‘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 –
My consternation must have shown clear in my face, for Father Antoine said kindly and reassuringly, ‘You are thinking, without doubt, of your friends and family, how distressed they must be not to have heard from you for so long. Do I understand that you have a grandfather residing in Spain, to whose house you were returning?’
Father Antoine must have listened outside the Abbot’s window last night, I thought, with a flicker of amusement, and then I thanked him in my heart, since plainly this had been with my welfare in mind, so that he could find some pretext to end the interview should Father Vespasian show signs of losing his temper.
I answered, ‘Yes, my father. Grandfather is the Conde de Cabezada, at Villaverde, in the province of Galicia.’
‘Ah,’ he said, nodding, as was his habit. ‘Somehow I felt sure that you came of good family. Though you do not look at all Spanish, with your round face and yellow hair!’
‘No, you see I take after my father’s family; he was English.’
It had always been an embarrassment and annoyance to me, living in my grandfather’s house in Spain, that I was so yellow-headed and different from everybody else. But now, having visited England, I felt reconciled to my looks.
‘Bien,’ said Father Antoine with satisfaction. ‘We will at once write a letter to your grandfather the Conde, reassuring him as to your welfare, and letting him know that you are here, and in good care.’
‘But – my father – thank you for the thought of writing, and it is a kind one – but what is to stop me from leaving now, and continuing on my journey?’
His luminous blue eyes surveyed me candidly. The same thought, I could see, was in both our minds. Father Vespasian might want to stop me. But why?
‘First, my boy,’ he said, ‘some legal formalities are necessary. You have no passport or papers. The French authorities will require to see those before you cross the frontier; and the Spanish ones, doubtless, on the other side.’
This news threw me into consternation. It was true, I had crossed to England in a smugglers’ vessel without papers of any kind; and my return on the Biscay hooker had been equally informal. Ahead of me I could see endless difficulties and time-wasting interference by French officials. How, indeed, situated as I was, would it ever be possible for me even to prove that I was Felix Brooke?
‘And then Father Vespasian,’ continued Father Antoine, slowly and carefully hoisting a large hank of seaweed into the cart, ‘believes that you have been sent to us – as it were, a gift from Providence. Our Order is diminishing, sadly; as the older fathers die, fewer novices replace them.…’
‘But I do not wish to be a monk!’ Then, quickly, for fear of giving offence, I added, ‘Indeed I truly love God – He has helped me more times than I can say. But I believe – I am sure – that He has other purposes for me than – than to say prayers and chant psalms all day long.’
‘Well, my boy, and who is to argue with you?’ replied Father Antoine cheerfully. ‘For my part I entirely agree that you have the right to choose. Yet I think that God must have had some special purpose in mind when He tossed you onto this beach and stole your wits away for so many weeks. I was there when it happened, when you fell and hit your head upon a great stone; I saw how the rope broke, how it all came about. And I have seen many such cases. There seemed no reason why you should not recover next day; yet there you lay, week after week, in a dead swoon, with Father Pierre, the infirmarian, feeding you broth out of a ram’s horn; then, when you at last sat, and stood, and walked, you were mild and biddable, ate, worked, and behaved as you ought in Chapel, but you never spoke. Your eyes were elsewhere. You seemed in a dream, still, as if you waited for the angel Gabriel to come and summon you.’
‘Is it true,’ I asked nervously, ‘that Father Vespasian had me beaten? For not speaking?’
‘Yes, I fear that is the case,’ Father Antoine answered with reluctance. ‘When our novices commit faults, or are slow in learning, or obstinate and sullen, he has them whipped round the infirmary cloister. This happened to you, twice. … Father Vespasian, you see, was so certain that if he laid his hands on you, the power of speech would be granted to you again. And – as I said -when he is thwarted, his malady comes upon him –’
I could not withhold a shiver. Somehow the thought of this unreasonable, mad anger – at someone who, by reason of infirmity, could not speak – and visiting upon them such a savage punishment, seemed to me most horrible. The fact that it was I who had suffered the punishment and that I could not remember the occasion at all, only made the whole thing worse, as if some innocent half-wit – my younger brother perhaps – had been thus unfairly dealt with.
‘Do you think that he will have me beaten again? If my memory does not return?’
Father Antoine crossed himself once more and said, without answering directly, ‘That was why, you see – it was in order to assist your memory – that I obtained the Prior’s leave to bring you down here. And indeed Father Mathieu is always glad of some seaweed for his garden.’
