(3/3) Bridle the Wind

by Joan Aiken

  Besides the trees in the forest we found huge stones: Here and there upright boulders, twice the height of a man or even higher, stood in circles, sometimes with one extra-large squared rock in the center.

  "What are they? Who could have brought them here?" I whispered in awe, and Juan whispered back, "I do not know! I have heard it said that the laminak put them here. People speak about these stone circles, but I never understood that they were so huge. How could the laminak have brought them? The laminak are little people."

  "But if not the laminak, then who?"

  For this he had no answer.

  It seemed to me that there must be all manner of creations, living in the globe with us, of which we knew less than nothing. Here, in this widespreading dimness and hush, where even the brooks ran softly between banks of moss and beech-mast, it was easy enough to believe in the laminak, or in any other fabled being.

  Two stone circles we found; then three, four, five, six; then we lost count. Some of the high-standing stones had been thrust aside, in the course of time, by growing trees; sometimes these trees, too, had grown to enormous size, then had died, fallen, and rotted away; which plainly showed that the stones must be more ancient still—discarded, perhaps, from some dark age near the very beginning of belief, when cold winds whistled, and there were no trees, and the earth was all cased in ice.

  We found it very hard to keep our sense of direction in the forest, where often the sun was hidden from us. Could we be wandering in circles? Were we covering the same ground, again and again? I thought of marking trees when we passed them, as gypsies do, but felt that it would be an act of discourtesy to the forest, and put back the knife in my belt. God would surely lead us, as He had to the hermits chapel.

  So, at the end of the day, on the side of a hill where some few rays from the setting sun did come filtering sideways, dusty and gold-bright, between the red yew boughs, we came to the final stone circle, set aslant on the sloping ground. The high, upright stones cast great black shadows like dragons' tongue over the forest floor.

  And there, waiting for us, were the Gente: a group of men, standing, sitting, and leaning by a couple of the stones in the ring; another man, white-haired, white-faced, motionless, against the biggest stone in the center.

  We had been leading our beasts; for the branches hereabouts dangled so low that riding was difficult. I saw Juan beside me stop, draw breath, and stand rigid for a moment; then he carefully attached his mule's reins to a yew bough, groped for a moment in his saddlebag, found something, and walked forward steadily.

  Fastening my pony likewise, I was about to follow him, then had a thought. I had found Brother Bertrand's little silver bell by the blackened stones of the burned chapel. Fearing that the sight of it would distress Juan by reminding him of his lost pony, I had tucked it into my knapsack. Now, taking it out, I walked after Juan. Under my sweaty shirt I could feel my heart thundering as if it were about to knock its way out from between my ribs.

  From the center of the group I heard the man Cocher call out with a pretense at joviality: "Hola, there, my young friends. We come the short way, you follow the long way! But twist as you may, you come back to us in the end."

  Utterly ignoring him, Juan walked on toward the , center of the circle. But I, glancing warily at the knot of Gente, observed that their numbers appeared to have dwindled very much. The hunchback was gone, and two of the men who had carried muskets. There were no more than five or six left, including Cocher; and all of them looked desperately tired, ragged, and heartsick, as if they had no hope left, as if they had been dragged by demons through terrible paths.

  Perhaps they had.

  How Juan ever summoned the courage to approach the Thing by the central monolith, I will never understand. No longer had it the least resemblance to the man who had been Plumet; nor to Father Vespasian. It was hardly human at all. The face, dead-white, was seared and scarred, as if the flesh and bone which formed it had been compressed, frozen, buried in quicklime, or subjected to other terrifyingly powerful forces. The mouth began to work, opening and shutting mechanically, but no sound came out; the hands also opened and shut their fingers jerkily like the shuttles of a loom; and the eyes stared, stared at Juan as he approached.

  "I have brought back your glass," said he, and held it out. "It was wrong to take it. I know that now. And so I have brought it back"

  For a long moment he held it extended, and I thought nothing was going to happen. Let him just drop it, I begged silently. He has brought it, that is enough. Then we can go.

