by Joan Aiken
Pedro and I had already dismounted and tethered our mules to stanchions in the outer wall; now, with Conchita and the two sisters, we walked through the arched gateway into Berdun. We found the Calle Mayor, where Don Ignacio lived, without the least trouble, since there were only two streets in the town, running parallel, neither of them as wide as a cart track. But the houses, built of stone, were tall and handsome, and that of Don Ignacio de la Trava had a great ancient coat-of-arms carved over its door.
Pedro had acquired a good deal of information about the de la Trava brothers from Tomas the coachman, and had passed it on to me. They came of an exceedingly ancient family, he said, and claimed descent from the ricos hombres, or great lords of medieval times, and, before that, from the Romans and the Moorish kings. Formerly they had been very rich, owned great tracts of land, villages, churches, towns; they had complete powers over the people who lived on their estates, and many ancient privileges, such as freedom from taxation. Their incomes had once been counted in hundreds of thousands of ducats. But, during the last century, the family had fallen into debt, spent much too much at the king’s court in Madrid, on travel and luxury, and on lavish dowries for their daughters. Lands had had to be sold. Now little remained, save a ruined castle in the mountains, a vineyard or two in the region of Zaragoza, a house in Madrid, and the estates round Berdun. There were two brothers left: Manuel, the elder, the Marquis of Urraca, who, since he inherited no money, had joined the army as a young man, fought in the Royal Corps of Spanish Artillery under the French, become a colonel, and lost an eye at the battle of Vitoria. When the French wars ended, he was denounced as a Bonapartist and a Liberal, obliged to live under police supervision. For a time he was banished to Santiago de Compostela, but, after his marriage, permitted to return to Madrid. Then, having been so rash as to write pamphlets criticising the state of the country, he had been thrown into prison.
The younger brother, Don Ignacio, was quite a different character. Originally destined for the church, he had been unable, because of some illness, to become a priest, and so took a minor position at Court when King Ferdinand was restored to the throne, for he was an ardent royalist. At first successful and popular, for he had been a very handsome fellow and knew how to make himself agreeable, he fell on hard times, and, when his illness worsened and he lost his looks and good spirits, retired to Berdun, where he lived on his share of what was left of the family estates.
What, I wondered, did the two brothers feel for one another? Were they attached? Devoted? After such very different lives and histories?
Now the front door – on which Pedro had been, all this while, methodically tapping with an ancient iron door-knocker shaped like a serpent – suddenly flew open. Within stood a massive woman in black dress and voluminous apron, who looked at us with great ill-temper.
‘No need to batter the house down!’ she said. ‘I heard you. I was coming. It is a long way from the kitchen.’
In her hand she held – oddly enough – a pair of black silk shoe-laces. I supposed that she had been, perhaps, washing or ironing them when we disturbed her. But it was odd that she had not taken the time to lay them down somewhere.
‘Dona Conchita de la Trava is here,’ I said. ‘I think her brother-in-law is expecting her.’
‘Ay, ay,’ the woman answered shortly. ‘The senor is out just at present – how did we know what time of day to expect the lady? He will be back in due course.’
‘I hope it will be convenient for us to come in and rest,’ Dona Conchita said in her soft pretty voice. ‘We have been travelling all day . . .’
With visible reluctance, the housekeeper let us in, along a dark hallway floored with shiny red tiles, and up a steep, highly polished stair to a long chamber with several windows that commanded a wide view, southward, across the valley. Its furnishings had once been handsome but were now shabby and worn. Conchita sank into an armchair, the two sisters stood by the window, I waited by the door.
‘I will inform His Excellency of your arrival when he returns,’ the housekeeper said shortly, and was going away, when Conchita halted her by asking for a little refreshment.
‘A cup of chocolate, perhaps . . .’
Sourly, compressing her lips, the woman retreated, and presently reappeared, carrying a tray. To my silent amusement she had taken the request literally and brought one very small cup of chocolate, which she presented to Dona Conchita; nothing was offered to the sisters or myself. I met Juana’s eye; she shrugged her shoulders with a slight twitch of the lips.
