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The Wolves Chronicles:
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
Black Hearts in Battersea
Night Birds On Nantucket
The Stolen Lake
The Cuckoo Tree
Dido and Pa
Is
Cold Shoulder Road
Midwinter Nightingale
The Witch of Clatteringshaws

About the Book

An unknown menace lurks at Villaverde. Don Francisco has sent word that Felix must return immediately, but his reasons are shrouded in secrecy.

Despite warnings of a conspiracy and his own suspicions of a trap, Felix fearlessly plunges into a plot thick with intrigue and danger. His grandfather said it was a matter of life and death – but whose?

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 services to children’s books. She died in 2004.

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.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

In which I receive a message from home; travel with Pedro; am followed by Sancho the Spy; see a spoiled child and her fat father; give our pursuers the slip; and witness a fearsome landslide

It was on some saint’s day – whose, I don’t remember – that Pedro came knocking at the door of my lodging in Salamanca. The townspeople had been celebrating since dawn, with processions, fireworks, bullfights, and dancing in the streets; the students at the University had a holiday, and most of them had been out, waving banners and demanding more liberal laws. Many of them had by this time been arrested and were probably in bad trouble. By nightfall, most of the town’s activities were concentrated in the Plaza Mayor, the main square, on to which my window faced. People who still had the energy – and there were plenty of them – were dancing; the older citizens sat at tables under trees in the middle of the plaza and drank wine and coffee and talked.

People talk more, in Salamanca, I have heard it said, than in any other town in the world. The sound of their conversation came up through my window – open, for it was a mild spring evening – in a solid clatter, like the tide breaking on a pebbled shore, just sometimes overborne by bursts of music on pipe, drum, and guitar.

For this reason it was some time before I noticed the tapping and scratching at my door, and heard Pedro’s voice.

‘Felix, Felix! Are you in there? Ay, Dios, what a struggle I’ve had, shoving my way here through the crowd –’ as I opened the door and let him in. ‘I reckon the whole town is packed into the square down below. Why aren’t you out there, drinking and dancing with the girls? Or carrying placards with the students? Mind, I’m just as glad you are not; it would be like trying to find one leaf in a forest.’

It was at least eighty leagues from home, two and a half days’ riding at a horse’s best pace. And Pedro, I knew, could not easily be spared these days; he had risen from stable-boy to a position in the estate office under Rodrigo, my grandfather’s steward, and everybody was very pleased with his work. So what was he doing here, such a distance from Villaverde?

‘No, no, set your mind at rest; Don Francisco is in good health; at least his mind is as active as ever, if his body isn’t.’ For many years my grandfather had been confined to a wheelchair because of rheumatism and wounds from old battles.

‘He wants you home, and in double-quick time, too. We must leave tomorrow at dawn. It’s a bit hard, I must say,’ grumbled Pedro, ‘year in, year out, I’m stuck up there on a windy hilltop in the middle of the sierra, not a girl to pass the time of day with, apart from country bumpkins smelling of goats’ milk. And when I do get sent to what looks like a decent town, full of jolly senoritas, I’m obliged to turn straight round and gallop home, not even allowed time to buy a gift for Aunt Prudencia.’

‘You can buy her something tomorrow while I see my tutor. Why does Grandfather want me home so urgently?’

Pedro shrugged. ‘I don’t know, I’m telling you! But, half an hour later, I was ordered off to fetch you back as fast as the Devil left St Dunstan’s dinner table. The Conde didn’t even take time to write you a note.’

‘Well, he writes so slowly these days, with his stiff hands. But you’d think he could have got Don Jacinto to do it.’

‘Didn’t want Don Jacinto to know, maybe. And I’ve half killed three mounts on the way,’ said Pedro, glancing round my room, ‘and I’m half dead myself. Is there somewhere I can sleep? And I’d not say no to a glass of wine and a mouthful of ham –’

‘Of course.’ I fetched food from a closet and said, ‘You can have my bed when you’re finished. I’ll sleep on the floor.’

‘What? You, the Conde’s grandson – and an English milord as well – Lord Saint Winnow,’ he mouthed the English syllables distastefully, ‘give up your bed to the cook’s nephew?’

