Bridle the Wind (22 page)

‘What can we do, father? We are very afraid of this man. And he seems able to pursue us wherever we go.'

Juan cast a glance at the door and I could not forbear to do likewise; neither of us would have been at all surprised if the scarecrow figure had appeared there at that moment. But, by God's mercy, it did not.

‘I feel certain that you are in God's keeping and will, without doubt, escape in the end,' slowly
answered the hermit. ‘Yet it is indeed strange how he has such power to follow you. I must devote thought to that. You seem good children. … What does he want of you? And why should this evil yearning have been awakened because you have both been so close to death, your souls, as it were, separated for a period from your bodies? Damned spirits, of course, are always drawn to children,' he went on, more to himself than to us.

‘Why is that, my father?' asked Juan, in a low, trembling tone.

Brother Bertrand lifted his eyes from the glowing embers.

‘Every being is divided between good and evil; God has willed it so, that each of us resembles a coin, with a white side and a black side. Both sides are required; take either away, and what you have left is not a complete soul.'

‘I think I understand that,' said I.

‘Doubtless in the next life it will be otherwise; or, perhaps, endlessly on up through every stage of heavenly excellence, there will always be two sides, but of a different nature. But here, in children especially, the difference between the bright side and the shadow can be very complete; for children are born innocent, straight from the hand of God, and yet the shadow they cast is a long one, long and black, like that of a man at the rising of the sun.'

I heard Juan draw a long, deep breath, and then he asked, ‘What does the evil spirit want, then?'

‘He wants that black shadow, for his nourishment, for his sustenance.'

‘But how can he take one thing without the other?'

‘We must pray that he will not be able to,' said Brother Bertrand, and he stood up, laid a gentle hand on each of our heads in turn, and added, ‘Come; let us do so now,' walking to the shrine, where he knelt in prayer. We were glad to follow his example.

His prayers must have continued all night. Next morning when I awoke he was still there. But at some point Juan and I must have fallen asleep, for when daylight roused us we found ourselves sprawled on a heap of dead leaves and pine needles at the side of the barn.

After we had washed in the brook, and groomed the ponies, and breakfasted frugally, Brother Bertrand showed us a strange little garden that he had planted in a patch of mountain meadow sheltered by the larch grove where we had first set eyes on him.

His garden contained many different flowers: rockroses, gentians, wild pea, and hundreds of others that I did not know, all set out neatly in rows, with space to walk between. Very different from Pere Mathieu's garden at the Abbey! But the strangest thing of all was that beside each plant was set a little cross, made from two slips of wood pegged together and painted white. And on many of the crosses names were written. It was like a miniature graveyard – the plants, with their
crosses, stretched a considerable distance across the meadow.

‘What are all these, my father?' I inquired.

‘Why, they are all the people in France, my son; or at least, all the ones I know about. And the people in Spain, too. See, here is King Louis XVIII; here is
le roi
Ferdinand of Spain; here is
le duc
d'Angoulême . . .' and so he went on, naming many famous persons, and many more of whom I had never heard. ‘Here is my brother Laurent; here is old Mere Marmottan, who kept the auberge in our village, and the blacksmith, whose name for the moment escapes me. Here is another man, who also loved my beloved Laura. But,' he remarked, eyeing the brown and wizened plant that drooped beside the little cross, ‘I think Victor must have died; I must remember to say a prayer for his fierce, tormented soul.' Casually he pulled up the dead plant, throwing it to one side. ‘Now, my young friends, I shall put in a plant for each of you. I think, my child, for you,' he said, eyeing Juan, ‘an orange rockrose; and for you, my son' – to me – ‘a yellow lily of the woods, a tiger lily.'

How strange, I thought. For in Spain my nickname had always been ‘Little Tiger.'

‘But – my father–'

‘Yes, child?'

‘These people are still alive. They are not dead? King Louis is on his throne, and King Ferdinand?'

‘Certainly they are; it is when they die that I pull out the plant and burn the cross. And I shall know when that moment comes, never fear! See my poor
brother's plant –' It was a clump of violets, which had evidently at one time been large and flourishing, but now drooped, with yellow leaves, plainly near its end. ‘When he dies,' Brother Bertrand said, ‘I shall know, and then I shall take up his plant and replace it with another. These shall be your places' – and he took two small crosses from a pile and set them in the ground. ‘After you have gone I shall walk up the hillside and find a plant for each of you. And they will remind me of your visit, which has done me good.'

Before we departed, Brother Bertrand inspected the Harlequin's sore shoulder and gave us excellent advice about how to foment it before putting on the caustic. He also pointed out a small wound on the fetlock of el Demonio, where he had cut himself with the heel of his off-shoe. To remedy this we made a kind of wet bandage, or gaiter, with some bits of cloth that the hermit provided, lashing it in place with cords. I began to see that we were insufficiently provided with such articles as cloth, string, and sewing materials, and that we must once again visit a town; also Brother Bertrand recommended that we find a blacksmith and have him file down the shoe that was doing the damage. We thanked the hermit for his good counsel, and he told us that he and his brother had been wealthy, and had bred many horses and cattle when they lived at Bidarray. He asked where we came from, and I said Spain; I noticed that Juan did not reply, but busied himself adjusting the Harlequin's girth strap.

Then, rather timidly, I inquired whether Brother Bertrand had given any more thought to our singular and frightening tie with Father Vespasian, or the Something that had taken possession, first of him and then of Plumet. How could we escape him? Or how could we combat him? (Though even to suggest such a notion filled me with an icy horror all up and down my spine.)

‘I have been thinking deeply all night about your situation,' said the hermit. ‘I laid the matter before God. And He told me that you must seek out my brother, who is wiser than I. Laurent will give you better advice than I can; or perhaps he will be able to defend you from your assailant. You must certainly visit him, and that without delay, for the invisible tendril that joins us is tightening daily, and this warns me that his end is now very close.'

