Bridle the Wind (19 page)

There was no choice but to dance past them, for our example had been followed by a dozen others and we were now at the head of quite a procession,
while the spectators laughed and cheered us on. I felt confident enough in my concealing horse's head, but what of Juan? Spinning around, I saw that he had pulled the Satan's red silk scarf up to cover his face, so that only his eyes showed above it; thus disguised, he boldly danced up to the three men, casting out his hooked ribbons as if to tweak them; then, as the third man turned round, he bounded after me, taking a huge leap, which looked as if it were done in exuberance but which I thought was really prompted by sheer terror; for, seen thus close to, there could be no question but that the third man was the Abbot of St Just de Seignanx, white-faced, flame-eyed, unmistakable. What could he be doing here, with members of the Mala Gente? One could not even begin to guess. My heart felt like an icy stone inside me as we quitted the flare-lit streets of the town and plunged into the darkness beyond.

The other dancers had left us and turned back into the town; we were suddenly alone.

‘Are they after us?' gasped Juan.

‘No, we have lost them – I think. Let us hide here and wait.'

A beech grove bordered the highway; we plunged into its shadow, put twelve yards or so between us and the road, then stopped, hidden behind trees, and waited to see if we were pursued. A long time passed and nobody came; all we could hear was the distant music of the masquerade, and the beating of our own hearts.

At last I drew a long breath and said, ‘I think
we have managed to lose them. But we had better not go back into the town.'

‘Oh, no, no!' breathed Juan. ‘Let us not lose a minute but put as much distance between us and them as possible. What shall we do with these?'

He was pulling off his Satan's hat and jacket.

‘Hang them on a tree,' said I, doing so with my horse's head. ‘Somebody will be sure to find them.' And I laid a few coins at the foot of the tree to pay the owner for their use.

Despite his terror and chattering teeth, Juan could not refrain from a chuckle.

‘Even you, virtuous Felix, sometimes steal!'

‘That was not theft but borrowing,' I replied coldly.

I felt his thin, cold hand steal into mine.

‘I know it! I was only teasing. And I think you showed wonderful
presence d'esprit
in clapping on that horse's head and beginning to dance. J felt so paralysed with fear that I was like a rabbit hypnotised by a serpent; I was on the point of walking up and offering myself back to them! But how well you dance, Felix! I had no idea that an English boy could foot it so nimbly.'

‘You did not do so badly yourself! And I am not English, but Spanish.'

Then we saved our breath for walking through the wood, which was very dark, for the moon had not yet risen. On the far side, beyond the trees, we almost tripped over a village; I say almost tripped, for the houses, or hovels, were so low that they seemed more like pigsties or dog kennels than
dwellings meant for humans. But human they were, lit by small gleams of light, enlivened by low human voices, and made welcoming by smells of food and cookery.

In fact a shrill astonished babble of voices greeted us as we stumbled into the dim circle of illumination; voices of wonder and alarm, then of welcome and goodwill. For a moment or two I was filled with fearful uneasiness, remembering a strange heathen hamlet of mountain folk I had wandered upon in Spain, where the inhabitants seemed prepared to make me into a human sacrifice; but I soon saw that these little people were of a very different kind.

Little
they certainly were; none of them was higher than myself or Juan, and many were far shorter; they were blunt-featured, with strangely shaped ears, but not otherwise peculiar or ill-looking; the garments they wore were similar to all others in the region, but each had, embroidered upon the shoulder, a three-toed crow's-foot emblem. They clustered around us, smiling and pointing, but speaking among themselves such a rustic form of the Basque language that, so far as I was concerned, they might well have been a flock of crows cawing.

Juan seemed in no way disconcerted by their appearance, and they were plainly prepared to be friendly and hospitable to us; I soon saw why, for among them was the small man with the wizened face and the tiny girl whose cat Juan had saved from the foxhound; the latter went up to Juan and
wound her threadlike arms round his knees – she could reach no higher – while he, looking somewhat embarrassed, patted her head.

