Pilgrim's Castle Read online

  PILGRIM'S CASTLE

  Violet Winspear

  Yvain Pilgrim had been named after a character in a fairy-tale, a maiden who had been assisted by a lion in her fight against a dragon — and in her present situation she could not help feeling that the fairy-tale had come true.

  Shipwrecked while on a cruise, she had been washed up on to the shores of a tiny Spanish island, the Isla de Leon -- Island of the Lion — and taken to the castle

  of the Lion himself, the autocratic Don Juan de Conques y Aranda, Marques de Leon. The Marques was kindness itself: he took her under his wing, made her his ward, arranged for her to stay at the castle indefinitely - a lot for a man to do who should really, she thought, have been concentrating on the lovely Spanish girl, Dona Raquel, whom he was expected to marry shortly.

  Then Yvain realised that like her namesake she had a fight with a dragon on her hands — the dragon of her growing love for the Marques. But how could the Lion help her in this particular battle?

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sirens wailed, people screamed, and lifeboats splashed into the dark water. One of the boats overturned as it was being lowered from the tilting side of the doomed holiday ship, and Yvain Pilgrim felt a rush of night air and a sudden sickening dive into the sea. The water closed over her head, half choking her until she bobbed to the surface on the buoyancy of her life-jacket.

  It was like a nightmare from which she couldn't escape. Her head was filled with the cries of people in distress, and yet at the same time she kept remembering the music to which the passengers had been dancing in the saloon. A sweet and sentimental tune, which had set her foot tapping and her heart yearning for a partner.

  But no one had approached her as she sat quiet and bespectacled beside her employer, her hair in an unbecoming bun. Mrs. Sandell had been advised by her doctor to take a cruise in sunny waters, and she had cast an eye round her household and picked on Yvain to accompany her. Yvain had worked for the Sandell family since she was fifteen, first as a nursery maid and later as lady's maid and companion to the irritable Ida Sandell, who was well off and wrapped up in herself. The needs and longings of a girl of nineteen were beyond her grasp and her understanding.

  From the outset of the voyage she had expected Yvain to be her constant companion. 'You're a sensible girl,' she said in her sharp, self-satisfied way, 'and you know your place. You mustn't expect to join in the fun and frolics of the other young people travelling on the ship, forever swimming in the pool, flirting and dancing.'

  Yvain harboured no dreams of a shipboard romance, but it would have been fun to play deck games with people her own age instead of reading Jane Austen to Mrs. Sandell. It would have made a delightful change to stroll the deck in the company of a young man.

  But the plain little girl in the prim dress and spectacles did

  not attract the attention of any of the males on board the cruiser. They probably assumed that she was too shy, or too cowed by her large and formidable companion to be very exciting company. They had no idea that beneath her plain dresses and unbecoming cardigans there beat a warm young heart that yearned for adventure.

  Adventure! Yvain felt drugged by the motion of the sea as she floated further all the time from the doomed holiday ship. Something had exploded down in the engine room. Water had flooded the ship in minutes, rushing in madly, and then the alarm sirens had swept the ship. All on deck! All take the places assigned to you! In the beginning Yvain had been next to Mrs. Sandell, no longer sure of herself but in a desperate panic, clutching her jewel-case and her handbag, and thrusting Yvain aside as a lifeboat was made ready. In the scramble Yvain had lost sight of her employer. When the lifeboat had overturned, she had heard a scream that might have belonged to Ida Sandell, cosseted all her life and now tossed into the sea that could be so cruel.

  Yvain floated and remembered and was dazedly aware that there were no bobbing shapes to keep her company. The cries from the ship were dying away behind her and a dread silence seemed to enfold her. During the day the water had looked blue and warm, but right now it was cold and her limbs felt as if all the life was going out of them.

  Sing out, she thought. Shout something. 'Ahoy!' Such a pathetic little cry in the silence of the night. 'Ahoy!'

  No one answered. Nobody heard. Being so light she was being carried on the wings of her life-jacket out of hearing of the other passengers. Soon she would be entirely alone in the middle of the ocean between the rocky coast of Spain and the north coast of Africa.

