by Joan Aiken
‘Senor Felix?’ she called softly.
‘Yes, senora? How can I help you?’
‘You have travelled to England, I believe?’
You know perfectly well that I have, lady, I thought, for you heard me tell the Reverend Mother so.
‘Yes, senora,’ I agreed politely.
‘Oh, do please, then, tell me about it. I have such a curiosity to hear about England!’
‘Why, truly, senora, I have seen but little of the country – only the part between my grandfather’s estates and the sea-coast. And the town of Bath. I have not been to London or the university towns.’
‘Describe the city of Bath to me. Is it as large as Bilbao? And tell me about your grandfather.’
Rather reluctantly, I did so. Part of me was wildly eager to hurry on ahead, to talk to the pair of sandalled sisters (Pedro, I noticed, had dismounted from his mule and was now walking beside them, discussing something with great animation and waving his arms about). Yet part of me still hesitated, nervous, touchy, and reluctant. Why, I wondered, I kept wondering, why had Juana not greeted me in any way, not by so much as the smallest gesture? Did she not wish to renew our old acquaintance? Yet, in that case, why had she sent for me? Now that she saw me again, was she ashamed of me? Or (this was a horrible thought) was neither of those two nuns Juana? Were they two total strangers? I felt dreadfully uneasy and cast down.
My answers to Dona Conchita’s questions must, I am sure, have seemed lame and random indeed, yet she appeared delighted and deeply interested, laughed merrily at various of the things I told her, and asked many questions.
When I had told her all that I could remember of Bath (a most displeasing city, bitterly cold and dank, where it rains without ceasing all winter long, and all summer too, those who lived there told me), Dona Conchita demanded of me, in a careless manner, ‘And pray tell me, is it not true, Senor Felix, that it was somewhere on your grandfather’s land – the Spanish grandfather I mean – that all the pay-chests of General Baird’s English army were cast away? Twenty-five thousand pounds’ worth of silver dollars, is it not said – all thrown down the mountain-side when Bonaparte was chasing the English out of Spain? Did your grandfather’s people never find those trunks of silver dollars?’
‘Never, senora,’ I replied calmly. ‘And I am quite surprised that you should pay such heed to an idle tale.’
She opened her beautiful dark eyes very wide.
‘But the pay-load was lost – everybody knows that story is true. And somebody had to find it. In fact there are many tales floating about; one of them has it that an English deserter named Smith knew where the treasure lay, and that he is now living like a lord in Tangier and calls himself Don Juan Forjador; other versions tell that your canny grandfather had the silver removed, little by little, and stored away secretly.’
‘Well, you can inform whoever told you those tales, senora, that both are baseless. My grandfather certainly does not have the silver – if he did, he would long since have taken steps to return it to its proper owners. And as for poor Smith, he died, five or six years back, of the lung-rot.’
‘How do you know that?’ she asked quickly.
‘Because I made inquiries.’
‘Ah! Then you had met Smith?’
‘Very briefly, once, yes, when I was on my way to England. And then when, by coincidence, he was taken into custody, along with a band of highway robbers, and held overnight in my grandfather’s stables, he wrote a letter to me, saying that he was dying.’
‘Why should he write to you?’ demanded Dona Conchita.
‘I had undertaken to deliver a letter from him, to his niece. He was grateful.’ And he also wrote to warn me that my great-aunt was making evil plans against me, I thought, but did not say. I was not flattered by Dona Conchita’s interest in my family – which seemed nourished on vulgar tales – and saw no reason to gratify it further.
She smiled at me mischievously. ‘You are certainly a cool young man, Senor Felix. If I thought there might be all those chests of silver dollars on my land, lying there for the taking, I would be out searching under every juniper-bush! But perhaps you have done that very thing and are, of course, far too shrewd to tell any inquisitive female who comes asking you about it.’
‘If you choose to imagine such a thing, senora, that is your privilege.’
She laughed musically, and changed to questions about Salamanca and my studies there.
‘How long will they continue?’