The housekeeper was again retiring when a most hideous and startling scream rent the silence of the house – followed by a series of others each seeming louder and more hysterical than the last. They came from downstairs.
‘Madre de Dios – what has that monster done now – ?’ hissed the housekeeper and ran from the room.
‘Sister Felicita – I believe we should see if we can be of use,’ said Belen, and the two nuns followed swiftly. So, after a moment’s hesitation, did Dona Conchita. So, more slowly, did I; but by the time I had reached the foot of the stair, the others had vanished from view. I moved a few paces through the shadows of the downstairs hall – with the front door closed, it was almost entirely dark – and was waiting for some sound to guide me towards the source of the trouble, when I heard a slight movement to my rear. Something small and exceedingly swift – a dog, a cat, a monkey? – had whipped past, scampered up the stairs behind me, and was now out of sight in the upper storey. Instinctively I turned and bounded back up the stair in pursuit, pausing at the top. Now which way? A faint breeze of movement came from the chamber we had just quitted, and I re-entered it. But all seemed in order – the faded satin chairs, the well-polished side tables, the glass cabinets – nothing moved. There was, however, an alcove at the end of the room, to the left; into this I could not see, and I moved that way. Again, I heard a sound, a furtive scrambling. At the same moment, from downstairs, there came the slam of a door and the sound of men’s voices. Ignoring these, I walked into the alcove – which was, in fact, an L-shaped end to the room, containing an enormous fireplace in which, at present, no fire burned.
A huge cone-shaped chimney, like a dunce’s cap, pierced upward through the ceiling. Part of its outer surface was visible. It was like a house within a house. The ashes on the hearth had been disturbed; their dust and a smell of woodsmoke still lingered in the air.
Stepping forward under the massive rim of the chimney-funnel, I looked up, and saw something small and black scrambling above me, mounting towards the tiny circle of light at the top. But how in the world had whatever it was achieved the upward leap needful to get into the chimney – the bottom edge of which came two feet above my head? A survey of the rim showed me two pairs of iron bars cutting across the curve of masonry – no doubt they were for the purpose of smoking meat or drying herbs – I reached up both hands, caught hold of a bar, and, without too much trouble, swung myself up. Now that I was contained within the gloom of the chimney, I could see stones protruding here and there from the inner surface of the chimney wall, set out like steps, probably to allow sweeps to climb up with their brushes and clean away the soot.
At this moment the chimney became wholly dark; my quarry, climbing above me, had blocked the hole at the top by squeezing through; then light shone down again, but, looking up, I realised that my pursuit was vain; though I might climb to the top and get my head through the hole, I could by no possible means push my shoulders after it; the opening was far too small.
Feeling foolish and thwarted, I was about to begin the descent when the sound of voices in the room below brought me to a sudden stop.
They were men’s voices; they seemed to be standing in the alcove and the sound came up very clearly.
‘If your brother is found to be lunatic, then what becomes of the property? Quick – this I must know before we see them –’
‘If Manuel is mad – and dies in his madness – then the family estates are mine
by inheritance. While such money as there may be goes to his wife.’
‘Ah! But if he is sane?’
‘If he is judged to be sane – then he is an enemy of the state, and all his property will be forfeit.’
Suddenly in a flash I recalled my two aunts Josefina and Visitacion twittering by my bed: ‘If your grandfather’s estates are confiscated – we and your grandmother will be forced to beg in the streets!’
‘So,’ continued the second voice – and a cold thrill ran through my bones at its soft and deadly emphasis, ‘so therefore he must be mad, and die in his madness.’
‘Agreed.’
God in heaven, I thought, now what do I do? If I dare to make my presence known –
Merciful Father, what a predicament!
And I remembered, as if in a dream, how, not half an hour since, riding idly along the road from Tiermas, I had prayed, dear Father, won’t you just give me a hint?
Here was my hint, with a vengeance.
