Bridle the Wind (15 page)

‘Now we climb,' I said to Juan. For I had seen a capital lookout perch three quarters of the way
up the cliff, a small natural platform where a birch tree grew and spread its roots into a fan; if we could get up there we should be able to lie in safety, unobserved, and see all who came to the cave entrance.

‘Climb?
Why?' Juan demanded in a pettish whisper. ‘Why not simply wait here at the grotto entrance?'

‘It is too early. Strangers might come by. Come, I will help you up. Take my hand.'

‘No – no! I can manage very well by myself,' he snapped. But he followed me with exasperating slowness, continually pausing to look round; I could have cuffed him for his sulky lack of compliance, and several times had to restrain the impulse to take his wrist and pull him along by force.

We had to take a circle round, climbing the slope farther away from the cliff, where it was easier, and then making our way along a goat or coney track which led downward across the face of the hill towards my birch tree. The last portion of this way consisted of nothing more than a few rock steps over the sheer cliff, and there Juan did permit me to aid him by holding his wrist and encouraging him from one step to the next. By the time that we were established in our natural balcony I noticed that his brow was shiny with beads of sweat.

‘I do not like looking down from a steep height; it makes me queasy,' he said, swallowing, and I felt impatience mixed with pity.

‘What in the world is the point of coming up here?' he added irritably after a minute or two. ‘It appears to
me
that there is no reason for it at all, except to show off your cleverness at climbing.'

‘Oh, hush! If you are hungry, why do you not have another bit of bread sopped in milk?' I felt sure that Father Pierre would scold me for dragging the poor boy up here.

We had finished the cold omelette before leaving, but brought the bread and milk with us. Juan followed my advice eagerly, and then even slept a little; we were very snugly established among the roots of the birch tree, like birds in a nest, so there was no possibility of his falling. But I remained awake, lying quite still, with my chin on my arms, looking out, watching for movement among the scrub of small oak trees down below. It was still two hours, at least, before the time named by old Pierre for our rendezvous, so my expectations were not immediate.

But in the end they were rewarded.

Four men stole into the clearing by the pool. Two of them I recognised; two were strangers. And none of them was old Pierre.

Very gently I awoke Juan by touching him behind the ear. I had heard this to be a capital way of rousing somebody without startling him, and so it proved. His dark-brown eyes flew open, gazing straight into mine, and I laid a finger on his lips to ordain silence, and pointed downward without speaking. His eyes followed the direction of my finger, and he drew breath in a silent gasp of fright
as he saw Cocher, the white-headed man; Plumet, the ex-cripple, apparently recovered from his seizure; and two others, all softly conferring together and looking vigilantly about them. It was not hard to guess that the third and fourth men were also members of the troop.

‘Bazin and Michelet,' Juan whispered. I could feel him trembling against my shoulder.

But Plumet had undergone a singular and terrifying change since the previous day and his pretended ‘healing' at the hands of Father Vespasian.

Overnight his face, which had (once the painted sores were rubbed away) been a healthy, ruddy, weather-beaten tan – his face was now deathly white, like the belly of a fish, and all creased and seamed, every which way, as would be a piece of crumpled muslin that had been pressed under a heavy weight. He moved jerkily, as birds do, in a series of small, sharp movements. There was something disagreeably unnatural about the motion. The distance was too great for me to see his eyes, but I noticed that the other men regarded him with a kind of awe mixed with repugnance, instantly obeying his commands but avoiding any contact with him. Cocher, I noticed, even took pains not to tread on his shadow.

Where, I wondered, was Gueule, the midget, who had been with him on the shore?

Presently old Pierre limped into view, and I heard Juan snatch his breath in a hiss of distress when the old man, without any hesitation, saluted the
four brigands as he might friends or neighbours (though I noticed him give Plumet an inquisitive puzzled glance and then quickly edge away). Now they all, in lowered tones and with much and expressive gesture, evidently were laying out a plan of action.

