by Joan Aiken
‘Yes, you are right. Come, my friend.’ De Larra took Don Manuel’s arm. ‘We can do nothing here. The esquiladores will be waiting, with wings to carry you over the mountains into France. Come, kiss your son goodbye and we must be off.’
‘Suppose they are intercepted in the tunnel?’ Juana asked in a low voice.
De Larra shrugged.
‘In that case Manuel will blow up everybody – them and us as well! But I think it unlikely that anyone else will come that way. It is too narrow and difficult. If a whole party of troops is expected, they will be waiting across the river for some signal from Don Amador. Well – if you hear an explosion, you will know that was the end of us.’ He smiled, his strange pale eyes throwing out sparks of light. ‘If not – then, perhaps, one day, Senor Felix, I shall see you in Madrid. Ask for Figaro . . . And in that case no doubt we shall be hearing from our friend in Mexico or Argentina. Adios!’
And he led off Don Manuel, who went with him biddably, like a man in a trance.
10
We leave the castillo; crossing the rope bridge; Pedro is shot; I become unconscious
The rope brought by de Larra, which had not been needed, still lay in the upstairs chamber of the keep.
While Juana, with great care, sip by sip, silently fed the unconscious boy water from a wooden cup, I busied myself cutting the rope into lengths and forming these into a net. That was a skill I had learned from my sailor friend Sam, years ago, while crossing the Gulf of Gascony on a Basque felucca. Now I thanked God for it. He is a thrifty planner; He wastes nothing, I thought.
Little Pilar huddled sorrowfully close to me, sucking her thumb, clutching the blue bead on her plaited necklace. When Don Manuel had kissed his son goodbye, he had passed her with averted face, ignoring her; and she had lacked the spirit even to call after him. I wondered if she realised, poor little wretch, the full implication of what had happened. She seemed to accept that she had no claim on Don Manuel. What if Amador also rejects her? I wondered. It is fortunate that Juana made that promise.
Because of the children’s presence, Juana and I could not discuss their mother’s frightfully sudden death and her previous acts; and perhaps this was just as well. No doubt time would bring charity. At the moment I could not help feeling, with Don Jose, that the world was well rid of Conchita de la Trava, who had brought death to one, perhaps two, of her children, ruin to her husband, and great unhappiness to her fat lover. Where, by the way, was Don Amador? Had he followed the other two men through the tunnel? Just as I was thinking that I ought to find out how he was occupying himself, he appeared, looking utterly wretched and lugubrious. Outside, a heavy mountain rain was falling, and sodden drenched clothes added to his generally dismal appearance.
‘Why do you sit there making a net?’ he demanded fretfully. ‘What in the world is the good of that?’ but wandered away again without waiting for an answer. He was like a great fat bluebottle fly in a confined space, buzzing and blundering. I could not help feeling sorry for him.
Letting out a great gusty sigh he went and stood by Juana and Nico.
‘It were best if the poor child dies too . . . His mother gone, his father disgraced . . . And suppose you bring him back to life, only to find that his wits are flown?’
Juana flashed him a furious glance from her copper-dark eyes as she carefully trickled a little more water between the boy’s open lips.
‘We certainly dare not go through the tunnel now,’ Don Amador muttered, ambling back to me again.
‘Oh? Why not?’
Not that I had intended to. The tunnel, de Larra had said, ran north into the Sobordan valley; it was nearly half a league in length and very narrow and slippery – only sheer necessity must have impelled Dona Conchita along it. The task of carrying Nico such a distance would be almost beyond our powers; and then we would come out a long way from where we needed to be.
‘Conchita told me – Don Ignacio warned her – that, after rain, the tunnel fills with water, and one must wait a day before it drains away. There was a storm last night; now it rains again; perhaps Manuel and de Larra will never reach their journey’s end.’
He spoke with childish spite, and seemed almost glad of the mountain rain, lashing in through the unglazed windows.
‘When is this troop of soldiery supposed to arrive from Pamplona?’
‘Oh, who knows? Who knows? Maybe they will not come at all.’
