“Dana, I will tell you this, he had so much in his head! He had more than any other man I have ever known or heard of. He had hardly begun to communicate it, but even so he had set many a man on fire with it. The truth he had may be meant to be withheld from us or given only a little bit at a time. I really believe he had too much of it. But we haven't enough of it, now that he is gone. I get a little from him yet. It may be that you can get some. Stay here and talk to him for the while, Dana. I have so few visitors who know how to talk to him.”
Jane Blaye went out and closed the door behind her, leaving Dana with the three strong objects in the angry shrine. And really, how does one talk to a skull?
“Old cloigeann, old hjerneskal, old schedel, old crâne, old calavera, what is it with me and thee?” Dana clowned. “It's that I always loved an open-minded man. Aye, and a silent one. And you are both.”
Then Dana himself fell silent. Something seemed to creep from the skull that was the very opposite of spookiness. It was a deep sanity. The man named Blaye, whoever or whatever he was, had indeed had very much in his head. He hadn't been able to communicate the large part of it, and yet he had set several men on fire. He set Dana Coscuin to smoldering now. There was something in the skull of the man named Blaye that was at least as fundamental as anything that would be encountered in the Carlist Hills. There was contradiction and riddle, but there was also sanity. Some of the murderous glee of the wooden statue of the Blessed Virgin was in the skull also. Some of the peaceful fury of Christ Coming Through the Wall was there. They hadn't killed Blaye entirely. If they'd wanted him to stay dead, they should not have brought his skull back.
Not so hard to talk to a skull at all! Dana and Blaye said certain things to each other, just as Dana and Blaye's daughter, the dumb girl who was called Sainte Erma, had said certain things to each other.
From some distance, certainly outside the room and probably outside the building, someone was calling “Dana, Dana Coscuin,” in a voice Dana had never heard. He held some further communication with Blaye and then went out to see who was calling.
“If you do go,” Jane Blaye said as she intercepted him in the main room, “and if they try to kill you, break away from them and come back to Hendaye. Louder, piper, louder! We will not hear the call when it comes.”
The horn-piper was playing Ride the Wild Mares now, a very rough dance. The lads and men vaulted onto the backs and shoulders of the girls and rode them like wild mares. And the girls whirled about as if to throw the men off.
The two English ladies returned, laughed, and entered. A young man went to them immediately and mounted the merry shoulders of one of them. 'twas Dana who did it.
“Dana, Dana Coscuin,” the unknown far voice was calling again.
“You do not hear the caller,” Jane said when she had the opportunity to talk to Dana again. “You do not hear anything. You are here present and there is no need for you to go further.”
“Who is the caller?” Dana asked. “Who will the caller be, since even the widows of Hendaye know more about my fate than I do?”
“It may be the old soldier,” Jane said. “It may be the simple-minded fisherman. It may be the Blind Woman, or it may be the false Blind Woman. Dana, when I had him alive, my man had all the green answers inside his head. But he was killed, and many of the answeres are still locked away. Were you able to get anything from him?”
“Yes. Something. But is it not an uncatholic thing to keep his skull here?”
“No, it is not an uncatholic thing to keep it. What he had in his head is still unfinished.”
“Dana, Dana Coscuin,” came a high voice from outside the back door.
“It's the Blind Woman who isn't blind,” Jane said. “Do not go.”
“She comes here directly to me.”
“Remember Jane Blaye,” said Jane, “that she will not allow you to be killed in Hendaye if you can get back here.”
“Dana Coscuin,” called the false Blind Woman, and she was inside and came right to them.
“What is it, Blind Woman?” Dana asked her. “Shall I ride you for a wild mare?”
“I would let you, Dana my love. But take this.” She gave Dana a small heavy leather sack. “It is from the Count Cyril,” the false Blind Woman said. “Now go to Pamplona.”
The false Blind Woman left Dana then and mingled with the dancers as if looking for someone with eyes that couldn't see.
“Dana, go ask my man's head what to do,” Jane Blaye said.
