Bridle the Wind

by Joan Aiken

  ‘Certainly, father.’

  ‘Come, and I will show you the place.’

  When we were out in the monks’ pelota ground, a sudden impulse made me ask, ‘Father Pierre: can nothing be done about the Abbot? It is so dreadful!’

  ‘No, child; our Rule binds us. We must obey him. But never fear; le bon Dieu doubtless has some purpose behind it all, and will show us that, in His own good time.’

  ‘But has Father Vespasian always been – as he is?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ replied Father Pierre. ‘He had a troubled history as a young man, before he entered; I myself knew him then. He loved a lady who would not have him – there were angers and grievances. But he was – no different from others then. Impatient, yes; but governed by reason. His – change – began seven years ago when a man was brought to the Abbey suffering from snoring.’

  ‘From snoring?’

  ‘He snored by day as well as by night; awake as well as asleep. Oh, it was a dreadful sound! Blood streamed from his eyes, and a terrible hissing speech from his mouth. This,’ explained Father Pierre, ‘was before Father Vespasian had come to his full, present power of healing, but already he had achieved some remarkable cures. He laid his hands on the snoring man – who in that very minute lost his symptoms and rose up as normal as you or I. But, at the same instant, Father Vespasian dropped down in a dead swoon and lay so for thirty-six hours. Ever since that day ...’ His voice trailed off, his eyes looked down, absently, frowningly, over the wide bay, for we stood at the highest corner of the kitchen garden. Then he shook himself, sighed, and added, ‘As I said, God will certainly display His purpose when He sees fit. Now, here is the corner of the wall which needs mending. You see?’

  ‘Yes, my father.’

  ‘You will fetch building materials immediately from the pile by the porter’s lodge, and bring them here, as much as you think sufficient.’ And he hurried away, his black robe flapping.

  I spent the next hour following his instructions.

  On my way to None, later, Father Antoine intercepted me.

  ‘Ahem! Have you managed to finish the task that Father Pierre showed you, Felix?’

  ‘Yes, father.’

  ‘You are a good boy. Now, come into the scriptorium a moment, I wish you to lift down some heavy volumes for me.’

  At his bidding I climbed up a ladder to a high shelf and fetched down several massive book-boxes, which I placed on a table for him. Close to where I had laid them I noticed a map, unrolled on the table, with weights holding it open.

  Casually Father Antoine indicated it.

  ‘See, here is our Abbey and the shoreline. There is Bayonne; here, St Jean de Luz. These are the passes over the mountains. That village there, Has-parren, that is where I come from. My widowed sister, Madame Mauleon, still lives there; she is a good, kind woman, always ready to help those in distress. . . .’

  ‘Any sister of yours, father, would be that, I am sure.’

  ‘Bless me, there is the bell for None! I must hurry off and have a word with the Prior. Close the door behind you, my boy, when you have taken down that last box.’

  ‘Certainly, Father Antoine.’

  When I quitted the scriptorium, it was with the map tightly rolled up under my belt. And, though I shut the door, I left one of the windows unlatched.

  At the close of None I observed Father Vespasian speaking to Father Pierre; his look was stern, his gestures vigorous, and he glanced once or twice, briefly, in my direction. This caused me some concern; did the Abbot propose further punishment for me?

  It was not quite so bad as that, but inconvenient enough.

  ‘Father Vespasian forbids you to sleep any longer in the infirmary building,’ Father Pierre told me sadly, when the Abbot had left him, striding away to his lodge. ‘You are to return to the novices’ dortor. It seems that Father Vespasian does not -does not wish for any further association between you and Juan.’

  ‘I see, father,’ I said, thinking fast. What a good thing I had left that window open! God must have been guiding me. ‘Well, I – I thank you for your many kindnesses, Father Pierre. And I am sorry to work for you no longer. I will go to Father Domitian now.’

  ‘You will remember what I told you to do? About mending the wall? You can manage the task? In the time?’

  ‘Yes, I can manage very well, thank you, father.’ And I smiled at him in a cheerful and serene manner, trying to convey that this new edict, though awkward, would not put a stop to my plans.