Don Amador sounded much less confident about the troop than he had yesterday. Perhaps, sure that their trick with the poison had worked, Conchita and he had sent a message by Pepe and Esteban to countermand the request for the troop. I wondered where the outriders were now.
‘That is a pity,’ I remarked. ‘They might have helped us carry the children back to Berdun.’
‘Please let us not wait for the chance of their coming,’ said Juana. ‘I think we should move this poor boy as soon as we can.’
‘I agree,’ said I, and, standing up, measured the net I had made against the boy’s body. ‘Another half-hour’s work should do it.’
‘Oh! Is Nico going down in a net?’ exclaimed Pilar.
‘Certainly. How else can we get him down?’
‘Can I go down in the net too?’
I would have rapped out a short No! but Juana said thoughtfully, ‘You could, of course, but it seems a pity that someone so clever at climbing should not go down in the loop, like the rest of us.’
That changed Pilar’s views at once, and I began to see that the control of this wayward little creature was an art which had to be learned.
As I worked on, Pilar, just a little cheered by the prospect of descending the cliff, said, ‘Uncle Dor-Dor?’
‘Well?’
‘Why did you bring Mama the paste for painting the book’s pages? If it was going to make Luisa mad?’
‘Indeed you are quite mistaken, child,’ he said hastily. ‘I did no such thing!’
‘But you brought her a little pot.’
‘It held ointment for her lips. Salve. Nothing at all to do with that accursed book. And perhaps it was not the book at all that killed Luisa. Maybe it was a sickness caused by hunger and cold.’
Pilar looked wholly unconvinced, but he took himself off to the far end of the room and stood there with a look of great uneasiness, alternately balancing on toes and heels, until I had finished my work on the net. Then I proposed that he come with me and observe the workings of the ratchet, to which he agreed with a show of alacrity. The storm had passed over by now, and the world outside was wet and sparkling.
‘I trust you do not think that I had any connection with that hideous trick of the book,’ he said virtuously as soon as we were out of doors. ‘Indeed I had not the least knowledge of it in the world. I did not know the brat was carrying it, even. For sure, that was why Conchita set me to hunt for the tunnel in the wrong place – just to give that little demon a chance to make her way up the cliff –’
‘I have had no thoughts about the matter, senor,’ I replied politely.
Don Amador was a weak, variable man, I thought. Harmless enough, perhaps, if left to himself, but, subject to another influence such as that of Conchita, I could believe him capable of crime. His manner of speech suggested this variability. Sometimes it seemed quite sincere, as when he had talked about the children last night; but at other times what he said had an airy falsity that would not deceive even a half-wit. Now he looked at me sidelong, as if wondering whether I believed him.
‘She was after his money, of course,’ he went on.
‘But I thought that Dona Conchita’s family were so rich.’
‘Indeed they were, the old Escaroz. But they have paid out thousands and thousands of reales, assisting the cause of the Carlists.’
The Carlists, I knew, were the political party most savagely opposed to Liberals such as Don Manuel and my grandfather. The Liberals wished Spain to be governed by a written constitution, for all men to be taxed equally, for all to have a vote, an
d equal rights. King Ferdinand had promised these reforms but, once he was supported by armies from overseas, forswore all his promises and restored the old tyrannical ways. But there was yet a third party who thought the king was not severe enough; and at their head was the king’s brother, Don Carlos, a most bigoted zealot, who wished to carry oppression even further, and for no changes of any kind to be made in the laws, ever. (He also wanted the throne for himself: King Ferdinand’s children were both girls, and Don Carlos claimed that, by the Salic law, they were not eligible to inherit the throne.)
A large number of the Carlists lived in the Basque territories or in Catalonia; it did not at all surprise me to hear that Conchita’s parents were of this faction. In old times the Basques had been exempt from a great many taxes; they had what were known as fueros, statute laws freeing them from military service and from other ordinances laid down by the central government in Madrid. The Basques claimed they had they had the rights of an ancient, independent kingdom, and should be treated differently from folk living in other Spanish provinces.
