by Joan Aiken
"Sacré nom de Dieu!" gibbered Jorobado the hunchback. "The laminak The laminak are angry—are angry with us!" and he clapped heels to his ass and scampered off up the gorge, while the rest of the troop followed him helter-skelter. All but the white-haired man with the black patch, who bawled after them angrily not to be a set of puling children but to come back.
"Dolts! Cowards! Imbeciles! Come back, there is nothing to fear but a couple of children. Come back, I say, or when I catch you I'll slit your tripes and drag the skin off your tongues!"
But they paid no heed.
Ignoring these shouts, Juan kicked the Harlequin into a walk, and made for the harrow gorge entrance. Cocher strode furiously to intercept him, standing in the middle of the way with arms wide.
"You don't deceive me, you little rat, with your talk of ghosts and laminak. That rock—" He looked at his fallen comrade, crossed himself, and said hastily, "That rock falling was nothing but a queer accident."
"Eh, Cocher, is that what you think?" Juan answered, sweet as quince. "Then it will just be another lucky accident if it happens again?"
And he raised his voice again in that eerie ascending wail, "Ooooooooh! Ooooooooh!" until the cloud of bats flew round once more.
The combination of the sound and the bats proved too much for Cocher. Almost despite himself, it seemed, he drew back and let Juan ride past him. Shrouded in my fog of pain as I was, yet I had presence of mind enough to give the Demon a kick, and obediently he broke into an uneasy trot—which, jolting me, almost made me shriek with agony—and made haste to follow his companion.
Sometimes still, in dreams, or if ever I am feverish, I find myself back there, in that hideous dark, slimy gully, with the horses slipping and trembling, the last light of the sky paling from blue to apple-green above, and the thought of those men behind us, hesitant, eager to seize us, angry at the death of their companion, yet cowed and indecisive, not able to pluck up courage to come after us. And behind them, in the dark cave, the Being that inhabited the body of Plumet.
What would he do now? Would he follow us, angry at their failure?
That ride through the gorge seemed to last for several lifetimes. I was too ill to measure time sensibly; inside my head I could hear a booming, and the light came and went as if veils were being waved before my eyes. I clung with my left hand to the pommel of the Demon's saddle; my knees felt as if they had melted away, my back was aching and stiff, and my right arm seemed the size of my whole body. The dank twilight of the place enwrapped me like a suffocating net.
Dimly, at last, I was aware that we had come out into clearer light and better air; then, later, that Juan had dismounted and was walking, leading my pony, while the Harlequin followed behind, on a long halter.
When had Juan done this? I did not know. Where were we? I did not know.
Sometimes I heard Juan murmuring words; I had no strength to follow the meaning, but the sound of them filtered slowly into my throbbing head like flakes of snow:
"The wind is rising
While I am falling
While I am listening
The wind is calling..."
Then he would break off and say, "Felix? Can you hear me? Are you strong enough to keep on—to go a little farther?"
I would mumble some reply, and he would say, "Keep your heart up. I know, I know the pain is terrible. I do not understand how you can bear it. But I see that you can. I am trying to find a way out of this wilderness that we are in."
Then we would plod on, kilometer after kilometer, league after league, up over ridges, down through valleys, and after a while I would hear his voice again, murmuring about the wind:
"While I am laughing
The wind is weeping
The wind is sighing
While I am sleeping..."
The lilt of these words, of Juan's voice, somehow formed a band of curving smoothness, like a path over gently rounded hills, which my spirit could follow while my wretched body obediently, doggedly continued to sit on the pony and submit to endless pain. Could it have been like this for Juan, I wondered, when he was dangling by his neck from the branch of the tree? Did he suffer so? Why did I never think of that before?
And on we went, scrambling over uneven ground.
And his voice came, gentle but insistent:
"While I am silent
The wind is raging
The wind is ageless
While I am aging..."
