(2/3) The Teeth of the Gale (16 page)

"That is how they dispose of their refuse," Conchita said laughing. "Is it not ingenious? They just toss down there anything that is not wanted. Though I fear that in summer, townsfolk who have windows facing this way may have to keep them closed!"

I made appropriate comments, wondering what could be the matter with Juana.

Conchita noticed her silence, too, and became solicitous.

"Are you tired, my love? It is such a change for you, from convent life, all this travel, all this to-and-fro; I feel that I am imposing on you shamefully, you and your good, kind companion; how you must long for your peaceful cells! Poor dear Juana! Never mind, let us hope that it may not be many more days. If only our clever Felix can, perhaps tomorrow, find my hateful husband and remove the children from him—then we can all be at rest..."

So she rattled on until they reached the door of the posada.

"Will you not come in, dear Señor Felix, and dine with us?"

No, I said, I was tired and would take the opportunity of an early night; that way we could start at cockcrow tomorrow.

"Cockcrow?" said Conchita with a little shriek. "Oh, not quite at cockcrow, dearest Señor Felix. Say, half past eight?"

In the end the hour of eight o'clock was fixed on.

All this time Juana had not uttered a word, and she disappeared into the posada without bidding me good night.

Feeling sore and puzzled and ill-used, I made my way to my own albergue.

N
EXT
morning, long before cockcrow,
I
was up and inspecting the open carriage that Don Ignacio had procured for his sister-in-law. It seemed sound enough, though shabby and of rustic design. Old Tomas, who had spent the night with his suffering horses and was up early fomenting them, agreed dourly that he supposed it would do well enough to carry the Doña on a mountain road where nobody could see them. "Though what Señor Escaroz would say!" The mules that had been found to draw the equipage were lean, haggard animals not much larger than ponies, but clean-legged and bright-eyed. I wished Pedro were there to inspect them, but concluded they would do their work sufficiently well. Having surveyed the whole turnout I went back to the albergue, loaded a pack for myself, and then walked round to the ladies' posada and asked the waiting-girl for Sister Belen.

The good sister came down directly, thinking, I daresay, that some sick person was asking for her. When she saw me she smiled and said, "Why, it is our young Señor Amarillo!" which she had taken to calling me, I suppose because of my yellow hair.

"Good morning, Sister Belen. I want you to do me a kindness."

"With all my heart. What is it?"

"I want you to accept, and persuade Sister Felicita to accept, these things, which I bought in Pamplona. You are going today into high mountains and the weather has worsened"—which was true: A sharp wind blew, combined with a fine, penetrating rain. "Your habits are not warm enough to protect you here."

She took the bundles, which consisted of a dark-blue baize riding habit and a hooded cape of the same warm material for each of the nuns, and two pairs of riding boots made from supple Cordoba leather.

"
Vaya, vaya!
" she exclaimed in astonishment. "What forethought! What good sense! You will make a fine, considering husband some day. But how in the world did you guess the size of our feet—?" trying one of the boots against her own sandaled foot, which was broad and sturdy, almost as wide as it was long.

"Oh, that was easy. Do you remember the muddy road outside the posada at Irurzun? I measured your footprints after you had each walked out to the carriage."

At that she laughed immensely. "Wicked boy—what a planner, what a plotter! I do not know what Sister Felicita will say."

"You will persuade her to accept them, won't you, Sister Belen?" I asked anxiously. "Pray do! For I fear she is displeased with me, and indeed I don't know why."

To my surprise Sister Belen gave me five or six quick little pats on the shoulder.

"I am sure it is no fault of yours at all. It is some idle thing Doña Conchita said to her. Don't let yourself be troubled about it. Whatever it is can be of but slight importance."

Then she bustled off with the bundles.

When we finally assembled outside the main town gate—Doña Conchita late as usual—and she turned to survey the conveyance that had been procured for the ladies, the whole excursion nearly came to a halt then and there.

"Ride in
that
?" she shrieked. "Why not simply carry us in a lobster pot?"

