The Teeth of the Gale

by Joan Aiken

  ‘I want something to eat!’

  ‘That comes after. First, a wash.’

  Attempting to tidy her a little, I found that she still had the leather necklace with the blue bead that I had made her; well, I thought, it had brought us considerable luck.

  Next, with indescribable pleasure, I washed myself; then we bought some food and returned to the doctor’s house.

  There we found Nico sleeping: pale and damp as to the temples, but with a more natural and peaceful aspect than he had worn hitherto.

  ‘He will very likely sleep for many hours,’ said Dr Zigarra, ‘after all I have done to him. In my opinion the best thing you can do for him now is to carry him to the young lady’s convent in Bilbao.’ I could see that Juana must have confided in him a good deal during my absence. ‘There he will receive excellent care. For it will be many days yet, I fear, before it can be certain whether he makes a full recovery.’

  Whatever Juana had told the doctor must have predisposed him in our favour, for when I offered pay, he waved his hand dismissively, and said, ‘Nada, nada! What I do, I do for love. And I hope the young man may grow up like his father.’ Glancing nervously about – although we were in his courtyard, where there was no one to hear – he whispered, ‘Viva la Constitucion! Viva la Libertad!’ and, ignoring our thanks, hurried back indoors to his cold chocolate.

  Returning to the barn, we found that the gipsy, true to his word, had removed the tartana and left us with a four-wheeled open chariot, a kind of phaeton, which would be faster than the clumsy tartana. We laid Nico on one of its seats, covered with a couple of cloaks, which I had kept, and then applied ourselves to the rolls and fruit which I had bought, for we were all ravenous.

  That finished, we climbed into our new equipage, and started off at speed. The gipsy had further done excellently in procuring a pair of machoes, fine spirited mules who bolted along at an extra-fast trot, covering the miles at a fine pace.

  We thought it best not to stop at any of the inns where we had put up on the outward journey, and so bought food at markets along the way and spent a night in the woods north of Vitoria – no hardship for me or Juana, who had spent many nights in woods on our former travels together. The doctor had supplied us with various draughts and tinctures for Nico, which he swallowed biddably enough and then returned to what, we hoped, was a restorative sleep.

  During the journey we talked. What did we talk about? I hardly remember. Nothing very momentous. We both, I believe, felt the need for a space of gentleness and tranquillity, a rest, after the violent and disturbing events of the preceding day. Also, the fidgety presence of Pilar on the box between us prevented the discussion of many topics that were in the forefront of our minds. For myself, I did not object to this quiet interlude; I was very content to ride by Juana in friendship among the green fields, without impatiently demanding: what next? What is going to happen to us? And God rewarded me for this patience by Juana’s sudden demand, on the second day, ‘Have we any paper, Felix? Any writing materials?’

  I told her, yes; in Tiermas, a well-provided little place, I had bought ink and a writing tablet. She retired with these to the floor of the carriage and curled up there chewing her quill, with that look of utter concentration which I well remembered from our previous association when she was occupied in the process of writing a poem.

  It must, I thought, have been a strange and painful hardship for Juana to be debarred from writing her poems; how could a thing so natural to her be considered sinful, or insulting to God? It was like forbidding her to breathe.

  ‘What is Cousin Juana doing?’ demanded Pilar.

  ‘Writing.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You like to climb. She likes to write.’

  ‘Oh . . .’

  The memory of climbing perhaps led Pilar’s thoughts back to the castillo and the deaths that had taken place there. She began to sob quietly, and, after a while, brought out, in a small, piteous, aggrieved voice, ‘I don’t want Weeza to be dead,’ looking up at me, her face all shiny with tears.

  ‘I know,’ I agreed sadly, ‘It is very bad. But there is just nothing we can do about it.’

  I wiped her face with a corner of my cloak and let her hold the reins, which cheered her a little.

  ‘Will Nico die too?’ she said by and by.

  ‘We hope not. You will have to help look after him. He may be sick for some time.’

  Her lip trembled again, so I stopped the mules and picked her some rushes from a stream bank and showed her how to plait them into a whip.

