by Joan Aiken
‘What is it, Grandfather? Are you ill?’
Even from a distance I could see how white his face was. And, coming closer, that his mouth trembled and shook in a way that frightened me. For, as a rule, he was a man of iron self-control. He had a paper in his hands.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I am not ill. But I have had terrible news.’
I waited in silent suspense while he made several efforts to speak. At last he brought it out.
‘They have killed Rafael Riego. The best man in Spain. Killed him like a dog.’
‘Oh, Grandfather –’
Riego was a Liberal leader, a man of great courage and nobility. In the wars against Napoleon he had served with gallantry, and had been taken prisoner. Back home, when peace returned, he was elected to the Cortes, the Spanish parliament, and, in 1820, appointed its president. That same year, he proclaimed the validity of the Spanish Liberal Constitution, which had been drawn up in 1812, while King Ferdinand was still a captive in the hands of the French.
But then, later in 1820, history repeated itself and French troops again invaded our country, for the other European nations refused to acknowledge a democratically elected Spanish government. Colonel Riego led the fighting against the French, and was captured at Malaga. The restored King Ferdinand, who had at first pretended to accept the Liberal constitution, now completely turned against it, and sided with the French, who supported him in all his tyrannical acts.
‘Not only have they killed Riego,’ said my grandfather with white lips, ‘but they did it in the most shameful, degrading way. He was dragged along the streets of Madrid in a basket, at the tail of an ass. Imagine it! The president of the parliament – the man who could have saved Spain! Then he was hanged, drawn, and quartered like a – like a cut-throat! This country, I truly believe, is turning into a hell on earth.’
There was no possible way to comfort my grandfather.
Riego, a neighbour, a man of Asturias, had been a close family friend. I know Grandfather felt his horrible end all the more keenly because, if he had not been prevented by his crippled state, he would have been Riego’s active ally.
‘What can we do?’ I said. I was wild to make some demonstration – put up a placard – write a letter to the king – hit somebody.
I was only fourteen at that time.
But my grandfather said, ‘Nothing. There is nothing we can do. King Ferdinand is backed by the French – the “hundred thousand sons of St Louis”. If the Spanish people did rebel, I have no doubt that the Tsar of Russia would send Cossacks into our country. We should be beaten into submission. The other kingdoms of Europe do not want Spain to become a free and liberal state.
‘But, Felix, it is for you that I fear. My political views are known. If I were to be carried off to prison, they would take you too. Then who would care for your grandmother and your great-aunts? It is best that you leave Villaverde, my boy, and go away, at once, to college in England.’
This, however, I flatly refused to do. My grandfather argued in vain.
‘You have relations there – ’ This was true, for though my mother had been Spanish, my father was an English officer, killed in the French wars, and I had travelled to England to visit his family home. ‘You could go to Oxford or Cambridge University,’ my grandfather said.
‘Those places are too far from Villaverde. Besides, I don’t like England.’
In the end, after much argument, I agreed to go to Salamanca. For I did, in truth, wish to learn. And my grandfather felt that, if I were at least that far away from Villaverde, it could not be argued that I was under his influence. He begged me not to involve myself in politics while I was studying; and, as I loved him, I gave my promise, and kept it, though it went against the grain. Which was why Pedro had found me at home and studying, instead of out rioting with my comrades.
As it turned out, the authorities had not imprisoned Grandfather – perhaps because it was so plain that, in his severely crippled state, he could play no part in any uprising. But for several years he was under house arrest, forbidden even to go out of doors. That was in 1823. And I went off to Salamanca early next year and had remained there for the following three years, often homesick and heartsick enough, but glad of the chance to acquire knowledge, for which I had a deep hunger.
If you can only discover the causes of things, I often thought, surely you can also discover their cure?
Now, despite my worry over Grandfather, I was deeply happy to be riding north again, back to Galicia. Among other reasons, because Galicia was a little nearer to France.
