by Joan Aiken
‘Yes, Grandfather. That is so.’
‘Senor de Echepara is a very upright and honourable man, for whose opinions I have a great respect,’ said my grandfather, and handed nie the letter.
To the Conde de Cabezada, etc., etc.
Esteemed Senor:
Permit me to express my deep sense of obligation to you for the kindness, courage, and honourable conduct of your grandson, Snr Felix Brooque, who during the past weeks, has often, I understand, at considerable risk and hardship to himself, escorted my niece, Senorita Juana Esparza, from France to my present domicile in the forest.
I understand from my niece that nothing could have excelled the delicacy, intelligence, good breeding, and resourcefulness of your grandson on this journey. I bitterly regret that, owing to political difficulties, I am unable to call on you myself in person to express my sense of gratitude for my niece’s safety. I hope that, some day, matters may be otherwise. Meanwhile Juana and I must live secluded, pursuing a course of studies in science and natural philosophy. She has all her life expressed a wish to enter a religious order, in order to expiate the tragic and untimely death of her Aunt Laura, my youngest sister. (This intention Juana’s execrable half-brother had proposed to set aside by marrying her to an elderly neighbour of his.) But Juana will, for the present, remain with me and order my household, until the future lies more plainly before us. It may be that we shall be obliged to travel into France to arrange the estate of my brother-in-law, which, since the death of her half-brother, my niece has inherited.
Meanwhile I remain, senor, your most obliged servant, and I would ask you, also, to express my gratitude to your grandson.
I am instructing the bankers of my deceased brother-in-law, Auteuil Freres, at Bayonne, to forward you moneys to defray the expenses which your grandson was obliged to undertake on behalf of my niece.
I remain,
Enrique François Urbain León de
Echepara.
Well! What a thing!
I read the letter; read it again; reread it yet a third time.
Twenty – thirty – a hundred details fell into place.
How could I have been so unseeing, so stupid, so crass? I felt like scourging myself for a blind idiot. Juan’s distress at being dragged away from the bertsulari contest – for, of course, women are not allowed to compete in these; and the masquerade; his actions over the cat, in St Jean, and his love for the pony; chance remarks that he had let fall about his brother; the haste of Father Pierre and Father Antoine to get him out of the Abbey – wise old men, they had known, of course they must have known! His views on the usage of girls, so often expressed; innumerable remarks, intonations, implications, came back to me. What a thick-skinned numbskull I had been! How Juan (I could not think of him yet as Juana), how he must have been laughing at me up his sleeve!
But no, I thought; no, he had not been laughing at me. We were happy together. Perhaps as happy as it is possible to be. God, I suppose, had not intended me to see through his disguise. And the reward I reaped for that was the friendship we had had – different from any other, better than any other. Deeper than any other.
Now I understood his parting. No wonder he had said, ‘If we should meet in the future, it would not be the same. Never, ever again.’
For that was true. The pair who had lit fires in the forest, and cooked fish, and quarrelled, and made up again, were gone forever. Nothing could bring them back.
Yet I had said, ‘The future may be different. It may bring greater good.’
Which of us was right?
At all events, one thing I knew for certain. Somehow, whether in France or Spain (looking again at Senor de Echepara’s letter, I observed that it had been sent from France), somehow, by some means, I must see Juana again. To say – what? That I understood. That I honoured her. That I would always have an especial feeling toward her. That I would always remember our journey.
Suddenly I found that my eyes were dimmed by a mist of tears. I took a deep, deep breath, blinked the tears away, and looked up at my grandfather, who was regarding me, I noticed, with extreme shrewdness.
I said: ‘I never knew. I thought, the whole time, that she was a boy!’
‘She must be quite a doughty young lady, this Juana,’ said my grandfather.
‘Oh, Grandfather! If you knew the things she had done – the things she dared. There is nobody like her!’ Surely, I thought, she is not intended to be a religious? Expiation for the tragic death of her Aunt Laura? And then another blinding flash of revelation came to me. Her Aunt Laura –
‘Is she a handsome young lady?’ my grandfather was inquiring suavely.