‘To be a barrister – which was my intention – I must learn logic and physics for three years; then mathematics and Roman law; then Spanish and ecclesiastical law –’
‘Ay, Dios mio! You will be an old, grey-bearded man by the time you qualify,’ she said, throwing up her hands. ‘How many years is the course, in heaven’s name?’
‘Thirteen for a fully qualified barrister. But, as I had good Latin. I might get through in a shorter time: all the teaching is in that language.’
‘Now I can be quite certain that neither you nor your grandfather found that treasure; who would put himself through such a training if he could afford to live at home?’
‘A man might choose to serve his country,’ I said rather stiffly.
Again she gave her silvery laugh. ‘Oh, pray! I heard enough of that kind of talk from my husband.’ And she began to talk about the city of Salamanca, where she had been herself, she told me.
‘I have friends there . . . I know it a little,’ and she mentioned some of the sights of the town, especially the famous Casa de las Conchas, a house with its facade all adorned with stone cockle-shells. ‘When my little daughter Pilar first saw those cockles, she wanted every one of them for herself,’ Dona Conchita told me gaily. ‘Oh, how she wanted them! She cried and cried –’
‘Pilar is the youngest – how old is she?’
‘Hardly more than a baby. Oh, how I keep wondering and wondering what that atrocious monster is doing to my poor darlings,’ she suddenly broke off to lament in a tremulous tone, very different from that she had been using.
I was trying to summon some phrases of comfort when she suddenly exclaimed, in a different tone again, ‘No, really, this is too much!’
For, as we climbed ever higher, the fine mountain rain had changed to a fine, sleety snow, blowing and stinging in our eyes and nostrils.
‘I refuse to ride on horseback any longer in this abominable blizzard!’ exclaimed Dona Conchita, and she insisted on Tomas the coachman stopping and letting her seat herself in the carriage once more. ‘The horses must have had sufficient rest by now – here we are, nearly at the top of the mountain!’
Tomas grumbled and objected a good deal, but she told him in the softest and gentlest manner that Senor Escaroz would dismiss him as soon as he returned home unless she had her way.
So, with downturned mouth and out-thrust jaw, he let down the step and she got back into the coach.
‘What about the holy sisters?’
‘Oh – they seem well enough, with the cloaks these gentlemen have been kind enough to give them. They are used to walking about in all weathers.’
Now that Esteban the outrider had his horse back, he and his companion and Pedro rode on ahead into the snowy gloom, to make sure that the road was clear.
I seized this chance to overtake the two sisters and dismount beside them, removing my hat politely as I did so, and greeting them. As I rode up behind them I had caught a snatch of their talk, and was surprised to find that this was neither in Spanish nor in Basque nor in French, but in Latin; so I greeted them in that language.
‘Salve, met Sorori!’
‘Aha!’ said Juana’s voice – her own, unmistakable voice, rather low-pitched but quick and clear – ‘so you have kept up with your Latin at Salamanca, have you, Felix? But do you still remember the Basque word for sister, I wonder?’
‘Ahizpa,’ I said, dredging the word up from some deep well of memory.
‘There! I wouldn’t have bel
ieved it!’ She laughed – the old, familiar chuckle. ‘Sister Belen, we shall have him speaking fluent Euskara yet; in a hundred years, perhaps.’
Sister Belen also chuckled – a fat, deep, comfortable sound. All I could see of her, inside the deep, flapping white hood, was a round brown cheek, but her voice was friendly as the sound of a brook.
‘In that case we had better, perhaps, speak Spanish.’
‘Why do you converse in Latin, my sisters?’ I asked.
‘Oh,’ Juana replied lightly, ‘for good practice. And – just in case the mountain eagles are listening to our chat.’
I caught a gleam of her copper-dark eye and remembered that one of the first things she had ever said to me was, ‘I have learned to trust nobody.’
She was still exactly the same Juana – even if dressed up in a nun’s robe; and, as the snow stung and slashed against our faces, I walked on beside her in deep content.
