Lola Montez Conquers the Spaniards by Kit Brennan Page A

to Sir Jasper. It was eventually arranged: The baby was handed over and they departed. Before they did so, Catherine found me and hugged me hard. She told me the little girl would be adored and cared for as their own forever-more. She urged me to have no worries for the infant’s welfare, that she would be first and foremost in their hearts, always. Uncle Herbert, ever silent, nodded and pulled his whiskers, looking anywhere except at me. Aunt Catherine asked permission to call my baby Emma. What could I say? I hadn’t seen the baby since the day she was born. I’d barely seen her then, and I didn’t see her on the day my step-relatives took her. Catherine kissed me and whispered, “Never tell a soul, dear. This way is best.”
    I was returned to the school. For months, while my breasts continued to leak and I hid the evidence as well as could be, my spirits were in the dankest, coldest cellar. I believed that the baby was better off without me. I didn’t even know how to miss her. I sat in the pews of the church in Bath and for the first time, really listened to the words. Virtually all of them were designed to punish and contain God’s handiwork, particularly the women. I believe some young souls encounter despair at an early age and spend the rest of their lives trying to escape it. And in my experience, that despair is as often caused by religion as by human wrongdoing. Those words, in that church, filled me with fear,then loathing—and finally, rebellion. I suppose, if I have one particular attribute of which I am most proud, it would be this spirit: which moves me to action, which goads me into facing it out, whatever it might be. God knows I have many black marks to my name, but this restless, questing soul of mine has saved my life. I am not saying I was sorry for myself—far from it. I was angry, that was what it was, and I wanted answers. I wanted choices. And I’d begun to understand that if I wanted those things I would have to learn how to take them.
    â€œSeñor Hernandez did not do anything to her?” I cried. “Tell me he didn’t do anything!”
    â€œShe is safe in the home of her surrogate parents,” Grimaldi said. “But. We know everything now, everything we need in order to ensure that you cooperate fully on your mission to Spain.”
    This was not an outcome I had remotely anticipated. Little Emma, seven years of age, a pawn of these determined, tempestuous Europeans? It was too terrible. Travelling through Durham to Portsmouth with Thomas, and from thence to India, I had held Emma for all of ten minutes; she’d been three and wriggled as much as I had when I had been held at that age. Her hair was dark as a crow’s wing, her eyes a deep sea blue. It had frightened me how much she looked like me, but no one else had seemed to notice, certainly not Thomas. I dreamt about her for many nights after that visit, trying to imagine what life would be like if she were mine. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t really want to, certainly not in that time and place, and not with that man. But I have made a promise, to myself and to her, that if I can ever help her in her later life, I will. Although I have only seen my birth child twice, only held her once, I truly love her. Where she is, that is my centre and always will be.
    Knee to knee with Juan de Grimaldi, a savagery ran through me: You cannot, you will not, use her this way! Nobody will! I swear it!
    â€œI was always prepared to do what you ask, Señor Grimaldi. You did not need to blackmail me.”
    He pursed his lips. “We have found, in the past, that it is a necessary greasing of the wheels, when the wheels get cold and begin to balk, as they always do at some point in the journey.”
    After this threat, Grimaldi became even more edgy and abrupt. The task I was to perform concerned the princesses’ tutor. I was to get close to the princesses, to have them see