  But at last one of the dead arms came up, the peg-like fingers extended, and grasped the brass cylinder. Juan swiftly snatched back his own hand; only just in time; for with my own eyes I saw the spyglass glow red hot in the lifeless grasp; then the fingers closed, crushing it like soft cheese, and a dribble of molten metal fell to the ground, scorching the mosses, which hissed faintly and turned black. A thread of smoke rose.

  "I—summoned—you—back," said a faint voice issuing from the open mouth. It was a high, remote sound, coming, I thought, from a vast distance, of time and place both. The lips did not move; the voice came from them as the sound comes from the mouth of a horn, blown from elsewhere.

  "I came of my own wish," said Juan, "to return the glass. Now I am going again."

  "You are going nowhere," said the dead voice. "You may not go. I conjure you to remain. And to tell me—"

  "I shall tell you nothing."

  The light issuing from the eyes began to change. It had been red. Now it brightened, became green and brilliant.

  "You will tell me all! Here in this circle you will tell me all!"

  "Nothing," said Juan, "I will tell you nothing," and he summoned me with a movement of his eyes to come and stand beside him. I had been a pace or two behind. Taking that pace forward was one of the hardest things I had done in my whole life. I slipped the little silver bell into his left hand. He transferred it to his right, then took mine and held it.

  "Tell me," said the unearthly voice.

  "No!" And Juan rang Brother Bertrand's bell sharply, once. Then, in the voice that he kept for poetry, he said, with a wonderful quiet authority,

  "By the power of Light, I charge you to tell me your name."

  The voice issuing from the motionless mouth began to gabble. A stream of mocking inhuman sounds came from it; like the rattle of pebbles being ground together.

  "That is no answer!" said Juan. "By the power of Light, I charge you, tell me your name."

  His eyes met mine; he slightly moved his head, and in a dry voice that hardly seemed to be mine, I repeated what he had just said.

  "By the power of Light, tell me your name."

  "By the strength of Rock," said Juan, "tell me your name."

  "By the strength of Rock, tell me your name."

  "By the goodness of Bread, tell me your name."

  "By the goodness of Bread, tell me your name."

  "By the purity of Water, tell me your name."

  "By the power of Light, tell me your name."

  Each time, as soon as he had spoken, I repeated what he had said. And in every pause between our voices, Juan rang the little silver bell.

  Time passed by.

  The sun sank lower and lower, the shadows grew longer and blacker. Then the shadows all rose upward and vanished, the light went altogether, and the forest turned to a sick gray: the gray of mildew, the gray of corpses. I tried not to think that, but such thoughts would slip in, at the end of each sentence that I repeated. And I thought also, Supposing the unclean spirit does come out of his body, where will it go? Suppose it takes refuge in another body? Whose?

  The alien voice began again on a high screaming note, but intelligibly.

  "Your grandmother would not have used me so! You are mine by inheritance! You belong on these mountains! Here and there! Here and there! You belong on these mountains!"

  "By the power of Light, tell me your name," said Juan, ignoring what the voice
said, but speaking a little faster so as to drown the hateful gabble.

  "By the power of Light, tell me your name," I repeated after him.

  Strange though it seems, as we recited our incantation, ten times, twenty times, a hundred times, perhaps a thousand times, I did not find myself growing weary. Quite otherwise indeed: I was aware of my feet, planted steadily in the moss, as if they were roots and I a tree; my hand clasped in that of Juan, as if he were a rock. The lack of light was no longer of importance, for trees and rocks do not see, they have no need of sight.

  But later the moon rose.

  "By the goodness of Bread, tell me your name."

  "By the purity of Water, tell me your name."

  "By the power of Light, tell me your name."

  Who knows at what repetition—whether we were in our thousands, or tens of thousands, I had lost track of time entirely—the gaping mouth suddenly opened wide, crazily, unnaturally wide, like that of a serpent which can stretch back almost into a straight line; and a high, monstrous voice shrieked,

  "Our name is Legion!"

