SOFIA AND HARRY walked slowly through the Rastro crowds. It was Sunday, a cool cloudy day, and Madrid's main street market was packed. The rickety wooden stalls with their awnings spilled into the narrow streets around Plaza de Cascorro. They were covered with junk of every imaginable variety cheap ornaments, pieces of broken down machinery, canaries in wooden cages. Harry would have liked to take Sofia's hand but that was now forbidden as immoral unless the couple were married. Pairs of guardias stood in doorways here and there, looking at the crowd with cold hard eyes.

It was exactly a week since they had made love in Harry's flat. Since then they had managed to see each other most days. Harry had time on his hands; he had had no further instructions from the spies. Sofia would come round to his flat in the evenings, leaving early because of her early shifts at the dairy.

He was happy to be in love for the first time, happy that his orderly world had been turned upside down. When the latest letter from Will arrived he read of their problems with getting a cleaner for their house in the country, the children's schooling, and felt unimaginably distant from his cousin's world at the same time as he felt a warm rush of love for him.

There were secrets, though. Harry wanted nothing more than to tell Sofia about his work as a spy and how he hated it, how his only friend at the embassy had turned out to be his watcher: but he couldn't and mustn't. Sofia, meanwhile, had not told her family of their relationship. She said it wasn't the right time. When she left Enrique to look after their mother and Paco in the early evenings she told him she went visiting one of the girls from the dairy. She didn't seem to mind lying to her brother; Harry wondered whether perhaps families as close as theirs could only cope with that closeness by having secrets.

Today was Sofia's weekly day off from the dairy. She had arranged for Enrique to stay at home to look after their mother and Paco.

They had made love at Harry's flat and then Sofia suggested the Rastro. As they threaded their way through the crowds, Harry whispered to her. 'You never smell of milk. Why don't you smell of milk?'

She laughed. 'What do I smell of?'

'Just you. A clean smell.'

'When I went to work there I promised myself I wouldn't end up smelling like the others. There is a shower there; it is freezing cold and has a concrete floor with a broken metal drain you must be careful not to fall into, but I shower every day.'

'No one will ever keep you down, will they?'

'No.' She smiled at him. 'I hope not.'

They walked deeper into the crowds, laughing at some of the bizarre things up for sale, and passed into the part of the market that sold food. Most of the stalls were nearly empty, only a few dried-up vegetables here and there. A meat stall sold offal that Harry could smell six feet away but there was a queue waiting to buy it. Sofia saw his disgusted look.

'People will buy anything now,' she said. 'The ration wouldn't feed a dog.'

'I know.'

'Everyone is desperate. That's why Enrique took that job, you know. He is a good man at heart, he didn't want to be a spy.'

'I wonder whether not being good at spying makes you a better man?'

'Perhaps it does. People who are good at deceiving cannot be good people, can they? He is happier as a street cleaner.'

'How is his leg?'

'All right. He is still tired in the evenings, but that will get better. Senora Avila is disappointed. Now there is more income coming into the family she has lost one excuse to run to the priest with, that we cannot afford to care for Paco.'

He looked at her. 'What was your uncle the priest like?' he asked.

Sofia smiled sadly. 'Mama and Papa moved from Tarancon to Madrid to find work when I was small and Uncle Ernesto went to a parish in Cuenca. Although my parents were Republicans they kept in touch, family is everything in Spain. We used to go and stay with Uncle Ernesto for a few days every summer when I was small. I remember being amazed by his sotana.' She laughed. 'I remember I asked my mother why Uncle wore a dress. But he was kind. He let me clean the candlesticks in the church. I would leave great finger-marks all over them, but he said it didn't matter. He must have got one of his beatas to polish them again afterwards.' She looked at Harry. 'Since the war ended Mama has said one of us should go to Cuenca and see if he is still alive. But even if we could afford it I do not think it is a good idea. I heard bad stories of what happened to the priests and nuns there.'

'I'm sorry.'

She grasped his hand for a moment, hidden by the press of the crowd. 'At least I had a family to look after me. I wasn't sent away to some school like you.'

