Bridle the Wind (3 page)

‘You can recall the shipwreck?'

‘Only indistinctly, sir. And then … after I was ashore… something very, very frightening happened.…' I paused, struggling to grasp at memory, but the door was blocked, and would not open.

‘Father Antoine, who had gone down to the shore with other members of the Community to help the sailors, said that you suddenly came running out of the sand dunes as if you were being pursued; looked around you wildly, then went to help pull on the rope just before it broke.'

‘That I do not remember at all.'

‘Come, now! What happened to you among the sand dunes? You have recalled the rest clearly
enough. Exert your mind, boy. Make an effort, I command you!'

Why should it be of such importance to him, I wondered. His voice was low, but very intense, his brows drew together until they resembled an overhanging cliff, and in the shadowed hollows below them his eyes seemed to shine at me with a queer reddish gleam.

‘Look at this paper, boy!' he commanded me, and on a paper in front of him he drew a very exact circle. Obediently I lowered my eyes to it. For a strange series of moments the circle on the flat surface of the paper seemed to become a hollow, a well, a chasm, out of which white smoke came pouring.... I shook my head to clear my sight, then looked up at the Abbot again. For a second or two his eyes seemed veiled by the white vapour, then they glowed at me, even brighter than before.

‘What happened to you on that shore? And where have you been since then? Where has your soul been hiding since that day? In what realm? Under whose dominion?'

I was filled with dread – he seemed so strange. Obediently I exerted myself, until it felt as if my own forehead were tied into knots – but still no memory would return.

‘Truly, I do not know, father!' The words came out of me in a terrified gasp.

The Abbot stared at me, hunched forward like a bird of prey. Then, by stages, a change came over him. Several violent tremors passed through his
body, his eyes blazed like lamps, he appeared to grow several inches taller, and a high, hissing voice came from him, utterly different from that in which he had at first addressed me:

‘Do not try me too far, boy! It is your
duty
to remember when I order you. Remember, I say! Or I will have you beaten again, and much more severely. I
must
know where you have been! How can you stand there like a mule,
saying I do not know?
We shall have to try whether a rope's end, stiffened with tar, cannot jolt the memory out of you!'

I gazed at him struck dumb with fright, my hands clenched at my sides, my tongue locked to the roof of my mouth. There seemed something truly inhuman, infernal, about him, especially about his eyes, glimmering with that uncanny reddish glow.

Greatly to my relief, at this juncture I heard a light tap on the door, and Father Antoine thrust his head round.

‘I did not summon you, Father Antoine,' said the Abbot angrily. But his voice lost its shrill unearthly tone and his eyes their red glare; he appeared more human.

‘Ahem! No, my father – I know – but the messengers are here from the Bishop of Bayonne; I remember you said you wished to be informed at once –'

‘Oh – oh. Yes. Certainly. Take the boy away, then, for the present, Father Antoine. I will interrogate him again. He is being stupidly obstinate –
he refuses to exert his memory, or to tell what he remembers. If he continues to refuse, he must be severely punished.'

‘Memory often returns very imperfectly at first, in such cases,' put in Father Antoine quickly and diffidently. ‘It may well be that, in a few more days –'

The Abbot's eyes began to dart to and fro again, his hand to ply the ivory ruler with that unnatural speed. Fortunately at this moment I heard voices and footsteps outside; Father Vespasian's attention was diverted, and Father Antoine made haste to pull me away.

Holding my arm tightly he hurried me through the ruined cloister and back to the novices' frater. I had a most urgent wish to ask him questions about the Abbot – about the frightening interview which I had just undergone – but, shaking his head, placing his finger on his lips, he handed me over to a small brown-faced, brown-haired monk who was superintending the white-robed novices as they filed upstairs to bed. For the first time it struck me that I, too, wore a plain white wool habit, cut rather short and narrow, with a dark scapular over it.

‘Here is your boy, Father Domitian; he's to talk no more now. I'll have him again in the morning.'

‘Did Father Vespasian –?'