Then we were ushered into a hut – for their thatched houses were little more; the thatch came down to the ground, and a hole let out the smoke from the fire in the middle. We were given something in wooden bowls that seemed to be a mess of biscuit, onions, liver, and beans, all boiled together, washed down with rough red wine; it was tasty enough, and we were in no mood to be critical. We then made signs indicating a great need for sleep, and were respectfully led to a smaller hut on the edge of the settlement, which contained a heap of bracken and straw piled high.

‘Felix?' whispered Juan through the silence when at last we had been left alone.

‘Yes?'

‘Was that
indeed
Father Vespasian? It looked like him – yet it also looked like Plumet.
Which of them was it?
'

His cold hand stole once more into mine.

I took a long time trying to decide what to answer him, and before I made up my mind, he whispered, ‘Do you think it could be
both
of them?'

‘Yes. I do. That is what I do think.'

‘S-so do I,' he said, shivering. ‘And the thought makes my heart die of terror within me.'

‘Come, now,' said I, though I knew exactly how he felt, for I felt the same, ‘pluck up your spirits. Think! God has seen fit to help and preserve us so
far. Why, we do not know. But He must have some purpose in leading us along. I do not believe that He will desert us now. So we must not let ourselves be too afraid. It would be ungrateful.'

‘Y-yes,' Juan agreed, but he sounded unconvinced.

‘Ask me some questions in Euskara.'

After a moment Juan said, ‘What is a man?'

‘
Gizon
.'

‘Men?'

‘
Gizonek
.'

‘What is “I have seen the house”?'

‘
Ikusi dut etxea
.'

‘Very good, Felix. You are coming along.'

Then he repeated a couple of lines of Basque verse which I could not understand.

‘What does that mean, Juan?'

‘I will wait until I can translate it into English to tell you,' he said, and chuckled. ‘
Gab-boon
, Felix.'

‘
Gab-boon
, Juan.'

And so we slept.

5

We encounter gypsies and buy pottoka;
are entertained by a hermit and
obliged to visit a smith; the bertsulari
contest; fleeing the Gente, we enter the
mountains

I was awakened by a sharp cry and sprang confusedly from my pile of bracken, fearing I do not know what – devils, brigands, wild beasts. I had been roused from some black and fiery dream, in which Father Vespasian, with a white crumpled face and eyes like beacons flaring, pursued us, wielding a pronged trident, over an oozy marsh in which we sank at every step, while he rapidly overtook us.

‘What is it, what is it?' I mumbled in fright, looking all about me.

But the cause of Juan's alarm was merely a large rat which had sniffed inquisitively at his nose and now, startled at our noise, scampered away and out through a hole in the thatch.

‘Only a rat!' I exclaimed in disgust. ‘I thought at least we were surrounded by the Gente! What a child you are!'

‘I hate rats.' Juan gave me an angry look, ‘If it had sniffed at
your
nose, I daresay you would have jumped and cried out. You need not be so superior!'

‘I'm sorry – it was just a joke,' I said hastily, not
wishing to begin the day with bad feeling between us. We had enough to lower our spirits, remembering last night, not to let ourselves be disputing over trifles. ‘Let us get out of this frowsty little hut.'

So we crawled through the door hole into fresh air and looked at the place we had come to overnight. An odd small village it was, of stone-and-thatch hovels, each surrounded by a vegetable patch. The men were all gone; doubtless to work. A rocky brook ran nearby in which some of the women were washing their linen. Others came smiling to us, their brown creased faces full of goodwill, and soon offered us a bowl of coffee – rather rank and rusty, with blobs of greasy goats' milk floating on top – and some lumps of stale bread. This unpalatable breakfast I choked down as politely as I could, but Juan drank the coffee only, indicating by signs and whispered Basque phrases that he had trouble in swallowing.

Several of the women conferred together, and fetched another, who, from her small hunched shape and deeply wrinkled face the colour of a brown walnut husk, looked to be the grandmother of them all. She carefully and frowningly inspected Juan's throat, removing the bandage that Madame Mauleon had placed on it, then fetched a small clay pot full of strong-smelling thick dark-green ointment, and spread this over Juan's skin, rubbing the neck strongly for a long time with aged fingers as dark and knotted as tree roots. Rolling his eyes at me in one expressive glance, Juan patiently sub-
mitted to this treatment; afterwards she replaced the bandage and uttered some long admonition, to which he appeared to listen with great attention, nodding his head obediently from time to time.

