by Joan Aiken
"She is in Berdun." I explained about the carriage horses.
"Is she staying with her brother-in-law? Do not trust that man," de Larra said quickly. "He is a rat—a snake—he would not give asylum to his brother when asked, and I am quite sure he immediately informed the authorities that Manuel was in this region."
I thought of the second man whose voice I had heard from the chimney. Very likely he was some official from the Military Commission.
"Yes, I believe you, señor."
He reflected, then said, "If you plan to take charge of the children—I confess that would relieve me—for I hope to help my friend Manuel, but two children as well would make the task far more difficult."
Plainly he was not disposed to give me any more information. I guessed that he might have plans to smuggle Manuel out of the country, perhaps help him take ship for Mexico or another of the Spanish American provinces that had rebelled and freed themselves from Spanish rule.
"The three children are best with their mother, no doubt," I said.
"Three? You said three? I had thought there were only two. Manuel spoke of two—I was able to visit him, once in jail, before he was sent to Barcelona—"
"No, there are certainly three: Nico and Luisa and Pilar."
"Odd—most odd. Can I have been mistaken?" He shook his head. "Still, it is of no importance."
Then there came a pause. We looked at one another warily, like card players each wondering what was in the other's hand. Did I trust him? Did he trust me?
"Come into the church," he said abruptly, so we followed him in there. The old brothers had gone to their living quarters in some cranny of the cliff, leaving a candle burning on the altar.
"Lay your hand on that altar and swear that you mean no harm to Manuel de la Trava," said Jose de Larra.
"Very gladly, if you will too, señor."
So we all three swore. Then de Larra said, "What will you do next?"
"I suppose I must report back to Doña Conchita. For I promised to do so today." I regretted this promise but she had begged me in such a trembling voice, with tears in her eyes.
De Larra said, "I would prefer that you did not tell her about my presence here. She does not like or trust me."
Something in his voice told me that he did not trust her either. Well, I thought, recalling Juana, he was probably right to trust as few people as possible.
"Very well, señor, I promise."
He went on, "There's a place called the Mouth of Hell, Boca del Infierno. High up in the mountains near the source of the Aragon river. The de la Travas own land in that region; there is a ruined castle. I think Manuel may be there."
This did sound probable, and hope rose in my heart.
"I shall go there today without delay," said de Larra.
"How far is it from here?"
"Seven or eight leagues, perhaps. But it is among the high mountains, to the north—6,000 feet up, twice as high as we are here. And a most wild and rugged road. It is a hard place to reach."
"You have been there before?"
"Yes—before—with Manuel—when we were both boys."
"Is it a place to which I could take Doña Conchita?"
He looked horrified.
"Por Dios, no! On no account. Why should she want to go?"
"I—I suppose to beg—to plead for the restoration of her children."
I thought of Doña Conchitas silk dresses; of her feet in their tiny velvet slippers; Boca del Infierno certainly did not sound like the kind of place that would be suitable for her to visit.
"It will be much, much better if you do not bring her," said de Larra positively. "She and her husband did not agree. It was a foolish marriage—he was bewitched by her black eyes and white skin. But they had nothing in common. By the time he was imprisoned they had come to disagree most bitterly. Indeed they had already parted. The sight of her would do nothing but harm."
"Well, I will try to dissuade her. But she is a lady with a very strong will."
Pedro said diffidently, "Señor Felix, do you think it would be a good thing if I went with Señor de Larra now, to find out the way to this place? Then I could return to Berdun and guide you—or meet you somewhere along the way tomorrow?"
"Yes, I do think that a good plan—if Señor de Larra agrees?"
After some thought, Jose de Larra did agree. Pedro was visibly a good and simple fellow and also a tough and well-muscled fighter, if fighting should be required. It would have been folly to refuse his offer.
As we all walked down the hill—de Larra's mule, he told us, was stabled like ours in the village below—Pedro said to me privily, "I've a notion that it will be a good thing to get to this Boca del Infierno as soon as possible, just in case somebody tries to steal a march on us."
