Bridle the Wind

by Joan Aiken

  The hermit moved his head weakly in denial.

  ‘A needle has power in the fingers of a sempstress, a pick in the hands of a miner. Who sent you here to me in my last hour? Never fear, child, when it is needed, the power will be sent you. Now, let me be still in my last minutes, and help me with your thoughts, for I am about to take leave of this world.’ And he lay back on his pillow of leaves and closed his eyes, though his lips still moved in rapid prayer.

  Outside the storm continued to rage; through one tiny high-up window in the massive stone wall, the blue-white glare of lightning could be seen at intervals, followed by a crash of thunder each time, as if rocks were raining down on the roof. I thanked God in my heart for finding us this place of shelter, for saving us yet again; and apologised to Him for my cowardice and distrust.

  Juan knelt on the rock floor, and when he made a slight gesture to me with his head, I managed to hoist myself onto my knees.

  ‘Oh, Father in heaven,’ I prayed, ‘look after this poor man. No doubt he did do a very dreadful thing in pushing that girl off the cliff and spoiling three lives; but, as You can see, he is now truly sorry for what he did, and, as Juan said, a great many years have passed and he is a different person from the wild young character who lost his temper. I think perhaps You should not blame him for the deed of a much younger man. But You do not need me to teach You Your business, I am sure!’

  And, clear inside my head, despite the turbulence of the storm outside, came the laughing voice of God. ‘Let not your heart be troubled, Felix. I will take up this poor piece of human wreckage. He shall be made as new.’

  Not long after, by an extra brilliant flash of lightning, we saw that the hermit’s, prediction about himself was correct; he had fallen back dead on his pillow of leaves, with open mouth and staring eyes.

  With gentle care Juan closed the open eyes and mouth, composed the bony hands so that they lay folded over the rosary on his chest, then said a quick prayer, kneeling by the corpse.

  He had just risen to his feet, and was about to address some remark to me, when the door burst open.

  A searing flash of lightning illuminated the figure who stood there. It was Father Vespasian, with a hand on either lintel, leaning forward, as if about to throw himself upon us. Words fail me to describe the horror of the dreadful mask which formed his face – so white, creased, puffed, dead – yet with its eyes fixed on us, burning like coals.

  ‘Now! he cried out. ‘Now, you must tell me – !’

  The mouth in the face did not move as he spoke; the words came out, as from a hole in a mask, spoken by the actor behind. And they came in a roar, like that of the wind.

  I could see that Juan, half risen, was wholly petrified by terror. He glanced round, desperate, as if trying to recollect what it was he had to do. I myself was in no better case; I crouched down, like a coney in its burrow, expecting the jaws to open and crush me.

  But a strangely long silence followed, and, venturing to look up, I saw that Father Vespasian’s eyes were now fixed, not on us, but on the corpse of Brother Laurent. A long, keening, babbling wail came from that open mouth: ‘Ahhhhh-h-h-h!’ like the air from a pricked bladder; then suddenly he turned, vanished from the doorway, and was gone. Could we hear his shriek diminishing in the distance? Or was it merely the voice of the storm?

  ‘You should’ – I gulped, after a while finding my voice – ‘you should have given him the spyglass.’

  ‘You think I could remember such a thing at such a time?’ But after a moment Juan added despondently. ‘Yes, you are right. I should have done so. Now it is all to do again….’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we had better snatch some sleep while we can. I do not think he will come back here,’ remembering Father Vespasian’s hatred of any dead thing.

  So we huddled together on the heap of mouldy cloth.

  ‘Gab-boon, Felix.’

  ‘Gab-boon, Juan.’ And I added, remembering his rhyme, If I die before I wake, You can have the birthday cake!’

  ‘You are not going to die this time, Felix,’ said Juan. ‘You are going to get better.’ And despite the horror of all that had happened, there was something of a smile in his voice.

  Exhausted though we were, we could not sleep for long. The storm abated, but then came back, even wilder and louder; daylight of a sort presently lit the hut with pale grey, but the rain did not diminish, the thunder reverberated, and lightning every now and then shattered the gloom.

