Bridle the Wind (2 page)

Whether it was my final tug that did it, who can say? But next moment with a loud crack, audible even above the roar of the surf, the rope broke, and the group of men tumbled backward higgledy-piggledy over one another; I, being at the end, collapsed under a pile of falling bodies, and some hard object at the same instant striking my head a violent blow, my sight became darkened, my breathing suspended, and I lost consciousness.

After that began a long, dreamlike period of darkness laced through and scattered with wandering
lines and flashes of light; I am not able to reckon precisely how long it endured but it seemed forever; I felt that I was floating in eternity, a speck in the hugeness of night, a tadpole in the vastness of the ocean; I was no longer Felix, a human boy, but lost, nameless and formless, in the roots of all being. I had no thoughts, no fears; I had ceased to exist until it pleased God to gather the threads of my soul together and plait them into the shape He had once given me, or some new one.

While thus suspended in the gulf of emptiness I seemed to see great patterns, and to understand them; I heard tremendous music, and was shaken by the gales of heaven; but all this, by degrees, passed away, and I lay at length, quiet and content, like a nut in its shell.

At one point, briefly, I thought that I opened my eyes and found that I was in a small, dim, warm place, a haven of comfort and rest, deeply familiar and dear. How happy I was to find myself there! I murmured my pleasure aloud.

‘Why – I am
here!
'

In those four words I was able to express all my joy and wonder at this great good fortune, all my feeling of sovereign privilege – for who, in the whole of humanity, could expect or deserve to come to this place a second time?

‘I never thought to come back
here?
'

‘Certainly, child,' a voice with a smile in it answered me. ‘You are here; and in the best of care. Rest at ease, little sparrow. We shall not let you fall.'

And I drowsed again, floating away with joy and trust among the mighty currents that bore me out of time and mind.

My next return came about so quietly, and by such infinite degrees of slowness, that I am at a loss how to describe it.

But, gradually travelling back out of eternity into time, I discovered myself, Felix, to be at work, with a hoe in my hand, loosening soil round the roots of thistle artichokes and vines, pulling up the weeds that threatened to smother them. A mild misty sun hung overhead and warmed me; I wiped my damp forehead. My back, I noticed, felt stiff; I must have been occupied in this work for some time, several hours perhaps. In the distance chimed a bell, its tone silvery and familiar. Soon, close at hand, I heard the click of a gate.

‘Aha!' remarked a friendly voice. ‘Very good boy!' The voice spoke in French, and went on: ‘Father Mathieu asked me to call you. I see you have finished the whole bed – and excellently well done, too. I had thought it would take more than one day. But now, lay down your hoe, wash your hands, and come to Vespers.'

I straightened my back and looked at the monk who was addressing me – a thin man, with a worn, kindly face, a sprinkling of scanty gray hair round his tonsure, and two wonderfully blue eyes. Almost transparent they seemed, like the sky just before it turns green at sunset.

He nodded to me, smiling, and beckoned me to wash my hands in a stone trough of water and
follow him through the gate. I saw that we were in a walled kitchen garden, a big place well stocked with herbs and vegetables and shrubs: spinach grew there and kale and other pot-herbs; parsley and thyme and garlic, bushes of lavender and rosemary and verbena such as had grown in my grandfather's garden in Spain; there were rows of onions, fruit trees trained against the stone wall, and vines twined on little pyramids of stakes. The plot sloped upward quite steeply, and as we passed through the entrance at the top, I turned to look back and could catch a view, over the wall at the foot, of waves breaking on a horseshoe-curved beach to my left, and the sea on both sides stretching away, whitecapped, into the distance.

‘Are we on an island, my father?' I asked.

My tongue and jaws felt stiff and strange, as if from disuse; I found that I had to clear my throat twice before I could speak.

The blue-eyed monk turned to regard me intently.

‘Why, yes, my boy, this is the island of St Just de Seignanx, and you are here in the monastery of St Just. I am very glad that you have found your tongue at last,' he added, smiling. ‘It has been a long time that you were off there, in a brown study!'