‘Try not to be more of a numbskull than you are,’ I said, pushing him on to the cot, which was narrow and hard enough, certainly, no ducal couch. ‘Go to sleep, you’re tired out. And I’ve bedded down in plenty of worse places.’

He argued no more, but kicked off his boots. ‘Beggarly sort of lodgings for a Cabezada,’ he grunted, looking disparagingly round my small untidy room.

‘I like the view. And money’s not so plentiful these days. You know that.’

‘Ay, ay. Since our dear king was put back on the throne, with all those French and Russians to hold him there and see he doesn’t get pushed off again

‘Who could hear, with all that blabber going on outside? And the taxes going up crippling high, and your granda’s Mexican estates lost in the uprising there – times are bad – ’ Pedro gave a great yawn and closed his eyes. In two minutes he was asleep.

I pulled my clothes out of the chest, ready for packing, piled them into a heap on the floor, and flung myself down on top of it.

Hours had dawdled by, though, before I slept. It was not the roar of chat from the Plaza Mayor, nor the lumpy layers of shirts and breeches below me, but sheer worry that kept me awake.

Was Grandfather in trouble with the authorities? He made no secret of the fact that he despised King Ferdinand, now back on the Spanish throne, and all the men chosen for his ministers. Villaverde was a tiny, unimportant place, high on the sierra and far from Madrid; but that made no difference. All over Spain men lived in fear these days. My grandfather’s crippled condition, his old age, his noble birth, and known patriotic fervour would be no protection. Empecinado, who had bravely led guerrilla troops against Napoleon, had been imprisoned at Roa for ten months, brought out on market days in an iron cage to be spat on by the peasants. A lady of aristocratic family had been put under arrest, simply because she had permitted patriotic songs to be sung in her house. Men had been sent to the galleys at Malaga, just for having Colonel Riego’s picture on their walls.

What could have been in that letter from Bilbao, that caused him to send for me at such racing speed?

Long before daylight, we were up. Seeing me put on my hat and jacket, Pedro said, ‘I suppose you’ll want to say goodbye to your sweetheart?’

‘Oh, ay,’ he muttered, ‘there was that French girl. I forget. Years ago, that was, though . . .’

To which I made no reply. Juana was not French, I thought, she was Basque. Pedro, seeing my face, I suppose, smiled his wide apologetic grin – his teeth fanned out like a hand of cards, but the effect was not unpleasing – and said, ‘I’m sorry, Senor Felix. You know me – I’m a clod. What I say is nothing but nonsense. Would there be any breakfast?’

‘Buy yourself what you like.’ I tossed him a couple of coins. ‘I have to see my tutor and explain that I shan’t be able to attend his classes for a while. I’ll not be long – back in twenty minutes.’

Having descended the three flights of stairs I set off running along the Rua Mayor which led to the University.

I found my tutor, as I had expected, already in the classroom where, two hours later, we would assemble for his lecture on the Greek drama. His own lodgings were small and frightfully cold – the pay of a university lecturer was not high – so he often came into the school halls long before dawn.

‘Glory be to God!’ he exclaimed at the sight of me, hot and panting, ‘here’s one of my students shows real enthusiasm at last! And thankful I am to see you weren’t one of those hotheads who are now cooling their heels in the jail.’

He was a small, round-faced, red-haired Irishman, with a soft voice and more learning in him than I would be able to pick up in several lifetimes. His name was Lucius Redmond.

‘N-no, sir – I’m afraid it’s not – though I am enthusiastic – and I would have been out with a placard but I promised my grandfather – the thing is, he has summoned me home, most urgently –’

‘Is it the politics?’ He gave a quick, wary glance round the ill-lit, empty classroom – at whose battered desks students had been sitting for more than 300 years. Craftsmen built good desks in the sixteenth century!

‘Eh well – let’s hope not.’ He crossed himself. So did I. Politics had closed down the whole University at Salamanca for several years after King Ferdinand returned to Spain from exile, and, when it did reopen, a number of the teachers were missing, and never reappeared. ‘Give my very kind regards to the Conde,’ said Dr Redmond, who had occasionally corresponded with my grandfather on learned subjects. ‘And return to us as soon as ye can, Felix, dear boy, to take your degree. We’ll miss ye, faith, in the classes. Like a sunbeam, ye’ve been.’

