The Teeth of the Gale

by Joan Aiken

  ‘What he is, or has done, is no concern of mine, Don Ignacio. I am not a hired assassin.’

  ‘Certainly not – of course not – ’ Now he was flustered. ‘But I do not see how – how they are to be removed from his clutches – unless –’

  ‘Have you any idea where he has taken them?’

  Now I could see that Don Ignacio was thinking hard – calculating.

  ‘When he left here – when I refused to give him shelter – he spoke of going to the Monastery of San Juan de la Pena,– he said slowly.

  ‘A monastery? He would take them to a monastery?’

  ‘Oh, it is only a ruin, with an old church. No monks live there now – or only a couple. But there is a cave – and various underground rooms; I suppose Manuel thought it would make a shelter for them.’

  ‘We will go there tomorrow. Is it far?’

  ‘Not far – five leagues. But a very steep ascent, on the side of a mountain.’

  ‘I will bid you good night then, senor.’

  As I left him I could hear a hurried scampering upstairs, then a thud, then a series of angry shrieks, quite different from those of the maid who had been frightened by the snake. A parrot? A monkey? The house was plainly very large; I had noticed half a dozen doors in the hall above, and as many again on the top storey when I ran up the second stair; if all the rooms were the size of the empty bedroom, Don Ignacio could house a platoon without the least difficulty. Still, I was glad that he was too stingy to invite us; I would have hated to sleep under his roof.

  I walked across the tiny plaza towards the albergue where Pedro and I were to sleep, which was on the north side of the little town. Greatly to my surprise, as I passed the church, Juana moved out from the shadow of its doorway and indicated, with a finger at her lips and a summoning gesture, that she wished to speak, but elsewhere, and in a place where we would not be overheard. We walked around the church to a little garden, containing a few graves and a couple of cypress trees, bounded by an outer wall that looked over the valley.

  When we were at the far end of the enclosure, where nobody could steal up close without being seen, Juana said bluntly, ‘What did that man want you to do?’

  And I answered as bluntly, ‘He wanted me to kill his brother.’

  ‘And you said no.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I do not trust him at all,’ Juana said. ‘How can two brothers be so different?’

  ‘Your brother wanted to kill you,’ I reminded her. ‘And for the same reason – inheritance.’

  She shivered. ‘What an ugly world, Felix! In many ways I am glad to be out of it.’

  I wondered if I dared suggest that this was rather a cowardly attitude; then decided that I did not dare. I remembered how Juana could flash out! Besides, if she chose to be a nun, it was entirely her own concern.

  She went on, ‘I am most anxious about this affair, Felix. It seems to me that there is something very wrong about it.’

  ‘I think so too.’

  ‘Do you?’ She turned and stared at me. In the moonlight I could see her face very distinctly under its hood. I was reminded of so many nights when we had talked and argued, in the forest, in the mountains.

  ‘I am very troubled now, in my mind, that I ever brought you into it. I hope it will not lead to harm.’

  ‘I am not sorry,’ I said roundly. ‘How could I be? For at least it has meant that we met again.’

  She frowned. ‘Yes; that is why – why I was so willing – when Conchita wrote to me asking for my help – asking for your help too – to rescue her children –’

  I felt an almost physical pain in my heart. Juana had not, then, thought of summoning me herself? It had been at Conchita’s suggestion?

  ‘But why should she ask for me?’ I said, gulping down this bitterness. ‘When did Conchita de la Trava ever hear about me?’

  ‘Oh, from me. When she came and stayed at my father’s house in France while I was disposing of his estates. I told Conchita about you. It was a stupid thing to do,’ said Juana angrily. ‘It was childish – boastful. I just wanted to tell our story to somebody –’

  ‘Oh Juana . . .’

  Now the pain was different: like the fierce tingle when frozen fingers first begin to thaw. Looking at her face, so anxious and vulnerable in the moonlight, I thought, I love this girl. I know her far better than I shall ever know anybody else in the whole world, and I love her. Even if she goes back into her convent and we never meet again, I shall love her all my life.

