(2/3) The Teeth of the Gale (10 page)

Meanwhile, Doña Conchita was not at all prepared to be put out on the roadway and required to proceed on foot. She apologized repeatedly in her soft musical voice—but, she said, she had not expected to be obliged to walk, the shoes she wore were wholly unsuitable, such an indignity was quite, quite out of the question.

By good luck, one of the outriders' horses was a quiet, docile beast, and so the man dismounted and led it along while she rode on it, sitting sideways with remarkable grace, considering that she was mounted on a mans saddle. I noticed that her feet were indeed tiny, and that the little silver-buckled, black velvet slippers she wore would certainly have been cut to pieces after a hundred yards' walking on this rough, stony road. Had she not, I wondered, thought to bring any more practical footwear?

By now a fine drenching mountain rain had begun to fall.

"Those poor sisters will be soaked to the skin," Pedro said perturbedly, looking after them. "That skimpy white calico they wear will not protect them at all."

"Give them our cloaks," said I, passing him mine, which had been rolled and strapped to my saddle. "Our jackets are thick enough to keep us dry."

Pedro threw me a puzzled glance, evidently wondering why I myself did not take this opportunity of speaking to the two sisters; however, he rode on ahead and soon caught up to them. At first I saw them shake their heads, as if declining the offer; but at length, evidently, he managed to persuade them that it would be foolish to let themselves be drenched to the skin so early in the journey, and they shrouded themselves in our warm riding capes.

Doña Conchita rode up on my right side.

She, I saw, was now all wrapped in a voluminous gray fur cloak with a fur scarf over her head, so that nothing could be seen but her beautiful pink-and-white face and those large velvety eyes.

"Señor Felix?" she called softly.

"Yes, señora? How can I help you?"

"You have traveled to England, I believe?"

You know perfectly well that I have, lady, I thought, for you heard me tell the Reverend Mother so.

"Yes, señora," I agreed politely.

"Oh, do please, then, tell me about it. I have such a curiosity to hear about England!"

"Why, truly, señora, I have seen but little of the country—only the part between my grandfathers estates and the seacoast. And the town of Bath. I have not been to London or the university towns."

"Describe the city of Bath to me. Is it as large as Bilbao? And tell me about your grandfather."

Rather reluctantly, I did so. Part of me was wildly eager to hurry on ahead, to talk to the pair of sandaled sisters (Pedro, I noticed, had dismounted from his mule and was now walking beside them, discussing something with great animation and waving his arms about). Yet part of me still hesitated, nervous, touchy, and reluctant. Why, I wondered, I kept wondering, why had Juana not greeted me in any way, not by so much as the smallest gesture? Did she not wish to renew our old acquaintance? Yet, in that case, why had she sent for me? Now that she saw me again, was she ashamed of me? Or (this was a horrible thought) was neither of those two nuns Juana? Were they two total strangers? I felt dreadfully uneasy and cast down.

My answers to Doña Conchitas questions must, I am sure, have seemed lame and random indeed, yet she appeared delighted and deeply interested, laughed merrily at various of the things I told her, and asked many questions.

When I had told her all that I could remember of Bath (a most displeasing city, bitterly cold and dank, where it rains without ceasing all winter long, and all summer too, those who lived there told me), Doña Conchita demanded of me, in a careless manner, "And pray tell me, is it not true, Señor Felix, that it was somewhere on your grandfather's land—the Spanish grandfather I mean—that all the paychests of General Moore's English army were cast away? Twenty-five thousand pounds' worth of gold and silver dollars, is it not said—all thrown down the mountainside when Bonaparte was chasing the English out of Spain? Did your grandfather's people never find those trunks of gold and silver dollars?"

"Never, señora," I replied calmly. "And I am quite surprised that you should pay such heed to an idle tale."

She opened her beautiful dark eyes very wide.

"But the pay load
was
lost—everybody knows that story is true. And
somebody
had to find it. In fact there are many tales floating about; one of them has it that an English deserter named Smith knew where the treasure lay, and that he is now living like a lord in Tangier and calls himself Don Juan Forjador; other versions tell that your canny grandfather had the gold and silver removed, little by little, and stored away secretly."