‘And – and I’ll miss the classes too, sir! But sir – please tell me one thing –’ I had been reading the plays of Sophocles that week, and for a moment thirst for information made me forget the urgency to be gone – ‘why, why did all those troubles fall on poor Oedipus? None of it was his fault – he did not know that Laius was his father and Jocasta his mother –’

‘Yerrah, dear boy, ye’ve read the classics with me now for three years and ye still expect justice in human affairs? Divil a bit will ye find in this world – justice is only guaranteed in the world to come! No, no,’ Redmond went on, shepherding me out of the door, across the cloisters, and out into the street ‘ – I’ll walk with ye a step of the road and take my breakfast coffee in the Plaza Mayor; no, my child, the misfortunes that fell on poor King Oedipus were kin to those that have fallen on poor Spain. Whose fault? Nobody’s, that we can see. Who could guess, when the English drove out Napoleon and kicked his brother Joseph off the Spanish throne, and brought back the rightful king Ferdinand, that the man would turn into such a bloody tyrant?’

Indeed the night was still black. The streets were empty. No Civil Guards were to be seen.

‘’Deed and I sometimes think,’ went on Dr Redmond, ‘that the ancient tales, such as that of Oedipus, were given us so that we may measure our own troubles against the ills of former times. That way, our own lot may not seem so bad.’

‘Time alone is the cure,’ he answered gravely. ‘No use expecting a sudden rescue, for there won’t be one. Maybe in a hundred years . . . Ye have English kin, have ye not?’

‘Ay, sir, a grandfather living near Bath. But he is old, and out of his wits.’

‘If it were not for the Conde,’ he muttered, ‘I’d say, take ship for England, and live there where folk of liberal views may speak as loud as they please. But ye’d not want to leave your granda.’

‘Well, God go with you, my child. Vaya con Dios!’ he added, breaking into Spanish – hitherto we had spoken English, to lessen the risk of being overheard – ‘ye have been one of my brightest students, don’t forget what ye have learned.’ He waved me a friendly goodbye as he turned into one of the cafés that lined the square, just beginning to open for business.

Back at my lodgings I found that Pedro had capably packed up my clothes and books, and had ready a pair of mules which stood waiting to take us on the first stage of our journey.

‘Now who’s being high and mighty? These are a good pair, from la Mancha, they can outpace any of your high-stepping Arabs; and will take longer to tire. Also – ’ he glanced about the street – ‘mounted on a pair of mules, we won’t attract such notice.’

I swung myself on to one of the long-eared beasts and Pedro, doing likewise, added with a grin, ‘Anyway, I seem to remember that you weren’t too proud to leave home on a mule, once before.’

Laughing, I kicked my mount into a swinging lope. It was true that, six years ago, at the age of twelve, I had run away from home, riding a canny, cross-grained mule from my grandfather’s stable, who had been my faithful companion through various hair-raising adventures, and had saved my life at least twice.

‘Everything you say is perfectly correct, Pedro. Did you manage to buy a keepsake for your aunt?’

‘Got the old girl a bit of lace from a stall in the Calle de Zamora.’ He patted his saddlebag.

For a couple of hours we rode in silence. As Pedro had foretold, the mules went well, covering the ground at a smooth, steady amble, five leagues to the hour. By the time full day had dawned we were well away from Salamanca, in open country. Then Pedro’s tongue was loosened, and he chattered with his usual vivacity, telling me all the news of Villaverde, my grandfather’s household, the great fortified house, and the tiny town that clung to one side of it and was encircled by the same massive wall, high on the Picos de Ancares. Who had been married to whom, who was sick, who was well, he related, which horses had foaled, how my grandfather did these days, and my five aged great-aunts; no, only four of them now, Great-aunt Feliciana had been carried off by the croup at the age of ninety-four last month, leaving Natividad, Adoracion, Josefina, and Visitacion. And Dona Mercedes, my grandmother, Pedro said, was now like a little child, had to have the simplest matters explained to her, and asked the same question five times in as many minutes.

‘It’s hard on your grandfather,’ Pedro concluded. ‘But everybody else in the household finds it a change for the better. Such a Tartar she used to be! Now she’s peaceable as a duckling, smiles and pats your head if you so much as pick up her fan.’