Ahead of them the street broadened out. It was particularly busy here and Harry saw an unusual number of well-dressed customers crowded round a stall, their faces intent, frowning. A pair of civiles stood in a doorway, watching.

'What's going on?' Harry asked.

'This is where all the things that were taken from the houses of the rich in 1936 end up,' Sofia said. 'The people who took them need the money for food so they sell them to the stallholders. Rich Madrilenos come here to try to find their family heirlooms.'

They walked past the stalls. There were expensive-looking vases and dinner services, porcelain figures and even an old record-player with a silver horn. Harry read the inscription on it. 'To Don Juan Ramirez Davila from his colleagues at the Banco de Santander, 12.7.19.' An elderly woman picked through a heap of brooches and mother-of-pearl necklaces. 'We'll never find it, Dolores,' her husband murmured wearily. 'You have to forget about it.'

Harry picked up a porcelain figure of a woman in eighteenth-century dress, her nose chipped. 'Some of these probably meant a lot to someone once.'

'They were bought with money stolen from the people,' Sofia replied, a harshness in her voice.

They passed on to a table with a huge pile of photographs. People were crowded around sorting through them, and here the faces were sad, stricken, some looking frantic as they delved through the piles.

'Where did all these come from?' Harry asked.

'Photographs would be taken from the frames when they were sold. People come here looking for photographs of their families.'

Some of the photos were recent, some half a century old. Wedding photographs, family portraits, black and white and sepia. A young man in a military uniform, smiling into the camera; a young couple sitting outside a taverna hand in hand. Harry realized many of them must be dead now. No wonder these people were looking so intently; here they might find the only image left of a lost son or brother.

'So many gone,' he muttered. 'So many.'

Sofia leaned in to him. 'Harry, do you know that man over there? He is looking at us.'

Harry turned and drew in his breath sharply. General Maestre was standing by the porcelain stall with his wife and Milagros. He wore civilian clothes, a heavy coat and a trilby. Out of uniform his weatherbeaten features looked harsher, older. Senora Maestre was examining a silver candleholder but the general was frowning in Harry's direction. Milagros was looking at him too, her eyes sad in her plump face. He met her eye and she blushed and lowered her head. Harry nodded at the general. He raised his eyebrows slightly before nodding briefly in return, a jerk of the head.

'It's a government minister, General Maestre,' Harry whispered.

'How do you know him?' Sofia's voice was suddenly sharp, her eyes wide.

'I had to translate for him. It's embarrassing, I went out with his daughter once, I was pushed into it. Come on, let's go.'

But the crowd round the pile of photographs was so thick they had to turn the other way, towards Maestre. The general stepped forward into Harry's path and greeted him unsmilingly.

'Senor Brett, good morning. Milagros was wondering if you had vanished from the earth.'

'I'm sorry, general, I've been very busy, I-'

He glanced at Sofia. She gave him a cold, angry look. 'Milagros was hoping you would ring her,' the general went on. 'Though she has given up now.' He glanced back at his family. 'My wife likes to come here, try to find some of our looted family treasures. I tell her she will catch something, mixing with these whores from the slums.' He raised his eyebrows at Sofia, running his eyes up and down her old black coat, then turned and walked back to his wife and Milagros, who was pretending to be absorbed with a Dresden shepherdess. Sofia stared after him, her hands clenched, breathing hard. Harry touched her shoulder.

'Sofia, I'm so sorry-'

She thrust his hand away and turned into the crowd. The press of people stopped her from walking faster than a shuffle and Harry quickly caught her up.

'Sofia, Sofia, I'm sorry.' Gently he turned her round to face him. 'He's a pig, a brute, insulting you like that.'

To his surprise she laughed, harshly and bitterly. 'Do you think people like me aren't used to insults from people like him? Do you think I care what that old shit says?'

'Then what?'

She shook her head. 'Oh, you don't understand, we talk of these things but you don't understand.'

He fumbled for her hands, clutched at them. People were staring but he didn't care. 'I want to understand.'

She took a deep breath. She pulled away from his grip. 'We'd better walk on, we're offending public morals.'

'All right.' He fell into step beside her. She looked up at him.

