Bridle the Wind

by Joan Aiken

  How much I wished that our goatskin had been filled with wine, as the inn lady had suggested, or, better still, aguardiente. A little of such a stimulant might have put heart into Juan. Failing that, I took him by the shoulders and shook him fiercely.

  ‘Don’t behave like a whining baby! We have got to get away from here before we grow any colder, and while those men are inside the cave.’

  I did not mention that it was through his wilfulness in the first place that we were in this situation, and that if I had not established us in this eyrie we should have been captured by now. ‘I am going to climb over you,’ I said, and did so, hoisting myself up with the aid of the birch trunk. ‘Now: take my hand. Shut your eyes, if you prefer; I will tell you where to put your feet.’

  At that moment a blue-white glare of lightning illuminated the whole series of rock steps above and ahead of us – very conveniently, except that it was then followed by an earsplitting crack of thunder, which made Juan cry out in shock and clap his hands to his ears. I shook him again. ‘Come, follow me – and don’t be a coward!’

  ‘I am not a coward!’ he retorted, setting his teeth and putting up his chin. Doggedly he began to follow me up the rock steps, I guiding his hand to such holds as there were, rock ledges and roots of trees, and instructing him in a whisper as to the footholds.

  ‘Up and to the right with your left foot; you will find a crack which narrows – you can rest your foot in it safely. Now shift the right foot; there is a lump of rock about an inch wide which you can trust.’

  Once or twice he trembled, or shivered, and I thought that we were done for and would go crashing down to the ground outside the cave entrance, but somehow, by God’s grace, we managed to make our way back to the sloping hill. The distance was not so very great, but our passage seemed to take several hours.

  And all the while the rain was cascading down our shoulders, making the rock slippery under hands and feet; I thanked God very fervently in my mind when I at last felt soft, yielding sandy earth under my feet instead of slimy, unfriendly rock.

  ‘Very well done, mon brave!’ I whispered heartily in Juan’s ear when we were both safely off the cliff, and I could not forbear to give him a hug, partly out of relief, partly to show that I forgave him for his poor-spiritedness. But another flash of lightning just at that moment revealed his expression of hostility, almost of hate; quite plainly he could not forgive me, either for dragging him across the cliff face or, more likely, for being proved right in my suspicions of old Pierre.

  ‘What now?’ said he sulkily. ‘Since you have put yourself in command, what now?’

  ‘Now we must find shelter as soon as we can; but first let us put a distance between us and those men,’ said I, and led the way at a brisk pace up the leafy hillside, thanking Providence that the pelting rain and crashing thunder made it needless to exercise caution, for nobody could possibly hear our steps. The rain blew in waves and sheets, the wind buffeted us, and the thunder was almost incessant; I thought it most fortunate that Juan, among his other fears, seemed not to be too much troubled by thunder; though he occasionally started at an extra-loud peal – as indeed I did myself – he followed me steadily enough as we climbed ever up and up.

  ‘It sounds as if your witch great-grandmother and all her friends were flying about overhead,’ I bawled in his ear as we struggled higher and higher, but he only set his jaw and, without looking at me, went on steadily putting one foot before the other.

  At length another lightning flash showed us a huge hollow chestnut tree whose girth ten men with arms extended could not have encircled. By then we must have walked for the best part of an hour, and were warm enough, though soaked. The tree promised some kind of shelter, and, pulling Juan by the hand, I groped my way into it. The inside was dry enough, and not too uncomfortable, for a heap of leaf mould and chestnut-mast had, through the years, piled high within the hollow space.

  ‘This will serve us,’ I said to Juan, and unfastened the blanket which I had carried. It was very wet, but we burrowed a kind of trough in the leaf mould, huddled in that, and pulled the blanket over us, with more leaves on top. Very soon a steamy warmth was achieved.

  ‘What if lightning strikes the tree?’ whispered Juan sullenly.

  I, too, had that possibility in mind, for chestnut trees often do seem to attract the stroke of lightning, and the thunderstorms of the Pyrenees are notorious for their severity; but I answered airily that a tree in an open field is much more likely to be struck than one in the midst of a forest. ‘And in any case there is nothing more we can do about it. So go to sleep.’