Pierre sat himself down on a boulder in the cave mouth, measuring with a glance the setting sun's distance from the shoulder of the hill, which would shortly cut it off from our view. Plumet and Cocher withdrew among the oak trees to our left, but did not go far; sometimes I could catch the glint of the knife which Cocher wore unsheathed at his belt. The other two men concealed themselves in a great growth of ivy almost directly below where we were perched, and I could hear them conversing in confidential mutters. Not all, but some, of what they said came up to me.

First there was some reference to Gueule.

‘… terrible, that!'

‘A thing from the ocean, do you think? A monster?'

‘… Who can say?'

Then I caught the name Esparza, Esteban Esparza, twice repeated, and that of the old nurse, Anniq Nay, but I could not make out what was said about these people. Some words did float up clearly: ‘That makes Etcheko Premu even more worth catching. Not a sardine, but a young whale!'

‘Will you be quiet, you two!' called old Pierre angrily. ‘You will scare the birds away – stow your row!'

A long silence then followed. At my side I observed that Juan was weeping, endeavouring to do it without any noise, gulping back his sobs and licking in the tears as they rolled down his pale cheeks, furiously rubbing his eyes and nose with the back of his hand.

Catching my glance, he threw me an angry look and flushed, with shame, I suppose, at his inability to control his feelings.

As over his fear of heights, I pitied but also a little despised him. He must really be a looby, I thought, if he had expected help and good advice from old Pierre; anybody could see with half an eye that the old man was a villain; but then I tried to put myself in Juan's position. Imagine that you had nobody at all on whom to rely – that even your brother and old nurse were your enemies -that you had to trust such as old Pierre. No, that must be very dreadful, I reflected, but then recalled that I myself had been in much the same case. I at least, though, had a safe haven awaiting me now that my grandfather had written affectionately, asking me to return home. Heaven send that Juan's Uncle León was not also prepared to betray him! If I was able, I thought, once we were in Spain, I would seek out some person of integrity who knew this Uncle León, and try to acquire a just estimate of his character; not simply entrust the boy to a person of whom I knew nothing. The boy! Juan was of an age with myself, but I felt by far the older and more experienced of us two.

And Spain was still a long way off. Although,
as the crow flies, it lay just over the top of the mountain, we were still perilously far from our journey's end.

No use, now, to attempt old Pierre's route. Indeed, as I was thinking this, he, by a low whistle, summoned Plumet and Cocher, evidently suggesting that they should enter the cave, perhaps to make sure that we had not arrived early and already gone inside. They disappeared under the rock beneath us, and did not reappear.

Dusk had fallen by now – an early dusk, for thick dark clouds had crept up, swallowing the sun's last rays, and a faint mutter of thunder made itself heard over the shoulder of the mountain.

After a while rain began to fall, slowly at first, in big drops the size of silver groats, then faster and faster, rattling and pattering on the ivy growth below us. I became deeply concerned over Juan, who had commenced to shiver badly. If we lay here for long in this violent rain, it might well be the death of him. We must shift, but how could we, with those men down below?

As if responding to my wish, another low whistle sounded from beneath us, and I saw the other two softly emerge from the ivy bush and slip inside the cave, evidently taking shelter from the storm. Another five minutes and I would not have been able to see them at all, it would be true dark; we must shift at once, there was not a moment to lose.

‘Now is our time to leave,' I breathed into Juan's ear.

‘I can't!' he replied through chattering teeth. ‘I'm too cold to move. And too scared!'

How much I wished that our goatskin had been filled with wine, as the inn lady had suggested, or, better still, aguardiente. A little of such a stimulant might have put heart into Juan. Failing that, I took him by the shoulders and shook him fiercely.

‘Don't behave like a whining baby! We have
got
to get away from here before we grow any colder, and while those men are inside the cave.'

I did not mention that it was through his wilfulness in the first place that we were in this situation, and that if I had not established us in this eyrie we should have been captured by now. ‘I am going to climb over you,' I said, and did so, hoisting myself up with the aid of the birch trunk. ‘Now: take my hand. Shut your eyes, if you prefer; I will tell you where to put your feet.'