'I have heard of that man. General Maestre. His was one of the names we feared during the Siege. They say in one village he ordered all the Socialist councillors' wives brought into the town square and got the Moors to tie them up and cut off their breasts in front of their men. I know there was a lot of propaganda but I nursed a man from that village, he said it was true. And when they occupied Madrid last year, Maestre had a big part in rounding up subversives. Not just Communists; people who only ever wanted a secure peaceful life, a share of their country.' Harry saw she was crying, tears running down her face. 'The cleansing, they called it. Night after night you could hear the shots from the east cemetery. You still can sometimes. They took this city like an occupying army and that's how they still hold it. And the Falange strutting and rampaging over our city-'

They had reached a quieter area. Sofia came to a sudden halt. She took a deep breath and wiped her face with a handkerchief. Harry stood looking at her. There was nothing he could say. She touched his arm. 'I know you try to understand,' she said. 'But then I see you talking to that creature. You have come to visit this this hell from another world, Harry. You will stay a while and then go back.' She bent her head. 'Take me back to your flat, Harry, let's make love. At least we can make love. I don't want to talk more now.'

They walked on without talking, back to Plaza de Cascorro where the market began. As they threaded their way through the square Harry thought, what if I could get her out, get her to England. But how? She'd never leave her mother and Enrique and Paco and how could I get them out too? She walked ahead of him, shoving her way through the crowds, strong and indomitable but so small, so vulnerable in this city ruled by the generals that Hoare and Hillgarth plied with the Knights of St George.

Chapter Thirty-Three.

IN THE TIERRA MUERTA the weather had turned bad. One morning the camp woke to find everything covered in snow, even the steep roofs of the watchtowers. The snow was thick on the mountain path to the quarry, soaking through the prisoners' cracked old boots. Bernie remembered his mother, when he was a child, saying he must be sure never to get his feet wet in the winter, it was a sure way to catch a cold. He laughed aloud and Pablo turned and gave him an odd look.

The men stopped for their brief rest at the fold in the hills from which, if conditions were right, Cuenca appeared in the distance. You couldn't see anything today, only a glimpse of the brown cliff of the gorge between the white hills and the cold milky sky.

'Come on, you lazy bastards!' the guard called. The men stamped their feet to restore the circulation and got back into line.

Vicente was dying. The authorities had seen enough deaths to know when someone was on the way out and had stopped trying to make him work. For the last two days he had lain on his pallet in the hut, drifting in and out of consciousness. Whenever he woke he begged for water, saying his head and throat were on fire.

That night a strong wind came in from the west, bringing a heavy sleety rain that melted the snow. It was still raining heavily next morning, the wind driving it across the yard in vertical sheets. The men were told there would be no work parties that day: the guards don't fancy a day out in this, Bernie thought. The storm continued; the men stayed in their huts and played cards or sewed or read the Catholic tracts and copies of Arriba that were all they were allowed.

Bernie knew the Communist group had held a meeting to discuss him a couple of days before. Since then they had avoided him, even Pablo, but they didn't say what they had decided. Bernie guessed they were waiting till Vicente died, giving him a short period of grace.

The lawyer slept most of the morning but woke towards noon. He made a croaking sound. Bernie had been lying on his pallet but got up and leaned over him. Vicente was very thin now, his eyes sunk deep inside black circles. 'Water,' he croaked.

'I'll get some, wait a minute.' Bernie put on his old patched army greatcoat and went out into the rain, wincing as pellets of sleet blew into his face. There was no water supply to the huts and he had carefully cleaned out his piss-bucket, leaving it out overnight to catch the rain. It was almost full. He carried it in, scooped some water into a tin cup, then gently lifted the lawyer's head so he could drink. Establo, lying on the opposite bed, laughed throatily. 'Ay, ingles, do you make the poor man drink your piss?'

Vicente leaned back; even the effort of drinking exhausted him. 'Thanks.'

'How are you?'

'A lot of pain. I wish it was over. I think, no more quarry, no more Sunday services. I'm so tired. Ready for the endless silence.' Bernie didn't reply. Vicente smiled tiredly. 'Just now I was dreaming about when we first came here. Do you remember, that lorry? How it jolted?'