We went on working in silence for a time, moving steadily along the shore, until the Abbey of St Just, behind us on its pinnacle of rock, looked no larger than a sharp tooth in the distance. Inland of us lay the ragged sand dunes, crested with sea grass. Every now and then, when I took a qu
ick look at them, something stirred faintly in the dark depths of my mind, like a carp at the bottom of a muddy millpool; but it was no more than the ripple of its movement that I caught; the thing itself was still far out of reach.
I said bluntly, ‘To me, father, it seems best that I continue my way to Spain now; directly. I can see there would be difficulties in continuing my journey by ship; I would have to go to a port, and somehow furnish myself with a passport. But there must be many byways over the frontier from France into Spain; I have travelled alone through wild country before, and do not fear to do so again. My poor grandfather will be wearying for me; and I see no sense in returning to a life in the Abbey for which I have no vocation – or to be beaten for a fault that I cannot rectify and for which I feel no guilt.’
‘You speak well, child, and with spirit,’ he answered. ‘But consider! In order to reach Spain on foot you must first cross the Pyrenees. Those mountains over there’ – he waved southward, to the farther end of the bay, where the noonday sun hung over the high snow-covered peaks – ‘those mountains conceal others, even higher. There are many dangers between here and Spain. You are wearing the habit of a novice – you have no money on you – if you quitted the Abbey without permission, Father Vespasian would have a report of you published abroad, and you would be taken up by the gendarmes and returned here –’
‘But I am not a professed novice!’ I was outraged. ‘How could they do so?’
‘Hush, wait!’ He held up a hand. ‘I am not saying that it would be right. But that is what would most probably happen. Also – a smaller consideration, but one which I hope would also have weight – I, too, would incur Father Vespasian’s displeasure for having allowed you to go off without leave.’
I stared at his worn, kindly face with dismay.
‘Mercy, father! I had not thought of that! It is the very last thing I would wish. But could I not quietly slip away from the Abbey, some time when the fathers are all at work, or sleeping? No blame would fall on you then. What became of my own clothes?’
And my belt full of gold money, I thought.
‘Do not be anxious about them. They are in the care of the infirmarian, Father Pierre. They are safe. But he would need permission from the Abbot before he could release them to you.’
Just let me find where they are kept, I thought, but did not utter this thought aloud. While I pondered the difficulties of my situation, Father Antoine eyed me mildly and kindly. Then he said, ‘Hearken, Felix. Do not distress yourself. Wait a little while in patience. I will write a letter today to your grandfather. I can do that, for I work in the scriptorium and have access to pens and ink. So that, I promise. Meanwhile give yourself to God’s purpose. It seems to me that His causing you to remain here, unawakened as you were, for so many weeks, was, perhaps, to prepare for an event which is yet to happen in the future.’
I gazed at him, deeply struck with this suggestion, which touched some response in me and moved with the current of my own thought. It seemed very familiar to me.
‘Now that you have woken up, and remembered that you are Felix Brooke,’ he went on, ‘perhaps the event, whatever it is, will not be long in coming.’
‘Yes, I do see … and I believe that you are right, father. I will try to wait in patience. I promise that I will not run off. But what about Father Vespasian? What if he questions me again?’
‘Well, you had better tell him as much as you can remember, and perhaps that will satisfy him. And, to rehearse your tale for him, why do you not relate to me, now, as much as you can recall of what has happened to you in the past? I shall be only too happy to hear it,’ Father Antoine said with a smile. ‘News from the outside world is always welcome!’
Accordingly, while we continued to load the cart, I told Father Antoine about how I had decided to leave my grandfather’s house at Villa-verde and search for my English relatives, guided by nothing more than a letter from my dead father in which I could read only five words. I told of my many adventures along the way and how I had made several friends, kind, good friends; how one of them, an English sailor named Sam Pollard, had, through a series of accidents, accompanied me on a smugglers’ ship from Santander to Plymouth in England, how the ship had been wrecked in a storm and we two the only survivors, how poor Sam had been thrown into an English jail for debt, and how I, travelling on to the town of Bath, had at length by God’s guidance been enabled to find my family home, discover that my English grandfather was a duke, and that I was rich enough to be able to send money to Sam and allow him to pay his debts and return to Spain, where he was promised in marriage. I told further how, discovering that there was no friendship or affection in my English home, but only wealth and a mad old man who confused me with my dead father, I had decided to return to Spain, where my true friends were.