It did bear a certain resemblance to a lobster pot, being a
tartana,
a kind of country vehicle often used in Aragon. We had seen them along the way. It was a two-wheeled, oblong conveyance, not large, drawn by two mules, the main feature of it being that the floor is woven from a rope network. This makes it light for hilly country, and also easily repaired.

"I am
not
going to sit with my legs dangling through that net," objected Conchita. "Why, it almost touches the ground. We should be scraped to death."

I noticed that, today, she had left off her velvet slippers and wore a pair of net little buttoned boots which peeped demurely out from below her black silk skirts; but they looked hardly more suitable for mountain walking than the slippers had been.

"Why, then," calmly said Juana, who was going to do the driving—Tomas had insisted on remaining with his master's horses—"why, then, you will have to sit with me on the box."

"Must I? Oh—very well. What Papa would say if he knew. Those are certainly the sorriest, scraggiest beasts I ever did see—"

"Where is Sister Belen?" I asked in surprise, as they seemed preparing to set off without her.

"Our good Sister Belen is not coming today," Conchita told me, settling herself with her many wraps and cushions, and clucks of distaste for her situation, as she took her seat alongside Juana. "Belen finds there are such a great number of sick persons in Berdun that she says her day will be better spent there—and who would argue with her choice in such horrible weather? Brrr!"

She contrived to make it sound as if Sister Belen were taking the day's holiday out of laziness because she did not want the discomfort of a trip into the mountains, which I felt very sure was not the case.

Juana quietly climbed to the driver's seat and took the reins. To my joy she was wearing the clothes I had bought; they fitted her well. Conchita was jocose about them.

"You are a most gallant caballero, Señor Felix, to have bought our friends those elegant habits.
Ay, de mi!
Our little Juana looks like a princess today, does she not? What would the Reverend Mother say, I wonder?"

Juana's eye met mine. She was red with anger. I could see that for two pins she would return to the posada, tear off the new warm clothes, and put on her old white habit. I rolled my eyes imploringly, looking like a clown, I daresay; she gave a small reluctant shrug, flicked the mules sharply with the reins, and set them in motion. Pepe and Esteban were astride their beasts already; I sprang on mine and followed the cavalcade along the straight road eastward.

For many miles we rode in silence. The mountains to north and south were veiled in mist. Juana and Conchita had nothing to say to one another, and, wishing to avoid being drawn into idle conversation by the latter, I took care to stay twenty paces to the rear of the tartana, allowing Pepe and Esteban to lead the way. In this formation we proceeded to Puenta de la Reina, and there turned north, up into the foothills. All the way we met with very few passersby, apart from an occasional shepherd and flock of goats.

About an hour after noon we reached the small mountain village of San Quilez, where Pedro had promised to meet us. It was no more than a handful of rough stone houses, clustered about a church. A small, swift rocky brook divided the houses; a high-arched bridge joined the two sections. Perched on a spur of the northern foothills, San (Quilez should have commanded a great view of the Aragon valley, but the mist cloaked everything; the houses were no more than gray shapes, and only a kind of shadowy darkness up above indicated the near presence of craggy mountains towering over the slate roofs and granite chimneys (each with a carved beast perched on top).

"Those are to prevent demons coming down the chimney," Juana coldly informed me. She had hopped out of the tartana and tethered the mules to a holly tree. I was glad to see that her anger was abating, or forgotten, or set on one side. She seemed calm, remote, and unapproachable.

"I'd have expected devils to go
up
chimneys, not down them," I said, thinking of the creature that escaped me up the chimney of Don Ignacio's house.

Conchita joined us, a faint cloud on her exquisite brow.

"Was not Pedro supposed to meet us here?"

Her tone suggested that it was remiss of us to be standing about making foolish conversation while her affairs were neglected.

"He was, señora, but I see no sign of him. That place over there might be an albergue—shall we see if they can provide us with any food while we wait?"

A house by the church, rather larger than the others, seemed to combine the function of inn and bakery; women came and went from it with. trays of loaves, baked and unbaked; I walked inside and found a stone-floored room with a fire, also a great barrel of red wine from which all customers were served in wooden cups.

