To Slay The Dreamer

by Alexander Cordell

Genres: General Fiction; Historical Fiction; World War II

Synopsis

From the Spanish sierras to the French Pyrenees, one desperate cause unites them. As the stromclouds gather in the passionate fight against the Fascists, a young Spanish countess and a trained american assassin join forces with the partisans in a desperate attempt on the life of General Franco. TO SLAY THE DREAMER is a rich and compelling story of a group of patriots ready to die for their country - a moving novel of dangerous loyalty amidst the ultimate futility of war.

Release date: August 21, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 320

Sample

CHAPTER EIGHT

Fonseca said, ‘Lady, the American has left the cellar.’

‘I know,’ replied Juana, ‘I have just been down there.’

It was the morning after Pío had left for his monthly tour of his business establishments. Juana and the butler hurried round to the back of the house, and Agustín, coming from the stable yard, cried: ‘He is going, do you know? He is more mad than most, this Yanqui. His head is sore and the sun is giving him the vapours.’ He opened his hands. ‘I’ve reasoned with him, but there is nothing to choose between him and his mule.’

‘He’s in the stables?’

‘Better than that, lady, he is saddling the thing.’

 

Richard was leading the mule out into the yard when Juana and Fonseca arrived there. She said, ‘Now come, this is stupidity, man, you can scarcely stand.’

Richard said, ‘It is necessary, I tell you. I’ve got to get to Astrada.’

‘Look, we can get a message to him, Fonseca . . .!’

‘No, I have got to go myself.’

Fonseca said, ‘Ten miles or more?’

‘It is more like five.’

‘Ten miles using the pass,’ replied Juana. ‘We know the country.’

The mule was standing in dejection. Agustín appeared, waving his stick, crying, ‘Let him go. He is a stupid Yanqui. The mule possesses more sense.’

Juana said, ‘Food and water?’

Richard patted his water-bottle. ‘Water in plenty, and I haven’t the stomach for food.’ He faced Juana, smiling and gripped Fonseca’s hand.

Strangely, there arose in Juana an empty sense of loss as the mule crossed the shippon; Richard waved once, then took the road eastward, towards the Sierra de Gredos.

 

The red brick turrets of Pío’s House were swallowed into the falling darkness as Richard took the mule into the foothills, traversing the steep hillside of the bleak mountain district where white water foamed down to the plains.

Here, in the steady clip-clopping of the mules hooves, there came upon him an isolating loneliness. All about him, as he took the narrow track to the east, great forests of pine and ilex stood in stately stillness under the moon. Richard paused at times, listening for hooves, sensing the possibility of ambush.

For this was Guardia country; the embossing olive-groves and vineyards, long deserted and overgrown, excellent headquarters for marauding gipsies. His head-wound throbbed in the absolute quiet. Over his shoulder Richard saw the flat-topped ridge of Avila to the west, and the spires of the town stabbed out of the enveloping ground mist. The moon flash of the Adaja River glimmered dull silver in the treeless plain. To the south and west the lofty mountains of the Sierra de Malagón rolled in dark thunder across the star-lit sky.

And to this barren loneliness there was added a regret – the loss of Juana. It was a nagging emptiness difficult to define. In some abstract way she reminded him of Carla, his wife. Richard smiled at his thoughts and his hand bunched harder on the mule’s reins. An Iberian darkness was common to them both, of course; Carla, like Juana de Córdoba, had been a full-blooded Spaniard; such women were not scarce. But there was more to it than looks. There was between them an affinity that he couldn’t readily identify, a pleasing phenomenon. Now he swayed in the saddle and the white track before him wavered against the jogging neck of the mule.

Shaking his head to clear it, Richard looked at his watch. He had been riding for three hours, for it was nearly ten o’clock. A little wind blew from the south, fanning the sweat of his face. Reining in, he took the mule into the track-side pines. The sombre gloom of the forest was lightened by great moon-shafts; the chattering of night-birds ceased abruptly to the advent of danger. Dismounting, he was about to tether the mule, when he heard hoof-beats coming along the track behind him.

