The Snow Gypsy(54)
She thought of the scene Lola had described—her mother and brother gunned down in an act of mass slaughter. It must have happened within walking distance of this place. What had happened to all those dead people? Had anyone buried them? Or were the bodies simply left where they lay, until the snow melted and flowers sprang from the earth to cover them?
Where are you, Nathan?
She whispered the words into the still morning air. Her head told her that she was summoning a ghost. That in all likelihood her brother had never made it out of these mountains. But if he had died here, she needed to know where. If all she could do was mark the place with a wooden cross or a stone, the journey here would not have been in vain. The not knowing would be over.
The smell of baking bread brought her back to reality. It made her stomach rumble. She got up and followed her nose to the kitchen.
“Buenos días.”
The miller’s wife glanced up at Rose, murmuring something inaudible in reply. She was pounding something in a pestle and mortar.
“I wondered if I could buy some bread?”
“Un momento.” Se?ora Carmona emptied the contents of the mortar into a metal pan and carried it through to the lofty room that housed the grinding equipment. Rose followed, thinking the woman was going to fetch a loaf. But the miller’s wife set the concoction she’d been making on the side of one of the flour troughs and took a box of matches from the pocket of her apron.
Rose stood watching as a match was struck and held inside the pan until the contents caught fire. An acrid smell wafted across the room.
“What’s that?” Rose coughed as the smoke caught her chest.
“It’s for the flies!” The miller’s wife swept out her arm. “It always works—they can’t stand the smell.”
“I’m not surprised,” Rose spluttered. “What’s in the pan?”
“Crushed garlic and the hottest peppers,” the woman replied. “And human hair. I’m going to need more of that to do the rest of the house—perhaps you and your daughter can save me some from your hairbrushes.”
Rose thought she’d rather put up with the flies than a smell like that. She glanced up at the rafters, where the swifts were darting around in a crazed aerial ballet.
“What about the birds?” Rose asked. “They have babies in their nests—the smoke might harm them.”
“They will die.” The woman shrugged. “But the parents can make more.” She poked at the pan with a stick, stoking up the flames.
Rose looked away. Clearly life was still cheap in this place that had seen so much human bloodshed. What the miller’s wife was doing went against everything Rose believed in. She had spent the whole of her adult life trying to save the lives of animals. To watch this wanton destruction was more than she could bear. The only way to stop herself giving the woman a mouthful of abuse was to leave the room.
“What about your bread?” Se?ora Carmona called after her.
Rose fought hard to resist the temptation to tell her what she could do with it. But there was no sense in getting herself and Nieve thrown out with nowhere else to go. She was just going to have to bite her tongue.
She dived into the kitchen and scanned the walls. There were jars of honey on one shelf and a row of goat cheeses wrapped in muslin on another. Grabbing one of each, she tossed fifty cents onto the table before running back up the stairs.
At midday Rose and Nieve were waiting outside the Church of Santa Cruz for the procession to begin. The Calle Veronica—the street that led through the town to the main square—was lined with little shrines that had sprung up overnight. The people who lived in the village had made them from tables covered in embroidered cloths, on which were placed towering arrangements of olive branches with white lilies woven into them. Lighted candles sat in jars in front of small statues of the crucified Christ or images of the Virgin Mary painted on wood.
Rose had thought about going to the church service—but she hadn’t wanted to leave Gunesh in the room at the mill, which was uncomfortably hot by midmorning. It would have been difficult to get a seat in the church anyway—the whole village seemed to have turned out for what was no doubt a very important day in the life of the community. It was like a mass wedding—with miniature brides and grooms. The little girls had skipped up the steps of the church, with their white dresses trailing in the dust and their veils billowing in the breeze. Behind them the boys had marched stiffly, looking very self-conscious in starched suits embellished with gold braid, like pocket-size admirals.
After watching them go in, Rose and Nieve had taken Gunesh for a walk along the river, then come back for a drink at the fountain outside the church. As Rose filled her bottle with the gushing water, she thought about what she was going to say and do when the procession got underway. The best thing, she had decided, would be to make an admiring comment about the dress or suit of one of the boys or girls. Then once the conversation had progressed, she would say that she had come from England on a working vacation to write a book about animals. That, she hoped, would place her outside any simmering resentment that lingered between different factions of the local population.
“Look—they’re coming out!” Nieve’s voice broke through her thoughts. “There’s Alonso—at the front.”
The miller’s son glanced this way and that at the people pouring out of the church, looking as if he wished the ground would open and swallow him up. Rose spotted his mother, clad entirely in black, coming down the steps. It was something she had noticed throughout Spain, this somber custom of dress the women had. It seemed that as soon as they reached their midtwenties, they wore only black when they were out in public—whether they were married, widowed, or single. To Rose it seemed very repressive—as if a woman over twenty-five was on the scrap heap and should no longer try to make herself attractive.