"The señora says that she can make you an omelette," I reported, returning to Conchita. With a faint moue of distaste at the darkness and discomfort of the place, she entered and sat on a stool. Pepe and Esteban followed and were served with mugs of wine.

"Pay the score and keep Conchita contented," I murmured to Juana, pushing a fistful of coins into her hand. "I'll be back as soon as I can—" and I slipped away through a back door. For, while gazing at the chimneys and their carved guardians, I had caught a glimpse of bright red up on the hillside, among the misty trees by the brook. Pedro had a red handkerchief; I had seen it a hundred times.

Sure enough, when I had crossed over the bridge and followed a goat-trodden footpath along the stream, up into the wood, I found Pedro, leaning against a tree.

"Took you long enough to get here," he said.

"Well! What is all this hide-and-seek about?"

"Matters are complicated."

"As if I hadn't guessed that. Did you find—?"

"Hush! Trees have ears."

Pedro looked about. A dozen yards upstream there was a four-foot waterfall in the brook, with a flat-topped rock above it in the middle of the water. "Let us sit on there," said Pedro. So we perched on the rock, where the sound of rushing water would drown our voices.

Then he said, "Yes! We found him! Jose de Larra was right in his guess. Don Manuel has taken refuge in the ruined castle up there. Castillo de Acher, it is called." He nodded backward toward where the mountains ought to have been.

"Did you see him? Speak to him?"

"I saw him. You can't speak, it is too high. De Larra sent him up a note."

"Sent? Who took the note?"

"He has a rope. He lowers it, with a basket."

"Ay,
Dios!
Where is he, then, in an eagle's aerie?"

"Not unlike." Pedro described the Castillo de Acher. "It is up on top of a crag, two hundred feet above the forest."

"But there must be a road up."

"Not anymore. Don Manuel blew it up."

"How did he come by enough gunpowder, in heaven's name?"

Don Manuel had known of kegs of gunpowder hidden there, left over from the French wars, Pedro said. The
castillo
had once been strongly fortified; but the French had, as it happened, never advanced that way, so the stores of arms were never used.

"Now, in consequence, he is well armed. And having blown a great hole out of the road, all he has to do is sit up in his turret and pick off anybody foolhardy enough to go up and try to bridge the gap."

"How did de Larra know about the place?"

"It seems when they were boys together they used to explore the ruins, and once planned such a scheme. They had even arranged a signal: When two shots were fired at the foot of the crag, a basket would be lowered. De Larra remembered it, and so did Manuel."

"So you went there and de Larra fired two shots?"

"We did; and presently, sure enough, down came a basket on the end of a cord. De Larra put in his seal, and a note he had written. Then, by and by, up there looking over the battlements, we see our fine gentleman; and the two little ones."

"Two? Where was the third?"

Pedro shrugged. "Maybe not tall enough to see over. But no—now I recall—when Señor de Larra had made his offer, of help and escort into France, and then on to Mexico or Ecuador—he explained that other provision would be made for the three little ones, in Spain; and then Don Manuel told him that there were only two."

"How very strange! What can have become of the third?"

"Fell over the cliff, maybe," said Pedro indifferently.

Putting aside this problem for later consideration, I said, "But did Don Manuel
agree
to his friend's plan? What was the outcome?"

"It all had to be carried on slowly and laboriously by notes. You cannot hold a conversation up and down two hundred feet of cliff. Back and forth went the basket, and in the end the rope broke—it was only a villainous old raveled bit of hempen cord which had probably been lying about in the damp ruins for twenty years—so de Larra said he would go off and procure more rope, also some food, for they were running short—"

"
We
have rope—"

"Well, I know, but I thought it would do no harm. And by the time he returned, Don Manuel promised to have reached a decision on the matter."

"But if he decide:; not to accept his friend's offer? What then?"

Pedro said, "He will never, never allow himself to be recaptured. He said so. He said, sooner than that, he will jump off the battlements and take the children with him."

"Heaven forbid! Did he seem mad, Pedro?"

"Not in the least mad," answered Pedro, shaking his head. "Of course one could not see his features at such a distance; but what he wrote to his friend was perfectly sensible."