Bridle the Wind by Joan Aiken Read Free Book Online Page B

bay. It gave me an odd feeling to handle my striped jacket with the steel buttons, and remember how I had first put it on in my English grandfather’s ducal mansion at Asshe, in England. What a distance from there had I now travelled; distance on land and in the mind, both! The gold English guineas seemed like fairy gold as I took them from the money belt and counted them, wondering greatly at the honesty of the people who had picked me up and brought me here, that the money should still be in the purse.
    â€˜Here, my father, this is for the poor woman; and should not I give you money, too, for the Abbey where I have been tended and sheltered for such a long period? Indeed I would not wish to be thought ungrateful or unmindful –’
    â€˜No, no, my son,’ he said hastily. ‘We require no payment from our patients, no indeed! And one crown will be plenty for the woman. Besides, are you not rendering payment to the Order in the form of service – tending the garden, helping Father Antoine? No, keep your store for when you set out on your travels again. Here it shall stay, safely guarded with your clothes, you see, in the third closet from the stair; I carry the keys on me always, and at night sleep with them under my pillow just here – ’
    He replaced my clothes in the linen bag, and the bag in the cupboard; it struck me, at first idly, then with some force, that he had taken considerable pains to impress on me just where my things were kept. Was there a purpose behind his words and actions?
    â€˜You are an excellent boy,’ he went on, quickly blessing me with the sign of the cross. ‘I was certain of it. One cannot tend a person in sickness without forming a strong notion of his character. Now you had best run along to your work with Father Mathieu. And – it were better not to speak of this generous act of yours to any person here. It is our secret – between you, me, and
le bon Dieu.
Just in case Father Vespasian, waking, is displeased to find her gone.’
    â€˜Of course, father; I perfectly understand.’
    He gave me a quick smile; if he were not a monk I would have said he winked.
    â€˜Good boy! Run along with you, then; you cango through this side-door, which will be a shortcut to the vegetable garden.’
    The door opened into the monks’ recreation ground, a stretch of rough turf, studded with sea pinks and nodding yellow poppies, which lay between the cloister and the walled garden.
    There, on the stretch of flat land at the foot of the wall (here about thirty feet high) it was their custom to play
pelota a mano
, a very ancient game of the Basques. Most men now play this game with a
pala
, or wooden bat, with which they strike the ball against the wall, but the monks kept to the oldest form of the game, using nothing but the bare hand, for which reason their hands were all tough and callused and thick as oak roots.
    The doorway through the wall from the surgery saved me a long walk round through cloister and living quarters and kitchen.
    â€˜I keep a key outside, hidden behind this stone, in case Father Mathieu has occasion to come in this way after gathering herbs for my sick ones,’ said Father Pierre, pulling aside a square stone to show me the hidden key. Then he returned through the door, locking it from the inside. I stood outside the door, on the flat pelota ground, thinking hard.
    Father Pierre is showing me something, he is warning me, I thought. What can be his object? Is he suggesting that for me, too, it would be best to leave the Abbey before Father Vespasian wakes?
    A terribly strong temptation shook me: to take the key from under the stone, unlock the doorin the wall, break open the closet, remove my clothes, and depart at once. It would be impossible to leave by the main gate, because of the porter; but I knew there were many gaps in the crumbling outer wall, which enclosed a large area and many buildings, half of them ruinous,