‘You could hardly say so. Oh, I don’t know – I have only seen her thin and scrawny and half starved, with her hair cut off – ’
And her lies and her thefts, I thought; her deceits and her poetry and her nonsense and her kindness. No, there is nobody like her. I have to see her again.
‘Well, you must tell me all about her,’ said the Conde. He added, half to himself, ‘Very old, honourable race, the Euskara. “Notoriamente hidalgos” Hmm. Also about the Abbot of St Just. I have had a most singular letter from a worthy man who signs himself Fr. Antoine at that establishment. He tells a strange rigmarole. But that, I think, must wait until tomorrow, perhaps, for you are beginning to look somewhat weary.’
Could I ever tell that tale to Grandfather? I wondered. It seemed, here, like news from another world.
‘I suppose that as soon as you are rested you will be wanting to gallop off and visit all those other disreputable friends that you seem to have made on your travels.’
‘Oh, yes, Grandfather, I shall! Sam, and Don Enrique – the good sisters who are looking after my mule in the convent at Santander – and Don Jose Lopez and Nieves – I hope that some of them may come and visit me here.’
‘Well, well,’ he said indulgently, ‘We can do with the sound of young voices about the place. It has been quiet for too long. Run along, now, however, to your bed. It is a great happiness to me to have you back with us, Felix.’
But after I had kissed him good-night and left his presence, I did not go directly to bed. I was too restless for that. I went out into the courtyard and looked up at the stars – the huge, cold, blazing stars of north Spain.
Those same stars, I thought, were blazing down on Juana in the Forest of Iraty – or wherever she was now.
I remembered her poem:
‘A strand of hemp, a silent star
And the wind’s lullaby…
A taste of salt, a touch of tar
And a sorrowful good-bye …’
I had left out a couple of lines, the poem was not quite fast in my head yet, but I would scan them when I went in. I felt the paper crackle in my jacket pocket.
Repeating those four lines again, I wandered on into the stableyard. And there a purring shadow detached itself from a pile of sacks and came to rub its head against my leg.
My old cat Gato, waiting for me. I picked him up, buried my nose in his hay-scented fur, and made much of him, thinking of all that awaited me in the coming days: there were friends to see, visits to pay, old tasks and occupations to resume.
And now, as well, I had another journey to make.
About the Author
Joan Aiken was born in Sussex in 1924. She wrote over a hundred books for young readers and adults and is recognized as one of the classic authors of the twentieth century. Amanda Craig, writing in The Times, said, ‘She was a consummate storyteller, one that each generation discovers anew.’ Her best-known books are those in the James III saga, of which The Wolves of Willoughby Chase was the first title, published in 1962 and awarded the Lewis Carroll prize. Both that and Black Hearts in Battersea have been filmed. Her books are internationally acclaimed and she received the Edgar Allan Poe Award in the United States as well as the Guardian Award for Fiction in this country for The Whispering Mountain.
Joan Aiken was decorated with an MBE for her service
s to children’s books. She died in 2004.
Also by Joan Aiken
Other titles in The Felix Trilogy:
Go Saddle the Sea
The Teeth of the Gale
The Wolves Chronicles:
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
Black Hearts in Battersea
Night Birds on Nantucket
The Stolen Lake
Limbo Lodge
The Cuckoo Tree
Dido and Pa
Is
Cold Shoulder Road
Midwinter Nightingale
The Witch of Clatteringshaws
Lady Catherine’s Necklace
For further details on these and other
Joan Aiken books, see: www.joanaiken.com
BRIDLE THE WIND
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 446 43075 0
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company
Red Fox edition first published 1997
This ebook edition published 2013
Copyright © The Estate of Joan Aiken, 1983
Cover artwork copyright © David Frankland, 2013
First Published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, 1983
The right of Joan Aiken to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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