by Babs Horton
It was his habit every morning before taking his breakfast of barley coffee and stale bread smeared with olive oil, to walk up the mountain track to the shrine of the Blue Madonna.
As he lifted the latch on the outside door, without warning a fierce gust of wind blew it inwards with such a force that it threw him back against the kitchen wall, knocking the breath out of him.
“Holy Moses!” He hung on to the latch with all his strength for fear of the door being ripped from its rusty hinges. He tried without success to force the door shut as the wind circled the kitchen, moaning testily, jiggling the tin pots and pans that hung on hooks embedded in the walls. Once inside the room, the wind seemed to gain in strength, a mini-hurricane setting the wooden crucifix that hung above the fireplace into slow revolutions on its rusty nail. Rosendo stared in fascination as the twisted body of Christ spun faster and faster until it blurred into a multi-armed creature, spinning like a Catherine wheel pinned to the wall.
Mother of God! This must be something to do with that nubeiro who’d been hanging round the place recently. He always brought trouble with him. The last time he’d been around, there’d been a terrible storm and in the middle of it a painting was stolen from the monastery.
Suddenly the wind dropped; spent of its fearsome force, it blew into the fire, sparking up the kindling, breathing life into the glowing embers, then heading away up the chimney, drawing the eager flames behind it.
Rosendo made the sign of the cross, steadied his breathing, then crossed the kitchen and straightened the crucifix with a trembling hand.
Tonight he’d light a blessed candle and put it in the window; that would put paid to that wily nubeiro’s tricks.
The sun was rising: a small watery ellipse dusting the mountain peaks with a soft, grey-pink flush of glimmering light. He walked towards the stable, unhooked the rope that secured the door and stepped inside. He loved the earthy primeval smell of the beasts, the sweet-smelling litter of chaff and straw, wood ash and peelings that lay in a deep carpet on the floor.
Alfredo the donkey was calmer this morning. In the night Rosendo had woken to the sound of him braying plaintively and had hurried out to check on him. It was most odd because he was such a placid creature normally, yet he’d certainly been spooked by something last night.
Now, he stamped his hooves and lifted his big head, his deep dark eyes gleaming with joy at the sight of Rosendo.
Rosendo smiled and clicked his tongue. Alfredo was as constant as the tides in his affections. He and the donkey went back a long, long way. It was more than ten years since he’d taken Alfredo in. He remembered the day quite vividly. The donkey trudging carefully up the track, the man slumped on his back, blood seeping through his shirt A handsome man, even though his face had been contorted with pain. He’d been shot and had lost a great deal of blood. The monks had taken him in, but the poor soul had lost consciousness soon afterwards and died two days later.
Alfredo, shut up in the barn, had roared and kicked and had escaped on a regular basis always to be found down at the man’s grave.
Rosendo had offered to keep the stricken beast and he had stayed with him ever since. Now, Rosendo stooped to fill the manger with chaff and barleycorn. He giggled as the donkey nuzzled his ear playfully. Rosendo stood up, scratched the space between the donkey’s ears as the beast nodded his great head, baring his old yellow teeth in pleasure. Rosendo peered over into the next stall and smiled. Dolores the pig slept soundly on as she did every morning, refusing to wake until the world was bright and the sun warm on her bristly back. If his parents had still been alive she would long ago have been turned into pig broth and black puddings, her trotters would be hanging from the hooks in the kitchen. But he hadn’t the heart to kill her even though the widow Alvarez constantly hinted that it had been a long time since they’d had a pig killing.
He left Alfredo enjoying his breakfast, and Dolores her sleep, closed the door to the stable and made his way on up the rough track.
The wind was cool and Rosendo shivered in his thin clothes. It was a strange, unsettling wind, which made goose-pimples erupt on his skin, the hairs quiver on the back of his neck; a wind that made him feel nervous and excited at the same time.
Here and there he stooped to pick a handful of the brightly coloured spring flowers that grew in abundance alongside the track and then carried on his way.
