by Joan Aiken
While these proceedings went forward I, for my part, grew steadily more and more uneasy. For quite soon I had spotted the little hunchback once more, weaving his way among the crowd; also another man who, I thought, might have been one of the four seen waiting for us at the grotto entrance. Again and again I attempted to catch Juan’s eye but without the least success. I was on the outskirts of the crowd, and the audience were closely packed, but by slow degrees I contrived to work my way forward, edging and wriggling between large and thickset bodies, a process for which at least my small stature was an advantage, until I reached the last row but one below the platform, and was almost within touching distance of Juan.
A large fat woman stood in front of me twirling a distaff and loudly shouting, ‘Bravo, bravo!’ at each recitation; the wool, as she spun it, went into a pouch at her side. The man beside her, evidently her husband, looked like a sailor; his black hair was twined into a tarry pigtail and he wore gold rings in his ears.
He called out a question in Euskara, which, to me, sounded like ‘How do you make a pie for a sailor?’
And the old man, first clearing his throat, answered something that sounded like:
‘Don’t make him a cake, he won’t need it,
He’ll be drowned before he can eat it!’
which made the audience laugh and hoot. Then the stocky poet produced some long piece of philosophical reflection which seemed to be about the lot of sailors, and how they travelled the wide world over in pursuit of whales and knowledge. On and on it went, and soon had a great many people fidgeting and whistling; the stout woman with the distaff sighed with irritation and trod on my foot.
Then Juan, who had been frowning in extreme concentration all through this oration, stood up and, quite softly, recited no more than half a dozen lines, which had the crowd so delighted that they began to stamp and cheer and shout ‘Hola, hola!’ as if we were at a bullfight.
In the midst of which commotion I, very quickly and quietly, slipped past the fat woman, seized hold of Juan’s ankle, and sharply tugged him off the platform. This had the unlucky effect of unbalancing the whole structure, the platform tipped over, the other two poets were catapulted into the crowd, and the wine barrels rolled in every direction.
‘Come with me! We have to get away from here!’ I hissed into Juan’s ear, hoisting him to his feet; and keeping a tight hold of his wrist, I dragged him after me through the pressing, shifting people, endeavouring, as I did so, to look sharply about me so as to avoid the hunchback and the other man.
‘Keep your head down!’ I muttered to Juan. ‘They are here!’
I am not sure that he heard me.
As soon as we were away from the square I obliged him to run fast, ducking in and out of the shadows of trees that grew beside the road, making as little sound as possible – though, indeed, the shouts and clamour from behind us would have drowned a cavalry charge.
‘I have left the things behind!’ Juan cried angrily.
‘Hush! Keep your voice down! What things?’
‘The food – and bandages.’
‘Then we will have to go hungry. Come on – faster!’
Behind us the noise of the crowd swelled louder; laughter, and shouts, and indignant outcry suggested that the collapsed platform had started a fight. Or perhaps the people of Licq-Athérey were searching for their mislaid poets.
Juan was still resisting me strongly, which made heavy weather of the run; he tugged furiously at my hand; also he seemed to be panting violently. When we arrived at the quiet, dusty patch behind the forge, which was illuminated by a beam of lamplight from the smith’s window, I saw that Juan was not panting, but sobbing with rage; tears sparkled on his cheeks. He burst out at me in a torrent of mingled French and Basque:
‘Infamous tyrant! Why does everything always have to be as you order? Just because you saved my life once, you believe I must always obey you and do as you say, but it is not so – it is not so -it shall not be so – I will go back there –’
‘Indeed you shall not!’ said I. ‘Don’t be such a hotheaded fool! Will you listen to me – just for one minute –’
But he would not listen. He called me all the bad names he could think of in his two languages. T wish to heaven you had never saved me, if I must always be subject to you!’ and finally even recollected an English insult. ‘You pig!’ he burst out, made at me as if to hit me, and aimed a blow at my chest, which I easily parried, holding his two wrists tightly together.