  "By the power of Light, I charge you to leave this man and begone."

  Juan raised his hand, as if calling down the rays of the moon to assist him.

  "Command us not to go out into the deep!" wailed the voice.

  "I have no right to govern your direction," said Juan hoarsely. "But you are forbidden to reenter any human body. That is all. Go where you will."

  An even wilder gibbering wail issued from the corpse mouth, rising shriller and shriller until it reached an unendurable crescendo of height and agony; then the body crumpled sideways and slid to the ground, while something—some slight, evanescent something—slipped swiftly away between the stones of the circle. Next moment, not far away, a monumental beech tree, one of the highest in the forest, slowly keeled over and fell with a thundering crash into the darkness.

  The body by the rock writhed and whimpered. Juan wiped his forehead with his left hand, gently removing it from mine to do so. Then he knelt by the shuddering body, turning it so that the face became visible in the moonlight. And it was once more the face of Plumet, though aged and white-haired.

  I, too, knelt beside him.

  After a moment the eyes opened. They looked up at Juan and recognized him. Behind me I heard Cocher whisper, "Ah, mon Dieu..."

  "I tried to hang you," whispered Plumet. "I intended to kill you."

  "It is forgotten. I forgive you. Go in peace now."

  "Thanks, child," gasped Plumet, and his eyes closed, and he died, faster than the wind can flick away a speck of ash.

  Juan turned and tumbled into my arms. At first, with terror, I thought that he was dead, or fainting. Then I realized that he was merely asleep, sound asleep.

  "Fetch a blanket," I mumbled to Cocher. Somebody produced our blanket from the saddlebag, and I laid it over Juan, wrapping it round. Next minute I myself was asleep also, huddled beside him.

  WHEN I woke, it was late morning in the forest. The remaining Gente, pale and silent, were squatting at a little distance, crumbling bread and sipping goats' milk. The body of Plumet had been removed. I hoped they had buried it.

  Juan still slept, deeply, under the blanket. I would not disturb him.

  I went over to talk to the Gente.

  "You will leave us in peace now?"

  "Jesu María, yes," they answered, crossing them selves. "We would not have followed you so far, only—only that terrible Thing which had taken hold of Plumet obliged us to go on."

  "Why did you not refuse?"

  "Nombre de Dios, it made us follow! Do you know what it did to poor little Gueule, on the beach? Tore him apart as if he were paper. And the same with the others, in the gorge—"

  "Don't tell me, I don't wish to hear," I said hastily. "But in the first place it was you who abducted Juan, before the devil took hold of Plumet—"

  "Oh, well, yes, at that time. It is true, the brother hired us to. He said the rich Spanish uncle would pay us ransom. But now the uncle is proscribed—exiled—has no money at all. We were angry when we discovered that. We went back with Plumet—that was after he was devil-ridden—and strung up Esteban and the old woman from his own apple trees. They will never eat soup again."

  I shivered at the callousness of these men, who lived so close to death that it meant nothing to them.

  "Why do that?"

  "To teach men that the Gente are not to be played with."

  "But if you knew the uncle had no money—why follow us in the first place?"

  "At first we believed that you would lead us to the treasure."

  "What treasure?" I said, bewildered, "I have no treasure!"

  "But you had known a man in Spain who told you about the treasure. The pay that the king of France sent from Paris for the French army—chests of gold coins, and chalices, and silks and jewels and brocades and statues, all the treasure that was in King Joseph's train, and lost when the French army fled home over the mountains. We heard that you knew where it was lost."

  "You fools! That man never told me anything at all! I never had any knowledge of such a treasure. Do you not believe me? You had better, for it is the truth!"

  They looked at each other glumly. They were a wretched, ragged crew, bloodshot-eyed, skinny, bruised, and trembling; in far worse case than Juan and myself. I felt sorry for them, wicked though they undoubtedly were.