The Blue Madonna was a stone statue that had been inexpertly but lovingly, sculpted by an unknown hand many centuries before. She stood on a worm-chewed wooden plinth in a grotto that had been roughly hewn from an enormous boulder. The blue paint of the madonna’s robes was faded now and the pink of her face was cracked and flaking but Rosendo still thought she was beautiful. She had a tranquil, soft, tired smile and one eyebrow was raised as if she were about to ask a question but wasn’t sure if she should. A mark beneath her eyes reminded him of a smudged tear, the lips slightly parted as if trembling.
He had made this small pilgrimage nearly every day since he had been a little boy. It had always been the custom of the local people to nail scraps of paper to the wooden plinth, paper prayers for the sick and dying, for the departed, requests for miracles and cures, entreaties for everyday things.
When he was a boy the hamlet had been a thriving place with its own blacksmith and a small bar-cum-shop. Then, the madonna’s plinth had always been covered with paper requests. Now, only three of the houses in the hamlet were still lived in. The rest were derelict the tiles on the roofs long gone and the broken walls gradually subsiding into the rich green grass of the mountain. The families who had lived there for generations had been lured away to the larger towns to work in the new factories and canneries. Others had moved further away, down to the coast to work in the hotels and cafes that served the tourists who now came in increasing numbers each summer. There were only two other inhabitants left, the widow Paquita Alvarez, her simple-minded son Felipe and their three tortoiseshell cats. Rosendo sighed sadly. Perhaps the time had come for him to hitch Alfredo to the cart, gather his few possessions together and move away too. He was only forty-five after all; he was still strong and he had his health and most of his own teeth. There was time enough left to make a new life for himself in one of the big towns, get one of those new fancy apartments with electric lights and running water.
Pah, he spat angrily into the wind. Where would he keep a flatulent old donkey, eh? And a troublesome pig with wanderlust? Besides, who would put an eye to the others if he were to go? Someone had to gather the firewood in for the winter and take the cart down the five-mile track to the nearest village to bring back provisions. Someone had to dig them out when the heavy snows came. It was too late to think about change now; he should have been more adventurous and gone years ago.
He reached the shrine of the madonna and stooped to pick up a glass jar. He tipped out the wilting flowers and dirty water, filled the jar from the spring that gushed out from behind the rocks and put in the fresh flowers that he had picked. He placed the jar carefully at the madonna’s feet. Such dainty feet she had, delicate little toes painted the same pink as her face. She really could do with a lick of paint, though. He’d take Alfredo down to Los Olivares one day soon and try and get a good match of paint, give the old girl a good spring clean.
He kneeled down on the springy mountain grass to pray. Maybe one day soon the Holy Madonna would answer his prayers. Then things would be okay.
Rosendo clasped his calloused hands together and bowed his head. He took out his own paper prayer from his trouser pocket. The same request was written on it as always. He must have written hundreds, no thousands of them over the years. He could have written it with his eyes shut. Sticking the paper down on one of the many small rusty nails that were embedded in the wood, he made the sign of the cross and slowly rose to his feet.
Suddenly a ferocious blast of wind roared through the trees overhanging the grotto. Leaves and twigs blew down round his head, whirling in an eddy round the feet of the madonna. As the win
d tore at his paper prayer, it fluttered wildly for a second, then was ripped away from the rusty nail. It rose into the air, twirling and coiling on the lip of the wind. Rosendo reached out frantically to try and retrieve it but the wind whipped it beyond his grasp. Higher and higher it climbed on the currents of strangely perfumed air. He watched in fascination and frustration as it was carried up, up and away until it was just a small speck drifting away over the roof of the monastery high above him.
Rosendo sighed, turned on his heel and made his way back down the track, dipping his head against the rough gale. From the stable he could hear Dolores the pig, awake now, grunting and squealing impatiently for her breakfast. Rosendo shivered, shrugged, pulled his thin jacket more tightly round his body, the wind whipping his silvery hair across his face, bringing tears to his eyes.
