(2/3) The Teeth of the Gale (25 page)

"Manuel!" she exclaimed suddenly, as if they were alone together. "Can't you forget all this wretched politics? Leave it! What is the good of it all? You will never gain your ends—whatever they are. And see what it leads to! Can't we go back? Be as we were at first—when we were happy? We
were
happy once—"

"Go back?" he repeated, in that harsh, husky voice. "Go back? After the things you did? Do you see this?" He gestured toward the grave. "Do you know what it is? Do you know who lies buried under there?"

She gaped at him in silence. She had not, up to that moment, taken in the fact that we were standing around a grave.

"Your daughter Luisa lies buried there!" he shouted at her. "Poisoned by the filthy book that you sent in with that other misbegotten brat. She is dead! And you say that we can go
back?
"

"Oh—
no
!" She let out a faint, horrified cry, dropping the fan, pressing her hand against her mouth. "No, it's not true! It can't be true! You are telling lies to frighten me—you monster!"

"You call me a monster? I don't know how you dare to show your face here." His control began to slip; he snatched up the rusty axe blade.

"Manuel—
no
!" exclaimed de Larra. He, like the rest of us, had been held, watching Conchita in absolute fascination—though I could see by the look in his queer, light luminous eyes that he loathed her and would be glad to see her blown by a gale off the face of the earth. But now he darted forward and knocked the rusty blade from Manuel's hand.

"Leave her alone, Manuel, you fool! She is not worth a straw. She is trash!"

But Don Manuel moved on toward his wife with such a look of awful, terrifying resolution upon his face—indeed he looked like the Cyclops itself, with wide nostrils and compressed lips and that one blazing eye—that she, with a faint scream, took to her heels.

"
Mama!
" wailed little Pilar. "Mama!" and scampered to intercept her mother.

"Oh, get out of my way, you wretched little changeling! Haven't you done enough harm? You were supposed to give the book to your father—not your sister—"

Conchita thrust the child aside and ran for a gap in the wall, crying, "Amador! Stop him, help me, help!"

And Don Manuel went striding after her.

At that, we were suddenly all galvanized. De Larra was first through the gap after Don Manuel, and I was close behind him, with Juana just after me, and Don Amador trailing unhappily behind us all.

Beyond the wall that encircled the keep a rough, wide slope of grass and boulders, scattered with ruined masonry, ran down to the outer bailey wall, which, on this side, was not complete. The wall, topping the cliff that surrounded the castle on three sides, had been built so as to take advantage of natural crags. And in a dozen places the masonry had crumbled, leaving the crags like teeth in a lower jaw with wide gaps between.

Down toward this wall Conchita ran at a crazy, terrified speed, stumbling and slipping among the tufty grass and brambles.

"Doña Conchita! Stop!" shouted de Larra. "We won't let him hurt you. Manuel, stop!"

"Stop!" I yelled.

"Stop!" called Juana.

Even Don Amador, somewhere far to the rear, called reedily, "My dearest! Stop, I beg you—!"

But nothing arrested her frantic flight. Floundering, tripping, snatching brief glances over her shoulder, seeing Don Manuel gain on her, Conchita only ran the faster.

Arrived at the wall, where it was only five or six feet high, but rough and ragged, crumbling on the inside, she flung herself upon it. In her dress she looked like a black lizard. Up the uneven slope of loose masonry she scrambled, and paused to look back only when she was out of her husbands reach.

De Larra had come up with Don Manuel by then and caught hold of his arm. The touch seemed to recall him to sanity; he halted, shook his head with a dazed look, and rubbed his forearm across his eyes.

"Conchita! I beg you, come down, my angel, or you will fall!" begged Don Amador. The poor fat man looked ludicrously useless, gasping and exhorting his lady as he came puffing down the slope.

Now we were all ranged in a row below her while she crouched on the broken wall above us calling out, "Do not let him touch me!"

"No one shall harm you, my precious angel!" promised Don Amador.

And then I heard little Pilars voice behind me upraised in a scream of utter terror. "
Mama!
"

She, farther up the hill, had seen—her sharp child eyes had seen—what was not so clear to us, close at hand: The whole piece of masonry, loosened by Conchita's headlong assault on it, was starting to topple outward.