"You are thinking of our fat friend?"
He nodded.
"We didn't see him in Berdun."
"That's not to say he wasn't there."
In fact, I had wondered: Could the other voice, talking to Don Ignacio, have been the fat man's? I tried to remember him in Zamora saying to the child, "Do not scold your papa! You shall have all the treats you want at the end of the journey." Could it have been the same voice? And what was the end of his journey?
We all rode a short way together along the carretera, and then, at a hamlet called Puenta de la Reina, where there is a bridge over the brawling Aragon river, Pedro and Jose de Larra turned northward toward the mountains. Pedro promised to meet me, or to leave word for me tomorrow, at a village called San Quilez, about five leagues into the foothills. And I rode back to Berdun at a brisk pace.
Leaving my beast, as before, stabled in a barn at the foot of the hill, I made my way up the steep zigzag track into the town and inquired at the posada for the ladies. Sister Belen was within, I heard, tending various sick people who had come to her for help; the other two ladies had walked out and I should easily find them somewhere about.
Accordingly I turned along the Calle Mayor to its end, then emerged through a narrow doorway in the town wall and followed a footpath that girdled it on the outer side. This path commanded a handsome view over the plain below, and a little rocky river, the Veral, that wound around Berdun and ran down to join the Aragon.
And there, leaning on a low wall by a flowering acacia, were my two ladies, one in white, the other black-veiled in her fur cloak, for the evening was cool and breezy. They were talking together and did not at first notice my approach.
Juana was saying, "But why in the world did you not bring the old nurse, Guillermina? I'd have thought you would need her badly once they are found—after all, you have never had to care for them entirely by yourself—"
"Oh, my dear! Where would we have put her? On the floor?"
"Belen or I could have sat on the box."
"Unthinkable! Besides—in fact—I had to dismiss old Guillermina. She was becoming quite incapable of dealing with little Pilar—couldn't discipline her at all—"
She seemed to have forgotten how affronted she was when Juana said the same thing.
"Well," Juana was saying doubtfully, "I hope that I shall be—"
Then she turned and saw me and fell silent.
Doña Conchita was all smiles and welcome.
"Felix! Our good friend! I am so rejoiced to see you back! What fortune have you had?"
I explained that we had had no luck at San Juan but that somebody we saw there—I contrived to make it sound as if it were one of the old priests—had advised us to try la Boca del Infierno. She listened, nodding gravely.
"Then it is there that we must certainly go tomorrow. This time I will accompany you. I feel in my bones that is the place where Manuel has my poor darlings confined; if only he does not have them chained up and half starved! Oh, it is too horrible to contemplate! We must start as soon as breakfast is over. Don Ignacio has managed to find us some kind of equipage and a couple of animals to pull it."
"From the sound of the road, señora," I said, "I don
't know if even that will take you all the way. It may be necessary to walk. I should certainly advise you to wear some stout shoes."
"Walk!" she said distastefully.
All this while Juana had remained silent. The dusk was now so thick that I could not see her face, shadowed under the white hood. But I felt an emanation of anger coming from her. Could I in some way have displeased her, I wondered?
We turned back toward the posada, Conchita chatting gaily about the deficiencies of the town.
"Only think! There is just the one baker. And no doctor at all. If you fall sick, you say a prayer in the church—or ride twelve leagues into Jaca and seek help there. And just see what they do with their waste—"
She pointed to a structure we just passed, a massive wooden trough, supported on props, the top end of which rested on the low wall by which the ladies had stood. The trough ran down the steep rocky precipice, which dropped away on the north side of the town, and disappeared into the darkness below; where it ended one could not see.
"That is how they dispose of their refuse," Conchita said laughing. "Is it not ingenious? They just toss down there anything that is not wanted. Though I fear that in summer, townsfolk who have windows facing this way may have to keep them closed!"