Pity she wasn’t like that fifteen years ago when I was a young child in her household, I thought; many was the beating she ordered for me then.

‘So how do you like college, Felix?’ Pedro asked. ‘Are you growing mighty learned? Are you going to be a great man of law? I reckon it’s better than being rapped on the knuckles twenty times a day by old Father Tomas, eh?’

‘Just about ten thousand times better. I like it very well. Though there’s a deal to learn. The full course of study for a barrister takes thirteen years.’

‘Thirteen years?’ Pedro turned to me a face of horror. ‘You’re joking, Senor Felix!’

I shook my head. ‘It’s true. But you have to be aged twenty-five before you can apply . . . I’m just working for a bachelor’s degree. I’d like to be a barrister, though. You have to swear to defend the poor for nothing –’

‘You always were mad on finding out about things that are no use,’ Pedro said rather disparagingly. ‘Now I – ’ he thumped his chest – ‘I can only reckon if I can see the things right there in front of me. Or know they are in the barn: so many head of goats, so many tons of hay.’

Pedro, I remembered, was lightning-quick at figures; calculation always had a great appeal for him. So I told him that, back in the fifteenth century, Cristoforo Colombo had travelled to Salamanca to ask the astronomers and mathematicians there for help in planning his voyage in search of the New World.

‘Is that true?’ he said, only half believing, and when I said yes he burst into ribald song:

Cristoforo Colombo

Es verdadero

Una grasa Senora

Se senta en mi sombrero!

Then he asked, ‘But you aren’t studying astronomy are you, Felix? That would be really useless!’

‘No, only law. And some other things which I hope will come in useful.’ Like plays of Sophocles, I thought, and fell silent, recalling, as I had many times, the day when it had been decided that I should attend the University at Salamanca.

I had been out on the grasslands, beyond the town wall, exercising a half-schooled Andalusian colt, when Pepe, one of the stable-boys, came racing to tell me that Grandfather wanted me urgently. And indeed, as I cantered towards the arched gate in the wall, I saw the Conde come through it, pushed in his wheelchair by Manuel, his personal servant. There was a stretch of paved road outside the wall, and here they halted. My grandfather made urgent beckoning gestures, and motioned Manuel to go back inside, so I dismounted and tied my horse to a stanchion in the wall.

Even from a distance I could see how white his face was. And, coming closer, that his mouth trembled and shook in a way that frightened me. For, as a rule, he was a man of iron self-control. He had a paper in his hands.

I waited in silent suspense while he made several efforts to speak. At last he brought it out.

‘They have killed Rafael Riego. The best man in Spain. Killed him like a dog.’

Riego was a Liberal leader, a man of great courage and nobility. In the wars against Napoleon he had served with gallantry, and had been taken prisoner. Back home, when peace returned, he was elected to the Cortes, the Spanish parliament, and, in 1820, appointed its president. That same year, he proclaimed the validity of the Spanish Liberal Constitution, which had been drawn up in 1812, while King Ferdinand was still a captive in the hands of the French.

But then, later in 1820, history repeated itself and French troops again invaded our country, for the other European nations refused to acknowledge a democratically elected Spanish government. Colonel Riego led the fighting against the French, and was captured at Malaga. The restored King Ferdinand, who had at first pretended to accept the Liberal constitution, now completely turned against it, and sided with the French, who supported him in all his tyrannical acts.

‘Not only have they killed Riego,’ said my grandfather with white lips, ‘but they did it in the most shameful, degrading way. He was dragged along the streets of Madrid in a basket, at the tail of an ass. Imagine it! The president of the parliament – the man who could have saved Spain! Then he was hanged, drawn, and quartered like a – like a cut-throat! This country, I truly believe, is turning into a hell on earth.’

Riego, a neighbour, a man of Asturias, had been a close family friend. I know Grandfather felt his horrible end all the more keenly because, if he had not been prevented by his crippled state, he would have been Riego’s active ally.

‘What can we do?’ I said. I was wild to make some demonstration – put up a placard – write a letter to the king – hit somebody.

But my grandfather said, ‘Nothing. There is nothing we can do. King Ferdinand is backed by the French – the “hundred thousand sons of St Louis”. If the Spanish people did rebel, I have no doubt that the Tsar of Russia would send Cossacks into our country. We should be beaten into submission. The other kingdoms of Europe do not want Spain to become a free and liberal state.