‘Will you pay attention? A small hunchbacked man is in the village – he was looking hard at your pony and saw me in the forge. Also another man – I think the one you called Bazin who was at the cave entrance – I am fairly certain that I saw him, too, in the street, listening, following, watching you.’
There followed a short silence, then – ‘Oh, mon Dieu,’ whispered Juan. All the fury drained out of him, his shoulders slumped, his hands fell away out of mine. ‘What shall we do?’ he muttered wretchedly. ‘Where shall we go?’
‘Back the way we came. And fast. We must be away at once. Come, I have already fed and saddled the horses; they are all ready.’
Without another word he mounted his pony; I did likewise, and as softly as possible, we left the village at a walking pace, darkness and silence encouraging us to believe that we were unobserved.
Behind us we could still hear shouts and sounds of riot. ‘Good,’ said I, trying to sound as brisk and cheerful as possible, ‘in all that disturbance it will be impossible for the men to make sure we are not still there.’
Juan made no answer.
As soon as we were well away we broke into a trot and, after a quarter of a mile or so, swung around to our right and made our way through oak forest, always continuing to circle to the right until, at length, I reckoned that we were headed once more in our original direction. Even in the dark it was possible to be fairly sure of this, for we could see the great pointed shapes of mountains, like dragons’ teeth, standing ahead of us against the paler sky to the south.
Juan spoke never a word.
Hour after hour we rode on through the darkness, with stars bright and cold above, our ponies cleverly picking a path, which we ourselves could never have found, among forest and rock, scree and coppice, ascending knolls, threading their way through narrow defiles, all the while climbing, climbing. They were tired now, the fight had gone even out of el Demonio; he plodded soberly along, minding his footing. And still Juan never spoke. His silence was as deep as a well; perhaps, I thought, it was a well that had no bottom. I felt within me an aching, sorrowful heaviness, and began to inquire of myself whether I had indeed behaved unreasonably in snatching him away from a performance that meant so much to him and promised to be his triumph.
The Gente seemed able to follow us no matter how we dodged to elude them; had I saved him, or were they still on our track? In which case I might as well have left him to enjoy his contest.
Now it occurred to me that, since their apparent ambush at the grotto on La Rhune, they had made no attempt to close in or seize us; they merely followed. What was their purpose in this? Did they, I wondered, perhaps intend to dog our heels until we had found the rich Uncle León, and then abduct Juan when they could be certain of reaping a reward for their trouble? Was that it? And was Plumet – the terribly changed Plumet – still with them, guiding them on our trail like some grisly bloodhound of hell?
And, if he was with them, how could they endure his company?
Occupying myself in these comfortless reflections, I rode almost unconscious of my own weary body until the Demon stumbled badly, reminding me of his equal weariness. Meanwhile the stars had vanished, and a fine rain had begun to fall. It would, I knew, be folly to continue any farther.
Under a thick stand of larches we found a tilted black shape, which on closer inspection proved to be an abandoned oxcart with a broken wheel.
‘This will have to be our habitation for the night,’ said I, ‘since no other presents
itself.’
Juan still made no reply. In silence he slowly and stiffly slid from his pony and I did likewise. The ground was thick and soft with larch-mast, and taking handfuls of this, having unsaddled our poor wet beasts, we endeavoured to rub them down, and then hobbled them. This was no country in which to lose them, though I thought that in any case they were probably too tired to stray far.
I drew out the blanket from one of my alforjas and climbed into the cart.
‘Come,’ I said to Juan, ‘it is not the best bed we have slept in, but it is better than none.’
Slowly and with reluctance he followed me. The cart, like the ground, was lined with soft needles; plainly it had stood there for many months.
Pushing a good half of the blanket toward Juan I lay down and said, ‘Gab-boon, Juan. Buenas noches’ He did not reply, but remained sitting up, hunched, with his arms round his knees, staring out at the larch branches which drooped around us like a tent. I reached to pat his shoulder, but he flinched away, so I withdrew my hand.