I made appropriate comments, wondering what could be the matter with Juana.
Conchita noticed her silence, too, and became solicitous.
"Are you tired, my love? It is such a change for you, from convent life, all this travel, all this to-and-fro; I feel that I am imposing on you shamefully, you and your good, kind companion; how you must long for your peaceful cells! Poor dear Juana! Never mind, let us hope that it may not be many more days. If only our clever Felix can, perhaps tomorrow, find my hateful husband and remove the children from him—then we can all be at rest..."
So she rattled on until they reached the door of the posada.
"Will you not come in, dear Señor Felix, and dine with us?"
No, I said, I was tired and would take the opportunity of an early night; that way we could start at cockcrow tomorrow.
"Cockcrow?" said Conchita with a little shriek. "Oh, not quite at cockcrow, dearest Señor Felix. Say, half past eight?"
In the end the hour of eight o'clock was fixed on.
All this time Juana had not uttered a word, and she disappeared into the posada without bidding me good night.
Feeling sore and puzzled and ill-used, I made my way to my own albergue.
NEXT morning, long before cockcrow, I was up and inspecting the open carriage that Don Ignacio had procured for his sister-in-law. It seemed sound enough, though shabby and of rustic design. Old Tomas, who had spent the night with his suffering horses and was up early fomenting them, agreed dourly that he supposed it would do well enough to carry the Doña on a mountain road where nobody could see them. "Though what Señor Escaroz would say!" The mules that had been found to draw the equipage were lean, haggard animals not much larger than ponies, but clean-legged and bright-eyed. I wished Pedro were there to inspect them, but concluded they would do their work sufficiently well. Having surveyed the whole turnout I went back to the albergue, loaded a pack for myself, and then walked round to the ladies' posada and asked the waiting-girl for Sister Belen.
The good sister came down directly, thinking, I daresay, that some sick person was asking for her. When she saw me she smiled and said, "Why, it is our young Señor Amarillo!" which she had taken to calling me, I suppose because of my yellow hair.
"Good morning, Sister Belen. I want you to do me a kindness."
"With all my heart. What is it?"
"I want you to accept, and persuade Sister Felicita to accept, these things, which I bought in Pamplona. You are going today into high mountains and the weather has worsened"—which was true: A sharp wind blew, combined with a fine, penetrating rain. "Your habits are not warm enough to protect you here."
She took the bundles, which consisted of a dark-blue baize riding habit and a hooded cape of the same warm material for each of the nuns, and two pairs of riding boots made from supple Cordoba leather.
"Vaya, vaya!" she exclaimed in astonishment. "What forethought! What good sense! You will make a fine, considering husband some day. But how in the world did you guess the size of our feet—?" trying one of the boots against her own sandaled foot, which was broad and sturdy, almost as wide as it was long.
"Oh, that was easy. Do you remember the muddy road outside the posada at Irurzun? I measured your footprints after you had each walked out to the carriage."
At that she laughed immensely. "Wicked boy—what a planner, what a plotter! I do not know what Sister Felicita will say."
"You will persuade her to accept them, won't you, Sister Belen?" I asked anxiously. "Pray do! For I fear she is displeased with me, and indeed I don't know why."
To my surprise Sister Belen gave me five or six quick little pats on the shoulder.
"I am sure it is no fault of yours at all. It is some idle thing Doña Conchita said to her. Don't let yourself be troubled about it. Whatever it is can be of but slight importance."
Then she bustled off with the bundles.
When we finally assembled outside the main town gate—Doña Conchita late as usual—and she turned to survey the conveyance that had been procured for the ladies, the whole excursion nearly came to a halt then and there.
"Ride in that?" she shrieked. "Why not simply carry us in a lobster pot?"
It did bear a certain resemblance to a lobster pot, being a tartana, a kind of country vehicle often used in Aragon. We had seen them along the way. It was a two-wheeled, oblong conveyance, not large, drawn by two mules, the main feature of it being that the floor is woven from a rope network. This makes it light for hilly country, and also easily repaired.
