Ibiza Surprise by Dorothy Dunnett

Author:Dorothy Dunnett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ibiza Surprise
ISBN: 9780755131549
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2012-05-15T16:00:00+00:00

The lane was pebbly and steep, and you could almost touch the high, continuous buildings on each side with your two outspread hands. Even in the dark you could see they were fine houses, with crested stonework and heavy bossed doors and, lower, with deep sills filled with cactus and cages and flowers, and sometimes a high, rattan-roofed sunroom, with roses and creepers in round Moorish pots, spilling over in the glow from a lantern. Wire skeined the canyon below us, black against the near blue-black sky. The sound of a drumbeat, suddenly, just out of sight ̶ Tuck. Tr-r-uck. Tr-ruck, tuck tuck, and Johnson abruptly broke off.

We had turned off the main passage by then and were plunging down something much more dicey: a broken lane bordered with dank, peeling houses, where the light hardly reached, except to pick out a sunken, barred window, a swaying curtain of reeds, a double door rotting in all its planks. Above us, the houses on each side suddenly joined forces, two stories high, and we entered a tunnel, utterly lightless, Johnson’s dry, warm hand gripping mine hard. Then the blackness became dimness, and we turned right and passed down between steps and walls and big buildings, the cobbles firmer and broad to the foot until we reached a wide flight of steps to the left, tumbling down against a high wall to what seemed a small square. Johnson took one step down, and I said: ‘Look.’

They were passing through the small square far below: so silently that but for the drum I shouldn’t have seen them. They were roped together, in two long, thin lines, tall faceless men in long-sleeved black gowns sashed in purple, a crucifix glinting on each. Over each head was a long, slender cone sheathed in light purple which fell to the shoulders. Each nose was merely a cut triangle of cloth, each eyehole a circle of flesh. Drums glinted, with gold fringe and purple, and short bugles shone in the hand. But while we watched them, they were silent, picking their way up the difficult path, the tall spires swaying against the shadowed white walls, the shod feet and bare alike making no sound.

They passed.

‘The penitents,’ Johnson said. ‘They will have carried their image round the low town and are now delivering it back. Does penitence frighten you? No, I’m sure. As I’ve said before, you’re too young.’ He was leading me down the wide steps.

‘I’m frightened,’ I said. I hoped he’d forgotten.

He hadn’t. He stopped and said quietly: ‘So. Did Derek come to Ibiza before? Before your father died?’

I gave up. I needed help, and he was helping, more than anyone.

I said: ‘Yes. Janey saw him. He came to see Daddy, and he had a quarrel with him on the Friday. That’s all he told me.’

‘He didn’t tell you what the quarrel was about? Not your mother, he didn’t know evidently that she was here.’

‘No.’

‘What then? Not you: you go your own sweet way, or so the evidence tells me.

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