  It was a frightening realization. The loneliness of the past few years was made active by the loneliness of being adrift in strange waters. Her mind began to wander and memories of the past began to sweep over her ... it was right what people said, when

  you were drowning you relived what had passed.

  She came from a place in Somerset called Combe St. Blaize. There was a stone on the moors called the Black Angel, and as a child she used to play around it, gathering wild flowers to carry home to the cottage in which she lived with her gamekeeper father. Her mother had died when Yvain was born, and she loved the big, strapping, auburn-haired man who called her his squirrel and who cared for the game in the large park belonging to the Sandell family, up at the Hall.

  She knew they were distantly related to the Sandells on her mother's side, and sometimes very early she heard the sound of hunting horns as the men and women of the family rode out across the moors after the red foxes. Because of the foxes Yvain hated the Sandells. They were big and florid and heartless, and she hoped she would never have to work for them as her father did.

  Glorious Somerset. Summer land as he called it. There wasn't a moorland flower he didn't know by its name. Not a bird of the wilds that he couldn't imitate.

  Yvain trembled in the water as she had trembled in the chapel the day her father was buried. So full of life, and then one awful day killed by a kick from the horse of one of the huntsmen, the warm burr in his voice stilled for ever.

  Someone, a neighbour, had tied a big black bow in Yvain's hair - autumn-leaf hair, her father had called it, straight and fine as the rain in the woods.

  There had been little comfort offered her after the burial, for she was but the orphan of a gamekeeper. No warm arms had been held out to her. Benumbed, the tears locked up inside her, she had been taken up to the Hall and put into a small room under the eaves, and the next day she had started work in the nursery, which was occupied by the two children belonging to Ida Sandell's son and his wife.

  Everything had changed so fast, so confusingly. One day Yvain had been free to roam the moors, and the next she was taking orders from the Sandells. After a few months in the nursery, Ida had started to make use of her as a persona! maid. Yvain remembered the Hunt Ball, a year after her father's death. The arrival of the week-end guests, the endless hours of arranging Ida's hair, of helping her to dress, of hearing the music as it floated up to the gallery where she sat on the steps to the attics and dreamed young and impossible dreams.

  She might have escaped to a job in the city, but what did she know beyond carrying tea-trays, mending lingerie, walking Ida's corgi dogs, providing the novels she liked to read, and rubbing her feet as she lay on the chaise-longue?

  She might have escaped ... and now she had ... drifting in a life-jacket, tossed like flotsam, cold and frightened with the darkness gathering closer and closer about her. Gone were the spectacles Ida Sandell had insisted she needed, and adrift had come her hair from its confining role at the nape of her neck. Her plain beige dress clung close to her slim body. She felt drowsy, like a child drifting on the edge of sleep.

  Would it come soon, the sleep from which she would not awake? Would she see again the tall, vibrant figure who used to sweep her up into his arms
and tell her that she'd be a princess in her own castle, like Rapunzel of the long hair that held the dark burning shades of autumn? Would it hurt, she wondered, as waves splashed over her and she heard in the night a throbbing that was surely the throbbing of her own heart, clamouring in her ears, growing louder until suddenly everything went as white as lightning and she was impaled on the beam.

  Someone yelled out ... was it herself? More waves washed over her, choking her, and then there was a splash and steel hands seemed to seize hold of her. A voice spoke urgently in a language she could not understand. It was a man, holding her, and she clung to him as to a rock in the dark, churning water.

  Some time later Yvain awoke to find herself tucked up in blankets in the berth of a small cabin. She lay bemused, feeling the motion of the boat, and a blessed warmth in her limbs that

  meant she was safe and very much alive.

  Her eyes widened as the cabin door opened and a man entered. He wore a great jersey to his throat and his face was lean and olive-skinned. He came to the side of the berth and leaned over her, his dark eyes searching her face. 'Que tal, niha?'

  She couldn't understand what he said, so she smiled at him. It was this young man who had pulled her out of the sea and saved her life. 'Thank you,' she said with deep gratitude.