‘But, Felix, it is for you that I fear. My political views are known. If I were to be carried off to prison, they would take you too. Then who would care for your grandmother and your great-aunts? It is best that you leave Villaverde, my boy, and go away, at once, to college in England.’

‘You have relations there – ’ This was true, for though my mother had been Spanish, my father was an English officer, killed in the French wars, and I had travelled to England to visit his family home. ‘You could go to Oxford or Cambridge University,’ my grandfather said.

‘Those places are too far from Villaverde. Besides, I don’t like England.’

In the end, after much argument, I agreed to go to Salamanca. For I did, in truth, wish to learn. And my grandfather felt that, if I were at least that far away from Villaverde, it could not be argued that I was under his influence. He begged me not to involve myself in politics while I was studying; and, as I loved him, I gave my promise, and kept it, though it went against the grain. Which was why Pedro had found me at home and studying, instead of out rioting with my comrades.

As it turned out, the authorities had not imprisoned Grandfather – perhaps because it was so plain that, in his severely crippled state, he could play no part in any uprising. But for several years he was under house arrest, forbidden even to go out of doors. That was in 1823. And I went off to Salamanca early next year and had remained there for the following three years, often homesick and heartsick enough, but glad of the chance to acquire knowledge, for which I had a deep hunger.

If you can only discover the causes of things, I often thought, surely you can also discover their cure?

Now, despite my worry over Grandfather, I was deeply happy to be riding north again, back to Galicia. Among other reasons, because Galicia was a little nearer to France.

Five years had passed by since I had met ‘that French girl’ referred to by Pedro. I had no reason to hope that I would ever see her again; yet still, how fervently I did hope! She and I had shared a strange adventure; we had each saved the other’s life, several times over. And, as surely as spring follows winter, I felt certain that our fortunes were, in some way, knit together and that we must, some day, meet again. I felt about no other person in the whole world as I did about Juana – we had grown to know one another so well, had become in the end – though not at first – such good friends.

Sometimes – in periods of doubt or despondency – it did occur to me that by now, after five years, she would be greatly changed. As, I suppose, I was myself. She would be grown up, she would have become a young lady. But still, but still, how I longed to see her!

Twice, during the five-year period, I had written to her, the first time in care of a firm of lawyers, Auteuil Freres, at Bayonne, who had been in charge of the affairs of her uncle, Senor d’Echepara.

Following the recent death of our esteemed client, Senor Leon d’Echepara, his niece and heiress Mademoiselle Jeanne Esparza has announced her intention of entering the Convent of Notre Dame de Douleur in Bayonne as a postulant, and instructed us to dispose of all her uncle’s property. This was done and the resulting funds of 30,000 reales assigned, at her request, to the convent as her dower. Any communication to Mademoiselle Esparza (now Soeur Felicitee) should now be addressed in care of Mere Madeleine, the Mother Superior of the Convent.

That, for a year and a half, had put a stop to my efforts to communicate with Juana. A novice! In a French convent! Now indeed she was really cut off from me.

But, at the end of that time, as my yearning to talk to her did not abate, I wrote another letter, addressed to the convent. Nothing of importance: asking how she did, describing the course of my own studies, recalling some of the events of our wild journey over the Pyrenees from France into Spain.

None came; only, at long last, a curt note, unsigned but indited in exquisite copperplate script, instructing me that ‘novices under the discipline of the Convent de Notre Dame de Douleur were not permitted to enter into correspondence with outsiders except on urgent family affairs’.

Feeling snubbed, rebuffed, and wholly cast down, I yet took a grain of comfort in that word ‘novices’. At least, then, Juana had not yet taken her final vows.

But two years had passed since that time; there was a strong probability that by now she had done so.

‘Senor Felix,’ said Pedro, interrupting my glum train of thought as we plodded through a small town called Corales, ‘my stomach rumbles like Mount Vesuvius. How about a bite to eat?’

It was a poverty-stricken little place, containing, perhaps, fifty families dwelling in mud huts and set in the midst of dry, dusty flatlands where young corn was beginning to sprout. We asked which was the posada, for there was nothing to distinguish it from any other house, and were directed to one in the middle of the village. Here we dismounted and entered, calling for food. A sullen-looking man said there was nothing to be had.

