2004 - Dandelion Soup (35 page)

Maybe the news that Isabella had not left the monastery to the monks had finally unhinged him. After all, Santa Eulalia had been a large part of his life. And now he was going to end his days locked up in an asylum.

Rosendo Angeles sat at the side of the bed and watched Nancy Carmichael as she slept. He took her hand in his own, stroked it gently and watched the sleepy smile transform her features. God, she was beautiful. He smiled to himself then as he remembered that first meeting.

He’d gone up to the stable that morning only to find that Dolores the pig had escaped again. She was like bloody Houdini. The trouble was every time she got out Alfredo set off behind her like a faithful minder.

It was a good job he’d had an inkling Dolores had taken a fancy to a boar that lived further down the valley on an isolated farm. He’d only just got to the river in time, to find Alfredo and Dolores standing on the bank watching the woman thrashing hopelessly in the water.

He’d jumped straight in and pulled her to the bank, a trembling half-drowned woman wearing only her underwear…

As Rosendo watched Nancy Carmichael he was unaware that she was only pretending to sleep. She was enjoying the feel of Rosendo’s warm hand on hers, his comforting presence obliterating the pain in her shoulder, the soft touch of his lips on her cheek.

She let her mind drift back over the past few days. The terror of tumbling into the glistening water. Frantically she had thrashed to the surface, sunk again, surfaced, sunk, surfaced again. Then suddenly she was lifted up, up out of the sparkling, beautiful, terrifying water and laid down on the soft riverbank. An anxious handsome face loomed close to hers. He had given her the kiss of life, little knowing that she didn’t need it. Oh, and what a kiss it had been.

Having swallowed Brother Tomas’s sleeping draught, Padraig had been pulled down deep into a dreamless sleep and woken in the morning heavy headed and calm until he remembered with a rush the events of the night before. He sat up and began to panic but was calmed by a nearby voice. He looked up to see Father Daley looking down at him anxiously.

“Padraig, it’s all right. Calm down, little fellow.”

“Where is he, Father? Put the chair back up against the door quick. Don’t let him in!”

“It’s all right son, he’s not here, he can’t harm you now.”

“Where is he, Father?”

“They’ve taken him away to somewhere secure. You’ve no need to worry.”

Padraig relaxed. Father Daley had called him son. No one had ever called him that since his mammy had died.

Suddenly the tears came in a torrent splashing down his feverish cheeks, trickling down his neck. His chest began to heave. Oh Jesus, he wanted to talk, to spill everything out, but his throat was a burned-out cave, everything about him felt broken.

Father Daley looked down at him, a skinny little shrimp of a thing, a boy racked with enormous pain. He leaned tentatively towards Padraig, took him in his arms and cradled him. As he felt the little rib cage heave against him with emotion, he experienced a sudden rush of tenderness, a tenderness he hadn’t felt since his own mother had held him close. He held the boy tightly and soon his own silent tears fell on to the boy’s head.

Later, Brother Bernardo brought Padraig breakfast in bed. He came in to the room smiling cheerfully, carrying a wooden tray that bore an earthenware bowl containing two coddled eggs in oil, a hunk of freshly baked bread and a bowl of steaming hot chocolate.

After he’d eaten, Padraig made his way along the corridor to see Nancy Carmichael, but when he approached the door the sight before him took him aback. A man, the bad-tempered-looking man he’d seen down in the hamlet, was bending over her as she lay in the bed. He was stroking her cheek and cooing like a pigeon. A right lovesick gimp. Ugh! It was disgusting! He wasn’t going to stop and watch that kind of thing; he’d come back later when the eejit was gone. He tiptoed silently away down the corridor and as he passed Brother Anselm’s room he saw with relief that the bed was stripped and the room was empty.

He walked quickly on down the stairs and into the refectory, where Father Daley was talking quietly to Brother Francisco. When they saw Padraig they fell silent and Father Daley smiled.

“Father, do you mind if I go out for a walk by myself? I’d like a bit of fresh air.”

“No. No, Padraig. You’re okay on your own, though?”

“Sure, I’m fine. Is Nancy going to be all right?”