‘My father?' I stammered. ‘Pardon me. I do not understand you.'

‘Never mind!' he said quickly, and in a gentle tone. ‘We will now go in to Vespers, where you may wish to thank our Father in heaven for giving
you back the power of speech. After Vespers I imagine that Father Vespasian will want to speak to you.' As he pronounced this name a guarded, anxious expression came over his face, but he gestured me to go ahead of him, laying a finger on his lips for silence.

We had been walking along a grassy path between stone buildings. Now we passed through a heavy wooden doorway into a spacious warm kitchen with flagged floor, brick ovens, and herbs hanging from the rafters to dry. Then, from a door on the far side of the kitchen, into a grassy cloister with a stone-arched, cobbled walkway surrounding it on all four sides. Other black-robed monks were hastening in silence round the walk of the cloister to an arched doorway on the distant side; this, I found, led us into a high-roofed chapel, where the service of Vespers was conducted.

I stood and knelt by my friend, the blue-eyed monk, and, as he had suggested, found relief from my state of much puzzlement and confusion in thanking God very sincerely for having restored me to life and awareness, and brought me to this peaceful holy spot, though I added that I would be obliged if He would see fit to furnish me with a little more explanation as to where, exactly, I was, and how I had come here.

When Vespers had ended the monks went to supper, which they ate seated at long bare tables in a large hall next to the kitchen. I followed my friend, sat down beside him, and received a bowl of bean soup (very good) and a hunk of brown
bread. While we consumed our soup in silence a white-robed novice, standing in a pulpit, read aloud a portion of the Scriptures. Nobody paid me any special attention or behaved as if my presence there were an odd thing; indeed, they seemed to treat me as if they were well used to my being among them, and took me quite for granted. I counted about thirty monks and half a dozen novices. The service and Scriptures had been read in Latin, but at the conclusion of the meal a tall monk with iron-gray hair, deepset eyes, and a lantern-jawed, almost skull-shaped face made a number of announcements in the French language. These I was able to understand, for the tutor who taught me in my grandfather's house had obliged me to read a portion of French daily as well as instructing me in the grammar. (Indeed, many Spanish people spoke French as readily as their own language at that time, since, when I was a small child, the French armies had been in Spain for nearly seven years until we and the English at last drove them out.)

When he had finished reading his notices the skull-faced man asked if there were any questions. My friend raised his hand silently.

‘Well, Father Antoine?'

‘Father Abbot, I thought you would wish to be informed that the shipwrecked boy has at last recovered the use of speech.'

‘Indeed? Has he so? What has he said?'

The Abbot's voice was cold, and strangely disengaged, as if, though he asked the question, he had
no interest in hearing the answer. But his eyes shone very brightly. Father Antoine replied: ‘Just before Vespers, my father, he asked if we were on an island. That is all he said. But later I observed that, during Vespers, he made the correct responses.'

‘Very well. I will interrogate him. You may bring him to my lodge in ten minutes.'

The Abbot's lodge, it seemed, stood at some distance from the frater, or monks' dining room, where we had eaten supper. Father Antoine led me along a narrow alley, going in the opposite direction from the cloisters and chapel. We passed between a number of ruined buildings and a derelict cloister overgrown with thistles.

‘The Abbey is not so large as it was once,' my guide explained in a low voice. ‘Two hundred years ago this was the old infirmary cloister and sickrooms. Now, alas, there are fewer monks than formerly.'

‘Where
is
this Abbey, my father?'

‘On an island off the coast, my child, not far from St Jean. But now, hush!' He laid his finger to his lips once more. ‘We are a Cistercian order, and must observe the rule of silence save when speech is absolutely necessary. Besides, here we are at the Abbot's parlour. Now: do not be afraid, child, but answer clearly and sensibly any question Father Vespasian may put to you.' He paused, then added quickly, ‘If – for any reason – you are unable to answer, simply tell the Abbot that you do not know without – without hesitating, or becoming
nervous. He is – he can be – somewhat hasty, if – if he thinks that people are not being reasonable. Ahem! That is all! Now, I will be waiting for you, close by.'