That was a miserable night.
Juan must, at length, have lain down to sleep, for in the course of the night, since the cart was tilted at an angle, we kept rolling down into the lowest corner, one on top of the other, and having to pull ourselves straight and rearrange ourselves and the blanket.
When dawn came and I awoke, stiff, cold, and unrested, it was to discover that torrential rain was falling. Our larch grove gave us some slight protection from the downpour, but even the thickest trees had begun to drip, so that we were far from dry. Juan had awakened before me and was sitting in the same position as he had last night, arms round knees, staring, pale-faced and impassive, into the grey and misty wilderness which lay all around our grove. The higher slopes of the mountains about us were all veiled in rain-cloud, and nothing could be heard but the rain, the hurrying water of a brook somewhere close by, the cries of a few dispirited birds, and the occasional distant call of a cuckoo.
‘Well,’ said I, endeavouring to make a jest of it, ‘if the Gente can find us here, they are indeed guided by Satan, for I doubt if even God knows where we are…’and then wondered if this might be the case. I have seldom felt so unhappy, deserted, and forlorn as I did in that far corner of the mountains.
‘Come, Juan,’ I said, when he did not answer. ‘Do not punish me forever! Indeed I am sorry that I had to whisk you away in the middle of your performance. I did it only for your safety and my own. I meant well, not badly, I promise you.’
He turned and looked at me, for the first time since the occurrence. I was much struck by his pallor and the grieved, bruised, hollow look of his eyes; their copper-brown sparkle was quite extinguished; they were like dark, peaty pools on a mountaintop.
I had, I must confess, last night thought his behaviour rather sulky and babyish; like that of a child, happily performing some conceited antics before company, who is reproved by his parents and sent to stand in the corner. But now I saw that the case was otherwise. His distress was of a different order, and went much deeper.
‘You can’t quite understand,’ he said slowly and hoarsely. ‘It was not vanity or vainglory that made me do it. To begin with … I wished to earn some money, to pay you a portion of what you have expended on me.’
‘But that is of no consequence!’
‘If I had won,’ he went on, ignoring my interruption, ‘if I had won that contest – and I believe I had the chance –’
‘Indeed, I believe so, too. It seemed very prob- able.’ I could not help breaking in, doing my best to comfort him. ‘The crowd liked you best. That was very plain! And you spoke very well, Juan.’
As on other occasions he seemed to find my praise irrelevant.
‘If I had won,’ he said, ‘there would have been a prize of two gold louis.’
‘Twenty francs? As much as that? Indeed, that would certainly have been useful,’ said I heartily. ‘But remember – after the contest there would certainly have been great rejoicings, and a feast, and you would probably have been expected to spend some of the money on buying wine for your defeated competitors.’
He turned his eyes on me in surprise. ‘Yes -perhaps. That may be true,’ he acknowledged, after thinking about it; and then, broodingly: ‘The old man was good. Very, very good. He was so quick-witted – and he had a sharp, shrewd turn of speech – like a spade slicing through turf. I could not have given my answer so quickly, or bettered his lines. But the other’ – he shook his head and made a dismissive gesture with his hand – ‘worse than weak soup! And too much of it, all the same. Flat and dull. It was a piece of luck for me, though. Gave me time to think. But, oh, Felix – what a joy it was!’ At the memory, he kindled, his remaining anger and stiffness falling from him. His eyes shone once more. ‘To stand up there, like a runner, waiting to start, poised ready to leap at the sound of the bell – one’s mind alert, set to spring in any direction –’
‘And I had to come and spoil it!’ I said, remorseful, beginning now to realise more of what he had felt. It was like the sight of some rare beauty of a plant, which one has heedlessly trodden down, lying there in the path, bruised and broken ‘But surely there will be other contests, Juan – many, muny of them! I can see now that your ambition is right for you; you must become one of the bertsulari.’
