Free Bridle the Wind by Joan Aiken Page B

sore.’
    Father Pierre had left a posset, ready to be heated, which I brought up, with some goose grease, which he had told me would be good to rub on the outside of the painful neck. I offered to come in and do this. To my great surprise, after long hesitation, my offer was accepted, and the door pulled back just enough to let me through; then closed again.
    Father Pierre had left a rush candle in the room, which Juan had managed to find and light. By its dim flicker I could see that his appearance was somewhat better, in that he wore the clean clothes and his hair was shorter and less matted. But the big frightened eyes were still hollow and sunken in their sockets, the cheeks haggard and drawn.
    â€˜Get back into bed,’ I said, ‘and sip the posset, then I will rub your neck with this.’
    So he scrambled back under the covers before drinking the hot milk. I wondered if Father Pierre had put anything in that, but if he had, it did not have the effect of sending Juan back to sleep; instead he became wider awake and more anxious.
    â€˜I must not stay more than one night in this place!’ he whispered. ‘They will guess that I have been taken here, and they will be after me.’
    â€˜Who are they?’ I asked, though it was not hard to guess.
    â€˜The Mala Gente,’ he said, shivering. He used the French term, Mauvais Gens, for he was speaking in French, but I understood what he meant.
    â€˜It was they hanged you up?’
    â€˜Who else?’
    â€˜But
why
? You are only a boy. What harm could you possibly do them?’
    He cast me a quick, doubtful look under his lashes – they were long, thick, and bristly – then said, ‘I know their names, you see. I know who they are. That is the harm I could do. I could tell the gendarmes.’
    â€˜Ah, yes, I see.’
    â€˜They had me with them for three months,’ he muttered. ‘At first it was their plan to make me into a thief, or a beggar; they would teach me to maund and patter and feign illness. As I would not obey them, they gave me no food.’
    Talking made him cough, and I said, ‘Hush! You should not try to talk too much. Drink the milk.’
    He took a sip, then said, ‘No, but you saved me, did you not? You gave me back my life. I owe you at least to tell you why they were trying to take it.’ He drank a little more milk, then whispered angrily, ‘It was my brother who hired them to carry me off.’
    â€˜Your
brother
?’ I was astonished, and wondered if, perhaps, he was feverish. ‘How can that be? Your own brother?’
    A strange, satirical expression flitted over his thin face.
    â€˜Hah! You perhaps have no brother? So you believe that all brothers love each other?’ A derisive sniff. ‘It is not always so, believe me. Mine hates me. He is my half-brother, ten years older than I. When his mother died my father married a younger wife, my mother. She was Spanish, Esteban’s mother was French. He has always been jealous, always – though indeed, Maman was always kind to him. So, after she and Papa were killed in the avalanche last winter – ’
    He coughed again, drank again.
    â€˜They had been on a visit to Uncle León in Spain, Maman’s brother. And as they were coming back over the Pass of Ibañeta, the avalanche sent their carriage off the road, down a crevasse. Esteban became head of the house,
etcheko jaun.
He is twenty-three. He made no secret of his hatred, his wish to get rid of me. Only when he took the notion – ’
    Juan stopped short, biting his lip.
    â€˜There is no need for you to tell me all this,’ I said, deeply troubled by the thought of such hate between brothers. If I had a brother, I thought, how dearly would I have loved him! Or even a sister. I had always been so lonely. But Juan had begun to whisper again, as if he desperately needed the relief of unburdening himself.
    â€˜My Uncle León in Spain