Instantly, drawing his Colt, he crouched in the bracken. The moon played tricks with light and shade; the boulders about him withered and shrank, a disturbing impression of focal instability. Richard rubbed sweat out of his eyes. The hoof-beats approached without respite, the sound throbbing in his ears; he cocked the revolver, drawing it back into the shelter of his poncho.

The rider came on, now the hoof-beats stammered into silence. Within their indecision, Richard craned forward, looking down the track. He saw, in a sudden scud of the moon, a horse and rider outlined against the stars, and heard a voice call: ‘Richard Hanson, are you there?’ and he recognised Juana’s voice.

Rising from the bracken, Richard walked out on to the track; the moon blazed, bringing to shape the forest verge, the white track, boulder-strewn and hostile.

Seeing him, Juana spurred her horse and trotted towards him.

‘Por Dios! Woman, in God’s name!’

Momentarily, Juana sat unspeaking, then dismounted.

Her face grew in outline before him; he saw the dark smudges of her eyes in her firm, white cheeks; pushing back her riding cap, she said: ‘We talked of it, Fonseca and I. And decided. “So what,” said he. “If the American worries you, accompany him to Salinero. Isn’t it the least a good nurse could do – see the patient to a place of safety?” ’

‘You were lucky not to be shot,’ said Richard. ‘This is no place for a woman.’

‘And foolish of you to leave Avila before you are fit to go.’ Juana led the horse, a young bay, into the cover of the trees. The moon, now clear of cloud, rose bright and clear over the purple rim of the mountains, etching the forest into sharp relief, bringing light and shade to the rolling hills of the sierra. Juana said, tethering the bay, ‘Let me stay. There is little for me to do back in the house, and I know all the short tracks to Salinero.’

‘Astrada will not like it.’

‘Astrada will probably be delighted. He and my mother were friends, according to Fonseca.’

Richard sat in the leaves, stretching out his legs. Juana sat opposite him on a boulder.

She looked somehow smaller in her riding jacket and skirt; the leggings, he thought, did not become her. He preferred her in the white smock she used when nursing: it induced a femininity that now deserted her.

There was in him a small sense of relief that she was near; it atoned for the strange emptiness he had known when he left her standing with Fonseca in the shippon of the house. He rejected the pleasure of her, yet it persisted. He said: ‘You’re foolhardy enough to get yourself into trouble. We aren’t going on a picnic, you know, we are going to partisans. There’s work to be done, and it will be dangerous.’

‘The Galapagar convoy?’

The moon faded; tree-darkness enveloped them; Richard could not see her face.

‘What do you know of the Galapagar convoy?’

‘Little enough, but you talk in your sleep. Is this why you’re in such a rush to get to Salinero?’

‘It’s unfair to listen when people talk in their sleep,’ he said.

‘Oh come, don’t be stuffy!’ Juana laughed softly, her head back, examining him through half-closed eyes. ‘Let me put you on the quick tracks to Salinero and then I promise to leave you.’

For answer Richard untethered the mule. ‘That would be wise. They tell me Astrada’s tough, and doesn’t like strangers. Meanwhile, forget all you’ve heard about the Galapagar convoy.’

‘Madre Mía! And I thought you’d be delighted to see me!’

Richard heaved himself up into the saddle of the mule. His head was light; shapes of the night gyrated in mist; the roadside boulders floated past him like contorted ghosts in flashes of the moon. Momentarily, as the mule stumbled on the uneven track he lurched in the saddle and was nearly unseated and Juana spurred the young bay up beside him, peering in concern.