  At eight o’clock I retired to bed with the rest of the novices, and, in the dark, thumped my head with my knuckles ten times, thus instructing myself to wake at ten o’clock. Prompt on the hour of ten I woke, to hear the clock strike. All about me slept, including Father Domitian. The windows all stood wide; I rolled my blanket, passed it about the central bar of the casement, slipped out, holding both ends of the blanket, and so slid and dropped to the ground, only ten feet below. The fall jarred my cuts and weals, which had stiffened again, but did me no other harm. Winding the blanket around me like a toga, I tiptoed over the dewy grass to the scriptorium, opened the window, climbed in, and came out with the ladder, which I carried on my shoulder across the cloister and round the frater to the infirmary. This was the longest part of the business, and I felt some anxiety, I must confess, lest anybody look out and see me. But the night was dim; an orange-red new moon, low down in mist, gave little illumination.

  Planting the ladder securely, I climbed up to Juan’s window, and so in. He was wakeful, and, after the first gasp of terror, not greatly surprised to see me. I think Father Pierre must have conveyed some kind of warning; for when I said, ‘Juan: it is time for us to leave this place,’ he merely nodded, and rose from his bed to accompany me. I saw that he was fully dressed, in shirt, waistcoat, and trousers. His feet were bare; no shoes had been found small enough to fit him.

  We stole down the stairs. On the pallet, in the surgery where Father Pierre slept, there was a note: ‘If anybody should want me, I am in the chapel, keeping vigil for St Gabas.’ Devout Father Pierre! I felt under his pallet, found his keys, and opened the closet where my clothes hung.

  Five minutes later we were outside, and hastening to the kitchen garden, where I had left a large pile of stones conveniently stacked against the outer wall. I wondered whether Juan would be strong enough to climb over, and offered, in a whisper, to lift him, but he indignantly declined my help and scrambled up nimbly enough; then waited for me. I followed him, climbed over, dropped – again jarring my bruises; the height was somewhat greater on the far side – and stood below to receive Juan’s kicking legs as he lowered himself.

  While stacking the stones at that spot on the previous afternoon I had carefully studied the hillside, and now led Juan quickly down a steep grassy track which wound over the headland in the direction of the causeway. There was no time to be lost; in a whisper I encouraged Juan to follow me as fast as he could. The sickle moon, previously veiled by mist, at this moment emerged and gave us more light to pick our way.

  It also illuminated a sight that almost froze the marrow in my bones: Father Vespasian, in his cloak and hood, walking, as was his nighttime habit, back and forth, back and forth, over the bare shoulder of hill that lay beyond his lodge. At the moment when I set eyes on him, his back was turned three quarters from us, and he was walking away; then he wheeled and came in our direction. But he was twenty-five feet above us on the hillside, and we were screened from him, at present, by some bushes of broom. Our path, however, led directly under where he was pacing. If he looked in our direction at that point, I did not see how he could fail to spot us, though he could not come down to us, for there was a sheer rock face between our course and where his path lay.

  I clutched Juan’s arm and whispered, ‘Crouch down!’ and pointed upward. I could feel Juan’s start of terror; then he huddled against me, peering through the broom fronds.

  When I was a child at Villaverde, I and the servants’ children used sometime
s to play a game called ‘coger la abuela,’ ‘catch the grandmother’. You all steal up behind one player, and try to touch him; if he looks round and catches you moving, you must pay a penalty. Our game with Father Vespasian was like that. The stretch of ground he was pacing was about nine or ten yards; while his back was towards us we slipped stealthily as far as we could along our way, judging the distance with care so that when he turned we would be able to take shelter behind a rock, bush, or overhang of ground; then, while he walked in our direction, we must remain frozen, motionless, like two coneys on the hillside. There was an angle of hill that we must pass which was full in his view; then, once round that, we would be out of sight again until we reached the beginning of the causeway. I could only pray that soon he would retire to the chapel to begin the celebration of St Gabas. For the tide was coming in fast; already the flat beaches were covered, and the sands on either side of the causeway. If we did not cross within the next half hour, we must wait until the water was on the ebb again, three or four hours; by which time the monks would be assembled for Night Office and our absence almost certainly discovered. I thought with despair of the ladder which I had left leaning against the infirmary wall. Idiot! Why had I not at least thrown it down, so that it would not be so conspicuous? And barefoot Juan was shivering, although the night was not cold; poor frail creature, he was by no means ready for a night vigil on a windswept headland. I had offered him my shoes, but they were far too big.