Five years had passed by since I had met ‘that French girl’ referred to by Pedro. I had no reason to hope that I would ever see her again; yet still, how fervently I did hope! She and I had shared a strange adventure; we had each saved the other’s life, several times over. And, as surely as spring follows winter, I felt certain that our fortunes were, in some way, knit together and that we must, some day, meet again. I felt about no other person in the whole world as I did about Juana – we had grown to know one another so well, had become in the end – though not at first – such good friends.
Sometimes – in periods of doubt or despondency – it did occur to me that by now, after five years, she would be greatly changed. As, I suppose, I was myself. She would be grown up, she would have become a young lady. But still, but still, how I longed to see her!
Twice, during the five-year period, I had written to her, the first time in care of a firm of lawyers, Auteuil Freres, at Bayonne, who had been in charge of the affairs of her uncle, Senor d’Echepara.
After long delay I had a reply from the lawyers.
Following the recent death of our esteemed client, Senor Leon d’Echepara, his niece and heiress Mademoiselle Jeanne Esparza has announced her intention of entering the Convent of Notre Dame de Douleur in Bayonne as a postulant, and instructed us to dispose of all her uncle’s property. This was done and the resulting funds of 30,000 reales assigned, at her request, to the convent as her dower. Any communication to Mademoiselle Esparza (now Soeur Felicitee) should now be addressed in care of Mere Madeleine, the Mother Superior of the Convent.
That, for a year and a half, had put a stop to my efforts to communicate with Juana. A novice! In a French convent! Now indeed she was really cut off from me.
But, at the end of that time, as my yearning to talk to her did not abate, I wrote another letter, addressed to the convent. Nothing of importance: asking how she did, describing the course of my own studies, recalling some of the events of our wild journey over the Pyrenees from France into Spain.
And then waited months, hoping, longing for an answer.
None came; only, at long last, a curt note, unsigned but indited in exquisite copperplate script, instructing me that ‘novices under the discipline of the Convent de Notre Dame de Douleur were not permitted to enter into correspondence with outsiders except on urgent family affairs’.
Feeling snubbed, rebuffed, and wholly cast down, I yet took a grain of comfort in that word ‘novices’. At least, then, Juana had not yet taken her final vows.
But two years had passed since that time; there was a strong probability that by now she had done so.
‘Senor Felix,’ said Pedro, interrupting my glum train of thought as we plodded through a small town called Corales, ‘my stomach rumbles like Mount Vesuvius. How about a bite to eat?’
‘With all my heart. And it is time we gave the mules a rest.’
It was a poverty-stricken little place, containing, perhaps, fifty families dwelling in mud huts and set in the midst of dry, dusty flatlands where young corn was beginning to sprout. We asked which was the posada, for there was nothing to distinguish it from any other house, and were directed to one in the middle of the village. Here we dismounted and entered, calling for food. A sullen-looking man said there was nothing to be had.
‘What?’ said Pedro, pointing to some dried bacon flitches hanging from the rafters. ‘What about those? And have you no eggs
? Bacon and eggs would suit us very well.’
Muttering and grumbling with the most cantankerous ill-will, the man at length hoisted down a side of bacon and cut a few slices from it. These he set sizzling in a pan while he growled his way out to a weedy yard at the rear, from which he presently returned bearing a basket of muddy, dusty eggs. These he fried in a great pan of oil so rancid that the smell was horrible.
‘I am sorry now that I asked you to stop here,’ muttered Pedro. ‘We should have gone on to Zamora.’
While the eggs were cooking I strolled to the doorway, to get away from the smoke and stink, and stood gazing along the dusty, empty main street of this gloomy little hamlet.
By and by, in the distance, coming from the same direction as we had done, I discerned another traveller. He was mounted on a big, bony stallion, and, though his pace was slow enough now, he had evidently been travelling at a much faster rate, for his horse’s shaggy grey coat was soaked and streaked with sweat. The man did not pause in Corales, though he eyed our two tethered mules with attention, I thought, as he rode past.
‘What a weedy little fellow!’ said Pedro, joining me in the doorway, attracted by the sound of hoofs. ‘He does not look as if he’d have the strength to master that big brute. Why do you stare after him so?’