With what seemed a dreamlike slowness, though it can have taken but a few seconds, she and the wall tilted away from us, describing an arc like the setting sun—then, with one harrowing, horror-stricken cry, she vanished from our view among a cataract of tumbling rock and stone.

"
Jesu
!" said de Larra.

Leaving go of Don Manuel he went gingerly to another part of the wall, a few yards to the side, and looked over. Returning, he shook his head and spread out his hands.

"Not a hope ... She is three hundred feet down, under a ton of rubble. And no particular loss to the world," he added in an undertone, but little Pilar was sobbing hysterically, "Mama—Mama—Mama—" and Juana was trying to comfort her, while Don Amador, looking utterly dazed with shock, repeated over and over, "How could you, how could you? Oh, Conchita, my dearest, how
could
you?"

I caught de Larra's eye and muttered to him, "The advice that Juana gave was good. If
they
came by the way of the tunnel, others may. Why don't you just go—now—take him away before anything else can happen. We will look after the children. Just go!" I repeated.

"Yes, you are right. Come, my friend." De Larra took Don Manuel's arm. "We can do nothing here. The
esquiladores
will be waiting, with wings to carry you over the mountains into France. Come, kiss your son good-bye and we must be off."

"Suppose they are intercepted in the tunnel?" Juana asked in a low voice.

De Larra shrugged.

"In that case Manuel will blow up everybody—them and us as well! But I think it unlikely that anyone else will come that way. It is too narrow and difficult. If a whole party of troops is expected, they will be waiting across the river for some signal from Don Amador. Well—if you hear an explosion, you will know that was the end of us." He smiled, his strange pale eyes throwing out sparks of light. "If not—then, perhaps, one day, Señor Felix, I shall see you in Madrid. Ask for Figaro ... And in that case no doubt we shall be hearing from our friend in Mexico or Argentina.
Adios!
"

And he led off Don Manuel, who went with him biddably, like a man in a trance.

The rope brought by de Larra, which had not been needed, still lay in the upstairs chamber of the keep.

While Juana, with great care, sip by sip, silently fed the unconscious boy water from a wooden cup, I busied myself cutting the rope into lengths and forming these into a net. That was a skill I had learned from my sailor friend Sam, years ago, while crossing the Gulf of Gascony on a Basque felucca. Now I thanked God for it. He is a thrifty planner; He wastes nothing, I thought.

Little Pilar huddled sorrowfully close to me, sucking her thumb, clutching the blue bead on her plaited necklace. When Don Manuel had kissed his son good-bye, he had passed her with averted face, ignoring her; and she had lacked the spirit even to call after him. I wondered if she realized, poor little wretch, the full implication of what had happened. She seemed to accept that she had no claim on Don Manuel. What if Amador also rejects her? I wondered. It is fortunate that Juana made that promise.

Because of the children's presence, Juana and I could not discuss their mother's frightfully sudden death and her previous acts; and perhaps this was just as well. No doubt time would bring charity. At that moment I could not help feeling, with Don Jose, that the world was well rid of Conchita de la Trava, who had brought death to one, perhaps two, of her children, ruin to her husband, and great unhappiness to her fat lover. Where, by the way, was Don Amador? Had he followed the other two men through the tunnel? Just as I was thinking that I ought to find out how he was occupying himself, he appeared, looking utterly wretched and lugubrious. Outside, a heavy mountain rain was falling, and sodden drenched clothes added to his generally dismal appearance.

"Why do you sit there making a net?" he demanded fretfully. "What in the world is the good of
that
?" but wandered away again without waiting for an answer. He was like a great fat bluebottle fly in a confined space, bussing and blundering. I could not help feeling sorry for him.

Letting out a great gusty sigh, he went and stood by Juana and Nico.

"It were best if the poor child dies too ... His mother gone, his father disgraced ... And suppose you bring him back to life, only to find his wits are flown?"

Juana flashed him a furious glance from her copper-dark eyes as she carefully trickled a little more water between the boy's open lips.

"We certainly dare not go through the tunnel now," Don Amador muttered, ambling back to me again.

"Oh? Why not?"