‘And so I took passage on a Biscay ship – the Euzkadi – bound for San Sebastian; it was the first ship I found in Plymouth about to set sail for a Spanish port. She was an ill-found little craft and I suppose if I had been wiser I would have waited for one bound for Santander or Villaviciosa. But I was in such haste to be away.… It seems that I am like Jonah; I have only to embark on a ship for it to founder!’
I said this half laughing, but Father Antoine replied seriously, ‘Beware of thinking yourself too important, my child. After all, many, many vessels are wrecked every winter in the Bay of Biscay. Here at St Just we are always on the lookout for ships like yours driven onto Les Dents du Diable, those reefs out yonder. Dozens of poor mariners have we pulled ashore, or assisted as we did you and your companions. But tell me now, looking about the beach, does no memory of that occasion stir in your mind?’
I stared inland, at the row of curving, pointed dunes, in shape like a child’s pothooks, that lay to the rear of the bay. Behind them could be seen here and there a belt of scrubby woodland from which, on the offshore breeze, drifted a faint, sweet scent.
‘You came running from those dunes, just about here,’ said Father Antoine, ‘with a look on your face as if Beelzebub himself were after you.’
I stared in the direction toward which he pointed and hauled at my memory as I had hauled on the rope of the Euzkadi. But to no avail.
‘No matter!’ said the monk. ‘Don’t look so disappointed, child. God will make all plain in His own good time. Now we must return; see, the tide is rising fast. As I told you, it is dangerous to loiter, or we should find ourselves obliged to remain on this side of the causeway until midnight, and Father Vespasian would be rightly displeased.’
The water was, in fact, lapping near the edge of the causeway while we hurried along it; and, looking back as we encouraged Berri and Erda up the steep zigzag ascent to the Abbey gate, I could see that the lowest part of the road was already submerged for a dozen yards, so swiftly did the ocean sweep back into the two bays.
We unloaded our seaweed onto a heap by the kitchen garden wall, then led the donkeys to the stable. Tethering and feeding them, it seemed to me that I could hear faint cries in the distance, and I noticed a troubled crease in Father Antoine’s brow.
As we returned to the frater we passed by the disused infirmary cloister, where we beheld a strange and horrid spectacle: a youth, naked but for a loincloth; was being driven around and around the quadrangle by two monks who beat him alternately with tarred ropes; meanwhile another monk was chanting prayers. I recognized the boy: he was Alaric, one of the novices who had given me cautious, friendly smiles at supper and during the instruction period; he had also failed very badly in his recitation. The monks who were beating him were two unknown to me. Watching somberly, at a distance, under the cloister arch, was the tall figure of Father Vespasian. As we passed the latter his cold recessed eye fell on me and I could not forbear a shiver. But he said nothing.
Next day, the instruction period over, I was occupied in hoeing around the young bean sprouts, as ordered by aged Father Mathieu, the gardener, when I came across a dead mole. Poor thing, there it lay on its back with all f
our feet in the air: strange, broad feet, designed for digging, more like shovels or paddles than like pads or paws. Fascinated by its long inquiring nose, tiny eyes, and wonderfully velvetlike black fur, I picked it up to study it more closely. A black-robed monk had just entered the garden, and, believing him to be Father Mathieu, I stepped around a quince tree, holding out the mole to show him.
‘See, father –!’
But the monk was Father Vespasian, who had been quietly standing and watching me.
When he saw the mole he turned a peculiar sick lemon-yellow colour and began to let out little sharp cries of distress, while his green eyes, pale-rimmed, shot desperately here and there. His cries became louder, his hands clenched convulsively, and at length he turned and fled, shrieking now in spasms like somebody suffering mortal agony; I could hear his cries dying away in the distance as I stood aghast, still with the mole extended in my hand, wondering what I had done.
Father Mathieu came hurrying out of the tool-house, looking greatly alarmed.
‘Mon Dieu, was that Father Vespasian? What occurred –?’
Then his eye lit on the mole in my hand.
‘Ah, I understand. Father Vespasian has a horror of death – of any dead thing. Such a sight as that is certain to start one of his attacks.’
‘Heaven help me, what have I done? I had no intention of distressing him!’
‘It is no matter, my boy. Do not put yourself about,’ Father Mathieu said kindly. ‘How could you be expected to know such a thing?’
‘But he will be so angry with me – he will think that I did it purposely!’
‘No, his fits always end in a profound sleep, which may last for many hours. Very likely when he wakes he will remember nothing of what caused his seizure, or even that it happened.’