“According to Brother Tomas she’ll be up and about tomorrow. I’m afraid, though, that we’ll have to go down to Santa Anna without her, but God willing she’ll be able to come with us to Santiago de Compostela.”

Padraig took a walk along the mule track that led away from Santa Eulalia and across a large expanse of meadow land. Brother Bernardo had told him a few days earlier that they would take that road when they went on down to Santa Anna. Padraig walked along it for some time, then stepped off the uneven track and ambled through a trail of trampled daisies and dandelions.

Eventually he came to an outcrop of rocks beyond which there was a sheer drop hundreds of feet down into the river valley below.

He lay down in the grass on his belly and turned things over in his mind. He trembled as he remembered the terrible look of hatred in Brother Anselm’s eyes last night. But why? What had he ever done to Brother Anselm? And why had he shot Nancy? Nancy wouldn’t harm a fly. Thinking about Nancy he remembered how happy she’d been the other night when she’d been humming that song, ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’.

After she’d gone he’d looked closely at the painting. The monk in the brown robes had deep-blue eyes, whereas the white-robed monks round him had dark eyes and swarthy skin. His skin was paler, pinker. He looked more like an Irish fellow than a Spaniard. In his hand he held a rosary and it was the rosary that had caught Padraig’s eye. He’d seen one something like it before but he couldn’t work out where. There was a group of similar pale-skinned monks in the background, some of them swigging from goblets, others holding out goblets to be filled from wine sacks. These ones had wide grins and rude-looking eyes.

Maybe, just maybe the fresco showed the group of Irish monks who had brought the statue to Spain. There was no sign of a statue in the fresco, though.

Then when he had scrubbed the blue paint from under his fingernails last night the colour was almost identical to the blue on the fresco, a peculiar shade of blue with a hint of lilac.

Padraig sniffed. He kneeled up and shuffled forward on his knees and peeped over the edge. A thin curl of smoke was drifting up from somewhere further down the rock face.

The view from here was brilliant but it churned his stomach and made him feel giddy. It was like being in an airplane, he guessed, because cows and sheep down in the valley looked as tiny as insects. He was about to scramble back up to his feet when he heard the sound of singing coming from below.

He got as close to the edge as he could without falling but it was impossible to see past an overhang of rocks a yard or so below him.

The singing stopped abruptly. He sniffed again. No more singing, just the tantalizing smell of woodsmoke and sizzling fish.

Then suddenly he was flipped gently on to his back like a big fish himself, being turned with a spatula. The sunlight blinded him momentarily. Shading his eyes against the glare, it was some moments before he realized that he was looking up into the eyes of the strange little rag man who had saved him from Brother Anselm last night.

He was a man with a face as shrivelled and dark as dried seaweed, eyes as black and damp as limpets.

The cave was surprisingly large, cut into the rock face high above the valley and only accessible through the dark tunnel down which the odd little man had led Padraig.

A thick rope was strung across the front of the cave and on it were hung an assortment of animal skulls in various sizes that rattled in the breeze. In a brazier, on an overhang of rock, a fire crackled beneath a blackened pan.

Padraig was impressed; it was a fabulous if dangerous hideaway.

He looked again in fascination at the oddly dressed little man.

“Thanks for what you did last night.”

“That’s quite all right. Pleased to meet you again, Padraig O’Mally.”

Padraig blinked in surprise. The weird-looking fellow spoke English but with a peculiar twang to it, almost Irish sounding.

He swallowed hard; half of him was terrified and the other half intrigued. The fellow looked deliriously mad.

“How do you know my name?”

“We met before, briefly, a long time ago,” the man answered with a smile and held out his hand.

“My name is Muli,” he said.

“Where did we meet Muli?”

“Ah, you won’t remember. You were tucked up warm beneath your mammy’s coat.”

“You knew my mammy?”

“I did indeed, and she was a wonderful woman. I’m only sorry that I wasn’t around when she passed away to give you a helping hand.”

“Why did you save me, Muli? He could have killed you.”

“Ah, it was nothing.”

“You saved my life.”

The man waved his hand dismissively.

“How did you know that he was going to come after me?”

“I was just hanging around the monastery, that’s all, keeping an eye out. I heard the first shot, thought I’d just take a peek.”