‘What?’ said Pedro, pointing to some dried bacon flitches hanging from the rafters. ‘What about those? And have you no eggs? Bacon and eggs would suit us very well.’

Muttering and grumbling with the most cantankerous ill-will, the man at length hoisted down a side of bacon and cut a few slices from it. These he set sizzling in a pan while he growled his way out to a weedy yard at the rear, from which he presently returned bearing a basket of muddy, dusty eggs. These he fried in a great pan of oil so rancid that the smell was horrible.

‘I am sorry now that I asked you to stop here,’ muttered Pedro. ‘We should have gone on to Zamora.’

While the eggs were cooking I strolled to the doorway, to get away from the smoke and stink, and stood gazing along the dusty, empty main street of this gloomy little hamlet.

By and by, in the distance, coming from the same direction as we had done, I discerned another traveller. He was mounted on a big, bony stallion, and, though his pace was slow enough now, he had evidently been travelling at a much faster rate, for his horse’s shaggy grey coat was soaked and streaked with sweat. The man did not pause in Corales, though he eyed our two tethered mules with attention, I thought, as he rode past.

‘What a weedy little fellow!’ said Pedro, joining me in the doorway, attracted by the sound of hoofs. ‘He does not look as if he’d have the strength to master that big brute. Why do you stare after him so?’

At that moment the innkeeper called out in a surly tone that our food was ready, so we returned to eat the unappetising meal. The bacon was burned, and the eggs drowned in evil-smelling oil. All the while we ate, the man stood eyeing us and grumbling as if we had done him an ill turn by stopping to eat at his posada; it was plain that, as a rule, he reckoned to serve only liquid refreshment, and that only in the evening. Pedro responded to this usage by a smile of beaming goodwill. He commented loudly and flatteringly on the delicious flavour of the food as he munched each disgusting mouthful, and, when we left, cordially shook the owner’s hand, assuring him that it was the best meal he had ever eaten, and that he would be sure to recommend the place to all his friends, of whom he had a great many, he assured the man, all over Spain.

‘So you will soon have hundreds of customers for your superb bacon and your incomparable eggs.’

The ruffian gaped at him, incapable of thinking up a suitable reply, since, though Pedro’s words were patently untrue, they were delivered with such smiling affability.

When I asked for the cuenta, it was at least double what it should have been, but, rather than fall into an argument with this disagreeable fellow, I paid it without haggling. I was still puzzling my wits, as I had done throughout the meal, as to where I could previously have seen the small man on the big grey stallion. He was a weaselly-looking character, who might have been an apothecary, or a lawyer’s clerk . . .

An hour later, as we travelled on towards Zamora, descending, now, into the valley of the River Duero, I exclaimed, ‘I have it! Of course, he is Sancho the Spy!’

‘That little fellow who rode by on the grey horse. We used to see him in Salamanca; very often, if a group of students were talking in the street, he would sidle past with his ears cocked like a terrier, and some of my mates believed that he was a police informer; if people were arrested it was thought that he had a hand in it; though nothing certain was ever proved. But they gave him the name of Sancho the Spy.’

‘I’d place a wager that it was. I wonder what in the world he was doing, so far from Salamanca?’

‘And he will certainly be waiting at some point farther on to pick up our trail again. It is a pity we must go to Zamora to cross the river. But perhaps after that we can give him the slip.’

‘No, Senor Felix, that is not sensible,’ said Pedro, shaking his own head. ‘To kill a spy is like killing a spider. It brings bad luck.’ Where he had his odd superstition from, I do not know. I never heard it before. ‘No – what we must do,’ he went on, ‘is to try and lose him after Zamora. We can leave the main highway, strike westwards to Pueblo de Sanabria, and cross the mountains, the Sierra Cabrera; he’d be clever if he could follow us there.’

‘Oh, I’ve ridden errands for your granda in these parts; buying wine and selling wool. It’s a fine wine country.’

Indeed the region around Zamora, very different from the desert plains north of Salamanca, is known as the Tierra del Vino and famous for its fertility, its vines and orchards. By and by we came within sight of the Duero, a wide swift blue river, here brawling over stones, there winding among white sand-banks. It was deep from melting winter snow, and its banks were well grown with trees, all in new spring leaf; among them, dozens of nightingales were singing at the tops of their voices.