Then he heard the noise. He stopped in his tracks, hardly able to believe his ears, and looked upwards in alarm at the monastery of Santa Eulalia. The monastery bell was ringing. The last time it had rung had to be twenty-odd years ago. Back in those days it had rung at all hours of the day and night. Now, the unfamiliar sound echoed across the mountains, a hoarse, arthritic, rasping knell.
The wind died down and the bell groaned to a stop. Rosendo shook his head in disbelief and hurried on his way. Something peculiar was afoot round these parts, that was for sure.
When Padraig awoke, Father Daley had already dressed and gone downstairs. Still slightly shaky and bewildered from his nightmare, Padraig got out of bed and hurried over to the window, eager to see daylight.
Outside, the sun was rising and a soft, pinkish glow was spreading up the valley. The air was alive with birdsong and he could smell wood smoke and strong coffee brewing.
He dressed rapidly and hurried along the corridor, thankful that the door behind which old Brother Anselm lay was now shut. He climbed down the stairs and made his way across the hall. The shutters on the windows were open and the hallway was bright with sunshine, although a fresh breeze added a chill to the air.
In the dining room Father Daley and Nancy were taking breakfast and Brother Bernardo was running to and fro bringing fruit and baskets of bread, chattering excitedly as he went.
“Morning, Padraig. Miss Carmichael, er, Nancy was just telling me that you’d had a nightmare. And a lot of help I was, sleeping right through!”
Padraig blushed. He’d thought that he’d dreamed that Miss Carmichael had stroked his head until he’d fallen back into a dream-free sleep.
“I just had a bad dream, that’s all, Father, I’m fine now.”
Nancy thought that Padraig looked a little pale this morning. Each day, though, since they’d been away from Ballygurry his features had grown a little softer; he was putting a little flesh on his bones, too. His hair was growing back very quickly, the soft dark springy curls framing his face like a cherub’s.
“Who did all these paintings?” Padraig asked with interest as Brother Bernardo came out from the kitchen.
“Ah, the big, er, bright ones,” he said pointing, “are by our own Brother Anselm. The small ones done by many different peoples who stayed here over the years. That one my favourite there. It’s by a man called Luciano. He was very good artist, came to stay here many summers, before my time of course. Luciano also made the famous statue of the little boy in Camiga.”
“The boy without his clothes?” Padraig said.
“Si, that’s the one. The one making a big piss.”
Nancy Carmichael spluttered into her coffee and blushed. Padraig tried unsuccessfully to stifle a giggle.
Padraig would have liked to meet this fellow Luciano and take some lessons from him. He could paint brilliantly, that was for sure. He remembered the awesome painting in Mr Leary’s house, the painting of the lopsided house beneath a sky where the stars were exploding fireworks. That was by Luciano too!
He looked up at the painting with total admiration. It was a picture of the monastery of Santa Eulalia by moonlight. The monastery looked almost as it had when they had arrived last night. There were even swathes of mist painted round the turrets. All the windows of the monastery were in darkness except for one. The one where Padraig and Father Daley were sleeping!
Padraig left his seat and got right up close to the painting. There was a small figure in the lighted window, someone leaning out into the night. A child staring up towards the sky that blazed with stars. It looked like someone had added the little boy as an afterthought.
In the bottom left-hand corner of the painting a shaft of moonlight illuminated the statue of the Blue Madonna. He could even see a few paper prayer requests at her feet. Moonlight caught the whites of the virgin’s eyes. Padraig scratched his head; although the perspective of the painting was perfect the colours great; there was something that didn’t ring true, but as hard as he stared he couldn’t work out quite what was wrong.
He looked next at Brother Anselm’s paintings. Bloody hell, they were awful. All thick swirls and splodges the way a bored child might paint trying to cover the paper as quickly as possible and then get on with something they found more interesting. Padraig didn’t think much of Brother Anselm’s artistic talent.
“Brother Bernardo,” he asked, “there’s a mark on the wall there as if a painting had once hung there.”
“Ah, yes, very, very sad. About ten years ago it was stolen away in the night by a thief.”
“Was it one of that Luciano’s paintings?”