 

In this manner, sometimes riding abreast, sometimes in file, with Juana leading, they entered deep into the Campo Azálvaro, the mountain link between the Gredos and Sierra Guadarrama, and here the track steepened into a pass, narrow and tortuous, winding backwards upon itself in loops and circles and the mountain crags stood out stark against the moonlit sky and the sierra took on a blueness, which was not of itself but the strangely coloured figuration of the clouds. From this high point in the campo they descended into a plateau of greenness, and here, behind a barrier of boulders stretched a smaller river leaping and foaming out of the forest and the river was unnamed, said Juana, because of its smallness; in times of cold it widened its banks and was deep and treacherous; at times of heat, she explained, one could ford it and only get wet to the thigh. But this was before the great heats of the sierra; now both mule and bay would have to swim.

‘You’ve done this before?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ replied Richard.

She admired his surly strength; when confronted, as now, with an imponderable, he retreated into silence. She cajoled him, saying as she dismounted, ‘It’s very easy. Look,’ and she stood beside the bay. ‘With your right hand you take the reins; with your left hand you grip the horn of the saddle. The horse takes confidence when you wade in beside it. The moment it begins to swim, you straighten your left hand to keep your distance.’

‘This,’ said Richard, ‘is a mule. Has he the brains of a horse?’

‘You’ll not drown, I assure you.’

‘I am no horseman,’ he said abjectly. ‘Also, I cannot swim.’

‘The mule will do the swimming, I tell you. Come, follow me,’ and she led the bay down to the river’s edge and the moon was fine and big, hanging like a broken onyx in the sky and all about them was the forest and the roaring of the river cascading over stones. A fish jumped, a silver crescent of terror in the moonlight. Richard followed tentatively, leading the mule.

Juana entered the river with the bay, calling over her shoulder, ‘When once he begins to swim, lift the reins high – keep them away from his forelegs. Walk until you float. Leave everything to the mule!’

Richard stood in the shallows watching her.

Unaccountably, and he recalled this later, the war was forgotten. The coming attack on the military convoy at Galapagar was forgotten; nothing was more important than being there with the mule, watching Juana as she waded into deep water. It was an emboldening thought, one exempt from apprehension. Was it possible, Richard wondered, always to stay in this wild, lovely place, and with this good companionship? In this there was no pain, no disquiet; it laid bare the artificial courage, it healed all conflicts. He no longer remembered the bright explosions of Jarama, the rafale shrieking of the ricochets. All was sanctified by simplicity – a woman and a horse crossing a river in moonlight.

Now Juana and the bay reached firm ground on the opposite bank.

Cupping her hands, she called to Richard above the shouting of the river.

‘Come on, come on!’

The water swirled about his knees and rose in icy waves to his thighs; deeper now: the mule, uncertain, was rolling its eyes. Richard whispered, digging in with his elbows. ‘Get up, get up!’

Holding the saddle horn stiffly at arm’s length, he plunged in.

Juana called above the surge of the river, ‘Reins high, reins high!’

The mule was gasping; Richard could feel its fine body writhing beside him; its forelegs danced, ploughing the swim of the river. Now came a deep silence and he was drawn along by an unseen power, until the mule’s hooves struck ground, then it rose, dragging him out of the cold. The river thundered. The mule shook itself, spraying him. Richard wiped water from his eyes and saw Juana standing before him. Her face was shining with wetness; her lips parted in a smile.

‘Now then! We’ve saved two miles!’

‘Is this professional nursing? At this rate I’ll be dead before I reach Salinero!’

The bay and the mule stood grazing. Momentarily Richard and Juana stared at each other. The spell, instantly woven, was instantly broken.

‘We’d best get on,’ she said.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Manolo, riding dolefully on a donkey, led the way back from Alanis to Las Navas, and the rendezvous with Richard, who had sent word for them to join him for the next attack upon the life of Franco.

Behind Manolo followed Old Pep; his Guardia mare, the property of Sergeant Fernández, was sure-footed on the tracks. Old Pep dozed, eyes shut but wide awake. After him came Nicolas, upright and alert, his bright eyes switching across the giant panorama of peaks and sun; his mind full of thoughts of Juana. Had she not reached out in the night and touched his face? thought Nicolas: would not such a woman, given time, be the pride of his mother’s posada, back in Alanis?