Next moment, round a corner of cliff, the weather changed; as so often in Spain, coming over the top of the escarpment we found a completely different climate waiting on the other side of the mountain: warm sun and a mild, grassy landscape.
Pedro and the outriders now trotted back to suggest that we should rest the horses for a short space of time and take a merienda.
Tomas, the coachman, very willing, quickly produced a feast from one of the large baskets in the baggage compartment: white rolls, ham, cheese, wine, fruit. A cloth was spread, the ladies perched on rocks, we all ate and drank.
The sisters put back their hoods. Sister Belen, I saw, was a round-faced, red-cheeked country-woman as her voice had suggested, smiling and comfortable. And Juana? Juana was herself – pale, thin, her dark eyes full of fire and resolution; her hair, cropped in a short, monastic fashion, was much as I remembered it during our journey together when she had been disguised as a boy.
Pedro gave me his gap-toothed grin and murmured, ‘Hey! More like a fiesta than a rescue mission?’
I had been thinking the same thing myself; it was hard to believe that this large party, drinking wine in the cheerful sunshine, had any connection with three terrified children being held captive against their will by a madman in some mountain fastness. The three children ought to be here with us, I thought – eating grapes, tumbling off rocks, and probably making thorough nuisances of themselves; I recalled the spoiled little girl in Zamora screaming at her father that she wished to ride in a carriage.
‘We certainly can’t drag all this circus with us wherever we go,’ Pedro murmured, ‘or those poor children won’t be rescued by the Ano Nuevo.’
‘You are right, of course. I have been thinking the same thing. But how are we to rid ourselves of all this company?’
‘It’s not going to be easy. The Dona de la Trava is a lady with a will of her own.’
I nodded, with gloom.
‘Well – we shall have to find a way somehow,’ Pedro said in an undertone, as the lady herself came smilingly towards us.
‘Will you not take more wine, Senor Felix, and another leg of chicken?’
‘No, I thank you, senora, I think we should continue on our way, or we shall never reach Pamplona by dusk. I will just ask the sisters if they have had sufficient refreshment.’
The two sisters, as seemed to be their habit, had placed themselves somewhat apart from the rest of the group, had eaten and drunk very sparingly, and were now sitting in silence and contentment looking at the great view outspread to the south. How different it must be for them, I thought, travelling freely like this, from being shut behind that black wall in Bilbao.
They were looking away from me, had not heard my approach and I was able to look at Juana fully. I remembered Grandfather’s warning: ‘You must be prepared to find great changes in her. Young ladies grow up much faster than their male counterparts.’ But, it seemed to me, she had not changed at all! The gleam in her eye was just as I recalled it; there was mockery in it, and merriment, but a spark of the Devil’s own temper as well; at any affront, real or fancied, she was capable of firing up into a fury. Had convent discipline, I wondered, cured her of this habit? Somehow it seemed unlikely.
‘Have you had sufficient, my sisters?’ I asked. ‘You have not taken very much?’
‘Yes, thank you, we have done excellently,’ Sister Belen assured me. She was plainly some years older than Juana and looked, from her outdoor complexion, as if she must be in charge of the convent’s garden or livestock. She had a sensible, good-humoured face and I thought, if our expedition had to be lumbered with so many females, that she, at least, would give us little trouble. ‘Come, Sister Felicita,’ she said, ‘the young senor wants us back in the carriage.’
I did not, of course; I wanted to walk beside Juana and recall old times. But there was no chance of that; Dona Conchita had come up and was asking how many more leagues it was to Pamplona and whether I had travelled this way before; the sisters climbed into the carriage and were shut up in it before I could exchange any more words with them.
We did not reach Pamplona that night; Dona Conchita insisted on yet another impromptu stop along the way, and dusk found us at a small village called Irurzun, where, fortunately, there was an inn simple but commodious enough to accommodate the whole party.
As soon as we halted, Juana and Sister Belen disappeared into the village church, presumably to pray for the success of the enterprise. I would have liked to follow their example, but was intercepted by Dona Conchita who asked me, with pretty civility, to take a glass of wine with her and tell her how I planned to rescue her babies.