“Muli, would you tell me something? Were you there in the monastery the night we arrived?”

Muli grinned.

“I was, why do you ask?”

“I saw someone hiding at the top of the stairs and thought I was imagining it.”

“I was just checking, that was all.”

“Do you live in this cave all the time, Muli?”

“On and off when I’m not travelling.”

“How do you live, though, for like food and that?”

“I live by the lip of the wind.”

“Come again?” Padraig said, puzzled.

“The winds bring me everything I need. A few apples and plums blown down here and there on the mountain, sometimes in a storm a bird will get blown in here and then I pluck it and bung it in the pot. This fish, for example, was dropped by a startled eagle.”

“Honest?”

“No, I caught this one myself just before dawn.”

“How come you speak such good English?”

“Ah, for many years I travel, selling pencils and pads, all over the place I go…wherever the wind calls. Wherever the nubeiro is needed.”

“Bloody hell, are you a nubeiro? I’ve heard all about them! You can make storms and that at the drop of a hat, isn’t that right?”

“A little more than the drop of a hat maybe, but yes, I can conjure up storms. Are you afraid of storms, Padraig O’Mally?”

“No, I love them.”

“Why do you love them?”

“I don’t know, it’s the excitement, the electricity and like that lovely fresh smell afterwards as if the world has been shook up a bit…”

“Like things might change?”

“Yes, like there’s a bit of hope. Why do you make the storms?”

“It was my destiny to be a nubeiro. Like my mother before me, her father before her…we just help things along a bit sometimes.”

Padraig caught sight of something at the back of the cave and gasped. He pointed with a shaking finger at the bundled wedding dress at the back of the cave.

“You did that?”

“I helped,” Muli said with a slow grin. “The poor girl couldn’t get married without a dress, after all, could she?”

“I saw that happen, saw it take off. The girl, the pretty one at Sefiora Hipola’s, was supposed to wear it for her wedding but she ran away.”

“Did she indeed? Maybe when the wind changed it made her restless, gave her a shove. Take a look at the back of the dress, Padraig O’Mally.”

Padraig flinched.

“Ah, you are afraid because it is the dress from your dream?” Muli asked.

Padraig gawped at Muli.

“How do you know about my dream?”

“Sometimes we share our dreams, Padraig. Sometimes dreams serve to point us in the way we should be going or where we have come from.”

Muli shuffled to the back of the cave and picked up the dress, fiddled round with the neck and revealed a label.

“A clue!” he said, holding the dress towards Padraig.

Padraig looked at the label.

“Does it mean anything to you?”

Padraig read the label.

FLORENCE GALLIVAN. CORK

“She must have been a big woman this Florence Gallivan. Is that who it belongs to?” he asked.

“No. No. Florence Gallivan was the name of a dressmaker in Cork.”

“Then how is it a clue?”

Muli smiled, a secretive smile.

“It’s a piece of a small puzzle. One of many small puzzles that make up one enormous puzzle.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“You will, Padraig O’Mally, you will. Already you are trying to solve many puzzles, is that so?”

Padraig nodded.

“I am, but at the moment I’m kind of confused.”

“Things going round and round in your head but nothing makes sense?”

“That’s right. Have you ever seen one of those glass snowflake domes that rich kids have? You know, there’s a scene inside and you shake them and the snow makes a blizzard. Siobhan Hanlon has one back in Ballygurry.”

Muli nodded enthusiastically.

“What’s inside your dome, Padraig?”

“A lost statue and…”

“And what else, Padraig?”

Padraig was silent.

“A face in a horse trough?” Muli proffered.

“My mammy’s,” Padraig said in a faltering voice.

“It’s a hard thing to lose someone you love, isn’t it Padraig?”

“Do you know how it feels, Muli?”

“I do, Padraig. Even a queer-looking thing like me feels loss.”

“Was it your mammy that you lost?”

“No, not my mammy, my mammy is still alive.”

Padraig wondered if Muli was a bit short-changed up top. No way could his mammy still be alive, he was as old as the hills.

“No, it was a woman called Therese that I lost a long time ago, but enough of that. Small boys aren’t interested in romance. Tell me what else you see in the dome.”