By immense good fortune there came, at this moment, some commotion downstairs, audible apparently to the two men, though not to me in my chimney, which caused the second one to say, ‘Hark, I hear voices. That must be them arriving; though it is strange I heard no knock at the front door.’
Footsteps retreated; in two seconds I was down on the floor, brushing myself over as best I could. Fortunately my breeches and jacket were of a dark colour so that smears of soot would not be too conspicuous; I smoothed my hair and scrubbed my face with my handkerchief, hoping that I did not have the appearance of a chimney-boy. Feeling myself still in grave danger of discovery here – for if the two men returned into the room they must know that I had heard what they said – I crept to the door and peered out. Fortunately they were descending the stair and did not look back so, on silent feet, I stole in the other direction along a dark hallway that led I knew not where, and opened a door at random. It gave into a bedchamber – disused, it could be guessed from its musty smell and lack of furnishings; the bed was the only object in the room.
Light from the door I had opened showed another stair from the hallway, leading upwards; I ran up this, and then came down again, making a great noise and clatter, and so on down to the ground floor where, in the long hall, there had now assembled a whole group of people: Dona Conchita, the two sisters, the hard-faced housekeeper, and two men. A lamp had been placed on a table, so that faces could be seen.
‘Bueno, here is Senor Brooke,’ said Conchita in her gentle voice. ‘Don Ignacio, allow me to present him to you – he is the young caballero who was of such signal assistance to my cousin –’
‘Ah, senor,’ said my host, bowing slightly but making no attempt to take my hand. In fact he looked at me with considerable suspicion, evidently wondering where the devil I had just come from.
‘Your pardon, senor,’ said I, bowing likewise. ‘You must wonder at my making so free of your house. But, after the outcry just now – what caused it, by the way? – something, some creature dashed past me up the stairs, and I chased it, thinking it must be an animal. It fled to the upper floor but there, I fear, it escaped me.’
‘No matter, no matter,’ said Don Ignacio irritably. ‘Doubtless it was a cat or a rat – some small vermin.’ His tone on the word vermin was exceedingly acid. I noticed that the housekeeper, who was frowning, frowned even more.
‘Dona Callixta, will you prepare dinner at once, please, for these gentry.’ Don Ignacio continued, in the same irritable tone. ‘I fear I cannot accommodate your party in my house,’ he said, turning to Conchita, ‘for it is many years since I have been accustomed to receive guests and my resources are scanty. But you will dine with me, and I daresay you can find beds at the posada.’
‘I will send my coachman to inquire,’ she told him sweetly, though she looked rather put out. ‘Of course we must not discommode you, dear Don Ignacio.’
‘Until dinner is ready, pray consider my house at your disposal.’ His voice was dry and cold, depriving this statement of any trace of hospitality. ‘Would you wish to step upstairs and – and take a little refreshment?’
We all returned up the stairs into the room with the chimney where, by and by, a thin, ill-favoured manservant brought a bottle of wine and some little plates of dry biscuits. Conchita and our host meanwhile kept up a somewhat stilted conversation about affairs and people in Madrid, the two sisters remained silent, and so did I, looking vigilantly about me.
What, I wondered, had become of the other man who had been there briefly downstairs? He had not been introduced, and when we came up he did not accompany us, but melted away somewhere into the gloom. He, I assumed, was the second voice I had heard from the chimney; the first was certainly that of Don Ignacio, whose tones I recognised at once. He it was who had said, ‘He must be mad, and die in his madness.’
What a blood-curdling thing to say about one’s own brother!
As may be imagined, I studied Don Ignacio with great attention.
He was a big man, with a kind of ruined good looks. Once he must have been handsome indeed, large-boned and strong-featured. Now his hair had receded until it was no more than a greasy straggle behind his ears. The skin of his face and neck was red, flaky and unhealthy-looking, with a glisten of sweat over the forehead and bald crown. His eyes were lashless and their brows mere ragged tufts. His teeth were discoloured and rotted, his hands, like his face, red and puffy; they trembled continuously. I would have hated to touch them and was glad he had not offered to shake hands. Indeed, the whole appearance of Don Ignacio de la Trava would have made me distrust him, even if I had not heard him make that cold-blooded remark about his brother. It was plain, however, that he was a man of breeding and education; he conversed civilly enough with Dona Conchita. He was carefully groomed, his linen snowy white and I could detect the odour of some sweet-smelling essence coming from him. At one point he remembered to make a polite inquiry about my grandfather.