  Juan gave a snort, whether of scorn or annoyance I did not know – or it might even have been laughter – and muttered some phrase in the Basque language. What it was I did not inquire. I was very near the point of swooning with fatigue myself, and next minute the arms of darkness enwrapped me.

  4

  We make our way to Hasparren, buy clothes, and attend a masquerade at St Jean; receive a frightening shock; and are treated with hospitality by strange little people

  Upon awakening, the first thing that I saw was Juan’s face regarding me anxiously. But this time he had not roused me complaining of hunger, as he had done on the previous day; he had waited until I awoke naturally. Sunlight shone on the forest outside our hollow tree, raindrops sparkled, and birds sang. Far away I could hear the call of a cuckoo.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ I asked Juan, but he shook his head. He said he had drunk a little of what milk was left, but waited to share the remaining bread with me.

  His voice sounded hoarse, and I asked, in some concern, if the state of his swollen throat had been worsened by the exposure and soaking which we had suffered last night. But he told me no; indeed, it was better, and he proved that by managing to swallow a little bread that had not been previously soaked in milk, and a thin morsel of sausage, after he had chewed it very diligently. Then I realised that the hoarse voice in which he had addressed me was in fact his natural tone (roughened still by strain) and not the whisper he had formerly been obliged to use: thus far had he mended in health. He could not, however, speak a great many words at one time without his throat becoming fatigued; and I urged him not to tire his voice.

  After we had eaten up our small supply of bread and milk I noticed that he seemed somewhat troubled and ill at ease; as we left our chestnut tree and marched off into the forest, brushing leaf mould and chestnut fibres from our clothes and hair, Juan said with difficulty, ‘Felix: I behaved ungenerously and childishly to you last night. I know that it was your prudence which saved me from – from those men; and it was my thoughtless, stupid trust in old Pierre which nearly plunged us into disaster. I – I am sorry. I was unfair. Forgive me.’

  He brought out this speech in a small, deep, hoarse voice, looking not at me but, as he walked along, at his own feet, still wound in those soiled and tattered strips of blanket. The apology thus hoarsely croaked out sounded so funny that I could not help laughing, and clapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘You sound like a penitent bullfrog! Never trouble your head about such a trifle. I did not regard it at the time, and don’t now. Come, let us take a look at the map and try to discover where we are, and what we should do next.’

  So saying, I unfolded the map, which, by great good fortune, I had stowed next to my skin, under shirt and jacket, so it had not been soaked by the storm. Laying it out on a fallen tree trunk I pointed with a twig and went on: ‘I should judge that we must be about here, would you agree?’

  Looking up, I surprised an expression of baffled hurt and annoyance on Juan’s face. Eh, bless me, what now? I thought. I suppose I have not received the silly fellow’s amends with sufficient seriousness; if he has not a whole courtroom, judge, jury, and accused, hanging on his lightest statement, it seems that he feels hard done by.

  ‘I am not accustomed to reading maps,’ he muttered stiffly and coldly. ‘I am unable to help you – I do not understand what you mean.’


  ‘Don’t understand maps? Why, what in the world have you been taught, then? Did you not go to school, or have a tutor?’

  ‘I did lessons at home,’ said he gruffly, ‘but –’

  ‘Well, never mind! It is not too late to learn now. Look, this line of fur that resembles a fox’s tail is intended to be the Pyrenees mountains. Here is the Bay of Biscay, here is Bilbao. Each of these black lines is a river – the Nive, the Nivelle, the Bidassoa. And these white patches are the summits of mountains.’

  ‘Oh!’ he exclaimed, his resentment melting. ‘Now I begin to see! Here is Monte Perdido, Mont Perdu, the Lost Mountain. Uncle León always promised that one day he would take me there. He says there is a great glacier.’

  ‘Well, we only have to find him, and perhaps he will take you soon. See, now, we must be hereabouts, on the side of La Rhune,’ I said, pointing with my twig, ‘and on the other side is Spain. There is Pamplona.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Juan, evidently beginning to comprehend the lines of the map, ‘why do we not just walk over here to Pamplona?’

