‘What?’

‘Scandal and bad publicity can wreck lives,’ she went on, Bartolomé’s full attention caught. ‘It’s not a risk you should take.’

‘Risk?’ he echoed. ‘What risk?’

‘You don’t know?’ She affected surprise. ‘I’m sorry, I thought … Your brother said you knew …’

He was dry-mouthed, staring at her as though he realised that whatever she said would destroy him.

‘Knew what?’

‘Gabino …’ she paused, focused and pitiless, ‘… is the father of your son.’

BOOK FIVE

Quinta del Sordo, Madrid, 1824

From across the river came the chiming of the night clock. Ten minutes fast, already ten minutes into a future hour. Surrounded by flickering candles, on the table, the worktop, the window ledges, even the floor, Goya painted in the tremulous light. Raw from lack of sleep, his body aching, his legs swollen and dry with the heat, he worked on. He was completing the last of his Black Paintings – an eerie, morose image of a decrepit woman hunched over a bowl of gruel, a skull-headed creature seated beside her. Both of them were looking to their left, gazing out of the window of the bedchamber.

Gazing out of the bedchamber, over the river, towards Madrid. Gazing out to the Court in the distance. Look where I look. Look …

Pausing, he felt a vibration under his feet and moved to the window. Outside a man was approaching on a horse, his presence unexpected at so late an hour. Although Goya couldn’t hear it, he could imagine the whinnying of the horse, pressed into nocturnal service, its hooves throwing dust patterns on the scorched earth. But why would someone be out so late? Come to the Quinta del Sordo on what night purpose?

Still watching, Goya saw the man pause, staring at the farmhouse. He was wearing dusty black clothes, a white ruff marking him out as a fellow of the court, a gold cross swinging round his neck as he stared at the shape in the window. Goya knew that Leocardia was asleep in a chair downstairs, her daughter on her lap, but still he waited for the front door to be unfastened, for her to hurry over to the stranger and greet him.

Seen before, noted before. Coming over the fetid river to the Quinta del Sordo – the Deaf Man’s House.

Turning away, Goya glanced over at the painting of the Holy Office, recognising the man outside as the man in the picture holding the drinking glass. His offering, his gesture from the court, his salutation.

This from the King, from Ferdinand. This from the Royal hand …

When Goya returned to the window, the man on horseback had gone. Suppressing fear and exhaustion, the old painter resumed his work. It would not be long now. Soon he would be finished. Soon the evidence would be complete.

His lifted his right arm, stiff in the joint, his full brush smearing the paint on the wall. He could sense the other paintings around him, sense them watching. Every figure playing a function in the grim commedia he had created. He had spent his life describing the indescribable – the cruelties and viciousness of his age, the tyranny of the Court and the ruthless hectoring of the Inquisition. Paintings, drawings, etchings had all presented the truth in vivid, brutal detail, but this time Goya was leaving behind a covert truth – an enigma, a riddle which depicted the unthinkable.

A secret too dangerous to be committed to paper or spoken out loud.

Let the court view him as a dangerous, treacherous madman. Let the world believe the same.

Goya knew that eventually fate would intervene. The Black Paintings might remain a mystery for a little time or for centuries, but one day someone would come looking … He leaned against the wall, smearing the paint with his bare arm. Terror, age and exhaustion hung over him. He had lived through wars, survived the Inquisition, grown old amid plots, treachery and carnage, but now he wondered if – finally – death was imminent.

A little longer, he pleaded. A little longer … it was almost finished, he reassured himself. When this last image was completed, he would leave the Quinta del Sordo.

Or be buried there.

64

For more than an hour after Gina had left, Bartolomé sat motionless at his desk. His thoughts came adrift, untied themselves, then knotted back together into one twisted coil of rope. Dismissing his secretary, he thought about his wife. Wondered how a woman he had loved so much had cuckolded him with his own brother and managed to fool him for so long.

Because much as Bartolomé wanted to laugh off Gina’s claim, he knew in his heart it was true. He knew it because – now he let himself admit it – he had always had his suspicions, never spoken aloud, but there nonetheless. How convenient it had been that Celina had finally conceived after so many failures to get pregnant – just in time to prevent the Ortegas from adopting a child! By giving birth to Juan, Celina had cemented her position in the family, securing her future and her son’s.

There had been other pointers too, now blindingly obvious. Juan was a handsome child, not tall like his father but stocky – like Gabino. And his temperament had little of Bartolomé’s patience; Juan was mercurial, reckless, capricious. Even his interests told of his true parentage. Juan loved toy guns, cars, weapons. He had no time for books or music … It was so obvious, Bartolomé thought helplessly, but he hadn’t wanted to see it. And for four long years Celina had hidden the truth.

For four years she had made love to Bartolomé and been privy to every aspect of his life and work. And for four years she had raised Gabino’s child as his.

Shaking, Bartolomé clenched his hands together, pressing the palms into each other, heart line to heart line, lifeline to lifeline, crushing the blood out of the flesh. But it didn’t help. He realised that her betrayal was the reason why she had always defended Gabino. Had always stayed his hand when he had wanted to punish his brother.

He was born an Ortega, and he will die an Ortega …

She had said that about Gabino, but she was also saying it about their son. Saying that blood was everything. Even crossed blood, treacherous blood – even that was to be accorded respect.

But to choose Gabino!

The lusty, violent, coarse Gabino. To choose the brother he hated, despised, to bring his cuckoo into their sweet nest … Bartolomé struggled to contain his anger, remembering Celina’s old jealousy of Bobbie Feldenchrist, the pressure she had put on him to end the relationship. No other person had ever fazed Celina like Bobbie. No other woman had ever caused her a moment’s concern. Jesus! Bartolomé thought. Why hadn’t he married the American? They were alike in so many ways, they were both collectors, and even if the relationship had faltered they would always have been bound by their common passion.

Bartolomé’s face was expressionless as he tried to decide what he should do. Divorce his wife? Disinherit his brother? But if he did, he knew only too well what the outcome would be – the whole sordid story would be exposed, his business colleagues in Madrid and Switzerland mocking him. Celina was right about one thing – if you came from a powerful family body you could never risk cutting off any limb, however septic. You had to treat it, cure it, but never amputate and risk a corpse.

Slumping back into his seat, Bartolomé felt ashamed and foolish the same time. Then his gaze fell on the envelope Gina had left on the desk and he reached out for it, his mind clearing. Carefully he drew out the papers, Leon Golding’s handwriting indecipherable in a few places but otherwise readable. A slow excitement shifted over his despair as he began to read. Leon’s theory was strange, oddly convoluted. He leaned back, reading on … Was it true? Bartolomé wondered. Could Leon Golding really have solved the enigma of the Black Paintings?