He took no notice at all of the two sisters, but I observed Juana eyeing him very intently, and wondered what opinion she was forming. In remarkable contrast to him was a portrait that hung behind him on the wall: this was of a man in military uniform with a long, narrow, exceedingly handsome face, square-chinned, large-eyed, with well-cut lips, high cheekbones, a straight nose, a resolute expression, and a large black patch over the right eye. This dashing figure could hardly have been more different from Don Ignacio; yet there was a faint, lurking resemblance between the two. I noticed that Conchita had given a start when she first saw the portrait and then deliberately kept her eyes away from it. Could that, I wondered, be her husband, the elder brother Don Manuel? The man that we had come so far to seek?
I thought it surprising that Don Ignacio should keep in his house a portrait that was in such contrast to his own ruined looks. (Afterwards I learned from Juana that it was by the famous painter Francisco de Goya; that was why he kept it, waiting for its value to increase.)
When, presently, we were summoned to dinner I asked Juana in an undertone if the portrait was of Don Manuel, and she answered by a quick nod.
‘What was all that commotion and shrieking downstairs?’ I demanded, for we had lagged behind the others in descending the stair.
It seemed to me strange that no one had referred to the incident.
‘Oh, it was nothing – a servant girl, going to get onions from a basket in the back kitchen, found a viper curled up among them. She has a horror of snakes, it seems . . .’
‘Odd, though, that one should make its way into the house? Especially in a town.’
‘There is a tiny garden behind the house, in which snakes have seen the housekeeper said. Though she did seem uncommonly put out.’
Then we both fell silent. I was remembering how, on our former adventure, I had been bitten by a viper which curled round my arm while I slept; the bite inflamed, making me deathly sick, and Juana had to coax me along for miles, feverish and half delirious, leading my pony and reciting poetry to me. I smiled, remembering
, and she smiled too.
‘Do you still – ?’ I was beginning, but she shook her head, for Don Ignacio had begun a long Latin grace, evidently a relic from the days when he had trained for the priesthood.
The dining room, on the ground floor, was dark and shabby, with a great scratched walnut table and sideboards, the china chipped and cracked and the plate not of the best; on the walls hung the inevitable still-life paintings of dead hares, water melon, and slices of hake. But the meal presently served was sumptuous; it was plain to see where Don Ignacio’s real interest lay, as course followed course: scallops, a great fish soup, omelettes, roast goose, almond tarts, and syllabub. Our host gobbled with such speed and greed that he hardly spared attention to see how his guests fared. The rest of us ate rather scantily; the sisters from habit; Conchita, seeming a little downcast, merely picked at what was on her plate; I felt disgusted by the sight of my host and had no wish to imitate his example.
After the meal Pedro appeared at the front door to say that bedrooms had been bespoken at the two small inns in the town. Conchita and the sisters went with him at once, but Don Ignacio beckoned me, with a nod, to follow him into another ground-floor room, a kind of study, furnished with half a dozen books and a few fowling-pieces which seemed in an equally poor state of preservation, either mildewy or rusty.
‘This business of despatching my brother – ’ he began, having signed me to a chair. ‘I hope it can be dealt with speedily.’
‘Of course we wish to rescue the three children from him as soon as we can,’ I said. ‘The poor things may be suffering from dreadful hardship –’
Don Ignacio stared at me, thoroughly startled. His lashless eyes widened, then flickered. Plainly he had not been thinking about the children at all.
‘It is the children that I was summoned to rescue, Don Ignacio,’ I said firmly. ‘They are my only concern.’
‘But my brother is a dangerous lunatic – a traitor to the state –’