"Well, you can inform whoever told you those tales, señora, that both are baseless. My grandfather certainly does not have the gold and silver—if he did, he would long since have taken steps to return it to its proper owners. And as for poor Smith, he died, five or six years back, of the lung-rot."

"How do you know that?" she asked quickly.

"Because I made inquiries."

"Ah! Then you
had
met Smith?"

"Very briefly, once, yes, when I was on my way to England. And then when, by coincidence, he was taken into custody, along with a band of highway robbers, and held overnight in my grandfather's stables, he wrote a letter to me, saying that he was dying."

"Why should he write to you?" demanded Doña Conchita.

"I had undertaken to deliver a letter from him, to his niece. He was grateful." And he also wrote to warn me that my great-aunt was making evil plans against me, I thought, but did not say. I was not flattered by Doña Conchitas interest in my family—which seemed nourished on vulgar tales—and saw no reason to gratify it further.

She smiled at me mischievously. "You are certainly a cool young man, Señor Felix. If
I
thought there might be all those chests of silver dollars on my land, lying there for the taking, I would be out searching under every juniper bush! But perhaps you have done that very thing and are, of course, far too shrewd to tell any inquisitive female who comes asking you about it."

"If you choose to imagine such a thing, señora, that is your privilege."

She laughed musically, and changed to questions about Salamanca and my studies there.

"How long will they continue?"

"To be a barrister—which was my intention—I must learn logic and physics for three years; then mathematics and Roman law; then Spanish and ecclesiastical law—"

"
Ay, Dios mio!
You will be an old, gray-bearded man by the time you qualify," she said, throwing up her hands. "How many years is the course, in heavens name?"

"Thirteen for a fully qualified barrister. But, as I had good Latin, I might get through in a shorter time; all the teaching is in that language."

"
Now
I can be quite certain that neither you nor your grandfather found that treasure; who would put himself through such a training if he could afford to live at home?"

"A man might choose to serve his country," I said rather stiffly.

Again she gave her silvery laugh. "Oh, pray! I heard enough of
that
kind of talk from my husband." And she began to talk about the city of Salamanca, where she had been herself, she told me.

"I have friends there ... I know it a little," and she mentioned some of the sights of the town, especially the famous Casa de las Conchas, a house with its facade all adorned with stone cockleshells. "When my little daughter Pilar first saw those cockles, she wanted every one of them for herself," Dofia Conchita told me gaily. "Oh, how she wanted them! She cried and cried—"

"Pilar is the youngest—how old is she?"

"Hardly more than a baby. Oh, how I keep wondering and wondering what that atrocious monster is doing to my poor darlings," she suddenly broke off to lament in a tremulous tone, very different from that she had been using.

I was trying to summon some phrases of comfort when she suddenly exclaimed, in a different tone again, "No, really, this is
too much!
"

For, as we climbed ever higher, the fine mountain rain had changed to a fine, sleety snow, blowing and stinging in our eyes and nostrils.

"I refuse to ride on horseback any longer in this abominable blizzard!" exclaimed Doña Conchita, and she insisted on Tomas the coachman stopping and letting her seat herself in the carriage once more. "The horses must have had sufficient rest by now—here we are, nearly at the top of the mountain!"

Tomas grumbled and objected a good deal, but she told him in the softest and gentlest manner that Señor Escaroz would dismiss him as soon as he returned home unless she had her way.

So, with downturned mouth and out-thrust jaw, he let down the step and she got back into the coach.

"What about the holy sisters?"

"Oh—they seem well enough, with the cloaks these gentlemen have been kind enough to give them. They are used to walking about in all weathers."

Now that Esteban the outrider had his horse back, he and his companion and Pedro rode on ahead into the snowy gloom, to make sure that the road was clear.

I seized this chance to overtake the two sisters and dismount beside them, removing my hat politely as I did so, and greeting them. As I rode up behind them I had caught a snatch of their talk, and was surprised to find that this was neither in Spanish nor in Basque nor in French, but in Latin; so I greeted them in that language.