He gave me a very strange deep look, eyes wide and grave, then slowly shook his head.
‘No, never again. But I am glad that I had the one chance. And I think that I would have won. I do believe so.’
‘For sure, you would have! What was the last question that man shouted out?’
‘The sailor? He called, “How do you make a sailor’s pie?”’
‘What kind of a question is that} How can one answer it? How did you answer it?’
Without replying he stood up, shook himself to throw off the pine needles, and dropped out of the cart.
‘Maladettal I am stiff as a plank. Have we any food left?’
‘Only a few mouthfuls of bread.’
‘And I had bought all kinds of good things!’ said he crossly. ‘Sausage, and cheese – and cakes. I had them hidden under the platform.’
‘Well; we shall just have to manage without. Perhaps we may come across a shepherd. Just at present, though, I think we should be foolish to move; the mist is too thick. While he was shoeing el Demonio the smith warned me that higher up in these mountains there are many terribly deep gorges. We had better remain in what shelter we have until the clouds rise.’
He yawned, stretching. ‘Oh, well, in that case, if we are not going anywhere, I shall bathe in the brook.’
‘In all this rain?’
‘Why not? I prefer to be clean.’
He went off upstream out of sight, as was his habit, and presently came back, clothed once more and shivering, but with a better colour, to announce, ‘Quel bonheur, Felix, the brook is full of fish! If we can only get a couple out, there is breakfast provided. But how to do that?’
‘Oh, there is no difficulty,’ said I. Pablo, one of my grandfather’s shepherds, had, when I was eight or nine, taught me how to catch trout with my hands. So I went and lay on my stomach in a wet patch of bracken by a rocky pool, and in twenty minutes or so had the satisfaction of catching three fish. Juan, meanwhile, had collected kindling for a fire, picking out dry sticks from under rocks and tree roots. This I lit with flint and steel (no chance to use Father Vespasian’s lens today) and, in due course, we had a fire hot and glowing enough to toast our fish on larch prongs, which gave them a very choice aroma. While Juan tended the fish, I managed to tip the cart onto its side by tethering the ponies to it and making them pull it over, so that it formed a kind of sloping shelter, and we were able to sit under it, on the dry patch that it had protected. There we retired to eat our breakfast.
‘This is not so bad!’ said Juan, whose spirits appeared to have risen a little. ‘In fact it is a better breakfast than those poor little Cagots were able to give us.’
‘You were going
to tell me about your poem,’ I reminded him, licking my fingers.
‘I had not forgotten. I was trying to turn the Euskara into English. Well,’ he said, ‘it went something like this:
‘Tell me, pray, if you may, how to make a sailor’s pie?
First, then, you must take a teacup full of sky!
A strand of hemp, a silent star
And the wind’s lullaby,
A flake of foam, a scent of night
And a gull’s cry;
A taste of salt, a touch of tar
And a sorrowful good-bye:
Mix all these together, to make a sailor’s pie.’
‘A teacup full of sky!’ I said. ‘Where do you find such notions, Juan?’
‘Teacup is not quite right,’ he muttered. ‘Wineglass? Salt bowl? No, that is not it. Such notions? Oh, inside my head. There are plenty more; if only I can find a way to make use of them.’
‘Well, I feel certain that you will be able to do so. I wish that J had such a talent! All I am good for is to light fires and catch fish.’
‘And to keep me alive,’ said Juan with a sigh, and a wry grin.
So we became friends again, and since the weather continued our enemy, we spent all of that day squatting under the cart; Juan told me tales and recited many more of his poems, I taught him a great quantity of English, and he endeavoured to teach me more Euskara, kindly not laughing too hard at my many mistakes. By the end of the day I had learned ‘Atharratz jauregian bi zitroia doratii, In Tardets Castle there are two golden lemons’; that seemed as much as my thick head would accommodate.