 

For the past week, while they had been in Alanis, it had not rained; all was sun, siesta for many, and early morning sowing under the lead-labourers. On the nights of the big moons there were bonfires and even a little fiesta dancing among the young ones who did not think in terms of war.

For Manolo, this had been a time of hatred.

As the donkey swayed him in the saddle (he had sold his Guardia mare for marriage money) he thought of Ana Martínez serving in the village shop of Alberto López; he remembered the sleepless siestas when he squatted in the shade of his mother’s kitchen amid the strutting hens, and watched Alberto’s shop on the other side of the village square. Every time the villagers went into the shop the bell would clang; when they came out it clanged again, and there was no other sound on the heat-laden air.

Ana was dressed as a Mexican rose, with a red, tight-stretched blouse across her shoulders, and her skirt was tight also so that it showed her bottom when she walked, and the other men said, ‘Look at Ana Martínez, hombre. If I had a waggling bottom like that and a black skirt to cover it, would I be gathering vine?’

And another said, and Manolo listened, ‘You think she hates Alberto López? I doubt it. He has become a habit. Anything can become a habit. Even a fat shopkeeper. After all, she could leave if she wanted to.’

‘She cannot leave,’ replied Manolo, hearing this.

The man who had spoken was eating black bread dipped in olive oil, and spread oily hands at the sun. ‘Of course she could leave if she wished to! But perhaps Alberto has a large one – larger, even, than the general’s horse which stands near the Retiro in Madrid; undoubtedly this is necessary to the Virgin of Alanis,’ and he winked and tore at the bread with big gnarled hands.

‘Mala sombra!’ Manolo had cried, and dived upon him and tipped him up, and white dust rose to the tearing of their cotton jackets as they wrestled in the sun, Manolo uppermost. Dashing away the bread and oil, he held the knife at the labourer’s throat.

‘All right, all right,’ the other labourers said, ‘You are in love with Ana? Aren’t we all? Is it needful to kill poor Ignacio for love?’

Then there was much jesting and Manolo sat brooding, and in his sweating palm was gripped the bullet he had polished for Alberto López, and when the shop door opened in the dusk, he watched still: Manolo watched, though the others had gone. Ana came out of the shop and went up the steps to the barn across the square, and Alberto López followed. And although the sun went down on Alanis, Manolo was there still, though his mother called him many times from her kitchen.

Dusk came and they did not come out of the barn, Ana Martínez and Alberto López.

Still Manolo watched. He took from his pocket the polished bullet which he had been saving for Alberto López and rubbed the sweat of his hand upon it, and polished it more.

 

‘Of what are you thinking, hombre, if you had anything to think with?’ asked Old Pep now from the saddle, but he knew what Manolo was thinking, and gave cruelty to ease the cruelty of the sun.

The rocks of the sierra were as diamonds of light. Manolo did not reply, so the old man called, ‘You are in trouble enough already, now we are going to have another try at Franco. That accursed American is trouble twice, do you realise it? He wags a finger at us from. Tornadizos and we arrive – all three of us. We were safe in your village. Now, serving this mad Yanqui, many bullets will arrive in our direction.’

Again Manolo did not reply, and Nicolas beat himself with his hat for dust, and shouted, from the rear, ‘Leave him, Grandfather! He grieves for Ana Martínez. Soon, says my mother, she and Alberto will elope to Toledo. What is elope?’

‘They will have departed together,’ said Old Pep. ‘It is an American politeness for fornication.’

‘Old Man,’ said Manolo, not turning in the donkey’s saddle, ‘you have a dirty head and a dirtier tongue. Continue like this and I will step off this donkey and slit it.’

Old Pep laughed at the sky. ‘Poor fool, listen to him! The sun has cooked his head. He is sensitive about Ana and that old fool, Alberto.’

 

In the evening the sky darkened and rain-clouds rolled up from the northern hills. All that night it rained, a drumfire that cascaded off their sombreros and churned up the forest leaves into mud; a deluge that filled the narrow gulches and defiles with foaming water. Dawn came, fine and big with stars. The three of them circled a fire and ate panecillos and drank, and the smoke of their fire drifted upward and there was a smell of leaf dampness in the trees, and coffee.

