by Joan Aiken
‘I’m sorry – it was just a joke,’ I said hastily, not wishing to begin the day with bad feeling between us. We had enough to lower our spirits, remembering last night, not to let ourselves be disputing over trifles. ‘Let us get out of this frowsty little hut.’
So we crawled through the door hole into fresh air and looked at the place we had come to overnight. An odd small village it was, of stone-and-thatch hovels, each surrounded by a vegetable patch. The men were all gone; doubtless to work. A rocky brook ran nearby in which some of the women were washing their linen. Others came smiling to us, their brown creased faces full of goodwill, and soon offered us a bowl of coffee – rather rank and rusty, with blobs of greasy goats’ milk floating on top – and some lumps of stale bread. This unpalatable breakfast I choked down as politely as I could, but Juan drank the coffee only, indicating by signs and whispered Basque phrases that he had trouble in swallowing.
Several of the women conferred together, and fetched another, who, from her small hunched shape and deeply wrinkled face the colour of a brown walnut husk, looked to be the grandmother of them all. She carefully and frowningly inspected Juan’s throat, removing the bandage that Madame Mauleon had placed on it, then fetched a small clay pot full of strong-smelling thick dark-green ointment, and spread this over Juan’s skin, rubbing the neck strongly for a long time with aged fingers as dark and knotted as tree roots. Rolling his eyes at me in one expressive glance, Juan patiently sub- mitted to this treatment; afterwards she replaced the bandage and uttered some long admonition, to which he appeared to listen with great attention, nodding his head obediently from time to time.
She then questioned him; as to our direction, I thought, for I heard the name Pamplona in his reply, and Orria; also the words zamariz, zamaria several times repeated. At last she appeared to bless us, making an odd crow’s-foot shape in the air with her gnarled hand; the other women and children seriously saluted us, and the little one whose cat Juan had saved once more hugged his knees. Then we were permitted to go on our way; and I did so, I must confess, with no little relief, for in spite of their friendly behaviour I had felt a sense of discomfort in the strange little place; also it did smell most vilely of rancid fat and other things not proper to mention.
‘Who were those strange little people?’ I demanded of Juan when we had put a fair distance between ourselves and the village, walking southward towards Spain and the high mountains.
‘They are Cagots,’ Juan replied, as if the name should mean something to me. But it meant nothing at all.
‘What in the world are Cagots? They are not brownies? Fairy people?’
He burst out laughing.
‘Nom d’un nom, non! Ai! Laughing makes my neck hurt. But to think that I should hear the practical, sensible Felix ask such a question!’
‘Well,’ I said, somewhat nettled, ‘only a day or so ago you told me that your great-great-grandmother was a witch. And besides – ‘Besides, I might have said, you and I last night saw something the strangeness of which far outruns the oddity of a tribe of dirty little pixies or leprechauns: we saw a man apparently risen from the dead and inhabiting the body of another.
But I held my tongue. The day was too young for such dire and haunting topics. Practical and sensible, Juan had called me; practical and sensible I must endeavour to be.
‘Well, I have never heard of Cagots. Who or what are they?’
‘Why, they are Cagots,’ he said. ‘That is all I can tell you. They have always lived in the Basque country, for many hundreds of years. They have their own little villages, mostly on the outskirts of larger towns, and by law they must wear the crow’s-foot mark to distinguish them, for they are not allowed to marry folk other than Cagots, or to sell things in the market. So they are mostly carpenters, or roadworkers, or masons.’
‘Are they Christians?’
‘Of course! And they have their own little entrances and windows in the churches, so that they may hear the service without troubling the rest of the congregation. I do not know what my father would have said,’ Juan remarked cheerfully, ‘if he had known that I spent the night in a Cagot village. Some people think that they are lepers.’
My flesh crawled at the notion, but he added reassuringly, ‘That is not true at all. Well, you could see so for yourself. Others say that they must be descended from the Saracens, or the Moors, who lived in this land long ago, and became converted to Christianity.’
