(2/3) The Teeth of the Gale by Joan Aiken Page A

speaking, and I wondered how old she was. Not, surely, more than twenty-six? Without her veil, she did not look even that. If Nico, the eldest, was nine—if she had been married at seventeen—?
    "When shall we set out?" I said. "Tomorrow?"
    "First we must see the Reverend Mother again. So that she can give permission for my cousin and her companion, Sister Belen, to ride with us."
    I did not at all see why the Reverend Mother could not have done that today; but there was no sense in finding fault. I felt much pity for Conchita, though, who must have been desperate to start in search of her children.
    "I will bid you good evening now, señora," I told her, "and, perhaps, see you tomorrow again at the convent? And then I hope we shall be able to start on our journey without further delay."
    She looked doubtful.
    "It will be too late to start tomorrow. We could not hope to go very far—"
    "How far is it to where your husbands brother lives?"
    "Berdun? At least forty leagues."
    Two days' riding, I supposed; with three females in the party we could not go as fast as Pedro and I had done on our own.
    Old Señor Escaroz croaked out something about the need for provisions for the journey, and an armed escort. I thought Doña Conchita looked at him with impatience—almost with dislike. But her voice, as she answered, was calm.
    "All that will be taken care of, Papa."
    "Very well," I said. "Until tomorrow.
Buenos tardes. Adios
—" to the two old toads, who again silently inclined their heads. "We will start the following day at dawn—all being well." And I went out into the damp and chilly night. There had been no suggestion that I should stay to dinner; for which I was greatly relieved. I thought the Escaroz parents seemed decidedly hostile toward me. But perhaps they were opposed to the whole scheme.
    Having asked the porter which road led back into town, I struck off downhill. The rain had somewhat abated, but still the way was long, and I was damp and ravenously hungry by the time I reached our inn. I found Pedro in the public room brooding over a glass of wine; from his morose expression it did not seem that he had had any success with the girls of Bilbao; and so it proved; he said they all turned up their noses at him and laughed at his Gallegan accent.
    "But you?" he said eagerly. "How did you fare? Did you see your young lady?"
    "Only a brief glimpse, if that," I told him. "But her cousin was there. The one whose children have been stolen."
    "So: Where do we go next? And when do we start?"
    Having received such a snub from the girls at the paseo, Pedro had no wish to stay any longer in Bilbao; it was a dismal dank place, he said, crammed in its valley, and he was sorry to hear that we were not to set out until the morning after tomorrow. Over supper (some excellent fish) he cheered up a little and asked a great many questions about Conchita and her parents.
    "Did they receive you kindly? Civilly?"
    "She, yes; her parents, no."
    "The Devil fly away with them, then! Although you have traveled all the way from Salamanca to rescue their grandchildren!"
    "Well, they were not
un
civil, precisely—perhaps they don't want their grandchildren rescued."
    Of what had the old people's manner reminded me? They seemed unsure how to deal with me—as if I were some piece of unfamiliar material, as to whose utility they were in doubt. I had felt them wondering—could I be molded? Shaped? Made into something that might serve them?
    After we had eaten we retired to our bedchamber, for the public room was noisy and full of smoke. Pedro soon slept, but I lay awake, hour after hour, looking at the square of sky that formed the window. Juana can see that same sky from the window of her cell, I thought, only a mile away. Do nuns sleep in cells, or in dormitories? There would be so many questions to ask her, if she was of a mind to answer.
    The bells slowly tolled the hours of night, and I thought, she can hear those same bells. I remembered