Vaguely, through all my pain, I understood that what he said about the wind was true; all the time, since we had left the hateful gorge, it had been rising, and now moaned and battered around us like a live thing, pushing, fluttering, urging us forward; it held us in its cold arms; it led us, dragged us, pulled us, and thrust us. Great swags and wads of black cloud came hurrying over the sky, piling into thunderlofts; and then, with a loud hiss, a whole world of rain fell on us, plastering the hair flat against our heads, even under our hats, drenching our jackets, sleeking down the ponies' rough coats until they looked like satin.
And still we rode on, on.
"The wind is rising
While I am sinking
The wind is speaking
While I am thinking..."
Now a bright saber of lightning cleft the sky, and not long after there came a giant crack, as if the whole nut of heaven had been split open, and the rain fell even faster.
"The storm is our friend," remarked Juan with satisfaction, "for the Gente won't be able to follow our tracks."
Indeed, the path we followed was like a running brook. Even the water-shy Harlequin seemed not to heed it, but patiently followed while Juan trudged up to his shins in mire and water.
"Ah!" I heard him exclaim some while later. "Now I truly do believe that God must have been guiding us."
I pulled up my head and stared about. For some time I had been aware that we were descending, not climbing; I saw that we were coming down a narrow col, or mountain pass; around us lay a jumble of woods and rocky peaks, illuminated from time to time by the lightning flashes. To the side of our track, ahead, stood a crude stone cross, and beyond that was a small stone building, square, with a domed roof, and a door supported by two solid stone columns. The building was almost grown over with creepers and vines; ivy and wallflowers sprouted between the cracks of the masonry, which was plainly very old. Behind the building rose a rock wall; there was a lean-to at one side, and, close by, a spring trickled into a stone trough.
There were some words carved over the lintel.
Juan led my pony up to this building and knocked on the heavy wooden door with my makhila, which he was carrying.
A faint voice called from inside: "Come in! Whoever you are! And heaven bless you!"
Now, with the most solicitous and tender care, Juan helped me dismount. I rolled off the saddle like a sack, supported by my left hand on his shoulder, and somehow landed on my feet. He pushed open the door of the cabin and helped me inside.
A tiny lamp, placed in a niche in front of a crucifix, faintly glimmered and illuminated the place.
On a bed of leaves and straw in a corner lay a desperately pale, emaciated man dressed in a canvas robe. His long shaggy white hair had not been cut, by the look of it, for years; his eyes were sunk back in his head, he held a rosary in his sticklike hands. He looked like a corpse; yet he still had strength to turn his head and gaze at us.
"Are you Brother Laurent?" said Juan.
The answer was a feint nod.
"Then we come to you with fraternal greetings from Brother Bertrand. But my companion here is sick—as you can see—he was bitten by a snake. May I take some of these things to make him a bed?"
Taking the faint croak of assent as permission, Juan found a pile of dirty sacks and a bundle of hay, my legs were on the point of collapsing under me, but just before they did so he carefully assisted me to lie down. Oh, the blessed relief of reposing full length on that unsavory couch!
Then Juan went outside to see to the po
nies and bring in our saddlebags.
"While he did so I gazed up at a crucifix above me on the wall; the life-size figure upon it was made of black, polished bones.
"Cordial—" faintly articulated the hermit when Juan returned. "In the chest—:by the holy book."
Juan knelt at a chest under the crucified skeleton. Its skull stared down at him as he pulled out a little flask. Matter-of-factly he administered a few drops to the sick man, and then a mouthful to me. At once a wonderful tingling warmth ran through me from head to toe, and I began to realize that, in fact, my state of sickness had turned, at sortie point on that agonizing ride, and that I had commenced the process of recovery. Perhaps the storm and the rain had done me good, washed the poison out of my arm, and now this cordial helped knit my faculties together. I felt more like Felix; understood that before too long, next day if God willed it, I should be restored to normal health.
Thanking God in my heart, I was able to smile at Juan, thank him, too, and whisper, "Take a sip of cordial yourself! You must be worn to the bone."
His look lighted up at my smile. He said, "Well, I will just have a taste!" and did so.