Whether they are right or wrong, I cannot pretend to say. But old customs, I believe, should not be lightly cast off.
‘Don Manuel, you see, had not come to trial at the time he escaped from jail,’ Don Amador was going on. ‘So his estates were not yet forfeit, as those of a condemned felon would be.’
‘I see . . . so Conchita would have inherited if he had died.’
‘And now Nico will – if the poor boy survives, which seems unlikely,’ Don Amador said carelessly.
I felt a fierce resolve that Nico should survive, if I could help it, but said merely, ‘Don Manuel has not died, however, so this is idle talk. Now, here is how the ratchet works –’
‘We must go down there?’ Don Amador gazed at the fearsome drop with starting eyes. His fat cheeks paled visibly.
‘That was the way we came up, senor.’
‘Ay, Madre de Dios!’
Just at that moment I heard two shots from below. My heart lightened, wonderfully. Holding on to the crane arm and peering over, I called, ‘Pedro, is that you?’
‘Felix!’ his shout came back, ‘Ay! – am I glad to hear your voice! How goes it, up there?’
‘You shall hear, by and by. But now we have to come down – and one of the children is sick. Wait there, at the bottom, and we will be with you soon.’
‘Come with me,’ I told Don Amador, ‘and help me carry Nico.’
I did not want him meddling with the crane mechanism while I was out of the way. So he accompanied me, not very willingly, back to the keep, and we placed Nico in my net, as in a hammock. He was still only half conscious, murmuring the word ‘thirsty’ from time to time.
We carried him back to the cliff-top – he was a light weight, poor child – little Pilar bounding alongside. She had picked up from somewhere her mother’s great plumy black fan, which she importantly flourished about. It struck me that both she and Don Amador were recovering quite speedily from Dona Conchita’s death. Which told a good deal about the lady.
I fastened Nico completely into the net, joining the edges together and knotting them. Then I fastened the net to the crane rope.
‘Now,’ I said to Juana, who had come with us, ‘can you go down with him, sitting in the loop, so as to fend him off and prevent his striking himself against the rock?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said, gulping, and I pressed her hand briefly as I helped her into the loop. The descent was far worse than being pulled up, for the moment of stepping off the cliff-top and looking down into that giddy void was so dreadful; but she concealed her fears as well as she could, gave little Pilar a wry smile, and, as we wound her down, kept her attention on the boy. They vanished from view past the overhang, we felt the rope vibrate, then, after what seemed a sickeningly long stretch of time, we heard Pedro’s cheerful shout.
‘Muy bien! I have them!’ – and the rope, coming free, suddenly lightened as we wound it up.
‘Now you,’ I said to little Pilar.
Her lip thrust out angrily.
‘But I want to climb down!’
‘That would take too long. We want to get your brother to a doctor. Also,’ I whispered in her ear, ‘you have to show your Uncle Dor-Dor that there is nothing to be afraid of.’
Her expression cleared.
‘Of course I will show him!’ And she skipped over to the crane, still clutching the plumy fan.
Despite her vehement protests, I tied her in, making a kind of harness.
‘Now, don’t forget to keep pushing yourself away from the rock with your hands. Otherwise you might get scraped.’
‘Of course! I’m not stupid,’ she said crossly; and down she went, briskly as a fisherman’s bait into the water.
By the time it came to Don Amador’s turn, I could see that he was in a jelly of terror.
‘B-but will the rope b-bear me?’ he demanded, his teeth chattering. ‘For I am a man of ample frame – you may have observed – ’ Now, for the first time, he seemed to regret all those good dinners he had been eating all his life.
‘Indeed, senor, it is a strong, brand-new rope which I just purchased myself in Pamplona,’ I said soothingly, not mentioning that the crane-arm which supported it was an old, weathered piece of timber upheld by some crumbling masonry.
At last he suffered himself to be lowered, but only after countless hesitations and fidgetings, and uttering many shrill cries of fright and discomfort; and he clung on so tightly with both hands to the rope that, in spite of my warning, he was thumped against the cliff face in what must have been a most bruising manner. Well, his fat frame can stand a few bruises, I thought; at least he is well-padded.