  He smiled back at her, then left her alone to rest from her ordeal. He was nice, she thought drowsily. So big and stalwart, as though not even the elements could frighten him. He had a fine face, and she decided that her knight errant was Spanish.

  The boat came to harbour just as dawn was breaking. A mug of steaming coffee was brought to Yvain, along with a roll-neck jersey and a pair of jeans with half the legs lopped off. By the time she had dressed in these garments, the sun was filtering through the porthole of the cabin and a glance outside showed Yvain that they were moored against the jetty of a shelving beach; the resinous tang in the air came from the tall pine trees that clustered above the beach.

  She found her way up a narrow flight of steps to the deck of the boat, a small motor vessel bobbing against the stone jetty on which a girl had appeared. The dark fringes of her head shawl blew in the morning breezes, and she was gazing at the boat, from which Yvain's rescuer leapt with outflung arms. He and the girl clung together, and as Yvain watched them the old feeling of desolation swept over her.

  She gave the couple several more minutes by themselves, then she walked to the side of the boat and was given a strong hand to the jetty. Her hair had dried and hung in a salt-bloomed tangle to her shoulder-blades. The borrowed jersey hung to her hips and she looked exactly what she was, an orphan of the storm.

  The shawled young woman gazed at her with eyes big with curiosity, and like the young sailor she was olive-skinned and nice-looking. She broke into a smile when he said simply to Yvain: 'Mi mujer, Mari Luz.'

  Yvain understood him. Now her wits had cleared, some of the Spanish she had been learning with Ida Sandell returned to her. The pretty dark girl was the young man's wife. Yvain smiled half to herself. What a let-down to learn that her knight of the water was a happily married man!

  She went with the couple to their white-walled house among the pine trees, where a curly-haired baby slept in a carved cradle, and where a fire of pine needles and chippings blazed cheerfully in the hearth. Mari Luz and her husband spoke together, then he excused himself and strode from the kitchen.

  'Telefona.' His wife mimed the movements. 'El gran senor to tell. Telefona at lonja.'

  Lodge? Yvain stared at Mari Luz from the fireside as she began to lay the table. 'El gran senor?' she queried. 'Emerito tell him of la senorita Inglesa - comprende?' Yvain nodded. It seemed that Emerito was about to pass her on to some grand gentleman of these parts, but in the meantime she admired the baby in his cradle and ate the fried eggs and bacon that Mari Luz cooked for her. She was drinking a cup of coffee when Emerito returned and made her understand that a car was coming to take her to the house of El Senor.

  'Where am I?' She gestured out of the window. 'What part of Spain is this?'

  Mari Luz rocked her baby son in her arms and left her tall young husband to explain. In amazement, and some consternation, Yvain learned that she had been brought to an island off the coast of Spain. La Isla del Leon - The island of the Lion.

  Events she absorbed the amazing fact, there came the sound of a car pulling up outside the house. Emerito opened the door and Yvain went outside into the sunshine that was bursting through the trees and gleaming on the bodywork of the car that throbbed there. A limousine with a silver miniature of a lion mounted on the bonnet, and a crest on the doors. Yvain caught her breath. Even the Sandells had not driven about in cars like this one. Even they had not been important enough to merit a gold and

  scarlet coat of arms.

  A chauffeur in a buff-coloured uniform emerged from behind the wheel and held open the passenger door. Yvain, an odd young figure in her sea-wear, smiled goodbye at Emerito and his young family. 'Mil gracias,' she said. 'You saved my life and I ... I can't thank you sufficiently.'

  Emerito spread his hands with Latin eloquence. 'Dios te proteja, senorita.'

  God had protected her. She nodded, kissed the baby's soft curls, and slipped into the limousine. She sank back against the soft buff velour of the upholstery and was assailed by a sense of wonderment. Never had she, Yvain Pilgrim, dreamed of being swept to some fabulous domain in a chauffeur-driven car. There was even fitted carpet underfoot and a cushioned headrest against which she leaned her tousled head as the car drove smoothly off the forest path and turned to take a road that wound upwards.