“No, it was one of Brother Anselm’s.”
Padraig’s eyebrows rose involuntarily and he wondered who in their right mind would have taken Brother Anselm’s painting when they could have taken Luciano’s.
“Did they ever catch the thief?”
“No. The police they talked to old Muli, an odd little fellow, who was hanging around at the time but they had to let him go.”
“Was it ever found?”
“No.”
After a breakfast of fresh eggs cooked in oil, chunks of crusty bread and steaming bowls of coffee, the three pilgrims and Brother Bernardo stepped outside into the courtyard.
A few monks came ambling out of a barn carrying an assortment of ancient gardening tools. They looked so decrepit and frail that a puff of wind could have lifted them off the ground and blown them to kingdom come.
As if to prove the point, a hearty gust of wind swept round the courtyard sending the hens into a frenzied scuttle towards the cover of the barn. The old monks wobbled dangerously on drumstick legs and Nancy held on tightly to her skirts.
Suddenly a bell began to clang up in the tower. Brother Bernardo sucked in his breath with a bronchial whistling sound. The old monks stopped in their tracks and a hoe clattered noisily to the ground. The monks crossed themselves, then began to chatter and hug each other while the Ballygurry pilgrims looked on bemused.
“Mother of God! You see!” said Brother Bernardo grinning from ear to ear. “You pilgrims are a good omen for Santa Eulalia. The bells! They were all rusted up; they have not rung in twenty years! It is an omen. I feel it in my old bones!”
In the Villa Castelo, Brother Francisco looked down at the old woman who lay in the four-poster bed and shuddered. He felt cold to his very core despite the warmth of the afternoon.
Even close to death, Isabella Martinez still had that hard cruel smile impressed on her pale tight lips, and her eyes retained that wary watchfulness he remembered from his childhood. She held her blue-veined hand out towards him but he could not, would not, take it. He made the sign of the cross and turned his face away from her.
As he opened the door and stepped into the coolness of the corridor an old peasant woman shuffled past him into the room, looking up at him with lively inquisitive eyes. She was old but she had a peculiar air of great energy about her. She wore a faded brown dress and down-at-heel shoes, and on her head a green beret was pulled down tightly over her ears giving her a comical look.
He stepped back fearfully when he saw the look of peculiar triumph on her wrinkl
ed face as she looked down at Isabella in the bed. She had a look of undisguised glee that was quite out of place in a deathbed scene.
The old woman looked back at him, scrutinized his face carefully. She spoke eagerly.
“She has made a confession to you, yes?”
Brother Francisco nodded.
“It’s my time now to speak with her. I’ve waited long enough and death will not deprive me of this pleasure.”
Brother Francisco looked down for the last time at Isabella Martinez. She lay quite still, eyes closed as the old peasant woman approached the bed. Then she rallied for a moment, her eyelids flickering, then opening wide as if startled.
The old woman bent her head closer until she was almost face to face with Isabella, who stiffened visibly, her eyes bright with terror. Her mouth moved and she whispered something hoarsely that Brother Francisco could not make out.
“Yes, Isabella, it is me. The past cannot be held at bay for ever.”
Brother Francisco turned away and closed the door softly. He thought sadly that a lot of people might have a score to settle with Isabella Martinez.
He had already made up his mind not to stay a moment longer at the Villa Castelo. He had listened to her confession and he knew that Isabella couldn’t possibly last more than a day or two. He wanted to get out of there as soon as possible and back to the peace of Santa Eulalia.
People were already arriving at the villa to visit Isabella in her last hours. There were villagers and workers from the estate, all come no doubt out of frightened respect. None of her closest family had arrived. Isabella, it seemed, was to be a very lonely woman in death.
“Is Piadora coming to the funeral?” he’d asked Carlos Emanuel.
“No, Brother. I have spoken with Isabella’s only sister, Augusta. Piadora, it appears, has gone, left abandoned her poor old aunt without a word. Augusta is on her way here now. By the terms of the will, as the next eldest she will inherit everything. She will be a very rich woman that one, a good catch for any man.”