‘I felt I knew his face. It seemed in some way familiar.’
At that moment the innkeeper called out in a surly tone that our food was ready, so we returned to eat the unappetising meal. The bacon was burned, and the eggs drowned in evil-smelling oil. All the while we ate, the man stood eyeing us and grumbling as if we had done him an ill turn by stopping to eat at his posada; it was plain that, as a rule, he reckoned to serve only liquid refreshment, and that only in the evening. Pedro responded to this usage by a smile of beaming goodwill. He commented loudly and flatteringly on the delicious flavour of the food as he munched each disgusting mouthful, and, when we left, cordially shook the owner’s hand, assuring him that it was the best meal he had ever eaten, and that he would be sure to recommend the place to all his friends, of whom he had a great many, he assured the man, all over Spain.
‘So you will soon have hundreds of customers for your superb bacon and your incomparable eggs.’
The ruffian gaped at him, incapable of thinking up a suitable reply, since, though Pedro’s words were patently untrue, they were delivered with such smiling affability.
When I asked for the cuenta, it was at least double what it should have been, but, rather than fall into an argument with this disagreeable fellow, I paid it without haggling. I was still puzzling my wits, as I had done throughout the meal, as to where I could previously have seen the small man on the big grey stallion. He was a weaselly-looking character, who might have been an apothecary, or a lawyer’s clerk . . .
An hour later, as we travelled on towards Zamora, descending, now, into the valley of the River Duero, I exclaimed, ‘I have it! Of course, he is Sancho the Spy!’
‘Sancho the Spy?’ said Pedro, very startled. ‘Who is Sancho the Spy?’
‘That little fellow who rode by on the grey horse. We used to see him in Salamanca; very often, if a group of students were talking in the street, he would sidle past with his ears cocked like a terrier, and some of my mates believed that he was a police informer; if people were arrested it was thought that he had a hand in it; though nothing certain was ever proved. But they gave him the name of Sancho the Spy.’
Pedro frowned.
‘Are you sure it was the same fellow?’
‘I’d place a wager that it was. I wonder what in the world he was doing, so far from Salamanca?’
‘Why wonder? For sure, he was following us.’
‘But he has gone on ahead.’
‘And he will certainly be waiting at some point farther on to pick up our trail again. It is a pity we must go to Zamora to cross the river. But perhaps after that we can give him the slip.’
‘If he is really following us, I would rather knock his head off.’
‘No, Senor Felix, that is not sensible,’ said Pedro, shaking his own head. ‘To kill a spy is like killing a spider. It brings bad luck.’ Where he had his odd superstition from, I do not know. I never heard it before. ‘No – what we must do,’ he went on, ‘is to try and lose him after Zamora. We can leave the main highway, strike westwards to Pueblo de Sanabria, and cross the mountains, the Sierra Cabrera; he’d be clever if he could follow us there.’
‘Whatever you say, Pedro. How do you come to know the roads so well?’
‘Oh, I’ve ridden errands for your granda in these parts; buying wine and selling wool. It’s a fine wine country.’
Indeed the region around Zamora, very different from the desert plains north of Salamanca, is known as the Tierra del Vino and famous for its fertility, its vines and orchards. By and by we came within sight of the Duero, a wide swift blue river, here brawling over stones, there winding among white sand-banks. It was deep from melting winter snow, and its banks were well grown with trees, all in new spring leaf; among them, dozens of nightingales were singing at the tops of their voices.
‘What a row!’ said Pedro, blocking his ears.
‘But their song is beautiful, Pedro!’
‘Beautiful? All that chuck-chuck, tizz-wizz-wizz? Give me the old parrot any day! She, at least, talks good Spanish.’
When I ran away from home at the age of twelve, I had spent a night in the jail at Oviedo; there an old man, who helped me to escape, gave me his parrot, Assistenta. As I was at that time on my way to England, I had left Assistenta with some kind nuns in a convent at Santander, but later went back to reclaim her. She became my grandfather’s favourite companion; he was tickled by the Latin words. I had taught her, and taught her a great many more himself. When I went to college I had been glad to think they would keep each other company; she spent all her days clambering about his bookshelves.