Then he busied himself kindling a fire in the crude hearth (fortunately there were dry sticks in a heap), heated water, and—since there was no food in the place—with a handful of herbs he made a kind of tisane, of which he gave cupfuls to the sick man and me and drank some himself.
The hermit, who had indeed appeared at the point of death when we arrived, now rallied a little, and said, "My children, you come at a good hour for me ... Did you indeed see my brother Bertrand?"
We were able to assure him that we had, and repeated the message of fraternal forgiveness. Tears stood in the hermit's eyes as he heard it, and he exclaimed weakly, "But Bertrand does not know—he does not know the blackest sin of all. No, no, I do not deserve his forgiveness! Monster that I am, I have never confessed my mortal sin. But now I think that God must have sent you to listen to the story of what I did."
Aghast, I began to say, "You have no need to tell us. It would be far better to confess it all to God—" But Juan hushed me with a finger to his lips.
Raising himself on one elbow, the dying man hurried on: "My brother told you, I suppose, that he and I quarreled fatally over a young girl, and that she killed herself, rather than choose between us?"
We nodded. He cried out lamentably, "But that was not true! She did not commit the sin of self-murder! It was I who killed the poor girl—rather than lose her to my brother, I, wild, mad with rage, thrust poor Laura into the ravine. That is what he has to forgive! Oh, miserable wretch, murderer, monster that I am."
"Well, my father," said Juan, after a pause—he spoke in a hesitant, thoughtful, troubled tone—"that was a very terrible thing to do; there is no doubt of that; but you have spent many years now repenting your sin, and I daresay God will understand and perhaps forgive you if you ask him very sincerely. I am sure He must have forgiven harder things than that in His time."
"Do you believe so, child?"
"Yes," said Juan more positively. "I suppose you were quite young when it happened, and stupid, and unreasonable—"
"Oh, yes, yes, yes!"
"Well, there! I do not suppose that you would commit such a crime now, would you? If—if the lady was to walk in at the door and—and tell you that she loved your brother best—you would not push her off a cliff now, would you?"
"Indeed not!" gasped the poor man. "I would greet her like a blessed angel!"
"There, then! Surely she is waiting to forgive you in Paradise."
The old man burst into a racking flood of sobs, which almost seemed likely to tear him in pieces. Juan tried to soothe him, but I said, "No, let him weep. He is washing away all those years of remorse and guilt." So Juan let him be.
At last the poor thing heaved a shuddering sigh, then another, gulped back his tears, and said, "Child, you have brought me great comfort. God indubitably sent you here. And perhaps He did it for your welfare as well as for mine. Can I assist you in any way, while this feeble husk still holds me together?"
"Yes, my father, you can," said Juan. "Your brother Bertrand said that you would be able to give my friend and me good counsel. We are being dogged by an evil man—or an evil spirit, we do not know which—but wherever we go, he follows our track, and we are very much afraid of him."
In as few words as possible he told Brother Laurent the story of our escape from the Abbey and Father Vespasian's pursuit of us.
Brother Laurent seemed to feel a stir of curiosity or memory at the name Vespasian.
"What was this man's name before he entered? Was it Victor Sihigue?"
"I do not know, my father."
"Strange ... strange. It sounds the same. And yet..." He pondered, seeming almost to nod off into sleep. Juan waited patiently, and presently he roused again.
"Wherever you go, he is able to follow? You have seen him, or his accomplices, at all these different places?"
"Yes, my father. At the grotto, and at St. Jean, at Hasparren and at Licq-Athdrey. And then today—we did not see him at the fearful gorge, but they said he was there, in the cave."
"Singular. Most singular. No doubt he has more than human powers. But what is there about you that is able to summon him to where you are, like the needle to the lodestone?"
"We cannot guess," said Juan.
"You do not, by any chance, have some article of his in your possession?"
At those words Juan turned completely white.
"Bon Dieu! I had forgotten about it. The spyglass! I took his spyglass."
He pulled it out of the saddlebag—a small brass instrument, somewhat tarnished and green with age and damp.