Father Antoine merely nodded his head up and down a great many times, significantly, saying nothing at all. The other monk received this with a glance of wide-eyed comprehension, looked at
me, I thought, with pity, and then gestured me to get into line with the other boys and young men. We climbed a flight of stone stairs to an upper room, made our ablutions, said our evening prayers, and lay down upon narrow wooden cots covered with straw palliasses.

The rest soon slept, but not I.

My mind was churning with questions. It seemed as if that period of time away from myself – why? how had it happened? and for how long? – had proved such a rest for my body that now sleep was not necessary for me.

I lay in the dark, listening to the others breathing, and the distant sound of surf, and surveyed what I knew of myself. I was Felix Brooke, travelling from England to Spain to rejoin my Spanish grandfather, the Conde de Cabezada, who had written me a kind and loving letter. I was aged thirteen years – or perhaps more now? My journey to Spain had been interrupted by a shipwreck. I could remember the wild howl of the wind, the fusillade of hailstones, the mast breaking with a crack like a pistol shot.

But after that all remained obscure, like a dream that, on awakening, hovers mockingly out of reach. Something dire had happened to me on the shore.… What had it been? How in the world had I arrived at this French monastery? How long had I been resident here? And – an even more important question – how soon would I be able to leave?

In the end, after many hours of uneasy tossing and turning, I suppose I slept. But not for long.

Shortly after two in the morning, while yet it was black dark, the monastery bell clanged to summon us from our beds, and we shuffled sleepily down the stone stairs and across the cloister to the chapel for the Night Office. This service was followed by half an hour of silent prayer (during which I prayed very heartily to God that He would soon set me back on my road to Galicia and my grandfather's house, or, if not, at least explain to me what His purpose was for me); then came the early-morning office of Lauds, which was succeeded by Mass.

Feeling by then somewhat hollow, not to say light-headed, I was glad to accompany the others to the frater, where we breakfasted frugally on brown bread and hot milk. Then back to the chapel for the service of Prime, by which time dawn was breaking; the eastern sky glowed redly through the chapel windows.

Then, for the novices, followed an hour of instruction from Father Domitian, which was succeeded by a further hour of silent study and reading. After which we returned to the chapel for Terce and High Mass. The monastery clock was chiming the hour of nine and the sun had climbed high when Father Antoine again came in search of me.

Nodding kindly and meaningfully, he said to me in a low voice, ‘I have leave from Prior Anselm to take you down to the seashore to gather kelp
for Father Mathieu in the garden. Come, you can help me harness the asses.'

Delighted to perform so simple and normal a task, and to escape awhile from the monastic timetable, which was beginning to make me feel somewhat hemmed in, I laid down the
Life of St Dogmael
that I had been attempting to study, and eagerly followed him. We went to the stables which lay in the angle between kitchen and garden, and there harnessed two sleepy furry brown asses to a light garden cart made of plaited withies. Leading the asses (who were decidedly reluctant to budge from their quarters), we made our way past a porter, through a great arched gateway, and down a steep track from which the cliff fell away abruptly on either side.

I gasped at the keen, fresh air, and at the prospect before me. Encased inside the monastery's walls, submerged in its orderly programme of worship, study, prayer, study, and worship, I had almost forgotten the close presence of the sea outside and all around. Now its blueness hit me like a blow. A wide vista of coast lay before me, stretching away in either direction: two vast sandy bays, divided by a rocky causeway, extended below us, with white lines of surf like ermine borders dwindling into the distance, far as the eye could see.

The monastery of St Just was perched on a high isthmus of rock, and, as we descended the causeway toward the mainland, I could see that cliffs dropped away abruptly below the very walls
of the chapel itself; what a place to defend, if enemies came!

‘It is a very beautiful spot, do you not think?' remarked Father Antoine placidly, leading the larger ass, Berri, while I pulled at the bridle of the smaller one, Erda. ‘And at high tide, as you can see, we are cut off for six hours.'

‘It is not, then, quite an island?'