Before they travelled again, to the place where they were to meet the others, Manolo mended his donkey, who had a loose shoe, and talked much to her in the process.

‘There is a great understanding between those two, you notice?’ Old Pep said to Nicolas. ‘Both having kissed the arse of the chief sorcerer.’

Nicolas did not answer; all night he had dreamed of Juana and the softness of her hand when she touched him, and there was in him a sickness that he could not define. Getting no response, Old Pep repeated his statement, and Nicolas said, ‘Poor Manolo. Do not give him cruelty, Grandfather.’

Manolo put down the donkey’s leg and stretched himself. ‘Does it sicken you, too, to hear the old fool croak?’ And he bent under the donkey to find his hammer and at that moment the donkey made water, soaking him over his head and shoulders and Manolo rose, shrieking and scrambled up and booted the donkey on the rump and hit her with his hat and booted her again, cursing her, while Old Pep was silent, squatting on the ground, holding his stomach with mirth. But Nicolas did not laugh.

‘The trouble with you, amigo,’ said Old Pep, laughing still, ‘is that you do not understand women. Remind me to give you lessons – how to handle women and donkeys.’

Later, before they set off again, Nicolas saw Manolo returning from a stream in the valley where he had gone to wash. The water was still on the face of Manolo.

 

Nicolas was cooking, on a triangle of sticks, a leveret that had come into his snare within the thickets: two he had caught, the first being with young, and her he had released since it was bad sense to eat the source of leverets; the second he had skinned, gutted and set over the fire, and while awaiting its roasting, the porrón had gone from mouth to mouth. ‘Thinking of Alanis sickens me also,’ said Nicolas. ‘By the time I’m home after killing Franco, there’ll be a new pair of rope sandals in our posada – Diego Díaz will be there.’

‘My son, your father is dead, Nicolas,’ said Old Pep, and he tore at the leveret’s leg with his yellow teeth and wiped his bearded mouth with his hand. ‘But your mother’s belly is still ripe for children. She is in need of another man; be reasonable.’

‘She has me.’ Nicolas thumbed his chest, chewing. ‘What need of another?’

Old Pep said at the stars. ‘Can you make your mother’s children?’

‘I am her son.’

Manolo, now recovered in temper, said, ‘Of course, but do you not also feel the wind up your shirt when girls walk by?’

Nicolas did not reply to this; he was thinking again of Juana, and hated the Yanqui who had taken her attention. How could it be, he thought, that one of his strength and hair could persuade such as her into love? Indeed – how could one as fair as his own mother rub skin with the skin of Diego Díaz, who was wrinkled with age? Women, he thought, were strange, and he angrily said. ‘My mother is young, as the lady Juana is young. Diego is old. It is indecent.’

‘Oh, yes?’ With heavily-lidded eyes, Old Pep squinted at the moon. ‘My son, my son! Do not assume that everybody above the age of thirty has one foot in the grave.’ He gave the leveret’s thigh-bone a final suck and tossed it over his shoulder. ‘When the Bloodstained Dwarf is six feet down, I shall retire and take another woman to my bed, to warm my old bones in winter. You, in your turn, will one day understand.’

Nicolas slept, again dreaming of Juana.

 

As they rode again, taking the sierra tracks to Las Navas and the rendezvous with Richard, Manolo thought again about Ana Martínez.

He had waited outside Alberto’s shop for Ana – near enough not to miss her when she finished work for the day; far enough away not to be seen.

It was not in the evenings that Alberto demanded her, but in the afternoons when the wine was in him and the day was hot: in the evenings, sober, he went home to his wife.

Therefore Manolo, who waited until dusk, was surprised to see Ana come out of the shop followed by Alberto; and still more surprised to see her mount the stairs to the grain barn on the other side of the square, as if of her free will.