  Presently Juana came out of her trance and told Pilar about the poem she had been writing, which was an argument between an owl and a nightingale.

  ‘Which of them won?’ demanded Pilar.

  ‘Neither of them. Listen and I will tell you –’

  So we passed the journey.

  On the evening of the second day, late, we reached Bilbao, and I saw, without any pleasure at all, its roofs, smoking in rain, huddled down in their narrow valley. I could have wished that this part of the journey would never come to an end, for Juana and I, though we had talked so little, had seemed so much in harmony. Still I had no idea what she had in mind for the future; that she felt she must at present return to the convent I understood, for there she had unfinished business, and arrangements must be made for the children. But what then?

  I did not dare say, ‘Juana! Marry me!’ for she was, after all, a professed nun, and that would be outrageous; but I hoped, I believed, that she knew what was in my mind.

  We reached the convent gate, in its high wall, and knocked for admission.

  How similar this moment seemed to that one, not so very long ago, when I had first stood there knocking, with my heart frozen in fright. How many things, and some of them terrible, had happened since then. The portress opened, and gave a cry of recognition at sight of Juana.

  ‘Sister Felicita! Come in, come in! But where is Sister Belen?’

  ‘She – she will be coming later. But here we have a very sick boy. Can he be carried at once to the infirmarian?’

  ‘Of course – ’ and the portress summoned help.

  Juana was suddenly swamped by nuns, in their black robes; they took charge, clucking and exclaiming, took charge of Nico, took charge of Pilar, who threw me a frantic glance as she was swept off, helpless, in a storm of black bombazine.

  ‘Reverend Mother wishes to see you as soon as possible,’ said the portress to Juana. Would she wish to see me too? I wondered, but then the portress, glancing in my direction, said, ‘Aie, the young senor! Wait, just a moment, my friend, I have an urgent message for you.’ I recalled the nun – what was her name, Sister Milagros? – who had wanted to see me last time and had then been prevented. ‘Is it Sister Milagros?’ I asked, but the portress, shaking her head, went back into her cubicle and returned with a letter which she handed me. It was in the hand of Rodrigo, my grandfather’s steward.

  My heart fell, horribly.

  My dear Don Felix

  I think you should try to conclude your present business and return home without delay. (These words had been underlined a great many times.) Your grandfather His Excellency the Conde had a letter from the Land Commissioners in Madrid which distressed him so deeply that he suffered from a Spasm, and lay for a day, unable to speak. Now he is just a little better, but asking for you. Please come as soon as may be.

  Rodrigo Pujal

  Oh, God. Please, dear God, don’t let Grandfather die.

  Juana was coming to say something to me. She looked distracted. I muttered, ‘I have had bad news concerning Grandfather. They – he asks me to return at once. He is ill – ’ and Juana’s eyes went wide with concern and pity.

  ‘Felix, I am so very sorry – shall I give your respects to the Reverend Mother?’

  ‘Yes – if you please – and tell her – tell her –’

  ‘I will tell her all that is proper,’ said Juana with a faint smile.

  ‘Please, Juana
– let us not lose touch – I will return as soon as I can –’

  It felt as if we were being carried away, in different directions, by different currents. Half a dozen of the sisters were clustered around Juana, looking with some surprise at her sturdy, mud-splashed blue garments and sun-tanned, windswept appearance.

  Doing my best to ignore them, I gently raised her hand, then kissed it.

  ‘Hasta luego,’ I said huskily, and she, ‘Vaya con Dios.’

  Then I left the convent, and had to restrain from driving down the hill at a breakneck speed to the nearest posada where I could arrange to leave the chariot and hire myself a horse.

  12

  At Villaverde; the old ladies and their bird; goodbye to Grandfather

  The journey back to Villaverde was speedy but sorrowful. I rode with a terribly heavy heart. Pedro’s ghost seemed to travel by my side. As I drew closer to home, each turn of the road brought back memories of our outward, hopeful journey: Pedro asking me questions about Bilbao and the Basque ladies; and my own anxious, fervent, shimmering expectations of what might be waiting at our journey’s end. How different reality had proved! And yet Juana herself was no different; the memory of her, herself, was like a glowing golden core, a certainty and warmth at the centre of my being.