  "Yes, my young señor, we do believe you," said the one-eyed man called Cocher. "No one who—who did what you were doing last night—would tell us a lie. I am certain of that. But, to tell truth, by the end, we had given up hope of the treasure, we had given up all hope. We were just driven on, from rock to hill to tree, by that one." He nodded toward a distant pile of earth. Beyond it lay a huge fallen beech tree.

  "Let us hope he sleeps sound," I said, crossing myself. They all did likewise.

  An hour later they gave me what food they had and departed, melting away into the forest, while I sat on beside the sleeping Juan. Before they went, they told me where to find Juan's uncle, Señor León de; Echepara. He had a holding, they said, very close to the French border: a farmhouse, an acre or so of land, a few goats, a hive of bees, in a sheltered, hidden valley.

  "What do you know of him? Is he a good person? Reliable?"

  It seemed strange to be canvassing the opinions of this group of rogues, but after what had passed between us, I felt sure that they would give an honest judgment.

  "Oh, yes," they assured me. "In the town of Pamplona Señor de Echepara had a very high reputation. He was well liked. 'Notoriamente hidalgo.' A fine gentle-man. He always kept his word and was of liberal principles. That is why he was obliged to flee."

  And then they left me.

  8. Juan's request to me; his Uncle León; I go to Vitoria, and encounter two English ladies; I return to Villaverde; I hear news from my grandfather; and form a new resolve.

  Toward sunset Juan woke up. At first he looked round him in terror and confusion. His right hand, I had noticed, was quite badly burned. A white scar crossed the insides of the fingers. While he was still drowsy I bandaged it as carefully as I could.

  After a while he muttered, "I thought we found all those wicked men here. The light ... the shadows..."

  I made haste to reassure him.

  "Set your mind at rest. They are all gone."

  "The bad spirit, too?"

  "Can you not remember? You rang your bell, and spoke those words, and sent him away."

  "Ah. Yes. So we did," he said slowly. "And then Plumet came back. And then Plumet died." He shivered—a deep, long shiver—and presently said, "Do not let us talk about it anymore."

  "No. It is done with. They won't trouble us, ever again."

  I wondered whether to tell him that, before leaving France, the Gente had killed his brother and the old nurse; decided not to. He would learn that soon enough from some other source. I did tell him, though, that I now knew his uncle's farm was no farther away than over a
couple of ridges, in a secret valley.

  Juan said, "Very good. I am glad to hear that we can find Uncle León without too much trouble. . But"—he suddenly sounded wistful, pleading—"Let us not do so tonight, Felix. Let us have one more night in the forest."

  "With all my heart," I said.

  I had kindled a fire while he was still sleeping, and caught fish in a brook that ran nearby. So, with the bread the Gente had left us, we had not too bad a supper. And afterward, as so often on our journey, Juan tried to teach me some of the Basque grammar, and I taught him various verses of English poetry. "Where the bee sucks, there suck 7,"he learned, and then broke off to ask me in a doubtful, troubled manner, "Shall I like living with my uncle, do you think, in the forest?"

  "Of course you will!" I assured him. "Think of all the things to see—eagles, deer, the wildflowers that you love. You and your uncle can climb the Lost Mountain, you can hunt izard and wild boar—"

  "But I had made a—a kind of promise to God, concerning my life—"

  "Oh, well," I said, not quite understanding him. "If you had made a promise, then of course you must keep it. I am sure your uncle would not stand in your way. 'Notoriamente hidalgo.' But if, by any chance, the life does not suit you—or if your uncle should be obliged to move once more—why, then, write to me, and you can come and live at Villaverde. Here, I will give you the direction"—and I wrote it on a scrap of paper. "For—after all—we have been good comrades, have we not? After I had stopped being arrogant, and you had stopped being willful!"

  He did not smile. He said, "But a journey like this can never be repeated. Never, ever again. Once we are parted, Felix—even if by some chance we should meet again in the future—it could not possibly be the same." And he repeated, "Never, ever again."

  His words tolled in my heart like a bell. But I said stoutly, "Perhaps not. But things may be different. They may be better, even. It is no use to refuse the future, which is bound to come. And it may bring even greater good than what we have now."