  The engine purred and Yvain was aware of a wild and wonderful scenery and the glitter of the sea that encircled the island of the Lion. Who was the Lion? Was it possible that she sat in his car and was being carried up and up to his palacio? She had heard that certain Spanish nobles still lived like feudal lords in these faraway parts, and Mari Luz had called the man who had summoned her El gran senor.

  Suddenly Yvain's hand gripped the silver inside handle of the door beside her. She had an irrational stab of doubt and fear. She wanted to tell the driver to take her back to the kind young couple in their secure little cottage, but she had no real Spanish, she knew only a few words and phrases, and 'Stop the car, I want to jump out!' was not among them.

  She gazed out of the window beside her and saw sheer cliffs, pine and gum trees, a touch of gold over the distant mountains, and an enticing blue to the sea.

  The sea in which she had been plunged last night, so fearful then, now like a melting pot of sapphires and jasper. As she gazed far down at the water, as the car climbed with a deeper purr towards the summit of the hills, she wondered about her employer. Had Ida Sandell been picked up? Was she safe? Would she soon be making inquiries about her maid-of-all-work, Pilgrim, as she called Yvain?

  Yvain was aware that she had an unusual first name. It came out of a book of fables, her father had told her long ago. Ida Sandell had sniffed scornfully at the idea of a maid-companion having such a fancy name. Pilgrim, she always called out when she wanted something. Fetch my book, Pilgrim. Massage the nape of my neck, Pilgrim. Take Jassy to the garden, Pilgrim, and see she doesn't go on the flower beds.

  Yvain stared blindly from the window of the limousine. She didn't want to go on like some patient pilgrim, forever at the beck and call of a woman who thought only of her own comfort. A cruise in sunny waters had seemed exciting, but on board nothing had changed for Yvain ... until the shrilling of the alarms, the tilting of the lifeboat, the plunge into the sea that had carried her near enough to the shores of this island to be picked up by a young Spanish sailor.

  The Island of the Lion.

  Her fingers gripped together in her lap, her gold-brown eyes slowly filled with wonderment. How could she forget the fable from which her name had been chosen by her father? Yvain, the girl who had been assisted by a lion in her fight against a dragon!

  It was then, as the car stood poised on a precarious bend o
f the spiral road, that she saw etched against the sunlit sky the turrets of a castle out of a Spanish fable. She felt the excited drumming of her heart as she gazed upon the place. It was perched high on a ledge of rock, like a wondrous tapestry, its pinnacles soaring high to pierce the blue-gold sky. A pennant flew from a turret that seemed poised over the sea itself, and the gold and scarlet colours caught the wind and the sun.

  Yvain let out her breath, very slowly. It was not a dream because she could feel the wind on her cheek, and she could smell the resinous pines and the salt in the air. It was not a dream, because now they were driving into the courtyard and Yvain saw a stone figure of a lion presiding over the entrance to the castillo.

  The car circled a stone well in the centre of the courtyard and came to a smooth halt at the foot of a flight of steps leading up to an arcaded porch. The chauffeur slid from the car and opened the door beside Yvain. In something of a daze she alighted and stood gazing up the steps at the huge coat of arms dominating the porch. An escutcheon quartered into deeds of valour, pride, honour, and love.

  She stared at the carved rose, symbol of love. She was entering the house of a Spaniard, of course, and it would be a place of warm affection, many children, and a smiling woman grown plump with contentment.

  'Por favor.' The chauffeur gestured not at the steps but at a wrought-iron gate set in a wall of the courtyard. 'Permitir.' He opened the gate, and Yvain entered a patio that made her catch her breath in wonderment. It was like walking into a picture, and she felt incongruous in her odd clothes among the rose-coloured trails of oleanders, the perfume of star-like flowers clustering about a fountain, and the wild tangle of roses cloaking a pergola.

  'Muchas flores!' she gasped.

  'Si, senorita.'

  'Un grand edificio,' she added faintly.

  A pair of dark eyes gazed amusedly into hers. 'El senor hidalgo es un hombre muy rico.'

  She didn't doubt the hidalgo's riches, and she followed nervously where the chauffeur led, in through open glass doors, across a quiet, shady, gleaming hall, and up a gracious staircase of marble and wrought-iron.