  ‘Here!’ I whispered. ‘Put this round you.’ I had brought the blanket, with a notion that it would prove useful when we had placed a good distance between ourselves and the Abbey. Now I wrapped it round Juan like a shawl, folded cornerways. He accepted and huddled into it with a whispered word of thanks; but then, as cursed fortune would have it, during our next dart along the track, he tripped over a trailing corner of cloth and fell headlong, dislodging a stone the size of my head, which went bounding down the hillside in ever-increasing leaps, starting off a dozen others in its progress.

  Father Vespasian did not catch the sound of the stones, for the waves below us made a soft continuous roar; but out of the corner of his eye, he must have seen a movement, and he whipped round, staring down sharply in our direction. Juan had almost rolled off the track, and I was dragging him back to safety.

  Father Vespasian froze, like a hunting dog, for an instant; then he started off, moving at great speed in the direction that would take him down to the causeway. He would have to go through the gate first; I judged that we had about five minutes.

  Juan was whimpering with the pain of his grazed legs and hands; I pulled him somewhat roughly to his feet, grabbed back the blanket from him in a bundle, and hissed:

  ‘Run! Follow me!’

  ‘I c-c-can’t!’ he gulped.

  ‘You must! Or we shall be caught, and both beaten for certain, and God only knows what else the Abbot will have done to us. Come on, now -stir yourself – be a man!’ And I ran ahead, but not at my full speed or anything approaching it, looking back as often as I dared on the twisting track, sometimes extending a hand to pull Juan over a difficult stretch, for, here and there, sections of the path were no more than steep loose shale or slippery bare rock.

  When we reached the hither end of the causeway we could see Father Vespasian, like some black-winged bird of night in his flapping cloak, coming swiftly down the zigzag track from the great gate.

  Juan let out a little moan of fear and darted ahead of me along the causeway, where the water was already making short swirls and eddies over the road. I felt troubled for him, in his bare feet, but he seemed able to run more easily on the level, though it was rough-cut rock with shingle and mortar packed in the cracks. I followed him fast, glancing back over my shoulder now and then, at some risk of slipping, to see how much Father Vespasian had gained on us. Now he had reached the bottom of the zigzag track and was gliding out along the causeway. I felt in me a mortal terror of what he might do to Juan if he caught up with us – and fear for myself, too, though that was not quite as bad. But Juan, still weak and frail, only just risen from his sickbed …

  Ahead of us the mainland still seemed an endless distance away, and already the waves were tugging at our ankles. I recalled Father Antoine saying, ‘Never attempt to cross when the water is more than ankle-deep, or you will be washed away for certain.’

  We were more than halfway over, I thought. But we were not going fast enough.

  ‘Stop!’ I gasped to Juan.‘Iam going to carry you. Get on my back’ – and I knelt down. He made some demur, but I fairly shouted at him, ‘Do as I say! Or we shall both be washed away!’ and gestured him to climb on my back.

  He did so.

  ‘Good! Now hold round my neck.’

  Clutching the blanket somehow across my chest, with his legs tucked through my arms, I ran stumbling, panting, gulping in cold sea-air, as fast as my obedient legs would strike the ground. They began to feel numb, as if all the blood had left them. And the footway was now wholly underwater, the waves pulled at my calves and swirled around my knees. I was in terror of turning aside from the path and plunging into deep water. Sometimes it was only with frightful difficulty that I kept my footing.

  ‘Listen!’ I called inside my head to God. ‘Please listen to me! I am doing what You told me. At least I think I am! So will You make haste to help us, for I need Your help as badly now as I ever have in the whole of my life!’