‘Beautiful? All that chuck-chuck, tizz-wizz-wizz? Give me the old parrot any day! She, at least, talks good Spanish.’

When I ran away from home at the age of twelve, I had spent a night in the jail at Oviedo; there an old man, who helped me to escape, gave me his parrot, Assistenta. As I was at that time on my way to England, I had left Assistenta with some kind nuns in a convent at Santander, but later went back to reclaim her. She became my grandfather’s favourite companion; he was tickled by the Latin words. I had taught her, and taught her a great many more himself. When I went to college I had been glad to think they would keep each other company; she spent all her days clambering about his bookshelves.

We crossed the Duero by the great stone bridge (the only one for miles) and so up into the fortified town of Zamora, tightly crammed inside its high walls. Despite which walls, the French had captured it in Napoleon’s wars, and remained there until fourteen years previously.

By now it was not far from dusk. Pedro said in a troubled tone, ‘Our wisest course would be to ride straight through the town and continue on our way. But I am not certain that I could pick out the road to Pueblo de Sanabria in the dark.’

‘No, it had better not be thought of. We’d get lost and waste time. Besides, the beasts need rest and fodder. What we should do is find some small venta near the northern edge of the town where we may pass the night inconspicuously and be off by dawn.’

Pedro agreed, so we rode on, along streets which, at this time of the evening, were crowded with townspeople taking their paseo, or twilight promenade. I looked carefully about me for the weaselly man on his grey horse, but saw them not. Near the north wall we found a small, humble inn, with a tumbledown stable where we left our animals. Now our plans received a check, for when we unsaddled we found that the belly-band of Pedro’s mule was nearly worn through; another hour’s riding would have broken it.

‘How could I have been such a dolt as not to notice that when I bought the beast? It was that cunning Granada gipsy who distracted me, when I began to inspect the harness, with a long tale about the beast’s pedigree –’

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘The belly-band can be replaced. All we need is a saddler.’

However – having ordered a meal – we walked towards the market square, which lies to the east of the town, and were lucky enough to come upon a harness-maker’s shop still open for business. The master of the establishment was attending to another late customer, but his boy came to serve us; Pedro, who had brought along his saddle, showed the rotted girth-strap and the boy went off to find a replacement. Meanwhile I amused myself by watching the other customer’s child, a petulant-looking little girl of perhaps four or five, with black hair plaited up on top of her head, fastened with red ribbons. She had a pert, pale, self-willed little face, its elfin prettiness quite spoiled by her expression. When, after listening with a sharp intelligence quite in advance of her age, she suddenly realised that the fat customer was purchasing a saddle with a pillion, she at once burst into ear-splitting shrieks of disgust and fury.

‘No – and no – and no!’ she yelled. ‘I will not! I will not! I will not ride behind you like a gipsy’s child! I wish to ride in a carriage. I want it very much. Very much!’

The fat customer appeared almost out of his wits at having to deal with her temper and her tantrum.

‘But, hija, you cannot! Querida, I fear it is impossible. Do not scold poor Papa!’

‘I want him. I want him very much!’ she cried, ignoring the fat man’s remonstrances.

‘Well – we’ll see – if you are a good girl,’ he told her rather hopelessly. ‘You shall have all the treats you want at the end of the journey, I promise! Sugar plums! And a new dress to wear –’

‘But I wish to ride in a carriage!’ she stormed. ‘Not on a nasty hard pillion!’

‘But that was along an easy road from Salamanca. Now we must cross mountains – where there may be no carriage road.’

Idly watching this scene, I had been plaiting together some scraps of broken leather thong that lay scattered over the floor – a skill picked up from sailors on the tiny Biscay hooker which had brought me from England to Spain five years ago. Now, threading over these a large blue bead, fallen from my mule’s brow-band, which came from my pocket, I tied the thong-ends together and dropped the whole circlet over the child’s head. She whirled round to stare at me, wide-eyed, clutching the leather necklace in astonishment – in her absorption over the affair of the pillion, she had not noticed me before.