At that moment a blue-white glare of lightning illuminated the whole series of rock steps above and ahead of us – very conveniently, except that it was then followed by an earsplitting crack of thunder, which made Juan cry out in shock and clap his hands to his ears. I shook him again. ‘Come, follow me – and don't be a coward!'

‘I am
not
a coward!' he retorted, setting his teeth and putting up his chin. Doggedly he began to follow me up the rock steps, I guiding his hand to such holds as there were, rock ledges and roots of trees, and instructing him in a whisper as to the footholds.

‘Up and to the right with your left foot; you will
find a crack which narrows – you can rest your foot in it safely. Now shift the right foot; there is a lump of rock about an inch wide which you can trust.'

Once or twice he trembled, or shivered, and I thought that we were done for and would go crashing down to the ground outside the cave entrance, but somehow, by God's grace, we managed to make our way back to the sloping hill. The distance was not so very great, but our passage seemed to take several hours.

And all the while the rain was cascading down our shoulders, making the rock slippery under hands and feet; I thanked God very fervently in my mind when I at last felt soft, yielding sandy earth under my feet instead of slimy, unfriendly rock.

‘Very well done,
mon brave!'
I whispered heartily in Juan's ear when we were both safely off the cliff, and I could not forbear to give him a hug, partly out of relief, partly to show that I forgave him for his poor-spiritedness. But another flash of lightning just at that moment revealed his expression of hostility, almost of hate; quite plainly he could not forgive
me,
either for dragging him across the cliff face or, more likely, for being proved right in my suspicions of old Pierre.

‘What now?' said he sulkily. ‘Since you have put yourself in command, what now?'

‘Now
we must find shelter as soon as we can; but first let us put a distance between us and those men,' said I, and led the way at a brisk pace up
the leafy hillside, thanking Providence that the pelting rain and crashing thunder made it needless to exercise caution, for nobody could possibly hear our steps. The rain blew in waves and sheets, the wind buffeted us, and the thunder was almost incessant; I thought it most fortunate that Juan, among his other fears, seemed not to be too much troubled by thunder; though he occasionally started at an extra-loud peal – as indeed I did myself – he followed me steadily enough as we climbed ever up and up.

‘It sounds as if your witch great-grandmother and all her friends were flying about overhead,' I bawled in his ear as we struggled higher and higher, but he only set his jaw and, without looking at me, went on steadily putting one foot before the other.

At length another lightning flash showed us a huge hollow chestnut tree whose girth ten men with arms extended could not have encircled. By then we must have walked for the best part of an hour, and were warm enough, though soaked. The tree promised some kind of shelter, and, pulling Juan by the hand, I groped my way into it. The inside was dry enough, and not too uncomfortable, for a heap of leaf mould and chestnut-mast had, through the years, piled high within the hollow space.

‘This will serve us,' I said to Juan, and unfastened the blanket which I had carried. It was very wet, but we burrowed a kind of trough in the leaf mould, huddled in that, and pulled the blanket
over us, with more leaves on top. Very soon a steamy warmth was achieved.

‘What if lightning strikes the tree?' whispered Juan sullenly.

I, too, had that possibility in mind, for chestnut trees often do seem to attract the stroke of lightning, and the thunderstorms of the Pyrenees are notorious for their severity; but I answered airily that a tree in an open field is much more likely to be struck than one in the midst of a forest. ‘And in any case there is nothing more we can do about it. So go to sleep.'

Juan gave a snort, whether of scorn or annoyance I did not know – or it might even have been laughter – and muttered some phrase in the Basque language. What it was I did not inquire. I was very near the point of swooning with fatigue myself, and next minute the arms of darkness enwrapped me.

4

We make our way to Hasparren, buy
clothes, and attend a masquerade at
St Jean; receive a frightening shock;
and are treated with hospitality by
strange little people

Upon awakening, the first thing that I saw was Juan's face regarding me anxiously. But this time he had not roused me complaining of hunger, as he had done on the previous day; he had waited until I awoke naturally. Sunlight shone on the forest outside our hollow tree, raindrops sparkled, and birds sang. Far away I could hear the call of a cuckoo.