  ‘This is no place to remain,’ said Juan at length. ‘Let us bury that poor man and be on our way.’

  In the rude lean-to at the side where he had stabled our ponies, we found a few tools: a pick, a spade, and a saw. We fed and saddled the ponies, then carried out the tools and began trying to dig a grave in a grassy patch beyond the track, the only spot in that rocky pass where there seemed a chance that the ground would be soft enough to dig.

  My right arm was still too stiff and sore to wield the pick, so I was working with the spade, while Juan hacked away somewhat ineffectually with the pick, where there came the most vivid and blinding flash that we had yet seen, causing us both to cry out, drop our tools, and cover our eyes. That was followed by such a shattering clap of thunder that we involuntarily clung together, still with our eyes closed, expecting imminent extinction.

  ‘Are we still alive, Felix?’ faltered Juan doubtfully, after a moment or two.

  ‘I – I believe so.’ Warily I opened my eyes, wondering if I had been struck blind, then shook my head with astonishment, stared, and stared again. Where the hermit’s stone hut had stood, there was now nothing but a battered, blackened, smoking ruin.

  ‘Ave Maria!’ I whispered, crossing myself. ‘I think God has done our business for us, Juan. We have no need to bury Brother Laurent.’

  Juan opened his eyes, gasped, and crossed himself likewise. Then he suddenly called out in a lamentable voice, ‘The Harlequin! Oh, my poor pony!’

  He had already led out el Demonio, with the tools on his back, and tethered him to a pine tree, but the unfortunate Harlequin had remained inside the lean-to, and was now burned to a crisp, along with the body of Brother Laurent.

  ‘Oh, poor, poor Harlequin!’ said Juan, and burst into uncontrollable weeping. ‘Oh, why, why did he have to die? Why did God have to kill him?’

  I had no answer to his question, and could only try to comfort him as best I could.

  ‘At least he suffered nothing, it must have been over in a second. Come, Juan, you have been brave for two of us during the last day; do not give way now! I am surprised to see you show such grief for a mere pony. Be a man! You shall have another as soon as we find a horse fair.’

  ‘He was not a mere pony!’ wept Juan. ‘He was cowardly and lazy, and I loved him.’

  What could I say? I remembered how I felt when I had to leave a bad-tempered mule behind in a convent in Santander; and I let Juan have his cry out, while I transferred the contents of his alforjas (which, luckily, he had already brought from the shelter) into those of the Demon, rolled up the bags, and tied them to my saddle. My hand was sore, but usable, and the swelling was going down.

  While doing these things I chanced to pass close to a seared, blackened hunk of stone which had previously, I recalled, been placed across the lintel of the hermit’s doorway. There were Latin words carved upon it: SIT TIBI TERRA LEVIS, from which I guessed that the building had once formed a tomb for some Roman; now, once more, it would be a tomb, for a troubled man and a lazy pony.

  Slipping Father Vespasian’s brass spyglass into the saddlebag, I wondered what would have ensued if it had been left inside the shelter when the lightning struck; would our demon have ceased to follow us? Or would he, once the glass was destroyed, have followed us forevermore? I did not speak of this to Juan; he was too distressed over the death of his dear pottoka.

  We were glad to leave that spot and continue onward down the pass. At first Juan wished me to ride and he to walk; but I insisted on our taking turn
about.

  By degrees the storm moved away southward to expend the last of its fury over Navarra, the clouds rolled back, and now, all of a sudden, we were given a magnificent view of the land rolling downward away from us to the south. What a contrast to the steep green French valleys! Now I knew that I was in my own country again; that, during our miserable night journey, we had crossed at some point from France into Spain. Far, far away the land stretched, with mountains rising in the distance; a bare land this, different from France, parched and dry-looking. Yet close at hand below us were forests; great beech woods wrapped the sides of mountains.

  After an hour’s travelling we met a boy with a yoke of oxen, and I was confirmed in my certainty, for the fly shield they wore over their eyes was made of sheepskin, whereas those in France habitually wear one of cloth.