'Yes.'

After Bernie's capture he had spent many months at the San Pedro de Cardena prison, where the first psychiatric tests had been done. By then most of the English prisoners had been repatriated through diplomatic channels, but not him. Then in late 1937 he had been transferred, along with a mixture of Spanish and foreign prisoners considered politically dangerous, to the Tierra Muerta camp. Bernie wondered whether his party membership was the reason the embassy hadn't petitioned for his release; surely his mother would have tried to get him out when she learned he was a prisoner.

They were driven to the Tierra Muerta in old army lorries and Vicente was shackled next to him on the bench. He asked Bernie where he was from and soon they were engaged in an argument about communism. Bernie liked Vicente's wry sense of humour, and he had always had that soft spot for bourgeois intellectuals.

A few days after their arrival at the Tierra Muerta, Vicente sought him out. The lawyer had been delegated to help the administration with the mountain of forms involved in inducting prisoners into the new camp. Bernie was sitting on a bench in the yard. Vicente sat beside him and lowered his voice.

'You remember you told me how the other English prisoners have gone home; you thought your embassy were not troubling themselves with you because you are a Communist?'

'Yes.'

'That is not the reason. I had a look at your dossier today. The English think you are dead.'

Bernie was astonished. 'What?'

'When you were captured on the Jarama, what happened exactly?'

Bernie frowned. 'I was unconscious for a while. Then I was taken by a Fascist patrol.'

'They asked you the usual things? Name, nationality, political affiliation?'

'Yes, the sergeant who captured me took some notes. He was a bastard. He was going to shoot me but his corporal persuaded him not to, he said there could be trouble since I was a foreigner.'

Vicente nodded slowly. 'I think he was more of a bastard than you realized. Embassies of foreign prisoners of war should always be informed of their capture. But according to your dossier, you were put down as a Spaniard. You were given a twenty-five-year sentence by a military court under that Spanish name, with a batch of others. The authorities didn't find out the error till later; they decided to leave things as they were.'

Bernie stared into the distance. 'Then my parents think I'm dead?'

'You would have been reported as missing believed killed by your own side. I would guess the sergeant who captured you gave false details precisely so your embassy wouldn't be told you had been captured. Out of malice.'

'Why was it never put right?'

Vicente spread his hands. 'Probably just bureaucratic inertia. The longer it was left before they were notified, the more fuss your embassy might make. I suspect you became a nuisance, an anomaly. So they have buried you away here.'

'What if I said something now?'

Vicente shook his head. 'It would do no good.' He looked at him seriously. 'They might shoot you to get rid of the anomaly. We have no rights here, we are nothing.'

VICENTE SLEPT for the rest of the day, occasionally waking and asking for water. Then, that evening, Father Eduardo came. Bernie saw him crossing the yard through the wind and rain, clutching his heavy black cloak around him. He entered the hut, dripping water on to the bare boards.

Father Jaime would have crossed straight to the bed of the sick man, ignoring the others, but Father Eduardo always sought to make contact with the prisoners. He looked round the hut with a nervous smile. 'Ay, what a storm,' he said. Some men stared at him coldly, others went back to their reading or sewing. Then the priest walked towards Vicente's pallet. Bernie got up and stood barring his way.

'He does not want to see you, father,' he said quietly.

'I have to talk to him. It is my duty.' The priest leaned closer. 'Listen, Piper. Father Jaime wanted to come but I said I felt this man was my responsibility. Would you rather I fetched him? I do not want to but if you bar my way I must report it, he is the senior priest.'

Wordlessly Bernie stepped aside. He wondered if it might be better to have Father Jaime here, that brutal man might be easier for Vicente to resist.

The noise had woken the lawyer. He stared up as the priest leaned over him. Drops of water fell from the priest's cloak on to the sackcloth sheet.

'Is that the holy water, father?'

'How are you?'

'Not dead yet. Bernardo, amigo, will you give me more water?'

Bernie dipped the cup in the pail and passed it to Vicente. He drank greedily. The priest glanced at the piss-pail with distaste. 'Senor, you are very ill,' he said. 'You should make confession.'