“I have asked him,” Dana replied. “He said to go.”
The false Blind Woman was calling again.
“Kemper Gruenland,” she called, and big Kemper came immediately. She also gave him a small heavy leather sack.
“It is from the Count Cyril,” she said. “Now go to Cagliari.”
Big Kemper, quicker to obedience than Dana, went out immediately without speaking to anyone. He took the long east road towards the Mediterranean and towards Cagliari. And Kemper and Dana would not see each other again for several years.
Before Kemper Gruenland had gone a hundred steps, he was joined by Jude or Judas Revanche, the squarish bearded man, the charcoal-burner who had made the sign with the edge of his hand across his throat at Dana Coscuin.
“Blind Woman,” the black man named Charley Oceaan was asking. “Have you an instruction for me?”
“No. I don't know you,” the woman said.
“Then you are not who you seem.”
Dana Coscuin was laggard. He did not immediately take the Spanish road to Pamplona. Oh, it was clear enough where the road went — from Hendaye to nearby Irún in Spain, and then to San Sebastián. And then it went inland by a mountain road to Pamplona. Dana Coscuin had money. He could even take the Pamplona coach once he got to San Sebastián, and he could walk to San Sebastián by dark. But he didn't go immediately, in spite of the clear instructions from the false Blind Woman.
He stayed for a while in the unmodish seamen's place of Jane Blaye. He watched and heard the carnal horn-piper instigate the Nine Waves Dance, the Over and Under Dance, and Country Thrones; dances and antics that made the Unbreakable Dolls and Mountain Bridges and Wild Mares seem tame.
Abruptly he embraced Jane Blaye, and her mute daughter Sainte Erma, and the large and handsome Margaret Gretz who had been sweetheart of Kemper Gruenland. Then he went out from the place and left them all there.
He walked in the roads and on the beach, and counted the eyes that were on him.
“The competition for Irish recruits must be extreme,” he said to himself, “and I am honored that I should be of such importance that men should order my death before I am even begun. I am not such as needs to be warned of these things. Even Jane Blaye did not give me this word of warning. She knows that I would be worthless if I needed it. But, as to my own appearance, she told me that she had put in the pack a cap named gorra. It is almost my life for that cap. And the two sheep men who argued so drunkenly about the details of the San Sebastián road: since they were not drunk, that possibly was for my benefit.”
Dana went into a more modish place than Jane Blaye's to take his evening meal and to be seen. This was the more cosmopolitan place where resort visitors and travelers-in-funds might be expected to dine. Here were not to be found the raunchy happy Hendaye girls. Which of these fine ladies here would …? Oh, two perhaps, or one.
For the two English ladies who had been to Jane Blaye's were here and were dining with Englishmen. One of them, recognizing Dana, smiled covertly at him. It was near sundown, time for the true Blind Woman herself to come with her message, if she had not been anticipated by the false Blind Woman, if there were indeed a true Blind Woman.
Then one of the Englishwomen came over and sat with Dana.
“I am Elaine Kingsberry,” she said. “Isn't it sufficient introduction that you have already ridden on my shoulders and that I know they call you Dana My Love? Whatever did you make of that madhouse we were in today?”
“It w
as a sane house, Elaine, the house of Jane Blaye, full of sane men and women. The proof is that their laughter and their vitality was greater than here.”
“That was Jane Blaye's house?” Elaine asked. “I came to Hendaye partly to meet Jane Blaye. But if such things as happened in her house were reported of South Sea Islanders, would you believe them?”
“No, Elaine, they haven't sufficient sanity for such things. Nor have enough of us.”
“Dana, Dana Coscuin,” the Blind Woman was calling outside the window, almost too faintly even for Dana's hearing.
The black man named Charley Oceaan was also dining in this place. He had talked Dutch at Jane Blaye's. Now he talked English with Englishmen.
“Dana, you are in trouble,” Elaine said. “Do you know the name Ifreann?”
“Am I Irish for nothing? Ifreann is Hell, a well-defined place.”