"That article belonged to him?" inquired the hermit. Juan nodded, still paper-white, staring at the glass with huge, terrified eyes.
"Ah, then that explains it all. No wonder he is able to track you down! You could cross the ocean, traverse the polar region, hide yourself underground, and still he would know where you were."
"What can I do, then, Father? Shall I drop the thing into a crevasse?"
"Oh, no, my child; that would solve nothing at all. No, if you took it from him, you must give it back."
"Give it back to him?"
Juan's voice was nothing but a cracked, horrified whisper; and for myself I felt the hairs rise on the nape of my neck. Seek out that dreadful being, deliberately seek his company, in order to give him back the glass? Could we possibly do that?
"Oh, yes," said Brother Laurent, "you must do so; that is the only way. Then, when he has the thing again, when be has no more power over you because of it, then you must endeavor to persuade the unlawful spirit to leave the body of the poor wretch in which it has taken refuge."
"But—how can we do that?"
Juan's face was appalled, his voice was no more than a thread. He said, "We are only young, my father, we have no powers of—of that kind. We are not holy."
The hermit moved his head weakly in denial.
"A needle has power in the fingers of a sempstress, a pick in the hands of a miner. Who sent you here to me in my last hour? Never fear, child, when it is needed, the power will be sent you. Now, let me be still in my last minutes, and help me with your thoughts, for I am about to take leave of this world." And he lay back on his pillow of leaves and closed his eyes, though his lips still moved in rapid prayer.
Outside the storm continued to rage; through one tiny high-up window in the massive stone wall, the blue-white glare of lightning could be seen at intervals, followed by a crash of thunder each time, as if rocks were raining down on the roof. I thanked God in my heart for finding us this place of shelter, for sav ing us yet again; and apologized to Him for my cowardice and distrust.
Juan knelt on the rock floor, and when he made a slight gesture to me with his head, I managed to hoist myself onto my knees.
"Oh, Father in heaven," I prayed, "look after this poor man. No doubt he did do a very dreadful thing
in pushing that girl off the cliff and spoiling three lives; but, as You can see, he is now truly sorry for what he did, and, as Juan said, a great many years have passed and he is a different person from the wild young character who lost his temper. I think perhaps You should not blame him for the deed of a much younger man. But You do not need me to teach You Your business, I am sure!"
And, clear inside my head, despite the turbulence of the storm outside, came the laughing voice of God. "Let not your heart be troubled, Felix. I will take up this poor piece of human wreckage. He shall be made as new."
Not long after, by an extra brilliant flash of lightning, we saw that the hermit's prediction about himself was correct; he had fallen back dead on his pillow of leaves, with open mouth and staring eyes.
With gentle care Juan closed the open eyes and mouth, composed the bony hands so that they lay folded over the rosary on his chest, then said a quick prayer, kneeling by the corpse.
He had just risen to his feet, and was about to address some remark to me, when the door burst open.
A searing flash of lightning illuminated the figure who stood there. It was Father Vespasian, with a hand on either lintel, leaning forward, as if about to throw himself upon us. Words fail me to describe the horror of the dreadful mask which formed his face—so white, creased, puffed, dead—yet with its eyes fixed on us, burning like coals.
"Now!" he cried out. "Now, you must tell me—!"
The mouth in the face did not move as he spoke; the words came out, as from a hole in a mask, spoken by the actor behind. And they came in a roar, like that of the wind.
I could see that Juan, half risen, was wholly petrified by terror. He glanced round, desperate, as if trying to recollect what it was he had to do. I myself was in no better case; I crouched down, like a coney in its burrow, expecting the jaws to open and crush me.
But a strangely long silence followed, and, venturing to look up, I saw that Father Vespasian's eyes were now fixed, not on us, but on the corpse of Brother Laurent. A long, keening, babbling wail came from that open mouth: "Ahhhhh-h-h-h!" like the air from a pricked bladder; then suddenly he turned, vanished from the doorway, and was gone. Could we hear his shriek diminishing in the distance? Or was it merely the voice of the storm?
