(2/3) The Teeth of the Gale

by Joan Aiken

  "Don Felix and Doña Juana are innocent," said de Larra at once. "They know nothing. They feel for you, most truly."

  Indeed Juana, getting up, walked straight to him and clasped his hands in hers.

  His face still stared past her. He seemed hardly aware of his surroundings. But two slow tears found their way down his cheeks, as she continued to press his hands.

  Little Pilar ran to him and seized him, around the leg.

  "Papa! Papa! Is Nico going to die also? Please don't let Nico die!"

  "It is as God wills, child," he said wearily. He looked down at Pilar with, I thought, some revulsion; and I could hardly blame him. Then, apparently taking in, for the first time, the presence of Juana, he murmured, "You are—you are Sister Juana—who used to be Juana Esparza?"

  "Yes, señor. I have come to give you"—she stopped and swallowed—"to give you my promise about your children."

  "I remember you," he went on slowly. "I always thought you—a good influence. A true friend. Will you—I have dug her grave and laid her in it. Will you come and say a prayer for my daughter Luisa?"

  His words came loosely, as if they drifted from him without direction.

  "Of course I will, Don Manuel," Juana said in deep compassion. "Let us all go. I will just make this poor boy a little more comfortable." She took off the blue cloak I had given her and folded it into a wad for him to lie on. Then she made a sign of assent to Don Manuel and we went after him down the stairs, little Pilar following forlornly in the rear. She seemed quite quenched with crying—very different from the other occasions on which I had seen her.

  The grave he had dug for Luisa was under the tree that Pilar and I had climbed. It was an oak.

  The only tools he had been able to find for digging were a rusty iron bar and an old blunt ax blade. It must have been a formidable task, using such implements, in the hard and scanty soil; I could see that his hands were dusty and gashed and bleeding, on top of those earlier scars. He had hauled over part of a broken pillar to lie on top of the grave, in order to mark it, and keep off wild beasts.

  Juana kneeled down at the foot of the grave and the rest of us did likewise, wherever we happened to be placed. Dawn had come by now. A lark was singing nearby; we waited in silence for a moment or two, while its voice spiraled upward into the pale green sky, and while Juana collected her thoughts.

  Then she said, "Most pitiful Father: We need not ask You to take charge of Your dear child Luisa, for she is already with You and sharing Your eternal joy. But we do ask You to comfort her brother and sister. May their lives be as guildess and free from harm as hers was."

  I could hardly feel this was likely to be true of Pilar, but doubtless it did no harm to ask.

  "Console this poor child's bereaved father and help him to see his path clear ahead," went on Juana. Then she paused. I wonder if she was thinking about asking God to punish the ill-doers who had caused Luisa's horrible and untimely death. In the old days she would certainly have done so. Then she had a strong and passionate sense of justice and used to long for retribution against the people who had hurt her.

  But she can safely leave all that to God? Surely she knows that by now? I thought.

  Yes, Felix, said the voice of God in my ear. And you can safely leave Juana to me.

  I almost smiled, the message came through so warm and clear, like a sudden blaze of sunshine in my mind.

  Juana looked up over her joined hands and met my eyes, for I was kneeling at the opposite end of the grave. She was frowning with concentration and resolve and glanced at me, just then, as if I were no more than a tree or a stone.

  "And I hereby give my solemn promise that as much of my life as they may need shall be devoted to the care of Luisa's brother and sister; that I will help them to grow in grace and wisdom, and so free themselves from this wicked wrong and tragedy.

  "Please give me Your support in this work, my dear Lord."

  "Amen," said Don Manuel strongly, and so did the rest of us.

  Then Juana recited a prayer for the dead, in Latin, to which we made the responses. After that she stood up, without self-consciousness, and held out her hand again to Don Manuel. This time he took it between both of his.

  "Thank you, child," he said huskily. "I do believe that you will do as you say. I pray God that my son lives to receive your care. And you restore, a little, my faith in human nature."