The look on his face seemed to me anxious, though his tone was meant to be reassuring. He tapped on a door, and when the Abbot's voice called ‘Enter!' put his head round and said, ‘Here is the boy, Father Abbot. Ahem! With your permission I will wait and pull the weeds out of this path (which is becoming somewhat overgrown) and then escort the boy back to the novices' dorter, when you have finished with him.'

‘Very well, Father Antoine. Come in, boy. Stand there.'

The Abbot's parlour was supplied with two different desks, one for sitting, one for standing; also two wooden armchairs, a prie-dieu, and many shelves of books, in many different languages. A window looked out onto the weed-grown disused cloister. On the wall opposite the window hung a picture. It was a representation of the raising of Lazarus, very skilfully painted. Lazarus was depicted as coming up out of his grave at the Divine summons: two angels were pulling him up by his arms, three devils were grasping him by the legs and waist, so as to hold him back. The sight of this picture somehow dismayed me; the details, especially of the devils, were so very vivid.

The floor of the room was of stone, covered with rush matting, which was much worn in one
strip, as if the owner there walked up and down, hour after hour, day after day.

The Abbot, sitting behind his desk, gestured me where I should stand, in front of the picture. The thought of it behind my back made me uncomfortable. I cannot say why. But I tried not to think about it.

‘So, boy: you have at last decided to speak?'

The question inside me, which had been rising up all through Vespers and through the meal, now burst forth from me.

‘Please tell me, Father Abbot, how long have I been silent? How long have I been in this place?'

I was thinking of my poor grandfather, so many miles away in Spain, waiting to hear from me, wondering what had become of me.

‘Be quiet!' snapped Father Vespasian. ‘It is for
me
to ask the questions, and for you to answer! Not the other way round. Just because you have now recovered the use of your tongue is no reason to employ it ill-advisedly.'

This, to me, seemed most unfair. How was I to learn about my condition and my whereabouts, if I might not ask questions? And it was, after all, only by chance that I came to be in this place, I was not a member of the Order. However, making an effort, I kept silent, and gazed at him with no great humbleness or docility; I daresay my feelings were plain to read on my face, for he gave me a long and chilling look out of deep-set greenish eyes before adding coldly and gently, ‘You have been beaten several times before this, for obduracy in
your silence; it would be well for you if you did not now incur further punishment for unbridled speech.'

Beaten several times? What could he mean? I had no recollection of such beatings. But I took firm hold of my tongue and, in spite of wild curiosity, remained silent.

‘Your name?' he then inquired.

‘It is Felix Brooke, father.'

‘Tiens.
An English name. Are you, then, English?'

‘Yes, sir, my father was English, an officer in Wellington's army under Sir John Moore. But my mother was Spanish. And I was born in Spain and have lived at my grandfather's house in Galicia, both my parents being dead.'

‘So. But the ship that you were in was sailing from England to Spain?'

‘I was returning to Spain from England, where I had visited my father's family.'

His first two questions I had answered easily enough. But this third one I found harder; I replied slowly and with some difficulty. Pulling the later episodes of the journey from my clogged and slow-moving mind seemed almost as hard as dragging those waterlogged bales of woollen goods from the pounding waves. Now, casting my memory back to England, I found myself suddenly overwhelmed with sadness, for I recalled how, hoping for friendly and welcoming cousins or other relatives in England, I had, when I arrived at my family home, found only an old, mad grandfather, who
mistook me for my dead father, the son he had always detested, and who bawled insults at me.

‘You had visited your English relations and were returning to Spain on the ship
Euzkadi?
'

‘I presume so, my father,' I answered him hesitantly. ‘My recollections of the journey, after embarkation, are very slight.'

‘If you have nothing sensible to say, remain silent!' he said sharply. ‘I want no untruths.'

I observed that, when he was annoyed, his greenish eyes had a habit of sliding very rapidly to and fro; faster, indeed, than one would have thought it possible for human eyes to move; and he began to tap fast and irritably on his desktop with an ivory ruler.

I remained silent.