We crossed the Duero by the great stone bridge (the only one for miles) and so up into the fortified town of Zamora, tightly crammed inside its high walls. Despite which walls, the French had captured it in Napoleon’s wars, and remained there until fourteen years previously.
By now it was not far from dusk. Pedro said in a troubled tone, ‘Our wisest course would be to ride straight through the town and continue on our way. But I am not certain that I could pick out the road to Pueblo de Sanabria in the dark.’
‘No, it had better not be thought of. We’d get lost and waste time. Besides, the beasts need rest and fodder. What we should do is find some small venta near the northern edge of the town where we may pass the night inconspicuously and be off by dawn.’
Pedro agreed, so we rode on, along streets which, at this time of the evening, were crowded with townspeople taking their paseo, or twilight promenade. I looked carefully about me for the weaselly man on his grey horse, but saw them not. Near the north wall we found a small, humble inn, with a tumbledown stable where we left our animals. Now our plans received a check, for when we unsaddled we found that the belly-band of Pedro’s mule was nearly worn through; another hour’s riding would have broken it.
He exclaimed with annoyance.
‘How could I have been such a dolt as not to notice that when I bought the beast? It was that cunning Granada gipsy who distracted me, when I began to inspect the harness, with a long tale about the beast’s pedigree –’
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘The belly-band can be replaced. All we need is a saddler.’
‘And where are we likely to find one open at this hour?’
However – having ordered a meal – we walked towards the market square, which lies to the east of the town, and were lucky enough to come upon a harness-maker’s shop still open for business. The master of the establishment was attending to another late customer, but his boy came to serve us; Pedro, who had brought along his saddle, showed the rotted girth-strap and the boy went off to find a replacement. Meanwhile I amused myself by watching the other customer’s child, a petulant-loo
king little girl of perhaps four or five, with black hair plaited up on top of her head, fastened with red ribbons. She had a pert, pale, self-willed little face, its elfin prettiness quite spoiled by her expression. When, after listening with a sharp intelligence quite in advance of her age, she suddenly realised that the fat customer was purchasing a saddle with a pillion, she at once burst into ear-splitting shrieks of disgust and fury.
‘No – and no – and no!’ she yelled. ‘I will not! I will not! I will not ride behind you like a gipsy’s child! I wish to ride in a carriage. I want it very much. Very much!’
The fat customer appeared almost out of his wits at having to deal with her temper and her tantrum.
‘But, hija, you cannot! Querida, I fear it is impossible. Do not scold poor Papa!’
‘You are not my papa! I want my proper papa.’
‘Indeed, hija, I am your proper papa. You know how much I love you.’
‘I want him. I want him very much!’ she cried, ignoring the fat man’s remonstrances.
‘But that man is not your real papa –’
‘I want him!’
‘Well – we’ll see – if you are a good girl,’ he told her rather hopelessly. ‘You shall have all the treats you want at the end of the journey, I promise! Sugar plums! And a new dress to wear –’
‘And a fan as big as Mama’s?’
‘A fan – if you wish – and shoes of the best red leather –’
‘But I wish to ride in a carriage!’ she stormed. ‘Not on a nasty hard pillion!’
‘But chica, we cannot!’
‘Why not? We rode here in a carriage.’
‘But that was along an easy road from Salamanca. Now we must cross mountains – where there may be no carriage road.’
Idly watching this scene, I had been plaiting together some scraps of broken leather thong that lay scattered over the floor – a skill picked up from sailors on the tiny Biscay hooker which had brought me from England to Spain five years ago. Now, threading over these a large blue bead, fallen from my mule’s brow-band, which came from my pocket, I tied the thong-ends together and dropped the whole circlet over the child’s head. She whirled round to stare at me, wide-eyed, clutching the leather necklace in astonishment – in her absorption over the affair of the pillion, she had not noticed me before.