  "If that is so, I am glad to hear it." Her voice was calm, quite matter-of-fact. She went on, "And now, Don Manuel, it is a hard thing to tell you, but I think you should leave this place without delay."

  "Yes!" said de Larra in heartfelt agreement. "Doña Juana is right, Manuel."

  "But, the boy—" His face contorted in anguish.

  "The boy is in the hands of God. Your staying can make no difference. These young people will care for him as well as you can—better—"

  Young people, I thought indignantly; how old are you, Señor de Larra, I should like to know? Not much older than I myself. But it was true that Don Manuel was older, was in his middle or late thirties—indeed he looked at this moment almost like an old man; there must have been a considerable gap in age between him and his wife. Perhaps that was why...

  At that moment I saw Conchita herself coming over the grass.

  She was dressed very stately, in black silk, with a black lace mantilla. She carried her great black ostrich-feather fan. True, these things were a little dusty and mud-splashed, but she had plainly taken considerable pains with her appearance, and moved with great dignity, waving her fan from side to side as she approached.

  Behind her came Don Amador, even more dusty and disheveled, and panting a little as he endeavored to keep pace with her.

  I could see that Conchita was taken aback at the sight of de Larra. Myself and Juana she had perhaps expected, but Don Jose she had not, and his presence disturbed her, though she did her best to conceal the fact and came on composedly. What startled her even more was the appearance of her own husband, when he turned around and became aware of her. She drew a sharp breath and gazed at him with huge eyes.

  He, for his part, turned completely white, so that his face looked like a shield, with the black eye patch and the diagonal line of its ribbon across his cheek. The good eye blazed with outrage.

  "You!" he brought out harshly. "How in the name of the fiend did you get here?"

  Having come as close as she dared, Conchita stood still and stared at her husband, her face gradually growing as pale as his.

  Of course, I thought, she expected to find him running mad and raving. That was why she came. To be a witness to his madness. And now, since he is plainly not mad at all, but sane and sober as anybody else present, she does not know what to do.

  "How did I get here?" she repeated slowly. "Why—by the tunnel, Manuel. You are not the only one who knows its location. Your brother Ignacio told me how to find it."

  She was staring at him, all the while, with a deep, distraught look, almost one of appeal. It was, I supposed, a couple of years since she had seen him; his appearance plainly shocked and disturbed her.

  Dear God, I thought in astonishment, she loves him; in spite of having betrayed him and plotted his ruin and death, she does still love him in her own selfish, childish way.

  "Manuel!" she exclaimed suddenly, as if they were alone together. "Can't you forget all this wretched politics? Leave it! What is the good of it all? You will never gain your ends—whatever they are. And see what it leads to! Can't we go back? Be as we were at first—when we were happy? We were happy once—"

  "Go back?" he repeated, in that harsh, husky voice. "Go back? After the things you did? Do you see this?" He gestured toward the grave. "Do you know what it is? Do you know who lies buried under there?"

  She gaped at him in silence. She had not, up to that moment, taken in the fact that we were standing around a grave.

  "Your daughter Luisa lies buried there!" he shouted at her. "Poisoned by the filthy book that you sent in w
ith that other misbegotten brat. She is dead! And you say that we can go back?"

  "Oh—no!" She let out a faint, horrified cry, dropping the fan, pressing her hand against her mouth. "No, it's not true! It can't be true! You are telling lies to frighten me—you monster!"

  "You call me a monster? I don't know how you dare to show your face here." His control began to slip; he snatched up the rusty axe blade.

  "Manuel—no!" exclaimed de Larra. He, like the rest of us, had been held, watching Conchita in absolute fascination—though I could see by the look in his queer, light luminous eyes that he loathed her and would be glad to see her blown by a gale off the face of the earth. But now he darted forward and knocked the rusty blade from Manuel's hand.

  "Leave her alone, Manuel, you fool! She is not worth a straw. She is trash!"