She then questioned him; as to our direction, I thought, for I heard the name Pamplona in his reply, and Orria; also the words
zamariz, zamaria
several times repeated. At last she appeared to bless us, making an odd crow's-foot shape in the air with her gnarled hand; the other women and children seriously saluted us, and the little one whose cat Juan had saved once more hugged his knees. Then we were permitted to go on our way; and I did so, I must confess, with no little relief, for in spite of their friendly behaviour I had felt a sense of discomfort in the strange little place; also it did smell most vilely of rancid fat and other things not proper to mention.

‘Who were those strange little people?' I demanded of Juan when we had put a fair distance between ourselves and the village, walking southward towards Spain and the high mountains.

‘They are Cagots,' Juan replied, as if the name should mean something to me. But it meant nothing at all.

‘What in the world are Cagots? They are not brownies? Fairy people?'

He burst out laughing.

‘Nom
d'un nom, non!
Ai! Laughing makes my neck hurt. But to think that I should hear the practical, sensible Felix ask such a question!'

‘Well,' I said, somewhat nettled, ‘only a day or
so ago you told me that your great-great-grandmother was a witch. And besides – ‘Besides, I might have said, you and I last night saw something the strangeness of which far outruns the oddity of a tribe of dirty little pixies or leprechauns: we saw a man apparently risen from the dead and inhabiting the body of another.

But I held my tongue. The day was too young for such dire and haunting topics. Practical and sensible, Juan had called me; practical and sensible I must endeavour to be.

‘Well, I have never heard of Cagots. Who or what are they?'

‘Why, they are Cagots,' he said. ‘That is all I can tell you. They have always lived in the Basque country, for many hundreds of years. They have their own little villages, mostly on the outskirts of larger towns, and by law they must wear the crow's-foot mark to distinguish them, for they are not allowed to marry folk other than Cagots, or to sell things in the market. So they are mostly carpenters, or roadworkers, or masons.'

‘Are they Christians?'

‘Of course! And they have their own little entrances and windows in the churches, so that they may hear the service without troubling the rest of the congregation. I do not know
what
my father would have said,' Juan remarked cheerfully, ‘if he had known that I spent the night in a Cagot village. Some people think that they are lepers.'

My flesh crawled at the notion, but he added reassuringly, ‘That is not true at all. Well, you
could see so for yourself. Others say that they must be descended from the Saracens, or the Moors, who lived in this land long ago, and became converted to Christianity.'

‘Well, they were certainly very hospitable,' said I, ‘and it was lucky for us that we encountered them, for we could not have gone back to the town. What was all that rigmarole the old dame was telling you?'

‘Oh, first she told me to leave the green paste on my neck for three days, and to say a prayer to St Benedict before I wash it off. Also she asked where we were going, and when I said that we wished to buy ponies to cross the mountains, she told me that if we go eastward we may very likely meet a train of gipsies coming to the horse fair from Jaca.'

This was useful information, and we sat down to study the map.

It would plainly be folly to travel anywhere near the Pass of Roncesvalles, or Orria, as the Basques call it, for the Gente would be most likely to expect us there; so this advice chimed well with my own inclination, which was to continue eastward along the flanks of the mountains and cross into Spain by some small pass. Accordingly we set off walking with the sun in our faces and presently came to the highway which led up from St Jean to the Pass of Roncesvalles, where Roland, with his great sword Durendal, defended France against all the might of the Saracen army. Looking warily all around us for signs of the Gente, we paused here,
but seeing none, crossed the highway and struck into the woods again. Our way now was over a series of tree-covered ridges with high peaks on our right and yet higher ones beyond; every now and then, through the neck of a valley or from some high point, we would catch a heart-stopping glimpse of huge snowy crests glittering in the early light. We crossed brook after brook tumbling down from the mountains into France, and the woods about us were of larch and spruce and beech.