"
Salve, mei Sorori!
"

"Aha!" said Juana's voice—her own, unmistakable voice, rather low-pitched but quick and clear—"so you have kept up with your Latin at Salamanca, have you, Felix? But do you still remember the Basque word for sister, I wonder?"

"
Ahizpa,
" I said, dredging the word up from some deep well of memory.

"There! I wouldn't have believed it!" She laughed—the old, familiar chuckle. "Sister Belen, we shall have him speaking fluent Euskara yet; in a hundred years, perhaps."

Sister Belen also chuckled—a fat, deep, comfortable sound. All I could see of her, inside the deep, flapping white hood, was a round brown cheek, but her voice was friendly as the sound of a brook.

"In that case we had better, perhaps, speak Spanish."

"Why do you converse in Latin, my sisters?" I asked.

"Oh," Juana replied lightly, "for good practice. And—just in case the mountain eagles are listening to our chat."

I caught a gleam of her copper-dark eye, and remembered that one of the first things she had ever said to me was, "I have learned to trust
nobody.
"

She was still exactly the same Juana—even if dressed up in a nun's robe; and, as the snow stung and slashed against our faces, I walked on beside her in deep content.

Next moment, around a corner of the cliff, the weather changed; as so often in Spain, coming over the top of the escarpment we found a completely different climate waiting on the other side of the mountain: warm sun and a mild, grassy landscape.

Pedro and the outriders now trotted back to suggest that we should rest the horses for a short space of time and take a
merienda.

Tomas, the coachman, very willing, quickly produced a feast from one of the large baskets in the baggage compartment: white rolls, ham, cheese, wine, fruit. A cloth was spread, the ladies perched on rocks, we all ate and drank.

The sisters put back their hoods. Sister Belen, I saw, was a round-faced, red-cheeked countrywoman as her voice had suggested, smiling and comfortable, And Juana? Juana was herself—pale, thin, her dark eyes full of fire and resolution; her hair, cropped in a short, monastic fashion, was much as I remembered it during our journey together when she had been disguised as a boy.

Pedro gave me his gap-toothed grin and murmured, "Hey! More like a fiesta than a rescue mission?"

I had been thinking the same thing myself; it was hard to believe that this large party, drinking wine in the cheerful sunshine, had any connection with three terrified children being held captive against their will by a madman in some mountain fastness. The three children ought to be here with us, I thought—eating grapes, tumbling off rocks, and probably making thorough nuisances of themselves; I recalled the spoiled little girl in Zamora screaming at her father that she wished to ride in a carriage.

"We certainly can't drag all this circus with us wherever we go," Pedro murmured, "or those poor children won't be rescued by the
Año Nuevo.
"

"You are right, of course. I have been thinking the same thing. But how are we to rid ourselves of all this company?"

"It's not going to be easy. The Doña de la Trava is a lady with a will of her own."

I nodded, with gloom.

"Well—we shall have to find a way somehow," Pedro said in an undertone, as the lady herself came smilingly toward us.

"Will you not take more wine, Señor Felix, and another leg of chicken?"

"No, thank you, señora, I think we should continue on our way, or we shall never reach Pamplona by dusk. I will just ask the sisters if they have had sufficient refreshment."

The two sisters, as seemed to be their habit, had placed themselves somewhat apart from the rest of the group, had eaten and drunk very sparingly, and were now sitting in silence and contentment looking at the great view outspread to the south. How different it must be for them, I thought, traveling freely like this, from being shut behind that black wall in Bilbao.

They were looking away from me, had not heard my approach and I was able to look at Juana fully. I remembered Grandfathers warning: "You must be prepared to find great changes in her. Young ladies grow up much faster than their male counterparts." But, it seemed to me, she had not changed at all! The gleam in her eye was just as I recalled it; there was mockery in it, and merriment, but a spark of the Devil's own temper as well; at any affront, real or fancied, she was capable of firing up into a fury. Had convent discipline, I wondered, cured her of this habit? Somehow it seemed unlikely.

"Have you had sufficient refreshment, my sisters?" I asked. "You have not taken very much?"