“But there is a man who uses it for a name, a Polish man, I believe, and the word apparently isn't Polish. You have not heard of him?”
“No, I have not.”
“But you argued with one of his dogs in the road, a bearded man, a sometime killer.”
“It is no matter. He took the other direction. There are other eyes on me.”
“Dana, Dana Coscuin,” the Blind Woman called faintly again. “It was not I before. You must not go to Pamplona by the direct road.”
“You may help me by being with me, Elaine,” Dana said. “In a moment we will stroll out of here together and we will walk about the sundown town. And then I will leave you quickly but quietly.”
“Let us go back to Jane's madhouse again,” Elaine said. “How is a girl to be improperly used in this place? A lady could hardly hold a gentleman on her lap here without someone taking it wrong.”
“Dana, Dana Coscuin,” the Blind Woman still called faintly outside the window.
“I knew it was not you before,” Dana raised his conversational voice towards the window. “And I know that I must find a more devious way to Pamplona or wherever I go. Thank you.”
“My man Dana, who are you talking to?” Elaine Kingsberry asked, puzzled.
“To the Blind Woman,” Dana said simply. “Come along, Elaine.”
They walked out of the place together. It was just sundown.
“Charley, Charley Oceaan,” the Blind Woman was calling faintly under another window.
Dana and Elaine walked several squares together. Dana kissed her as if they were great friends. Then he left her quickly and quietly.
Elaine stood puzzled. Then she returned, not to the modish place where she had been dining, but to the madhouse, to the sanity-house run by Jane Blaye. Ah, there was something else working here. And Elaine Kingsberry had come to Hendaye partly to meet Jane Blaye.
And Dana Coscuin walked more rapidly than he appeared to be. There is a curious gait that venturesome men sometimes use. The same gait will take one along quite rapidly or quite slowly as the occasion requires. He was quickly on the road towards Irún and San Sebastián, the little West Road out of Hendaye. He felt himself followed, and he went a half-mile. He saw the other man ahead. And he saw the draw or ruisseau gully between. He whistled loudly. He knew that his fair hair was like a beacon in the still strong light. He strode down into that gully with his shrill whistling and his white-flame hair.
Then his whistling was cut off sharply and he was heard no more.
So then let those who had set to take him and trap him be themselves set down for bunglers. They should have sent wiser men to take him. In the lesser light of the draw, Dana Cosuin hooked with his arm a mountain pack that a lady had fixed for him while he was still on the high seas. He kissed lips that he barely saw. And then he was traveling on a no-path back within thirty degrees of the direction he had come.
“The gorra,” he thought, and his fingers found it at once. With this big cap, his fair hair was no longer a beacon. Immediately he had the alpargata sandals on, he had the wine-skin and the blanket and the sack a-sling, he had the American pistol stuck in his belt. He looked like a Pyrenees mountain man now, and he was traveling through the near dark with three other Pyrenees mountain men who talked the Basque which Dana understood even less than French or Spanish. These men understood his plight.
“God bless Jane Blaye,” Dana said in his own tongue and heart. She had provided everything.
At about ten of the night Dana left the three camouflaging men and went on alone, knowing little more than the directions, which he would always know.
III
DEATH DANGER, DANA
Dana was in the high hills behind the French town of St. Jean de Luz and was quite near the Spanish border. He would not cross here, however.
It was dark. The moon would rise only a little bit before dawn, and Dana traveled on until dawn exactly. Then he stopped in a rock shelter on the crest. He could see everything here, and he could not be seen from under his rock ledge. He made a breakfast of bread and cheese and sausage and wine. He put everything in ready order. He went to sleep. He slept. He slept …
… and woke when it was very close to noon. A blue-eyed girl (should there be eyes that blue in the Pyrenees?) was making her own lunch from Dana's mountain pack, and was watching him out of those damnable sky-colored eyes. How could Dana have been slipped up on, he whose ears never slept? The girl had Dana's wine-skin. And his sack with the bread and cheese and sausage. But did she have — ?