  Whatever decision she came to, about her life and the future of the children, would be the right decision, I knew.

  I had pressed on, travelling both day and night, making the journey in four days which previously had taken seven, and came to Villaverde late one evening. White moonlight bathed the uplands so that, although the month was June, a spectral winter seemed to lie over the rugged countryside. Villaverde’s great pale wall rose up like the barriers set to keep sinners from the Holy City.

  Please, please, dear God, let Grandfather be alive, I prayed unceasingly as I rode up the long, gradual ascent; and help me, in whatever troubles may be coming to me now, to behave like a man.

  I was praying in Spanish – as I generally do; the word hombre – hombre – hombre echoed hollowly in time with the beat of my horse’s hoofs; but God said nothing.

  As soon as I reached the house, though, all was light and turmoil. Rodrigo wrung my hands, Prudencia wept, the old ladies fluttered about like disturbed bats, crossing themselves, lamenting, hobbling in and out of the oratory with their veils, beads, and crucifixes.

  ‘Grandfather – ?’ I said to Rodrigo.

  ‘Still with us – praise to the Holy Mother – hoping for you every minute –’

  ‘I will go to him directly’

  So Rodrigo led me away, cleaving a path through the choppy mass of the old ladies, who parted, like a bow wave, on either side of us.

  My grandfather, for years past, had slept in a chamber on the ground floor, because of his infirmity and the wheelchair to which he was confined. But I had never been to his room, not once. When I was a child, we had not been fond of one another, I kept strictly to my own quarters in a distant wing; and, by the time I was grown, his habits of dignity and privacy were so fixed that no one, save Paco, his personal servant, would have dreamed of intruding on him. Now, it was with a sense of shock and awe that I saw for the first time the bleak sparseness of his own space: a tiny slip of a room, a low, narrow pallet, one hard chair, a prie-dieu, and a small window looking out over the sierra. It was like a monastic cell.

  Pillows had been piled on the bed, though. Grandfather lay against a mound of them, propped upright. He was wholly inert – a log, washed up on the shore. Only his eyes turned as I entered the room. For a moment I was in terror that he was deprived of speech, but his lips moved, and he said, ‘Hah! Felix, my dear boy! Rodrigo, you may leave us. But send Paco with some refreshment for the young senor.’

  I stopped and kissed his brow. His face, I saw, was somewhat swollen and flushed; instead of resembling a mountain eagle he now, perhaps, looked more like an owl. And his eyes had lost their flash; indeed, at the moment, they were filled with unshed tears.

  As were my own.

  He is old, I thought. He is an old, weak man, near his end.

  Kneeling by the bed, I took his hands, which felt thin and bony, and very cold.

  ‘Dear Grandfather. I am sorry that you are ill.’

  ‘Better for seeing you, my dear boy.’

  His voice was not strong. It had sunk to a deeper, hoarser note than I remembered. But he had not lost his acuteness and acerbity.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded ‘What befell you? Did you find the children? What happened to Manuel de la Trava?’

  ‘One of the children died – poisoned by her own mother – who is also dead. The other two children are with Juana in the convent at Bilbao – one, the boy, very sick, also poisoned. Manuel de la Trava escaped – I devoutly hope – and will go overseas, to the Americas.’

  What an immense and complicated tale it would be to tell. But at this moment Paco came in, beaming with welcome for the ‘young senorito’ and a tray of bread and cold meat, which I was glad to devour, since I had hardly eaten for several days. Meanwhile my grandfather was supplied with restoratives and cordials which, under protest, he swallowed.

  Between bites, I gave him most of the story, and he listened, nodding and frowning.

  ‘So: as I thought. It was a trap.’

  With an ache at my heart I remembered Pedro saying the same thing at Tiermas. ‘We are being led into a trap.’