  ‘Now, I daresay we shall not be long in finding your uncle,’ I said to Juan, and he gave me a strange look, as if we had been too long in a world of our own to have confidence in ever again discovering the real one.

  Presently the mist came down again, for I suppose the sun was sucking up moisture from the soaked mountain slopes, and we must go carefully and cannily, listening to the drip of the trees and the distant roar of a torrent, now on one side of the track, now on the other. From time to time the mist would lift for a few moments, and we could get a glimpse of great aisles in the woods, and huge trees.

  Sometime after noon we reached a village named Ustarroz, where we were able to purchase food, but no mounts were to be had. Go on to Och-agavía, they told us. We, however, by that time were desperately tired, and turned aside from the track to sleep on a pile of hay in a great many-arched barn where the shade was deep and none came to disturb us.

  7

  We arrive at Pamplona; the message from Uncle León; the forest; what happened in the forest

  We travelled soberly westward from Ustarroz, on a little road that wound along a mountain valley, with great views of peaks to our right and, later, to our left also; we could not achieve a rapid pace, for both of us were still desperately weary and I a touch feverish, still, from my snakebite. So, as evening fell before we had found any place large enough to have ponies or mules for sale, we turned aside and slept under the roots of a great fallen pine. The mountains were much forested here, especially on our right hand; Juan told me this must be the edge of the great Forest of Irati, or Iraty, as the French spell it, where the little friendly laminak are reputed to dwell.

  ‘Not so friendly to the Gente, however,’ I said, laughing.

  ‘Whatever in the world, Juan, gave you the notion of letting out that yell in the gorge, when Cocher was about to stop us? But for that shout of yours, I believe that we should be there still. And God Himself only knows what would have happened to us by now.’

  ‘What gave me the idea? Why, you did, yourself!’ said Juan. ‘Don’t you remember? You said, “The laminak are waiting to help us.…”’

  ‘Did I? I have no recollection of that at all.’

  ‘Felix,’ said Juan. ‘I have been thinking, as we came along. That day… it seems long ago now … I was angry with you, when you took me to task for stealing Father Vespasian’s spyglass -and the other things; I thought it was arrogant of you, and priggish, too, to make such a to-do about a few unimportant trifles; yet see what trouble it has led to. So you were right, I think, and I was wrong.’

  ‘Yet it was arrogant of me,’ said I. ‘I see now very plainly that I should have said it all in a different way. Also – who knows? – your taking Father Vespasian’s spyglass – for all we can tell, that may have been part of the plan?’

  ‘I wanted to take it,’ said Juan obstinately. He drew it out of the saddlebag, handling it as if it might be red-hot, and we both stared at it with a certain dread. Yet it was no more than a tarnished little brass object. Turning it in my hands I observed the letters v.s., very tiny, incised on the rim. The maker’s initials, no doubt.

  ‘How I wish I had never laid eyes on it! Yet perhaps,’ said Juan hopefully, ‘the Gente and that – that creature will stop following us, now that we are in Spain.’

  I, secretly, had been entertaining the same thought, which was not, perhaps, a very logical one.

  ‘There is another thing I have had in my mind,’ Juan went on. ‘It is no great distance from where we are now to Pamplona, to the house of my uncle. Eight leagues, perhaps? Not more. Why should you come any farther with me, Felix? I can manage the rest alone, very well. You should be travelling westward, not south.’

  ‘What, leave you now?’ I said. ‘Are you mad? Alone, and on foot, and with no certainty that your uncle is there? Put that thought out of your head!’

  ‘Well, at least,’ he said, ‘it would be wasteful to buy another pony or mule for that distance. We can walk it, turn about, as we did today.’

  His tone was wistful. What a singular thing, thought I, as I had often before, that this boy, son of a moneyed family (for, though he had not said as much, everything about him, including his abduction by the Gente, suggested this) – how singular that he should not ever have had a horse or pony of his own! Though I had been unloved in my grandfather’s house, and continually rebuked, and held to be of no account, yet it was taken for granted that, from the age of eight or so on, I should have my own riding horse; my grandfather would have considered it a slight on the dignity of the house were I seen riding abroad on some insignificant animal. Yet Juan, though he could ride, and ride well, had never, before the unlucky Harlequin, possessed a pony. No wonder he was so attached to it, and grieved when it was killed.