Not that I had intended to. The tunnel, de Larra had said, ran north into the Sobordan valley; it was nearly half a league in length and very narrow and slippery—only sheer necessity must have impelled Doña Conchita along it. The task of carrying Nico such a distance would be almost beyond our powers; and then we would come out a long way from where we needed to be.

"Conchita told me—Don Ignacio warned her—that, after rain, the tunnel fills with water, and one must wait a day before it drains away. There was a storm last night; now it rains again; perhaps Manuel and de Larra will never reach their journeys end."

He spoke with childish spite, and seemed almost glad of the mountain rain, lashing in through the unglazed windows.

"When is this troop of soldiery supposed to arrive from Pamplona?"

"Oh, who knows? Who knows? Maybe they will not come at all."

Don Amador sounded much less confident about the troop than he had yesterday. Perhaps, sure that their trick with the poison had worked, Conchita and he had sent a message by Pepe and Esteban to countermand the request for the troop. I wondered where the outriders were now.

"That is a pity," I remarked. "They might have helped us carry the children back to Berdun."

"Please let us not wait for the chance of their coming," said Juana. "I think we should move this poor boy as soon as we can."

"I agree," said I, and, standing up, measured the net I had made against the boy's body. "Another half hour's work should do it."

"Oh! Is Nico going down in a net?" exclaimed Pilar.

"Certainly. How else can we get him down?"

"Can I go down in the net too?"

I would have rapped out a short
No!
but Juana said thoughtfully, "You could, of course, but it seems a pity that someone so clever at climbing should not go down in the loop, like the rest of us."

That changed Pilars views at once, and I began to see that the control of this wayward little creature was an art that had to be learned.

As I worked on, Pilar, just a little cheered by the prospect of descending the cliff, said "Uncle Dor-Dor?"

"Well?"

"
Why
did you bring Mama the paste for painting the book's pages? If it was going to make Luisa mad?"

"Indeed you are quite mistaken, child," he said hastily. "I did no such thing!"

"But you brought her a little pot."

"It held ointment for her lips. Salve. Nothing at all to do with that accursed book. And perhaps it was not the book at all that killed Luisa. Maybe it was a sickness caused by hunger and cold."

Pilar looked wholly unconvinced, but he took himself off to the far end of the room and stood there with a look of great uneasiness, alternately balancing on toes and heels, until I had finished my work on the net. Then I proposed that he come with me and observe the workings of the ratchet, to which he agreed with a show of alacrity. The storm had passed over by now, and the world outside was wet and sparkling.

"I trust you do not think that I had any connection with that hideous trick of the book," he said virtuously as soon as we were out of doors. "Indeed I had not the least knowledge of it in the world. I did not know the brat was carrying it, even. For sure, that was why Conchita sent me to hunt for the tunnel in the wrong place—just to give that little demon a chance to make her way up the cliff—"

"I have had no thoughts about the matter, señor," I replied politely.

Don Amador was a weak, variable man, I thought. Harmless enough, perhaps, if left to himself, but, subject to another influence such as that of Conchita, he would be, I believed, capable of crime. His manner of speech suggested this variability. Sometimes it seemed quite sincere, as when he talked about the children last night; but at other times what he said had an airy falsity that would not deceive even an half-wit. Now he looked at me sidelong, as if wondering whether I believed him.

"She was after his money, of course," he went on.

"But I thought that Doña Conchita's family were so rich."

"Indeed they were, the old Escaroz. But they have paid out thousands and thousands of reales, assisting the cause of the Carlists."

The Carlists, I knew, were the political party most savagely opposed to Liberals such as Don Manuel and my grandfather. The Liberals wished Spain to be governed by a written constitution, for all men to be taxed equally, for all to have a vote and equal rights. King Ferdinand had promised these reforms but, once he was supported by armies from overseas, forswore all his promises and restored the old tyrannical ways. But there was yet a third party, who thought the king was not severe enough; and at their head was the king's brother, Don Carlos, a most bigoted zealot, who wished to carry oppression even further, and for no changes of any kind to be made in the laws, ever. (He also wanted the throne for himself; King Ferdinand's children were both girls, and Don Carlos claimed that, by the Salic law, they were not eligible to inherit the throne.)