(2/3) The Teeth of the Gale (32 page)

***

S
O WE
were married, with no parade and little ceremony, in the convent chapel, with Pedro acting as a groomsman, and the two children in attendance.

"This getting wed is such a famous notion, I'm going to work on Sister Belen to persuade her to come out of the cloister," Pedro muttered to me just before the service, while we were waiting for Juana to appear, looking prickly and self-conscious, in her white lace and silver crown, on the arm of the convent chaplain.

"
Pedro!
"

"I plan to keep writing letters to her," he said. "It will be hard work."

I did notice that Sister Belen gave him an especially friendly greeting when healths were being drunk afterward.

We started on the return journey to Villaverde very soon after the ceremony, for I was eager to get back to Grandfather with the least possible delay.

"I am so longing for you and the children to be there. And for you to meet Grandfather—that will make me so happy—"

But—alas—that final happiness was not to be permitted.

When I first decided to write about Felix at the age of eighteen, I hardly realized what a fearsome period of Spanish history I was going to plunge him into. The years between 1823 and 1833 are called by some historians the "Ominous Decade" because such a lot of bad things were going on in Spain.

After what we call the Peninsular War, 1808–14, and the Spanish call the War of Independence, during which English, French, and Spanish armies skirmished all over Spain, with the English and Spanish allied to drive out the French, the country was desperately poor and in a state of upheaval. The upper classes were worried that there would be a revolution, as in France.

King Ferdinand VII had been exiled with his parents Carlos IV and Maria Luisa when, in 1809, Napolean enticed them out of Spain by a trick, and put his own brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne. The Spanish people were longing to have their rightful king back, but when Ferdinand arrived in 1814, after Napoleons downfall, they discovered that he had a mean and vindictive nature. He soon canceled the liberal measures that had been passed during his exile and began a regime of repression that lasted till his death in 1833. Nor was the trouble ended then, for his children were both daughters; his brother, Don Carlos, claimed the throne; and a long series of "Carlist Wars" began. (The Salic Law of 1713 had barred girls from reigning, but Ferdinand had declared that law invalid.)

So during the late 1820s, when this story is set, there were three main parties in Spain: that of the king, reactionary and repressive; the Carlists, even
more
reactionary (they had an idea that the king was being influenced by Freemasons); and the Liberals, a surprisingly large group. These three groups were all in conflict, but the Liberals had the worst of it.

I wish I had more space to tell about the awfulness of Ferdinand (he seems to have spent his exile knitting socks from statues of the saints) and his parents, Carlos and Maria Luisa. You have only to look at their portrait:; by Goya to see how weak, obstinate, vain, and stupid they were. And Goya's paintings
The Second of May
and
The Third of May
show what happened when the French came into Spain in 1809, the year in which Felix was born.

One real character appears in this story. Mariano Jose de Larra was a Liberal journalist who spent his childhood in France during the War of Independence, with his family, who were Bonapartists. After the war, in the amnesty of 1818, they came back to Spain. De Larra soon began writing indignant essays, under the name "Figaro," about the state of the country. One of them was called to "To Write in Madrid Is to Weep." He said that trying to reform Spain was like plowing the sea. Sad to tell, he committed suicide at the age of twenty-eight. He would have been glad to know that in the middle of the twentieth century Spain at last became a democracy.

Armstrong, Martin.
Spanish Circus.
William Collins.

Coverdale, John E
The Basque Phase of Spain's First Carlist War.
Princeton University Press.

Inglis, Henry D.
Spain in 1830.
Whittaker, Treachor & Co.

Kamen, Henry.
Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century.
Longmans.

McCabe, Joseph.
Spain in Revolt 1814–1931.
Bodley Head.

Morton, J. B.
Pyrenean.
Longmans.

Morton, H. V.
A Stranger in Spain.
Dodd, Mead, & Co.

Oman, Carola.
Sir John Moore.
Hodder & Stoughton.

"Poco Mas."
Scenes and Adventures in Spain from 183$ to 1840.
Bendey.

Quin, Michael J.
A Visit to Spain 1824.
Hurst Robinson & Co.

Scott, J. M.
From Sea to Ocean: Walking Through the Pyrenees.
Geoffrey Bles.

Sedgwick, Henry Dwight.
A Short History of Spain.
Harrap.

Some of the above tides are now out of print, but may be obtained through a library.

JOAN AIKEN
(1924–2004) was the author of many books for adults and children, including
Black Hearts in Battersea
and
The Wolves of Willough by Chase,
which won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. Her 1968 novel,
The Whispering Mountain,
was a Carnegie Medal Honor Book and winner of the Guardian Award. She was named a Member of the Order of the British Empire for her services to children's literature.

In the first book of the trilogy, twelve-year-old orphan Felix Brooke is given a letter that contains a clue to the whereabouts of his father's family. So he gladly leaves his unhappy home in Spain to follow the trail. But it's a long way to England, and many dangers stand between Felix and his destination.

Felix's adventures continue in the second book in the trilogy. After visiting his father's family in England, Felix is on his way back to Spain when he's shipwrecked off the coast of France. He is taken in by monks to recover from his ordeal—but it soon becomes clear that he is actually being held prisoner. Felix encounters an injured boy, Juan, on the grounds of the monastery and saves him from death. The two boys escape and continue on to Spain together—but a gang is pursuing Juan, and the journey is more dangerous than they imagined.

Praise for this trilogy:

"Each leaves the reader eager for more."
—
VOYA
(5Q—highest rating)

"I can't recommend these too highly."
—novelist and reviewer Amanda Craig in
The Independent on Sunday

"These books get better with each reading."
—
School Library Journal

*If the priests and friars only knew
What a beating we are going to give them
They would huddle together shouting
Liberty, Liberty, Liberty!
Swallow it, swallow it, swallow it
Old long-face diehard
We don't want a witch for a queen
Or a sluggard for a king.
(Riego's hymn became the national anthem of the Spanish Republic in 1931.)

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