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

the last night we had spent together, in the forest of Irati, up in the Pyrenees, not so far distant from here. We had both been exhausted, quite at the end of our strength, after a terrifying encounter with a man who seemed to be possessed by a devil. And then, when I woke up, the following morning, Juana was gone....
    At all events, I thought, nothing can, ever again, be so bad as that time. And Manuel de la Trava cannot possibly be either as evil or as frightening as
that
man was.
    Just the same, I felt desperately uncertain and lonely. And Pedro's company did nothing to lessen that loneliness.
    Silently, inside my head, I said a prayer to God to be with us in our enterprise; and then, at long last, I fell asleep. Just before drifting off, I saw again the face of Conchita de la Trava—so beautiful, so sad, so full of piteous appeal. Oddly, it reminded me of some other face that I had recently seen—where, whose could it have been? Not beautiful, by no means sad or appealing, but
similar
—why could I not remember the owner of it?

    N EXT day the procedure at the convent was as before. Except that Doña Conchita was not there. Nor, so far as I could see, was Juana. The Reverend Mother received me, just a fraction more graciously than she had on the previous day, and told me that my proposals had been favorably received, and it was permitted that I should rescue the de la Trava children.
    I did not remind her that I had been invited to come and that all had been arranged already; I stood silent and polite, waiting.
    "So you may set forward at dawn tomorrow," the elderly nun said. "Sister Belen and Sister Felicita will be ready for you, waiting at the main gate."
    "May—may I not see her—them—beforehand, so as to give them advice—instructions—?"
    "That will not be necessary."
    I said, "Will the sisters be supplied with warm clothing? Heavy footwear? We shall probably have to go into the high mountains" (thinking of the child's letter) "where it may be very cold. And perhaps they should be armed—able to defend themselves from wild beasts, or brigands?"
    The Reverend Mother drew herself up.
    "Young man, when the blessed St. Teresa traveled all over Spain with her nuns, they would have
scorned,
to provide themselves with weapons. They were protected by the hand of God. No brigand would dare to lay a finger on them."
    "Brigands might not—but what about bears?" I objected.
    (Secretly, I was not so sure about the brigands either. The ones
I
had encountered would have made little distinction, I thought, between saints and ordinary people.)
    "Remember St. Jerome," said the Reverend Mother curtly. "The sisters will need no protection, apart from the holy habit of their Order."
    I was far from satisfied—and she had said nothing about the warm clothes—but saw that it would be useless to argue. Inwardly resolving to equip the expedition if need be from my own purse—for my grandfather had seen me handsomely supplied with money—I bade farewell to the sour-faced Mother Superior and said that I hoped to return her sisters to her in safety before too long a period had elapsed. Of course I hoped nothing of the kind; I hoped—what did I hope? I hardly knew.
    As I took my way to the visitors' parlor earlier I had been accosted by a small, pale-faced nun who, glancing about her nervously, had whispered that Sister Milagros would like a word with me after I had seen the Reverend Mother.
    On my way out, therefore, recalling this, I asked at the portress's lodge if a message could be dispatched to Sister Milagros, saying that I was now at her service. But the portress told me that Sister Milagros had been sent on an errand to the other side of Bilbao and would not be back for some considerable time.
    "Oh well, I do not imagine it can have been of great importance," I said, "since I do not know the sister. She left no message?"
    "No, señor. But the sister did know you. She was transferred here from a House in Santander where