“I have your American pistol,” the girl said in a lilting sort of French. Her eyes were roguish and dancing. She was very slim, trim and pretty, but she was not small. She was beautifully catlike in her motions and in her instant wariness, and there was the suspicion of unusual strength in her. She belonged in the mountains; she was at home here, that was clear. But she would have graced any salon in the world just as she was.
“I share your food merely to be friendly,” the girl said. “Surely you will want to be friendly with me. My name is Magdelena Brume and — ”(she pronounced it Magdelena and not Magdalena, and surely she must have known how to pronounce her own name) “ — and you have no name in your things at all, and no papers whatever in them that I can find. Have I missed something in them? Shall we be the best of friends?”
She sat on her heels, seeming poised to spring.
“Give me back my American pistol and we will be the best of friends, Magdelena,” Dana said. His voice sounded a little funny to himself and his breath played him tricks. This girl would set any blood to racing. She was ambivalent. She would have killed him quickly, it seemed, on impulse. It may already have been close.
“I will not give it back, and I will shoot you in the head if you reach for it precipitously,” the girl said. “Why can you not be friendly without these conditions? What is your name?”
“My name would mean nothing to you,” Dana said.
“Your name would mean everything to me,” Magdelena smiled the words. She had a willful mouth. “How can you be my dear friend when I do not know your name? You are a new man in the mountains, so it is time that you declare yourself a person here and be known by your name.”
Dana had rolled up onto one knee. He measured with his eyes his American pistol on the ground near the girl.
“About seven feet and a third more, from your eye to the pistol,” Magdelena smiled to Dana's thought question. “French measure. Yours may be slightly different. Do not do it. I don't know how fast you are but I know how fast I am. I would not like to kill you. I want you to be my friend.”
Oh the deceit of this girl! It was not the black deceit of the evil people. It was more like the golden deceit of Aileen Dinneen the Irish cousin. It was the curling, laughing, manifold, friendly deceit. This girl would not kill Dana yet. She had assured herself of something that he didn't quite understand. She didn't even want him to believe that she would kill him. She wanted him to make a game of it when she gave him the opening, and she wanted him to understand exactly when she was giving him the opening.
She tilted
her head slightly away, smiling. She turned a little, sitting on her heels. She went onto one knee on the grass. She pivoted away from Dana, watching with a backward look.
“You were sleeping so sweetly,” she said, “and it was after your first night in the mountains. You are like a boy: will they make some sort of soldiering man out of you?” She was on her hands and knees now, turned away from him and watching him over her shoulder, but with one hand very close to the American pistol. (Ah, Dana you are being distracted. You have not learned it yet.)
“You will tell me your name,” she said, “or I will make up a name for you.”
She had said she didn't know how fast he was. She wanted him to be fast because she liked fast men. Dana struck quicker than Magdelena's blue eyes could blink, outreaching her for the pistol, coming down heavily on her back and collapsing her onto her face and belly; then he turned her over and pinned her down by lying on top of her.
“Why, how nervous you are, little Irishman,” she said surprisingly in English. “I would have given it back to you anyhow, but it is so much more exhilarating to let you take it. Oh my friend, is it not luxurious to lie on top of Magdelena Brume? Tell us your name, friend.”
“Tell us your name, friend,” a man echoed in heavy French.
“Oh my friend, Oh how twice nervous you are,” Magdelena was laughing. “How you started! It is only my husband. It is not as if a stranger had found you atop me here.”
Dana rose to face the most formidable, the ugliest man he had ever seen in his life. The formidable ugly man was grinning, however.
“You have risen needlessly, boy,” he said pleasantly. “I myself have to pin her down whenever I want to have meaningful words with her. But you will have to tell us your name.”
“Dana Coscuin,” Dana said softly.
“Yes, that is one of the names I hold in my mind,” the man said. “Have you ever heard of a man named Ifreann?”
The Flame Is Green: The Coscuin Chronicles Book 1 Page 5