  Just when a terrible doubt was beginning to pluck at my mind – just when it occurred to me to wonder whether God’s purpose might be for Juan, the Abbot, and me all to drown together – I noticed that the pushing, sucking water was not quite so deep. Here the causeway sloped upward somewhat. Now the water was only to my shins now to my ankles. Now we were on bare rock, and toiling up towards the highwater mark.

  And then Juan let out a sharp, whispered cry.

  ‘Oh, mon Dieu! On the beach – Gueule and Plumed’

  But I had turned at the same moment to look for our pursuer. Father Vespasian was now about halfway across, but I could see that he was in severe difficulties, up to his breast in water, with the waves pulling and thrusting him this way and that. I could see his face now plainly in the moonlight, and it was a truly terrible sight: his eyes were fixed upon us, and they flamed like candles. Still he came on, forging his way through the water. He is not human, I thought, the sea will not stop him. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that the two men on the beach were observing him, and us also.

  At this moment I must confess that I almost fell into despair.

  For whether the Abbot caught us, or they did, our fate seemed certain; we were trapped between two evils.

  The men on the beach moved briskly in our direction. Evidently they had been keeping the causeway under observation; Juan was right, I thought wearily, they had not been deceived by his hiding.

  I went on doggedly towards them. We had no weapons, but a pile of fence stakes lay by the track, above the highwater mark. Wearily setting Juan on his feet, I panted, ‘Snatch one of those cudgels and we will do the best we can,’ when, from behind us, I heard a long, terrible cry.

  Oh, the thought of it freezes my marrow to this day.

  What was it like? Like no sound I have ever heard, before or since. It was high, vibrating, not wholly human. It was at one and the same time the shriek of a wild, supernatural being driven from its habitation, and the agonised yell of a living body which had been almost torn asunder. It was in two syllables, both of which seemed to linger in the air like echoes of each other.

  ‘Laaaaaaa – raaaaaaa?!’

  Heaven defend me from ever hearing such a cry again! It sounded as if a razor-sharp saw were cleaving through flesh, bone, and stone, all at the same time.

  ‘Jesu Maria!’ whispered Juan in consternation, crossing himself repeatedly. He was staring over my shoulder, his mouth open in horror. I spun round, regardless of the men on the beach; but there was nothing, nothing at all to see, only the swirling, whitecap
ped waves pouring from one side of the bay to the other. No sign, none at all, of the Abbot.

  And then, the following instant, away to our side we heard an equally loud, equally agonised yell. Before we had had time to do more than accept with terror and relief the fact of Father Vespasian’s disappearance, we were faced with another fearful happening: the tall black-haired man on the beach, the one that Juan had said was called Plumet, who had pretended to be a cripple, was evidently taken in some form of atrocious seizure: he wailed and gibbered like a damned soul; he fell to the ground, flinging himself about, his limbs jerking with maniac violence; he frothed at the mouth, as he had earlier feigned to. But this was no pretence, it was all too real – no actor, however skilful, could simulate those wild spasms, in which his body arched back and forth, head touching heels in one direction, then toes in the other, with the snapping, whiplike speed of a wounded snake. All the time, through his anguished groans, a hissing stream of gibberish language proceeded from his wide-open mouth. And curses of a terrible violence; I had never even imagined such profanity.

  Juan and I clutched one another in horror, while the little man, the midget, knelt sobbing and wailing beside his friend, calling his name over and over.

  ‘Plumet! Mon ami, what is it? Answer me!’

  ‘Oh, come away!’ whispered Juan to me, his teeth chattering with dread. ‘Come quickly! It is too horrible.’

  For a moment I hesitated. Was it not our duty to try and help the wretched man, afflicted in so dire a manner?

  ‘Should we not try to do something for him? Or summon help?’

  ‘What could we possibly do? Besides, he is the man who hanged me,’ said Juan bitterly. ‘Should I feel compassion for him? Felix – please come! Do not wait. It is too dreadful. Besides – this is our chance.’