‘What do you mean?’ She stuck out her lower lip, frowning down at the plaited necklace, pulling it up so as to study the blue bead. ‘What is this? It is like the beads that oxen wear – to protect them from the Evil Eye.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘perhaps it will protect you likewise. Or perhaps it will help you to enjoy riding on that pillion!’

Then, seeing that Pedro had completed his purchase, I joined him among the dangling saddles at the shop entrance as the child still stared after me – meanwhile, I noticed her father hastily handing over silver coins for his pillion saddle. Flustered, sweating, and anxious, he had never even noticed my conversation with his child. Glancing back, I saw her quickly push the blue bead out of sight, under her tucker.

‘Good, that was piece of luck,’ said Pedro with satisfaction. ‘Heaven only knows what we would have done if that girth had broken somewhere on the mountains between Pedralba and Ponferrada.’

At our little inn they had a great dish of stewed hare waiting for us – a far better meal than our midday bacon and eggs.

While we were eating in the dim-lit downstairs room, the only one the place boasted, I overheard some inquiry taking place at the front door, and, craning so as to see past the back of the fat innkeeper who stood there, I caught sight of my small man from Salamanca, apparently putting questions to the posadero.

This seemed a perfect moment to take the bull by the horns – if bull there were – so, rising from the table, I walked to the entrance as if wishful to take a breath of air. Then, appearing to observe the small man for the first time, I gave a great start of assumed wonder, and cried out, ‘Why, senor, what a pleasant surprise! How good to encounter a familiar face in a strange town! My dear friend, I have seen you so often, week after week, month after month, in the streets near the University in Salamanca that I feel you are, indeed, quite a friend! Will you not come in and take a glass of wine with me? It is such a joy to meet an acquaintance when far from home!’

The small man seemed startled out of his wits, and gaped at me, not in the least gratified at my recognition of him.

‘Er – ha – hum – I fear I don’t understand you, my young senor. Know you? I’ve never laid eyes on you in my entire life!’

‘Oh, senor, how can you say such a thing? When I have so often seen you looking at me! Do you not come from Salamanca?’

At this he looked very put about. ‘May the foul fiend fly away with you!’ he burst out crossly. ‘What affair is that of yours? I have a right to be in Zamora if I please! My – er – my sister lives here!’

‘But you were asking, senor,’ said the innkeeper patiently, ‘you were inquiring if a certain young gentleman were staying here – was this the young gentleman you had in mind? You were telling me that he –’

‘No, no, no, Devil take you, and him, this isn’t the one. This isn’t he at all. A – a tall big-built black-haired man – I was about to say – with a scar on his cheek –’

Outside the inn doorway there was a lantern suspended, and, now that my eyes had grown used to its dim glow, I could see that the Salamanca man had two companions, who loitered in the shadow just beyond the first circle of light. The smaller one I recognised at once by her movements – it was the child from the saddler’s shop, dancing up and down, dragging and twisting her companion’s arm. And he, from his bulk, must be her fat father.

The child knew me directly. I saw her intent little face look up, her eyes flicker, her hand move to the neck of her dress, as if she expected me to ask for the leather circlet back.

‘Would you wish to come in and wait, in case the senor you are looking for comes later?’ suggested the landlord.

‘No, no, no!’ cried the other man again. ‘How do I know that he is not at some other posada – I must be on my way without delay –’

But, whisking his companions away from the circle of lamp light, the small man departed at speed. I returned more slowly to the table and my unfinished plate of hare stew.

Pedro made no comment at the time, nor did I. But, later, when we were abed – the small bare bedchamber had but one couch in it, a big sagging one with a tester and a flock mattress which we had to share (it was damp and soggy as a tidal marsh) – ‘Well,’ whispered Pedro, ‘I always say that it is an advantage to know your enemy.’

Accordingly we were up and stirring, as on the previous day, long before daylight, had drunk a cup of greasy chocolate, paid our reckoning, and saddled our beasts before anybody else was abroad in the streets. Or, at least, anyone that we could see.

‘The turning for Pedro de Sanabria should be about seven leagues farther on,’ Pedro said. So we rode at a good pace, in silence, for about an hour and a half, listening hard for any sound of pursuing hoofbeats.

By that time, a grey and misty day had dawned. Ahead of us now, to the north-west, we should have been able to see high peaks, the Cabrera, and perhaps the Montanas de Leon; but all was veiled in cloud.