Cuenca and Barbara leaned over and touched Harry’s arm. She pointed to a track leading from the road into an uncultivated field, winding behind a clump of trees that would screen the car from the road.

‘That must be the place.’

Harry nodded and turned on to the track, the car bumping over frozen ruts. He halted behind the clump of trees. On the other side the meadow rose gently up to the horizon.

‘What d’you think?’ he asked.

‘It’ll be a long walk back,’ Barbara said.

‘We ought to follow Luis’s advice. He said it was the nearest concealed spot.’

‘All right.’

They opened the doors. Outside Harry felt suddenly vulnerable, exposed. A bitterly cold breeze ruffled their hair as they walked out to the road. Harry slung the rucksack with the clothes and food over his back. Sofia stood at the side of the road, looking towards Cuenca.

‘I can’t see the cathedral,’ Harry said.

‘It is at the very top of the hill. The gorge is behind it.’

‘And the Tierra Muerta is on the other side of the gorge?’ Barbara asked.

‘Yes.’ Sofia took a long breath, then began walking towards the town. The others followed her down the long empty road.

Only a couple of carts and a car passed them before they reached a bridge over a swirling grey-green river. By then the winter sun was low on the horizon. They walked through the poor shabby houses of the new town, past the railway station. There were few people around and no one paid them much heed. They kept an eye out for civiles patrolling the barrios but only a couple of mangy dogs challenged them, barking angrily but scurrying away at their approach. Their barking reminded Harry of the feral pack and he put his hand on the Mauser in his pocket for comfort.

Then they were climbing over worn cobbles into a soaring wilderness of stone, higher and higher as dusk began to fall. The narrow streets wound up and up: endless four-and five-storey tenements, centuries old, unpainted and with crumbling plaster. Each tenement block loomed over them, then they would climb to the next street and be looking down on the roofs. Weeds grew between cracked tiles, the only green things among all the stone. Thin wisps of smoke rose from the chimneys; there was a smell of woodsmoke and animal dung, stronger than in Madrid. Most windows were shuttered but occasionally they glimpsed faces peering at them, quickly withdrawn.

‘How old are these buildings?’ Harry asked Sofia.

‘I don’t know. Five hundred years, six. No one knows who built the hanging houses.’

In a little square halfway up the hillside they paused to let an old man lead his donkey past, the burro almost buried under a load of wood.

‘ Gracias. ’ He looked at them curiously. They paused for a moment to recover their breath.

‘I remember all this,’ Sofia said. ‘I worried I might have forgotten the way.’

‘It’s very bleak,’ Barbara said. The setting sun cast a cold glow on the street, turning the little piles of frozen snow in the gutters pink.

‘Not for a child.’ Sofia smiled sadly. ‘It was exciting, all the steep streets.’ She took Harry’s arm and they climbed on.

The old Plaza Mayor crowned the summit of the hill, municipal buildings lining two sides. The third side was a sheer drop over a parapet to the street below, left unbuilt on to give a clear view of the cathedral that dominated the fourth side, its huge square facade solid and intimidating. A wide flight of steps rose to where a group of beggars sat huddled in the deep porch of an immense doorway. There was a bar next to the cathedral but it was closed; apart from the beggars the plaza was deserted.

They stood in the doorway of the bar, their eyes darting over the shuttered windows surrounding them. An old woman carrying an immense bundle of clothes on her head passed across the square, her receding footsteps echoing through the frosty dusk.