"I am not going to sit with my legs dangling through that net," objected Conchita. "Why, it almost touches the ground. We should be scraped to death."
I noticed that, today, she had left off her velvet slippers and wore a pair of net little buttoned boots which peeped demurely out from below her black silk skirts; but they looked hardly more suitable for mountain walking than the slippers had been.
"Why, then," calmly said Juana, who was going to do the driving—Tomas had insisted on remaining with his master's horses—"why, then, you will have to sit with me on the box."
"Must I? Oh—very well. What Papa would say if he knew. Those are certainly the sorriest, scraggiest beasts I ever did see—"
"Where is Sister Belen?" I asked in surprise, as they seemed preparing to set off without her.
"Our good Sister Belen is not coming today," Conchita told me, settling herself with her many wraps and cushions, and clucks of distaste for her situation, as she took her seat alongside Juana. "Belen finds there are such a great number of sick persons in Berdun that she says her day will be better spent there—and who would argue with her choice in such horrible weather? Brrr!"
She contrived to make it sound as if Sister Belen were taking the day's holiday out of laziness because she did not want the discomfort of a trip into the mountains, which I felt very sure was not the case.
Juana quietly climbed to the driver's seat and took the reins. To my joy she was wearing the clothes I had bought; they fitted her well. Conchita was jocose about them.
"You are a most gallant caballero, Señor Felix, to have bought our friends those elegant habits. Ay, de mi! Our little Juana looks like a princess today, does she not? What would the Reverend Mother say, I wonder?"
Juana's eye met mine. She was red with anger. I could see that for two pins she would return to the posada, tear off the new warm clothes, and put on her old white habit. I rolled my eyes imploringly, looking like a clown, I daresay; she gave a small reluctant shrug, flicked the mules sharply with the reins, and set them in motion. Pepe and Esteban were astride their beasts already; I sprang on mine and followed the cavalcade along the straight road eastward.
For many miles we rode in silence. T
he mountains to north and south were veiled in mist. Juana and Conchita had nothing to say to one another, and, wishing to avoid being drawn into idle conversation by the latter, I took care to stay twenty paces to the rear of the tartana, allowing Pepe and Esteban to lead the way. In this formation we proceeded to Puenta de la Reina, and there turned north, up into the foothills. All the way we met with very few passersby, apart from an occasional shepherd and flock of goats.
About an hour after noon we reached the small mountain village of San Quilez, where Pedro had promised to meet us. It was no more than a handful of rough stone houses, clustered about a church. A small, swift rocky brook divided the houses; a high-arched bridge joined the two sections. Perched on a spur of the northern foothills, San (Quilez should have commanded a great view of the Aragon valley, but the mist cloaked everything; the houses were no more than gray shapes, and only a kind of shadowy darkness up above indicated the near presence of craggy mountains towering over the slate roofs and granite chimneys (each with a carved beast perched on top).
"Those are to prevent demons coming down the chimney," Juana coldly informed me. She had hopped out of the tartana and tethered the mules to a holly tree. I was glad to see that her anger was abating, or forgotten, or set on one side. She seemed calm, remote, and unapproachable.
"I'd have expected devils to go up chimneys, not down them," I said, thinking of the creature that escaped me up the chimney of Don Ignacio's house.
Conchita joined us, a faint cloud on her exquisite brow.
"Was not Pedro supposed to meet us here?"
Her tone suggested that it was remiss of us to be standing about making foolish conversation while her affairs were neglected.
"He was, señora, but I see no sign of him. That place over there might be an albergue—shall we see if they can provide us with any food while we wait?"
A house by the church, rather larger than the others, seemed to combine the function of inn and bakery; women came and went from it with. trays of loaves, baked and unbaked; I walked inside and found a stone-floored room with a fire, also a great barrel of red wine from which all customers were served in wooden cups.