  ‘Grandfather – Pedro is dead. They killed him. For no reason, except that he knew Don Amador was implicated in Conchita’s murderous plans.’

  Death, I suppose, had no great importance to Grandfather just now, he being so near his end. (That, with sorrow, I could tell from everything about him.) He said, ‘Pedro was a good lad. And I am grieved for your sake that he is gone, as I know how fond of him you were – and he was like a right hand to Rodrigo. But he died doing his duty – he saved Juana’s life, you say?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘No man can do better. God knows that. He will have his reward. And you killed his murderers?’

  ‘Yes, I am almost sure.’

  ‘So that chain is wound up. And the children are safe, and Don Manuel –’

  ‘We hope –’

  ‘Indeed I hope, very greatly, that Manuel’s son may live to grow up,’ said the Conde thoughtfully. ‘Our country is in such a sorry and desperate state. Too many factions are warring, one with another, for wrong reasons. Men of such stature as Manuel de la Trava are needed, and will be needed, for a hundred years to come. I can see no easy way out of the pass we are in.’

  I thought of Professor Redmond, how he had said the same thing. But then, harking back, I asked, ‘About the trap, Grandfather?’

  ‘It was all a Carlist plot – to get hold of you, to put pressure on me –’

  ‘But why? Why? Why should we be of any importance?’

  Grandfather’s lips twitched in a faint parody of a smile. ‘They still think I have some faint influence, I suppose. And that you may have, by and by. When the letter came from Madrid –’

  ‘The letter –’

  ‘A communication from the Superintendent General of Police, saying that I was suspected of complicity in a Liberal conspiracy and must stand trial; if I was found guilty my lands would be confiscated, unless I could pay a fine of a hundred thousand reales. Being old and stupid I let the letter frighten me – since I could not by any possibility pay such a fine – and I fell sick. But now I have thought about it I am not afraid any longer.’

  ‘Grandfather, I believe it is because they all still think that the English army dollars are somewhere on our land.’

  ‘It would be ironic, would it not, if they were really there? When I think of your poor English father, living here, all unknown, as a stable hand, when you were a boy? It fills my heart with shame to think of him, Felix –’

  ‘He chose it for himself, Grandfather,’ I said stoutly. ‘He loved horses –’

  ‘But in any case, if the money were there – whic
h I take leave to doubt – it must of course be returned to its rightful owners,’ my grandfather pronounced.

  I grinned, thinking of the fearsome difficulties this would involve. A British Army pay-load from eighteen years back . . . To whom, in England, would we have to send off all those chests of gold and silver dollars? To the War Office?

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘let us hope it is not there. Wherever there may be. In any case, dear Grandfather, do not trouble any further about the fine. I think I may now be entitled to claim moneys from my English estates – ’ and I told him the news that Don Amador had given me, about the death of the Duke of Wells. His face did clear at this information, and he nodded, slowly.

  ‘God is wonderful. Only to think that you, a little impertinent yellow-haired boy, should rise to be an English duque! But Felix, never mind all that – though I fear that it will bind yet another heavy load upon your shoulders, which, doubtless you will bear as best you can.

  ‘It is an inexpressible joy to see you home again. But, my dear boy, I had hoped that you would bring your Juana with you. I hoped that you would persuade her out of her convent, and marry her. Since I have seen, for years past, that your heart was set on her. And indeed she sounds a most redoubtable young lady.’

  He said all this in pauses, with breaths taken between.

  ‘She is without peer, Grandfather.’

  ‘Did you tell her that you loved her?’ he demanded crossly, sounding like Juana herself.

  ‘Yes.’ I smiled a little, thinking of the circumstances in which that declaration had been made, in the tartana, with Conchita’s cloaks and feathers piled on top of us. ‘And I am not entirely without hope. For one thing she is going to need help with those children. Nico, if he lives, may be frail – and Pilar is a little demon –’

  And also, I think – I hope – that Juana loves me in return; her look as we parted, her laughter in the tartana, even her childish jealousy over Conchita . . . But this I did not say. It would have seemed like tempting Providence.