  ‘I wanted to see you again, do you see?’ she was saying gruffly and awkwardly. ‘So, when Conchita suggested that you might rescue her children, I – I agreed to the plan. I thought, perhaps, if I saw you – that you might have changed. Or not be as I remembered you. And that – that would help me to make up my mind, one way or the other.’

  From a kind of precarious happiness I was plunged again into fear. I did not dare ask if she had indeed found me changed. Nor how, if this was so, it would help her make up her mind. I could not bear to imagine the words in which she might reply.

  Instead – and in some surprise at myself, for it was not in the least what I had intended to say – I remarked, ponderingly, ‘Do you know that we are speaking English?’

  ‘Yes, of course I know!’ said Juana. ‘That way, no one will be able to understand us, even if they overhear.’

  ‘But when did you learn to speak English?’

  ‘At the convent in Bayonne. There was an English nun, Sister Rose, I used to talk to her every day. I – it helped, when I first entered.’

  ‘You speak it so well – what a clever girl you are, Juana! I remember how you always wished to read Pope and Dryden and Shakespeare.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘now I have read them.’

  ‘And do you still write your own poetry, Juana?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That is not allowed.’

  I wanted to exclaim at such an arbitrary prohibition, but a knifelike quality in her tone and glance held me back; instead I made some lame comment about her proficiency in the English tongue.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I knew it was no use waiting for you to learn Euskara, Felix!’

  She looked up at me with her old teasing smile.

  I was, at the same time, so happy and so very unhappy that I thought my heart would split in two. I would have liked to remain with her, talking all night, leaning on the churchyard wall, with the milky plain stretching away below, a belt of mist over the Aragon river, and the mountains beyond. But I said, ‘We had better go to our beds, Juana. Tomorrow we must make a search at the ruined monastery of San Juan. Maybe, after all, there will be some simple way to rescue those children.’

  ‘Somehow I cannot believe that,’ said Juana. Before retiring, in the albergue, I emptied my pockets, as was my custom, and puzzled over a tangle of black string that had found its way into one of them. Where could I have picked it up? Then, looking closer, I saw that it was not string, but two black silk shoe-laces, somehow plaited together, with a horn button strung on them in the middle. The housekeeper, I then recalled, had held a similar pair of laces when she came to answer Don Ignacio’s door; but her pair had been smoothly ironed. These were in a sorry tangle, and smeared with ash . . . Vaguely, now, I thought I remembered picking them up off the hearth, before starting up the chimney in pursuit of that elusive creature, whatever it was.

  Something the housekeeper had said floated back into my head: ‘Madre de Dios, what has that monster done now?’

  Did Don Ignacio keep a tame chimpanzee? With a fondness for shoe-laces?

  But soon my thoughts went back to Juana. And I thanked God, very humbly, for having created her in the first place, for having permitted me to see her again, and for having been so patient with me when I grumbled at Him.

  Very faintly, as it might have been from the top of the chimney, I heard His voice answer, ‘Be vigilant, Felix. I have troubles in store for you yet . . .’

  Then I slept.


  6

  Trouble with the Escaroz horses; Pedro and I go to the monastery of San Juan; there we meet ‘Figaro’; I return to Berdun; am surprised at the municipal arrangements for refuse; Dona Conchita objects to being carried in a lobster-pot; more news of the fat man

  Drinking our lumpy chocolate next morning in the albergue, Pedro and I were startled by the voice of Tomas the coachman, aroused in fury and denunciation.

  ‘What is the matter?’ I asked, walking out into the narrow street to join him.

  ‘Matter? What is the matter? The matter is that somebody has poisoned Senor Escaroz’s horses – they are all sick and dying – Valgame Dios! Better horses never came out of Andalusia, and now they are sweating and frothing and near their end, how shall I ever be able to face my master?’

  ‘Where are the horses?’

  They were, it seemed, stabled in the valley below the town, so Pedro and I walked down a steep footpath which dropped from corner to corner of the zigzag road leading to the main gate. On the level ground stood groups of barns and farm buildings where the townspeople kept their mules and goats, cattle and poultry, for which there was no space among the houses tightly crammed together up on the bluff.