‘Well, senora, can you tell me a little about the children? It is not really possible to make any plan until we discover where they are being kept; but in the meantime, any description of their habits and dispositions may prove useful.’
This, however, she seemed to find it impossible to provide. Whether it was because the children had been reared by nurses and servants and had spent little time with their mother, or because she was the kind of person who has no gift for making a picture in words, I could not decide.
‘Nico is a little angel – so good, so sweet! And Luisa is a perfect wonder at embroidery – already she has stitched two altar-cloths for the Carmelite nuns –’
‘How old are they?’
‘Nico is nine – the poor darling has had a birthday since that monster abducted them – and Luisa just eight –’
‘And the baby?’
‘Oh, little Pilar? She is four. But now, give me your own history, Senor Felix? How did your parents chance to meet? Do, pray, tell me all about yourself.’
This I had no great wish to do. Beautiful as Dona de la Trava was, kind and full of interest as she appeared, yet her company somehow made me fidgety. And the story of my parents, a very sad one, was not of a kind to be related idly, by way of passing the time, in the ale-room of a posada, no matter how cordial the audience. I jumped up and said I would hurry the cook with our dinner, so that we might make an early start the next day.
On my way back from the kitchen I encountered the two sisters returning from their devotions, and offered them a glass of wine. This they declined, but came into the ale-room to sit (indeed there was nowhere else) and placed themselves on a wooden bench. Then I remembered that Juana had met her cousin’s children, they were fond of her – that, in fact, was why Dona Conchita had appealed to her for help in the first place. So I asked her if she could supply me with information as to any of their particular likes or dislikes, habits or skills or fears that she might call to mind.
‘Yes, of course,’ she said readily. ‘Nico is very good at drawing – he loves animals and has great skill in making pictures of them. And he has a natural way with all beasts – dogs and horses trust him, and wild creatures too – he had a pet owl that he tamed, and a snake. Whereas Luisa is rather frightened of many animals – she is a nervous child, prone to nightmares. I remember she used to wake screaming, “Father! Father!”’
‘Ah, the poor angel,’ murmure
d Dona Conchita, who had been listening to this with slightly knitted brows – ‘Even then, when you met them three years ago, they were terrified of their father, he cast such a shadow over the whole household –’
‘And Pilar?’ I asked Juana, who was frowning and looking thoughtful. ‘Do you recall anything special about her? Or was she too small then to have developed any special characteristics?’
‘Indeed no,’ said Juana laughing. ‘She was a perfect little devil. Even at the age of one it could be seen that all her ways derived straight from the Evil One.’
‘Oh, come, my love, how can you be so hard on the poor child?’ said Conchita, smiling, but I could see that she was not pleased. ‘Poor little Pilar, how can you say such things about her at an age when she could hardly walk or talk. And she your own cousin!’
‘I remember the dance that she led her nurse, poor old Guillermina. And how she used to plague the two elder ones, scrambling after them and snatching their toys from them. Yet they were remarkably patient with her. Nico and Luisa spoke a special language to each other that they had made up themselves,’ Juana told me, ‘and little Pilar was wild to learn it too, though she could hardly speak Spanish then; but she used to scream with rage if they talked their own language in her presence; she would rush at them and hit them with her tiny fists. Truly, Conchita, I am sorry for her father if he has her somewhere shut up, he is the one who will suffer.’
‘How can you say such things?’ repeated Conchita with a hurt, smiling face.
‘Because I can remember very clearly the rages Pilar used to fall into when something was not given her that she wanted – my books about flowers and birds, for instance, that Nico used to look at. He was so careful with books always, but Pilar could not be trusted; she would tear and crumple the pages. And, Dios mio, the passions she fell into when she saw them put up out of reach on a high shelf. If she is the same now –’
‘Of course not, she is much older and wiser,’ protested Conchita in her soft musical voice. ‘You are giving Senor Felix quite a wrong impression. What in the world will he be thinking?’