‘Well, they were certainly very hospitable,’ said I, ‘and it was lucky for us that we encountered them, for we could not have gone back to the town. What was all that rigmarole the old dame was telling you?’
‘Oh, first she told me to leave the green paste on my neck for three days, and to say a prayer to St Benedict before I wash it off. Also she asked where we were going, and when I said that we wished to buy ponies to cross the mountains, she told me that if we go eastward we may very likely meet a train of gipsies coming to the horse fair from Jaca.’
This was useful information, and we sat down to study the map.
It would plainly be folly to travel anywhere near the Pass of Roncesvalles, or Orria, as the Basques call it, for the Gente would be most likely to expect us there; so this advice chimed well with my own inclination, which was to continue eastward along the flanks of the mountains and cross into Spain by some small pass. Accordingly we set off walking with the sun in our faces and presently came to the highway which led up from St Jean to the Pass of Roncesvalles, where Roland, with his great sword Durendal, defended France against all the might of the Saracen army. Looking warily all around us for signs of the Gente, we paused here, but seeing none, crossed the highway and struck into the woods again. Our way now was over a series of tree-covered ridges with high peaks on our right and yet higher ones beyond; every now and then, through the neck of a valley or from some high point, we would catch a heart-stopping glimpse of huge snowy crests glittering in the early light. We crossed brook after brook tumbling down from the mountains into France, and the woods about us were of larch and spruce and beech.
To steer my mind away from anxious thoughts, I recommenced teaching English to Juan and found that he was a lightning-quick pupil, able to remember all that he had learned yesterday and eager to acquire more. I taught him many of the ballads which I had heard, as a tiny boy, from my father, when I believed him to be a stableman; and various others that I had learned from the English sailor, Sam, who accompanied me from Llanes to Plymouth.
Juan speedily caught the English words and pronunciation; he seemed to have a wonderful facility for remembering such things.
‘You have a great gift for learning, Juan,’ I told him with truth.
‘Well,’ he said seriously, ‘I wish to be able to write poems in many languages. That is my intention.’
‘Poetry? You wish to write poetry? I was somewhat confounded at the ambition of putting his talent to such a use.
‘I already do write poetry in French and Euskar.’ His tone was a trifle haughty. ‘I am a poet! And when I am grown, that is what I hope to do most in the world. That is – ‘He stopped abruptly.
‘But –!’ Poetry is not proper work for a practical person, for a grown man, is what I first intended to say. Looking at Juan’s resolute eyes and tight-pressed lips, however, I amended my remark to ‘How could you ever make a living by writing poetry? I am sure poets are not well paid. Cervantes was a great writer. But he did not make a living from writing Don Quixote!’
‘People will wish to buy my poems,’ said Juan stoutly.
‘But suppose that you should marry? How could you ever support a family?’
‘I shall never marry,’ he said quickly. ‘I have other intentions. And perhaps my Uncle León may leave me a sum of money so that I may be independent.’
I thought of the wide uplands of Villaverde which would one day be mine, and the care and trouble of looking after such an estate.
‘A mighty easy life, yours will be! Doing nothing but write p
oems all day, and living just as you please.’
‘Writing poetry is not at all easy!’ retorted Juan, firing up. ‘Sometimes you can fret and sweat and frown, and feel as if you were pushing your whole soul out of your body, and yet hardly one line comes as it ought.’
Well, then, I thought, why not find some other occupation, something more useful in the world, be a merchant or a lawyer? But I knew what trouble would follow if I uttered such a sentiment aloud, so instead I asked, ‘Can you recite a poem that you have made up? I should indeed like to hear one.’
‘They are mostly in Euskara,’ he replied. ‘Basque is a wonderful language for poetry. But I will try to translate one into English as we go along, and then I will say it to you.’
Now, faintly, ahead of us we began to hear the jingling of bells, and after a while half a dozen lean wolfish dogs loped up and sniffed around us with lowered heads until I flourished my makhila at them, whereupon they slunk farther off but continued to eye us hungrily.