He had not thought to inquire how I was going to get down, with no one to wind the wheel; and indeed I had purposely not discussed the matter for fear that Juana might raise difficulties. Now, taking the remnant of de Larra’s rope, I made a loop at either end, one small, one large, passed the large one over my shoulders, and hooked the small one over the last of the cramping-irons which I had fastened into the rock when Pilar and I made our ascent of the cliff.
Going up had not been bad; going down was liable to be far, far harder.
So I found it, indeed. Some stretches of the climb I was able to remember; and that helped greatly, for then I knew in which direction to move. But the face of the cliff seemed very different now that I was climbing down, not up; while descending, I could not look down and see what lay below my feet, whereas on the ascent it had been easy to look upward and scan the area above me.
Once, the iron, which had not been jammed in firmly enough, dropped out of the rock, and I slid my own height down the cliff (luckily not quite sheer at that point) and landed on a narrow rock ledge; it was too narrow to support me but, by half falling, half lurching to my left, I managed to reach a wider section of it. The rope round my shoulders helped to give me confidence, but sometimes it was hard to shake it loose from the iron above – once I nearly shook myself loose in the process; then I would loop it over another iron, farther down, and so scramble on my way.
Luckily, at the moment when I fell, I was hidden from those below by the overhang, but a scatter of dust and pebbles cascaded past me and I had to shout, ‘Beware, down there!’ and I heard anxious cries from the foot of the cliff.
When I finally came within view of them the climb was not too difficult, and there were more hand-holds; now I had reached the point that little Pilar had climbed to when I first saw her.
She is a courageous little ant, I thought, if terribly undisciplined; perhaps Juana will be able to make something good of her: heaven send that the poor child never comes to realise the full extent of the harm that was done when she carried that book into the castillo . . .
At last, with bleeding hands and (I must confess) with weak and shaky knees, I reached the foot of the cliff, and little Pilar ran at once to upbraid me furiously.
‘Why did you not let me climb down too? If you were go
ing to? Instead of making me go down like a baby on the rope?’
‘Oh, come, Pilar,’ said Juana – she seemed to be trembling too – ‘the rest of us went down on the rope, Don Amador too, it was not babyish –’
‘How does Nico seem?’ I asked quickly. ‘Did the descent do him any harm?’
‘I do not think that he is any worse,’ Juana said doubtfully. ‘But the sooner we can get him into care, the better – I only wish Sister Belen were here –’
Plainly, while Don Amador and I had been descending the cliff, Juana had given Pedro a fairly full account of what had been happening. His eyes met mine expressively; and he came over and gave me a hug that was half a shake. ‘If only I could have been up there to help you – ’ he muttered.
‘There is plenty of help yet needed, Pedro.’
So he and I picked up Nico, still fastened in his net, and carried him along the narrow brambly path to the rope bridge. Pilar darted ahead, dragging Juana by the hand, Don Amador followed, limping and complaining, in the rear.
Across the gorge, two horses could be seen, tethered by the door of the foresters’ hut. And as we came closer I observed, without joy, the two outriders Pepe and Esteban come out of the hut and look us over.
They seemed well-disposed enough, however. Don Amador shouted to them that we were coming over with the children, and they made gestures, indicating that they would stand by to give help, if needed.
‘I can go by myself!’ clamoured little Pilar.
‘Very well – only take care,’ said Juana.
Pilar cast her a lofty look, stuck the black fan into her waistband, then went across, hand over hand, as nimbly as a monkey.
‘She belongs in a circus, that one,’ muttered Pedro.
Don Amador went next, puffing, groaning, swaying, and making a great to-do. He was a comical sight, I suppose, but none of us felt like laughing. Too many sad and dreadful events had taken place. Pepe and Esteban, on the far bank, however, did seem to have some difficulty in concealing their amusement; I saw Pepe turn away with his shoulders shaking, and Esteban gave him a great cuff on the ear.