  ‘First, because there is a whole row of mountains in the way. We must find a pass, not climb over a peak.’

  ‘Then, let us find a pass,’ he said, glancing round as if expecting to see a beckoning fairy among the trees. ‘Let us find the nearest pass and walk through. Why not here, at Ainhoa?’

  ‘No, that is precisely what we must not do.’

  ‘Why?’ he inquired, almost meekly.

  ‘There will be gendarmes at all the main frontier posts. We must find a lesser path. Also, the Gente will be expecting us to take the nearest route. We will do as we did last night – make a circle round, to a point where they do not expect us.’

  Juan sighed, as if he found the prospect fatiguing, but said only, ‘Very well. Which way shall we go?’

  ‘For a start, north. Then east.’

  ‘Which way is north?’

  ‘We shall need to keep the sun on our right side.’

  It was yet early, I judged, though in this thick wood the sun’s whereabouts were not too easily discovered. But we continued climbing, surmounted a ridge, and presently came out in a mountain meadow, where gentians and anemones grew, and a brook ran sweetly between rocks and banks of moss. By now, in the warm sun, our clothes had dried on us, and Juan exclaimed, ‘Oh, how dearly I would like to wash in that brook and bathe my sore feet.’

  ‘What’s to stop you? I have no objection! In fact I will do the same myself.’

  And without more ado I flung off shirt and breeches, and splashed myself with handfuls of the icy water, which stung like vinegar on my healing cuts. It was much too cold to loiter in the stream, so I came out soon and sat barefoot in my breeches on the bank, letting the sun dry my back.

  Juan, who, as I had already discovered, possessed a fierce sense of privacy and decorum, had retired out of sight round a bend in the brook, to perform his ablutions. By and by, returning barefoot, dangling the strips of blanket in his hand, he for the first time caught sight of my back, and gasped with horror.

  ‘Felix! How in the world did you get those terrible cuts on your back?’

  ‘Father Vespasian had me beaten,’ I replied, with as much nonchalance as possible. ‘Well, at least, now he is richly served. He will be ordering no more beatings, and the novices of St Just have cause to be grateful to us.’

  ‘But why? Why did he have you beaten?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said evasively, ‘he was forever having the novices flogged for one fault or another.’

  ‘No,’ said Juan, ‘but I believe I know when it happened. It was after he tried to question me – was it not? And you came into my room with a bunch of rosemary, and I heard him asking questions of you, in a fury, as he went down the stairs. Did he not question you about me? Was not that it? And you would not tell him what I had told you?’

  ‘It was of no consequence,’ I said. ‘He had had me beaten various times before.’

  Juan looked at me with huge eyes.

  ‘Oh, Felix. I am so sorry. And here have I been, grumbling and making a great to-do over my sore feet and throat, while all the time you must have been in much worse pain and I never even knew. What a spoiled child you must have thought me!’

  ‘It was nothing. The cuts are almost better, as you can see.’

  ‘You must have some of that goose grease on them, that you have been putting on my neck.’

  With what there was left, only a smear, he insisted on anointing the worst of my cuts, doing it with the utmost delicacy, and wincing on my behalf as the stuff went on to the raw, healing skin.

  ‘Poor, poor Felix. Father Vespasian was every bit as wicked, I do believe, as the Mala Gente. No, he was worse, because he pretended to be good and holy, whereas they do not pretend to be anything but what they are.’

  ‘Well, it is certainly a good thing he is drowned,’ said I, devoutly hoping this was true. ‘And I wish the Mala Gente were, too, or at least that they will now leave us in peace.’

  The sun was by this time well risen, as we could see from our alp, and, guiding ourselves by its position, we went on in a northeasterly direction, crossing grassy ridges and wooded valleys, hearing cuckoos, seeing wild columbines and gentians and many other flowers. We encountered another shepherd in blue smock and baggy beretta, leading his flock, and bought from him for a penny another flaskful of milk.

  In the far distance on a mountain we could see a town of red-roofed houses among groves of chestnut trees; we asked the shepherd its name, and he said Ai’nhoa; so we were able to place ourselves.

  I suggested to Juan that we should make our way to Hasparren and, if she would have us, spend a night or so with Father Antoine’s kindly sister.