Presently their owners came in sight: a long gipsy caravan, trains of horses, mules, and asses, some led, some driven, by a dozen men and women – dark, swarthy, and somewhat Moorish in their appearance, with gold rings in their ears and black tangled ringlets. The old zingaro, or leader of the tribe, had a massive grey beard, and his bushy grizzled hair was confined in a netted bag. The men wore red canvas breeches, deerskin jackets, and sandals that laced up to the knee. Some had wolfskins over their shoulders, which gave them a fierce appearance. The women wore striped skirts and petticoats, and carried musical instruments, tambours and mandolins. They had brilliantly coloured shawls knotted over heads and shoulders. Two of the younger ones displayed golden arrows passed through their knotted black locks as a sign that they were unmarried.
‘Egg-en-noon,’ we greeted them in Euskara, but the old zingaro replied in excellent French: ‘Bonjour, messieurs! How can I serve the young gentlemen?’ And he looked very sharply at us, especially at Juan, with his twinkling black eyes.
We said that we wished to buy a couple of ponies. The zingaro nodded to a pair of the younger men, and they led forward six or seven tiny beasts.
‘Why! They are hardly bigger than dogs!’ said I.
‘They are pottoka – mountain ponies,’ Juan informed me. ‘My Uncle León had several. They will be quite suitable for our purpose, as they can find their way over any kind of country. They are strong as oxen, sagacious, and obedient.’
This, to me, seemed just as well; nobody would select the pottoka for their looks: they have huge heads, pot bellies, short knobby legs, not particularly straight, and coats so thick and rough that they resemble sheep or bears rather than ponies. Compared to my Spanish grandfather’s Andalusian steeds, or the magnificent hunters of Arab descent that I had seen in England, these were like dwarfs or gnomes rather than ponies – mounts more suitable for Cagots than for ordinary people.
I daresay I regarded them somewhat superciliously, for Juan nipped my arm and whispered, ‘Do not curl your lip so, or the old capo will take offence and clap half as much again on the price.’
After long consideration, we selected a pair: one, a bay, the most handsome of the string, with something of spirit in his eye; he flung up his head and lashed out at the boy who led him; the other, a piebald with particoloured hooves, a white face, and a black forelock. Juan took a mighty fancy to this one and urged me in a whisper to make an offer for him.
I had chaffered for horses before, on my grandfather’s estate and during my journey to England; so I commenced by telling the zingaro that these two appeared to be the best of a very poor string, but that, nonetheless, they seemed wretched, slow-paced, knock-kneed, broken-winded beasts, hardly appropriate for such noble riders as we, and we would feel it a condescension to offer him ten shillings for the pair. At this his eyes and hands flew up to heaven; he exclaimed that it must be our intention to ruin him, either that or we were joking, and named a sum six times as much, which I then divided by three. We continued dickering in this manner for about forty minutes, carefully examining the two ponies point by point, breaking off sometimes to converse about the weather, the country, the condition of the mountain passes, then beginning again. At last our bargaining was concluded by my offering a gold guinea for the two beasts, with their harness (a sum about double what I had first named, and a third of what had been asked). I thought it was a little more than they were worth, but felt that we had made not too bad a bargain. The zingaro gripped my hand in his, and the sale was concluded.
Meanwhile a couple of girls had lit a fire, pounded chocolate, heated water, brought out flat cakes of unleavened bread and earthenware cups; presently they offered us a dish of miga – breadcrumbs steeped in water, sprinkled first with salt, then with hot oil in which garlic has been scattered – as well as cups of hot chocolate. Of which we were glad to partake, for our breakfast had been scanty, and the walk long.