  Sure enough, Senor Escaroz’s four handsome Andalou horses were all lying down in their straw, eyes closed, sweating and gasping, with great ropes of spittle streaming from their nostrils and mouths.

  ‘Ay, ay, Madre mia, this looks bad,’ said Pedro, who knew a great deal about horses. ‘You are right, Senor Tomas; somebody has given them some venomous dose.’

  ‘If I could catch whoever it was I would throttle him with my bare hands,’ yelled Tomas, in a passion. ‘My beautiful horses – that they should die like this, so far from home!’

  ‘Do you think they will die, Pedro?’ said I.

  He gave me a solemn look; then knelt by each in turn, inspected their eyes, their nostrils, their mouths, listened to their breathing.

  ‘No,’ he said then, ‘I do not think they will die. But they will be very sick for several days, not fit for the road for at least a week. You must give them a warm mash, Senor Tomas, with wine and bran, keep them well blanketed, with warm water to drink administered every hour of the day. And, at first, dose them with laudanum and turpentine, mixed in linseed oil, and apply hot fomentations to the belly. If the symptoms do not abate after that, try a laxative of Barbados aloes with one scruple of croton bean and one drachm of calomel. Give them no corn at all; only dry bran with cut hay. Would you like me to help you give the first dose?’

  ‘Why, thank you, Senor Pedro, I shall be very much obliged,’ said Tomas, greatly impressed by this expert knowledge, and so Pedro remained there to physic the horses while I went, first to inspect our humble mules – who were, fortunately, well and frisky; no one, it seemed, had attempted to tamper with them – and then back to the town to find Dona Conchita and tell her about this misfortune.

  She was still breakfasting at her posada and was aghast at the news.

  ‘Por Dios! What shall we do? My father’s horses! This is terrible! I will ask Don Ignacio if he has any horses he can lend us.’

  Don Ignacio, needless to say, had no horses to spare for such a purpose; he regretted, infinitely, but he had only the one riding-horse, kept no carriage himself, and knew for a fact that there was neither a carriage nor draught-horse to be had in all the town. ‘We are poor people hereabouts, Dona Conchita,’ he said with a thin smile, ‘and have learned to make do with mules and mule-carts.’

  Ride in a mule-cart! Dona Conchita looked appalled at such a suggestion.

  However it seemed that there was not, immediately even a mule-cart to be had in Berdun. Don Ignacio said that he would send off to Anso, the next town, where he thought there might be a tilbury for hire. ‘But for today I fear you must be content to rest at your posada; no doubt you will be glad to do so after the fatigues of your journey,’ he ended, making it plain that he did not intend to offer any more hospitality.

  She shrugged, raising her beautiful brows. ‘What else can I do, indeed? But you, Senor Felix – ’ with a pleading look, ‘you need not be bound by my misfortune –’

  ‘By no means, senora,’ I said. ‘With your permission, Pedro and I will set off for San Juan de la Pena directly he has finished helping Tomas dose the horses.’

  Her face cleared. ‘So, too much time will not be lost.’

  I was sorry not to see Juana just then, but sure that she would understand. And, truth to tell, when Pedro and I rode off eastward, along the road that led towards Jaca, we felt decidedly light of heart. It was a great relief not to have to limit our pace to that of the carriage; Tomas was a surly, self-willed old man, and the two outriders, Pepe and Esteban, were lazy and disobliging; we were delighted to be rid of them all.

  Conchita had asked if we wished the outriders to accompany us, but we said no; supposing that Manuel de la Trava had really taken refuge in the ruined monastery, there would be more chance of discovering his hiding-place if just two of us went there quietly than if a large group rode up with noise and clatter.

  ‘The sickness of those horses was a great piece of luck for us,’ I said. ‘I wonder who did it?’

  ‘Doubtless we shall never discover,’ said Pedro, his face and tone blandly expressionless.