  ‘Why?’ he demanded, but less combatively than he would have done yesterday.

  ‘Because, if she is as kind as Father Antoine, she will give us good help and advice. We need various things before we cross the mountains – shoes for you, food, knapsacks, something to light a fire. Also, if we remain in Hasparren for a night or two – which is much farther north than the Gente would expect to find us – they may be thrown off the scent. Then we can cross the mountains farther to the east, perhaps in the Val d’Aspe, where they will not be looking for us.’

  ‘Where did you say your grandfather’s house in Spain was situated?’ he suddenly demanded.

  ‘In Galicia.’

  ‘But that is a hundred leagues or so to the west.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘I am taking you far out of your way,’ he said, as if this had not occurred to him before.

  ‘My grandfather is not expecting me on any particular day,’ said I; though a pang smote me as I said it, for Grandfather was, after all, an old man, wounded from long-ago wars, crippled with rheumatism, obliged to pass his days in a basket chair. Suppose, after all, he did not survive until my coming? But I said to Juan, ‘A few days more or less will make no difference. And it would be stupid, having escaped them twice, to walk back into the jaws of the Mala Gente. Let us go first to Hasparren and ask the advice of Father Antoine’s sister.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Juan, quite humbly.

  And I thought, if Grandfather dies before I return to Villaverde, well, we shall doubtless meet in heaven.

  We agreed not to pass through towns before we reached Hasparren, so went cannily across the foothills, avoiding the village of Cambo, on the banks of the Nive.

  It was dusk before we reached our destination, for the distance we had to cover must have been close on five leagues. We did not walk continuously, for I thought that Juan should have rest at frequent intervals, and so we paused at many a grove or brookside or vineyard, and lay in the sun, or bathed our tired feet. Hasparren, when we approached it in evening light, looked a pleasant, quiet village of white houses set in a shallow green valley. Juan told me that the Basque name meant Haitz-Barne, or ‘in the heart of the oak forest,’ and indeed, there were many oak woods all around.

  We inq
uired for the house of Madame Mauleon, and were directed to one on the edge of the village, a handsome timbered building, whitewashed between its beams, with a shallow sloping roof of red tiles, wide eaves, shuttered windows, and a great stone slab with a coat of arms over the door. An old Basque woman opened to our knock. At first she eyed our dusty and tattered appearance somewhat suspiciously, but the name of Pere Antoine softened her, and she showed us into a brick-floored room with great pieces of carved furniture, and shuffled off to call her mistress.

  Madame herself was so like Father Antoine that I should have known her for his sister at once, even if I had met her in the street; she had his luminous blue eyes and worn, kindly face. When she heard that we came from her brother, she could not do enough for us, and would have installed us each in a huge bedroom with a four-poster bed. But I said, and Juan agreed, that if the kind lady did not object, we would prefer to sleep in her barn, which was a noble brick-and-stone building across a yard from the house.

  ‘But why, mes enfants? Why sleep in the barn when you could have the best linen sheets and goose-down quilts?’

  I said: ‘Because, madame, we were obliged to escape from the Abbey of St Just. Your brother, who has been kindness itself to me, and indeed gave me this map, will tell you, I am sure, in due course, that we did no wrong. But the Abbot has died –’

  ‘What? Father Vespasian is no more?’

  ‘He was drowned, crossing the causeway.’

  ‘Well, he was a strange man,’ she said, making the sign of the cross. ‘Rest his soul! But I never thought he had a genuine vocation to be a monk. I knew him when he was a young man – before the thought of joining a religious community had even entered his head. In those days he was very different.’ And a somewhat wintry look came over her face, as if at a disagreeable recollection.

  ‘What was he like then?’ I inquired curiously.

  ‘Hotheaded!’ was Madame Mauleon’s brief reply. But then she added, ‘The reason why he entered the Order – so I have heard and I believe it – was due to a dispute over a female. He and a pair of brothers were all courting the same lady – she would have none of them – she came to some tragic end – so two became hermits and one a monk. Beware of the female sex, my lads! They can cause more damage than rats in a granary!’ And she laughed, the old serving-woman’s dry cackle joining with hers.