While we sipped our chocolate one of the gipsy girls began to play on her mandolin and sing, a barbaric chant not unlike the flamenco singing of Spain. After that the capo invited us to contribute a song, so I obliged with an English ballad about a faithful farmer’s son that I had been used to singing with my friend Sam. This was received with friendly applause. Then Juan explained with signs that he could not sing for them since he had hurt his throat, but he then, after some hesitation, proceeded to recite a Basque ballad about a poor girl who was sent away from her home to marry the king of Hungary and there died of grief for her Basque sweetheart. I could not understand it all, but caught a word here and a word there. Juan recited the poem in a kind of whisper, softly, but very affectingly, and the gipsies listened to it in most concentrated silence, with deep frowns and sighs of appreciation. At the conclusion Juan received quite an ovation, one of the girls kissed him, and the old capo, taking one of the younger men on one side, gave him some instructions, which ended in our bay pony being led away and replaced by a black one.
‘Better for you – this one!’ explained the chief with a grin. By which, a little abashed, I gathered that the bay must suffer from some defect which we would only have discovered later, when the vendors were far away.
‘So we have your poetry to thank for saving us from a bad bargain,’ I said to Juan, after the money had been handed over, farewells cordially exchanged, and the gipsies had continued on their journey toward St Jean, while we, in high spirits, astride our new mounts, rode on eastward. Juan had taken the piebald, I mounted the shaggy black, who proved to have more energy in him than had shown at first appearance.
Juan looked a little smug, smiling over his pony’s particoloured mane, but he said only, ‘That was a fine song about the farmer’s son, Felix. You must teach me the words.’
Thinking of the gipsies on their way to St Jean, I said in sudden anxiety, ‘You do not suppose that the gipsies will tell the Gente about us?’
‘No. The Gente have nothing to do with gipsies. Neither trusts the other. The gipsies do not mingle with other people. They move about the country on their own concerns. When I was with the Gente I heard them speaking of gipsies with dislike and suspicion.’
‘Tell me your ballad about the king of Hungary,’ I invited him. ‘For I caught only one word in three of the Euskara.’
‘It is not my ballad,’ he explained carefully. ‘It is an old one from Tardets. I heard it from our cook, Barbe.’ Then, to my utter astonishment, after a fairly long pause for thought, he gave a rendering of it in English, as follows:
‘Two gold lemons grow in our town
The king of Hungary has asked for one
They are not ripe, the king has been told
But soon he’ll be given a lemon of gold.
Father, you sold me as if I were a cow
If Mother were living, you’d not have done so
To faraway Hungary I’d not have gone
I’d have married my love in Tardets town.
By my father I was sold
My elder brother received the go
ld
My next brother sat me on my steed
My youngest brother rode by my side.
Sister, from Sala’s house look forth
Feel if the wind blow south or north
If north, send word to my love, and say
Soon my soul will have flown away.
The bells are tolling in Tardets town
And every lass wears a funeral gown
Since out of the gate our sister rode
The horse she sat wore a saddle of gold.’
‘But that is wonderful!’ I cried. ‘Juan, you really are a clever boy! I could no more turn a French poem into a Spanish one than I could take wing and fly over those mountains.’
To my surprise Juan did not seem particularly impressed or gratified by my words of praise. He took them quite as a matter of course. Indeed he rather put my congratulations to one side, and treated me, instead, to a lecture on the wretched lot of girls, especially in the Basque country.
‘I know the happenings of that ballad took place long ago – if they are real at all – but girls, even of good family, are still bought and sold like cattle at a fair.’
‘I do not know any girls,’ said I, ‘save a miller’s daughter in Galicia and a blacksmith’s daughter in Llanes. And she was able to suit herself about marrying the man she loved. But it is true,’ I added, ‘that her father liked the man, too. If he had not, I suppose it might have been otherwise.’
‘If I had had a sister,’ said Juan, ‘she would have been given in marriage without her wishes being consulted at all. And she would never have been free, as we are, to ride about the world and see strange places.’
‘Unless she was married off to the king of Hungary,’ I pointed out.
He laughed. ‘Yes, that is true! But I daresay the king of Hungary was old and hideous, with breath that stank of rotten onions. And once married to him, she would have been a prisoner. I had a cousin,’ he went on, ‘who wished to become a nun. She had vowed it. But her family intended her to marry, despite her wish to enter a convent.’