  After an hour or so’s riding we came to the little mountain village of Santa Cruz de la Seros. There we left our beasts in the shed of an obliging farmer and continued on foot up the back-breaking forest track.

  ‘How did those ancient monks ever bring their supplies up here?’ I panted, as we stopped to catch our breath on a shoulder of hill.

  We had been told that a holy settlement had stood here since very ancient times. Indeed the church, some eight or nine centuries old, contained the tombs of the first kings of Aragon.

  ‘Up here I daresay they had a better chance of keeping their heads safe on their shoulders while the Moors were pillaging down below – or the Goths,’ said Pedro, mopping his forehead.

  The place when we reached it certainly inspired awe. A huge curving cheek of reddish rock soared upward towards the mountain top. Below it was a great split, like a mouth running sideways across the hillside. And tucked into this mouthlike crack was a whole church, and a cloister alongside; both church and cloister were roofed by the overhang of the bulging mountain.

  As we neared the church we heard the faint sound of chanting. And, looking with caution through the door, which was half open, we found two exceedingly old monks conducting the service of Sext. Removing our hats we joined them, and I again took the opportunity of thanking God for his interesting and unexpected kindnesses.

  When the service was done, I asked the holy fathers if any stranger had lately visited this ancient place – but thinking, as I did so, that if Manuel de la Trava had taken refuge here, not even the President of the Military Commission in Madrid would have power to dislodge him, for he would surely be in sanctuary. To my slight surprise, one of the monks nodded his head.

  ‘Yes, my son. There is a person here now at this very time. He told us that he was a scholar, pursuing researches into the Early Church, and asked leave to examine the tombs of the kings of Aragon and the other curiosities to be seen here. You will find him somewhere about the place.’

  No word of three children.

  So we began to explore and hunt about, finding more and more dark rock chambers, nooks and vaults and chapels cut out from the overhanging cliff, with steps going down into darkness, and water dripping, and a cold smell of dust and rock and loneliness. But there was no sign of Manuel de la Trava or his three children; if three children had ever been there, I thought, surely the monks must have seen them? Somehow I began to feel certain that the man we sought was not here.

  However my certainty was shaken when we heard a footstep and a cough in one of the very lowest chambers – a small dark vault or crypt which I thought must be very ancient indeed.

  ‘Quien vive?’ called Pedro shar
ply. Both of us instinctively put our hands on our pistols – though I felt rather ashamed of doing so in a holy place, and the more so next moment when an astonished voice exclaimed, ‘And who under the sun are you?’

  Out of the darkness at the far end of the chapel emerged a short, slight man – nothing but his size could be seen in the dim light. But even before my eyes grew accustomed I could be sure that he was not Manuel de la Trava – he was nothing like tall enough and had no black patch over his eye.

  ‘Your pardon, senor – we did not intend to disturb you – we were looking for a – a person,’ I said rather lamely.

  ‘A person? And what person might that be?’

  He began to climb the stair, so we followed; plainly there was nobody else down here.

  In the big vaulted hall above he was revealed as a man of rather less than average height with tawny, badger-coloured hair, a keen shrewd face, and such eyes! They glowed like those of a wild cat, full of intelligence and fire in his pale face.

  I might have remained silent, but Pedro said bluntly, ‘We are searching for Senor Manuel de la Trava, who has absconded with his three children.’

  ‘Oh, are you indeed?’ said the pale-faced man, looking at us very sharply. ‘And what do you propose to do with Senor de la Trava when you find him?’

  ‘Senor,’ I said, ‘our business is not with him at all, but with the children; I have been engaged by their mother to search for them. It is not right that they should be carried off into the wilderness, and she is most deeply distressed about them.’

  The man nodded his head once or twice. ‘So who are you?’ he asked at length.

  I might have been rather affronted at his assuming the right to interrogate me like this, if there had not been such an air of authority about him – instinctively I felt that he was to be respected. And trusted.

  ‘My name is Felix de Cabezada y Brooke,’ I said, and he nodded again, frowning.

  ‘I have heard of your grandfather; and of you, a little,’ he said. ‘Your grandfather the Conde is a good man –’