  But Don Manuel moved on toward his wife with such a look of awful, terrifying resolution upon his face—indeed he looked like the Cyclops itself, with wide nostrils and compressed lips and that one blazing eye—that she, with a faint scream, took to her heels.

  "Mama!" wailed little Pilar. "Mama!" and scampered to intercept her mother.

  "Oh, get out of my way, you wretched little changeling! Haven't you done enough harm? You were supposed to give the book to your father—not your sister—"

  Conchita thrust the child aside and ran for a gap in the wall, crying, "Amador! Stop him, help me, help!"

  And Don Manuel went striding after her.

  At that, we were suddenly all galvanized. De Larra was first through the gap after Don Manuel, and I was close behind him, with Juana just after me, and Don Amador trailing unhappily behind us all.

  Beyond the wall that encircled the keep a rough, wide slope of grass and boulders, scattered with ruined masonry, ran down to the outer bailey wall, which, on this side, was not complete. The wall, topping the cliff that surrounded the castle on three sides, had been built so as to take advantage of natural crags. And in a dozen places the masonry had crumbled, leaving the crags like teeth in a lower jaw with wide gaps between.

  Down toward this wall Conchita ran at a crazy, terrified speed, stumbling and slipping among the tufty grass and brambles.

  "Doña Conchita! Stop!" shouted de Larra. "We won't let him hurt you. Manuel, stop!"

  "Stop!" I yelled.

  "Stop!" called Juana.

  Even Don Amador, somewhere far to the rear, called reedily, "My dearest! Stop, I beg you—!"

  But nothing arrested her frantic flight. Floundering, tripping, snatching brief glances over her shoulder, seeing Don Manuel gain on her, Conchita only ran the faster.

  Arrived at the wall, where it was only five or six feet high, but rough and ragged, crumbling on the inside, she flung herself upon it. In her dress she looked like a black lizard. Up the uneven slope of loose masonry she scrambled, and paused to look back only when she was out of her husbands reach.

  De Larra had come up with Don Manuel by then and caught hold of his arm. The touch seemed to recall him to sanity; he halted, shook his head with a dazed look, and rubbed his forearm across his eyes.

  "Conchita! I beg you, come down, my angel, or you will fall!" begged Don Amador. The poor fat man looked ludicrously useless, gasping and exhorting his lady as he came puffing down the slope.

  Now we were all ranged in a row below her while she crouched on the broken wall above us calling out, "Do not let him touch me!"

  "No one shall harm you, my precious angel!" promised Don Amador.

  And then I heard little Pilars voice behind me upraised in a scream of utter terror. "Mama!"

  She, farther up the hill, had seen—her sharp child eyes had seen—what was not so clear to us, close at hand: The whole piece of masonry, loosened by Conchita's headlong assault on it, was starting to topple outward.

  With what seemed a dreamlike slowness, though it can have taken but a few seconds, she and the wall tilted away from us, describing an arc like the setting sun—then, with one harrowing, horror-stricken cry, she vanished from our view among a cataract of tumbling rock and stone.

  "Jesu!" said de Larra.

  Leaving go of Don Manuel he went gingerly to another part of the wall, a few yards to the side, and looked over. Returning, he shook his head and spread out his hands.

  "Not a hope ... She is three hundred feet down, under a ton of rubble. And no particular loss to the world," he added in an undertone, but little Pilar was sobbing hysterically, "Mama—Mama—Mama—" and Juana was trying to comfort her, while Don Amador, looking utterly dazed with shock, repeated over and over, "How could you, how could you? Oh, Conchita, my dearest, how could you?"

  I caught de Larra's eye and muttered to him, "The advice that Juana gave was good. If they came by the way of the tunnel, others may. Why don't you just go—now—take him away before anything else can happen. We will look after the children. Just go!" I repeated.

  "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 good-bye 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, Señor 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 good-bye, he had passed her with averted face, ignoring her; and she had lacked the spirit even to call after him. I wondered if she realized, 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 that 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, bussing 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 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 Doña 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 journeys 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."