On hearing this reply I gazed with a certain blankness at Brother Bertrand, wondering if God had
really
told him to advise our visiting his brother, or did the suggestion merely come from his own wish to be reconciled before it was too late? And how in the world would we be able to discover a ruined chapel somewhere on the slopes of the Pic d'Orhy, a large mountain covering many leagues of country? And supposing the brother had died already by the time we got there?

‘I can see that the Demiurge is putting other thoughts into your mind,' said Brother Bertrand calmly. At which I blushed. ‘But I hope, and not only for my own sake, that you will do as I recommend.'

Then he went back into his barn and came out again with a tiny silver bell, about the size of a crab apple.

‘Unclean spirits hate the sound of a bell,' he said, smiling, handing the little bright object to Juan, who exclaimed, ‘Why, of course! Of course they do! Why did I not think of that? I used to help the old
benedicta
in – ‘he stopped short, then added, ‘She said the power of bells would keep away any number of devils. Thank you, my father! But what will you do without it, here in this lonely place?'

‘I must rely on the power of prayer, my child, which has never failed me yet.'

So, leaving him our supply of milk and bread (he would not take cheese or ham) we rode off and left him looking after us somewhat wistfully, his hand upraised in blessing for as long as he could see us, before the track turned round an angle of the valley.

After that we rode for many leagues in silence.

I was feeling not a little sad, and heavy; Brother Bertrand's talk, his account of having been, as it were, in conversation with God all through the night, had reminded me of my own trouble, which was that for the past few days, ever since we had left the Abbey, God had remained silent and had not spoken to me, either to communicate His wishes, or to scold me, or to let me know if I was following the right course. Each night I had duly said my prayer, and sometimes during the day as
well, when danger threatened; but I had no intimation that my petition was acknowledged, or even heard. I was reminded of how one drops leaves and twigs into a brook: they are swept away to an unknown destination. Nothing ever comes back. I had never felt myself so disjoined from my Adviser before, even at times of dire danger; and I could not help wondering miserably if, somehow, I had gone astray from the direction that I was meant to follow, and thereby cut myself off from God's discourse. Or was He testing me, to see how well I could manage when left unguided? The only thing that cheered me at all (and that not greatly) was to believe this; I had to battle, at times, against a most forlorn sense of dragging discouragement, loneliness, and abandonment. Yet, Felix! I said to myself, you should be accustomed to that. You managed without help from earthly parents; you cannot expect your Heavenly one to be keeping an eye on you every minute of the day; fie, for shame! And you have Juan to care for now; so show a brighter face and come out of the dismals.

Juan, also, seemed unusually silent and preoccupied as he rode along, despite the cheerful tinkle of Brother Bertrand's bell, which he had fastened to the Harlequin's browband. Sometimes he sent a frowning, pondering glance in my direction; sometimes he rode deep in thought, with his chin sunk forward and his eyes on his pony's shoulders.

After perhaps a couple of hours he suddenly exclaimed, ‘Felix?'

‘Well?'

‘Was that
true?
That tale you told the hermit? That you had been astray in your wits – out of your senses – unconscious for so many weeks, before you and Father Antoine found me in the thicket?'

‘Yes, it was true,' I answered him rather drily. T do not tell untrue tales.'

He flushed up, but went on: ‘Do you not think that is exceedingly strange? It seems almost as if you were
waiting
for me in that Abbey; as if you had been sent there to await my arrival.' He ended in rather a diffident tone, but I answered,

‘Yes, that is how I felt about it.'

‘That we were meant to travel together? But why? What is the purpose behind it, do you think?'

‘How can I tell?' I began to say, rather impatiently, but then added, the notion suddenly coming into my head, ‘Perhaps it is because of -of Father Vespasian. Singly we would not be a match for him. But together – with the help of God –'

‘Ah, yes!' he agreed, his face lighting up. ‘Perhaps that might be the reason.' But then he shivered. ‘I wish, though, that it were
not
so.'

‘Do you wish that we were not travelling together?'

‘Why, no,' he said slowly. ‘I – I am growing accustomed to you, Felix. You are teaching me a great deal that I did not know before.'

This in some degree warmed my troubled heart, and I said, more cheerfully, ‘Well, let me continue to teach you English, for I begin to fear that there
is no hope of my ever mastering Euskara. You are right, it is a language of the devil! Have you made a translation of your poem yet?'

‘Yes, I have done so,' he replied. ‘I did it last night while you and Brother Bertrand were at your prayers.'

‘You did not pray?' I was a little shocked.

But Juan said, ‘Oh, I can only pray to God in one sentence. He understands that. I greet Him, then it is done. I hope to live some day entirely in His honour, but I am sure He does not want me to be continually dinning my petitions into His ears, or repeating meaningless words by rote. Besides,' he added thoughtfully, ‘I believe that poetry
is
a form of prayer. Whom should it be addressed to, if not to God?'

This made me look on poetry in a new light, and while I was thinking about it, Juan recited his little verse, first in Euskara, then in English:

After he had spoken the words I, in my turn, was silent for a considerable time. Then I asked him, ‘You think that poetry is a kind of thanks? For the things we see, the things we have?'

‘Why not?' said Juan. ‘If a friend gives you a gift – as you gave me the Harlequin, as the hermit gave us his silver bell – you say, do you not, “I thank you, friend, for this beautiful black-and-white
pottoka,
for this bell which cheers me with its sound and keeps away unclean spirits.” You say, “My heart is filled with thankfulness at sight of the wooded hills and the rivers pouncing down like white arrows.” What is that but a poem?'

‘Yes. I think I begin to understand a little of what it is all about.'