She, Ana, had not known of Manolo’s presence.

In Manolo’s pocket were pastries; little cakes of wheaten flour which his mother had made: he had intended that he and Ana would go to a quiet place and eat these, first drinking a little wine. Therefore he had also brought with him a small porrón, and in this was the best wine of Alanis.

He and Ana would drink and eat, and it would be good, thought Manolo.

 

Seeing Ana climbing up to the barn, Manolo would have called her and followed, for deep in the hay he could have held her and told her what would happen after the war, when Alberto had gone from Alanis, and there would be only them – he and Ana Martínez, for love. Would not Diego Díaz, the lead-labourer speak for him, he being a friend of Nicolas’s mother? And perhaps, even, the agent would speak to the landlord and grant him a cottage.

All this Manolo planned to tell Ana Martínez; and all this would come to pass after she had freed herself from Alberto López.

Now he called to her, his hand up, but the call stopped upon his mouth.

After Alberto had closed the door of the barn, Manolo came from his hiding place; there was no sound but the cicada’s song and the croaking of bull-frogs from the pond; this and the guitar of Gustavo, the blind mute who lived behind the inn.

Crossing the road, Manolo stood at the bottom of the steps leading to the grain loft, listening, but heard no sound other than the sounds of the village.

Manolo mounted the steps to the grain loft, until he reached the platform serving the door, and the timber here was stained white with flour and golden husks; these, disturbed by his sandals, drifted down to the ground in a golden rain.

Again Manolo listened, this time outside the barn door.

Silence.

Carefully, he turned the handle of the door, but the door did not open to him.

 

Above him was a ball-hook, used for swinging the grain bags.

Manolo measured the chain length, the hook, the crane arm, the radius of the swing. At full stretch, he calculated, the hook would take him opposite the loft window where the grain was loaded.

It meant swinging from the platform into space. But, once in position, dangling over the fifty-feet drop to the ground, he could command a view of the interior.

Leaping up, he caught the hook; reached out with a foot, and pushed.

The jib arm swung with a creak.

Dangling from the hook, Manolo twisted from the waist, thrusting out with his legs, propelling himself in space.

The jib arm began to move to a position opposite the window.

Rigidly, Manolo hung upon the hook, staring through the window into the loft.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘I must get back to Avila,’ said Juana, and looked at her watch and the luminous dial glowed in the forest darkness where they walked, she and Richard. Her young bay and Richard’s horse grazed nearby.

‘I do not want you to go.’

Before them, at the end of the path through the forest, the serrated peaks of the sierra rose up in the moonlight. Earlier, they had looked down into the valley where fields of vines and wheat glimmered in a wilderness; squat cottages curled smoke into the rain-laden air. Beyond lay the town of Avila shrouded in night mist.

They walked slowly, removed in time and space, now that the others had gone their different ways, and the death of Astrada was heavy on their minds.

Near midnight, on a cairn above the track, they sat, and the traffic of war rumbled southward to Toledo; this and the wind were the only sounds of the night. The noise and violence of the Galapagar ambush receded within the intimacy of their nearness.

 

Richard said, ‘You are not as I imagined you. When first they told me of the Countes of Avila – it was Hans Deimler, I think – I gathered the things one associates with a countess; romance, vitality, aristocratic indifference.’

‘That was because he was speaking of my mother.’

‘And you are none of these things?’

‘Not if you were to ask Pío.’

‘Is Pío a good judge?’

‘Of women, yes. His experiences include his paramours.’

‘But not the daughter of a countess?’

Juana smiled. ‘The fault is probably mine. I could have been a more tolerant wife.’

‘You don’t love him?’

‘Of course I do; everybody loves Pío. To me he’s a cherished friend.’

‘You’d not consider me like that, if I were your husband.’

Juana lay back on the pine-needles; the forest floor was vibrant beneath her head. ‘But you are not my husband. Anyway, how can love be perfected under conditions of war?’

Richard said, ‘I love you, Juana, war or not.’

‘You must not. It i. . .