‘Near enough,' he said. ‘We are better off than the brothers at Mont St Michel in Brittany, where the sea, I have heard, visits only every other week or so, and the rest of the time they are high and dry. But then they have no causeway. We are fortunate to possess ours; without it we should be marooned for twenty hours a day. The tide rushes in here at great speed; never attempt, child, to cross when the water is more than ankle-deep or you will be washed away for certain.'

I marvelled at the construction of the causeway, which, about half a mile in length, was made from great slabs of rock bolted together with iron bolts, now weed-grown and barnacle-encrusted. At low tide the road stood six feet and more above the wet, gleaming sand, but Father Antoine told me – and indeed I could see from the high-water mark – that when the tide was full in, the way was submerged to a depth of ten to twelve feet.

‘And the currents race through the channel from one bay to the other; no man could swim against them.'

I observed that, once away from the monastery, Father Antoine spoke with greater freedom and
more cheerfully than he had within its limits. Indeed, as soon as we had traversed the causeway (proceeding with great care, for the slabs of stone were slippery from brine and green clinging weed) and were crossing the flat, wet sand, he said, ‘I brought you down here, my boy, because I thought that your memory might be prompted by a sight of the beach where you were cast ashore. Also I know that it may perhaps be difficult to assemble your thoughts in the presence of Father Vespasian-'

‘Father Antoine!' I burst out. ‘Please tell me – is the Abbot mad?'

The good monk gasped as if I had dealt him a blow on the heart, and his blue eyes went blank for a moment. He crossed himself fervently several times. But then having reflected, he answered in a mild tone, ‘Bless me, my dear boy! I can see very clearly that, now your wits are returned to you, they are keener and more inquiring than those of many young people your age. Have a care, though, in the monastery, how you come out with such blunt utterances!'

‘No, but
is
he?' I persisted. ‘He seemed so strange and – and so unreasonable! You see, Father Antoine, I – I am not unacquainted with madness; my English grandfather, whom I saw not long ago, was astray in his wits, and some of his gestures were like those of Father Vespasian: that quick darting to and fro of the eyes – and – and his shrill voice –'

I stopped, hoping for an affirmation; since, in
fact, what in my heart I feared was much, much worse than simple madness.

Father Antoine glanced apprehensively about the beach as if, even on this huge open space, we might still be overheard. He walked some distance before he replied; he seemed to be collecting his thoughts. Meanwhile I began, I thought, to have a dim and patchy recollection of this place. The sand dunes, the wooded hills and high snow-covered peaks in the far distance –

‘Our Abbot is not – is not wholly mad, my child,' said Father Antoine, clearing his throat nervously. ‘Indeed, judged in many ways, he is sane as you or I, and – and remarkably quick-witted and an excellent administrator. Also: he is almost a saint! He has a wonderful power of healing. Over and over again I have seen it; and so will you. Each Friday they come – the sick people; he has only to lay hands on them and, in seven cases out of ten, their affliction will quit them at once. People come here from great distances – to be healed –'

‘But nonetheless,' I persisted, ‘he is mad, is he not? Or at least, not sane. There is something very strange about him. Am I not right?'

Father Antoine frowned distressfully.

‘It is hard to say it of him: in many ways such a saint; but yes; it is like this, my son: when Father Vespasian finds himself thwarted for any reason, his malady – for such I do indeed believe it to be – comes suddenly upon him. That is why I must confess that I was anxious yesterday to get you
away from him – I feared that if your memory did not return to you – and he could not fetch it out…'

I began to catch his meaning.

‘Did he, in the days before I came to myself – when I was still silent…Father Antoine, please tell me, how long have I have been in this place?'

‘Since January, my boy. It is now the end of March.'

He began, methodically, to gather up the great black, brown, and green sheaves of seaweed that lay tossed hither and thither upon the sand, hoisting them into the wicker cart; and, following his example mechanically, I did likewise while my mind absorbed this shock.

Three months! I had been in this place nearly three months! My poor grandfather! He must by now believe me dead, or that I had played some foolish prank, run away to the Indies or joined the army. I must make haste, make haste, and resume my journey. Not another day must be lost –