to the man who had fathered her as ‘Daddy’. Daddies were men who played with their children and who loved them—not strangers in a far-off country.
‘Yes,’ her mother had responded. ‘I once took Vidal there, and your father joined us. We had the most lovely day. One day you and I will go there together, Fliss,’ her mother had promised. But somehow that day had never come, so now she was here on her own.
Through the tinted windows of the car she could see the city up ahead of them, its ancient Moorish quarter of Albaicín climbing the hillside that faced the Alhambra. Close to it was the equally historical medieval Jewish quarter of the city, but Fliss wasn’t in the least bit surprised, once they were in the city, to find Vidal turning into a street lined with imposing sixteenth-century buildings erected after the city’s capture by the Catholic rulers Isabella and Ferdinand. Here on this street the tall Renaissance-style buildings spoke of wealth and privilege, their bulk blotting out the rays of the sun and casting heavy, authoritative shadows.
She might have been surprised to discover that Vidal drove his own car, but she was not surprised when he slowed the car down and then turned in towards a huge pair of imposing double-height studded wooden doors. This area of the city, with its air of arrogance and wealth, was perfectly suited to the man who matched its hauteur—and its visually perfect sculptured classical magnificence.
Fliss was relieved to be distracted from that particular thought by the sight of the sunny courtyard they had just entered, its lines perfectly symmetrical, and even the sound of the water splashing down into the ornate stone fountain in its centre somehow evenly timed.
The house—more a palace, surely, than merely a house—enclosed the courtyard on all four sides, with the main entrance facing the way they had come in. On the wall to their right a two-storey archway led into what had looked like formal gardens from the glimpse Fliss had seen before Vidal had brought the car to a halt alongside a flight of stone steps. The steps led up to a wooden studded door that matched the style of the doors they had just driven through. Around the middle floor of the three-storey building ran what looked like a sort of cloistered, semi-enclosed walkway, whilst the windows looking onto the courtyard were shuttered against the late-afternoon sunlight. On the stonework above the windows Fliss could see the emblem of Granada itself—the pomegranate—whilst above the main doorway were carved what she knew to be the family’s arms, along with an inscription which translated as ‘What we take we hold’.
It wasn’t just the way her job had encouraged her to look at new areas with an eye to their tourism potential that caused her to note these things, Fliss admitted. She had made it her business as she grew up to read as much as she could about the history of Vidal’s family—and of course that of her own father.
‘Does it ever concern you that this house was built with money stolen from the high-ranking Muslim prince your ancestor murdered?’ she challenged Vidal now, determined not to let the beauty and the magnificence of the building undermine her awareness of how the fortune that had bought it had been made.
‘There is a saying—to the victor the spoils. My ancestor was one of many Castilians who won the battle against Boabdil—Muhammad XII—for Ferdinand and Isabella. The money to build this palacio was given to him by Isabella, and far from allowing the murder of anyone, the Alhambra Decree treaty gave religious freedome to the city’s Muslims.’
‘A treaty which was later broken,’ Fliss reminded Vidal sharply. ‘Just as your ancestor broke the promise he made to the Muslim princess he stole away from her family.’
‘My advice to you is that you spend more time checking your supposed facts and rather less repeating them without having done so.’
Without allowing her time to retaliate, Vidal got out of the car, striding so quickly round to the passenger door that Fliss did not have time to open it. Ignoring his outstretched hand, Fliss manoeuvred herself out of the car, determined not to let herself be overwhelmed by her surroundings and instead to think of her mother. Had she felt intimidated by the arrogance and the disdain with which this building frowned down upon those who did not belong to it but who were rash enough to enter? Her mother had loved her time in Spain, despite the unhappiness it had eventually brought her. She had been hired by Vidal’s parents as an au pair, to help Vidal with his English during the school summer holidays, and she had always made it plain to Fliss just how much she had liked the little boy who had been her charge.
Was it perhaps here in this house that she had first seen and fallen in love with Vidal’s adopted uncle—the man who had been her own father? Fliss wondered now. Perhaps she had seen the handsome Spaniard for the first time here in this very courtyard? Handsome, maybe—but not strong enough to stand by her mother and the love he had sworn he felt for her, Fliss reminded herself starkly, lest she get carried away by the romantic imagery created by her surroundings.
She knew that her mother had only visited the family’s house here in Granada very briefly, as most of her time in Spain had been spent at the castillo on the ducal country estate, which had been Vidal’s parents’ main home.
The thought of what her mother must have suffered caused a sensation inside Fliss’s chest rather as though iron-hard fingers had closed round her heart and squeezed it—fingers as long and strong as those of Vidal He had played his own part in her mother’s humiliation and suffering, Fliss thought bitterly, and she turned quickly away from him—only to give a startled gasp as her foot slipped on one of the cobbles, causing her to turn her ankle and lose her balance.
Immediately the bright sunlight that had been dazzling her was shut out as Vidal stepped towards her, his hands locking round her upper arms as he steadied her and held her upright. Her every instinct was to reject his hold on her, and show him how unwelcome it was. He moved fast, though, releasing her with a look of distaste, as though somehow touching her soiled him. Anger and humiliation burned inside her, but there was nothing she could do other than turn her back on him. She was trapped—and not just here in a place she did not want to be. She was also trapped by her own past and the role Vidal had played in it. Like the fortress walls with which the Moors had surrounded their cities and their homes, Vidal’s contempt for her was a prison from which there was no escape.
Walking past him, Fliss stepped into the building, standing in a cool hallway with a magnificent carved and polished dark wood staircase, to take in the austere and sombre magnificence of her surroundings.
Portraits hung from the white painted walls—stern, uniformed or court-finery-dressed Spanish aristocrats, looking down at her from their heavily gilded frames. Not a single one of them was smiling, Fliss noticed. Rather, they were looking out at the world with expressions of arrogance and disdain. Just as Vidal, their descendant, looked out on the world now.
A door opened to admit a small, plump middle-aged woman with snapping brown eyes that swiftly assessed her. Although she was simply dressed, and not what Fliss had been expecting in Vidal’s mother, there was no mistaking her upright bearing and general demeanour of calm confidence.
She realised her assumption was wrong when Vidal announced, ‘Let me introduce you to Rosa, who is in charge of the household here. She will show you to your room.’
The housekeeper advanced towards Fliss, her gaze still searching and assessing, and then, ignoring Fliss, she turned back to Vidal. Speaking in Spanish, she told him, ‘Where her mother was a dove, this one has the look of a wild falcon not yet tamed to the lure.’
Fresh anger flashed in Fliss’s own eyes.
‘I speak Spanish,’ she told them both. She was almost shaking with the force of her anger. ‘And there is no lure that would ever tempt me down into the grasp of anyone in this household.’
She