  ‘Well, I still think that we should purchase another pony,’ said I. ‘Who knows? Perhaps your uncle may have moved elsewhere from Pamplona; perhaps that is why the letter never reached him. Pamplona may not be the end of our journey.’

  ‘That is true. I had not considered that.’ Juan’s tone suddenly became more cheerful. ‘And after all, he can buy it from you, Felix; you will be certain to get your money back.’

  ‘Stop troubling your head about my money! There still remains enough to get you to your uncle’s house and myself back home.’

  No demon came to trouble our sleep that night. We slept lightly, having rested during the day, rose before daylight, and made our way onward to Burguete, a large, pleasant village of white-faced houses on a southward-facing slope of mountain; there was no market that day, but from a farmer here we were able to purchase a mule, with its harness; he asked nine shillings but I beat him down to three silver crowns. The mule was a humble, docile beast, well content to follow wherever el Demonio led the way.

  ‘It will do very well,’ said Juan, sighing. ‘But I shall never love it as I loved the Harlequin; never.’

  ‘You have a faithful heart, Juan!’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ said he. ‘Once I give my friendship, it is given for life. Provided the other person does not play me false, like old Anniq.’

  The road down from Burguete to Pamplona is long and winding, and the hills are steep zigzags, so that el Demonio and the mule (whom Juan christened Rosa) were continually slipping on the rocky track and our saddles almost sliding forward over their shoulders. We rode slowly enough. My heart was cheered to see the round haystacks of Spain, and to hear words of Spanish coming into the language of the greetings we had from wayside folk.

  The brooks roared down beside us, full to overflowing after the storm of two nights ago, and we saw many uprooted trees. The pastures here, filled with mouse-coloured grazing cattle, were green and lush; not like the high plains of Spain farther on, where never a drop of rain falls from March to October.

  Pamplona is a handsome city, situated on a high bluff in a ring of mountains. It has noble walls, and a great viaduct of a hundred arches.

  Yet I remember the place with sadness, and would never wish to go back.

  As we drew near the city I observed that Juan, too, had fallen silent and had begun to appear more and more downcast. I myself had little to say. My arm still pain
ed me, and the town seemed so grand and prosperous when we approached it, with carriages and cavaliers going in and out, that I began to think what a shabby and ragamuffin appearance Juan and I must present, for our clothes, though purchased not so long ago, had become dusty with travel and stained with drenching. Juan was still sparrow-thin and large-eyed, while I was pale from my recent fever.

  Suppose Juan’s uncle was some great man of the city?

  ‘Felix,’ said Juan, as we crossed the bridge over the River Arga and rode in at the city gate. He was paler than ever, and seemed to speak with difficulty. ‘Felix, I – I believe it will be best if we part here. You should not be held back any longer from your journey to your grandfather. And I remember how to find my uncle’s house – I shall do very well by myself from now on.’

  He sounded hurried, strange; almost ungracious. ‘I have taken up too much of your time as it is,’ he went on. ‘Also you must see that – that so long as the Gente and Father Vespasian are on my trail, I shall only bring danger on you. But, once away from me, you will be safe. Therefore – therefore I wish that we shall say good-bye to each other now – here. I know, I am certain, that my uncle will most p-punctiliously defray all the costs that you have been put to on my behalf. I – I will ask him to send all moneys that are owing to your grandfather at Villaverde. So – so farewell, now, Felix, my good friend. Adieu. Adios.’

  He had flushed up somewhat while making this long speech, and now held out his hand, which trembled; I could see that he was holding himself very rigid.

  ‘Come, what is this?’ said I. ‘Are you mad? Part here? Like this? In the street of a strange town? Do you think that I would let you go in such a way, without ensuring that you are among friends? Without entrusting you to some good guardian? When the Gente and that evil demon are still pursuing you – so far as we know to the contrary? And without even being sure that your uncle is here – or able – or willing to receive you?’