The Snow Gypsy(60)

Rose felt her spirits lifting. How amazing, she thought, to be able to see another continent when you walked out your front door each morning. No wonder Zoltan had chosen to settle in this place. A view like this was balm to the soul.

“Where in the village are you living?” he asked as he guided the mule around an outcrop of weathered limestone.

“At the mill across the bridge. It’s the only place that allows dogs.”

“How do you like it?”

“The room is okay.” She shrugged.

“But the landlady is not so nice?” He shot her a knowing look.

Rose hesitated. “I don’t think she likes me very much—I’m not sure why.”

“She’s not a happy person. Her husband was beaten to death by the men of the village during the Civil War.”

“Poor man—what had he done?”

“Well, Maria—the old lady I was telling you about—says he was a spy for the fascists. When people came to buy flour, he used to find out what was going on in the village—who was taking messages to the partisans, who was supplying them with food and ammunition. When they found out who had betrayed them, they dragged him all the way to the village square and clubbed him to death, right in front of the church.”

Rose thought of Alonso throwing stones so aggressively into the river, and his sister, hard faced and imperious. Bad enough that they had lost their father—but to know that he had been murdered by the fathers of their classmates must be unbearable.

“Se?ora Carmona is a very bitter woman,” Zoltan went on. “She’s always spreading what the Spanish call mala leche.”

“Bad milk?”

“Yes. She never has a good word to say about anyone. I’d be careful what you tell her.”

Rose nodded. “I haven’t mentioned my brother to her. I told her I’d come here to write a book about animals.”

Zoltan tightened his grip on the lead rein as the path narrowed. Ahead of them was a spectacular waterfall tumbling over moss-covered rocks into a pool of turquoise water.

“It’s very dangerous up here,” Zoltan said. “It’s all the meltwater from the glacier at the top of the mountain.”

Rose looked longingly at the pool. It didn’t look dangerous. If she had been on her own, she would have been very tempted to strip off and jump in.

“We’re almost there now.” Zoltan pointed to a clump of trees on the ridge above the waterfall. “The bunkers are just beyond those trees.”

She would never have spotted the bunkers if she’d come up the mountain alone. Bushes camouflaged the entrance to the system of tunnels and trenches that had been dug into the hillside. Bees hovered over the golden blossoms of broom. A skylark flew out of a tangle of ripening brambles. The waterfall was nothing more than a distant murmur.

“I found a gun lying down there.” Zoltan pointed to a spot just below the bush the bird had emerged from. “It was a big old-fashioned hunting rifle with what looked like a bullet hole right through the barrel.”

It was hard to imagine violence in such a place. The thought of Nathan holed up here, ready to shoot enemy troops, made Rose go cold. But he must have been here. It was exactly as he had described it in his letter: a hiding place in the mountains above the village where he had met his fiancée.

A few minutes later Zoltan was leading Rose toward a low stone cottage with a barrel-vaulted roof. As she climbed down from the animal’s back, he said, “Go on in while I sort him out. I’ll make us some coffee. Then we can go and take a look at the sick one.”

Rose pushed open the weathered wooden door of the little house. An enticing smell came wafting out—a savory, salty aroma with a tang of herbs. Fennel and mint and something else she couldn’t identify. It was coming from a metal pot suspended over a smoldering log fire at the opposite end of the room. Above the fireplace was a hefty pair of animal horns, and on the stone floor in front of it was an enormous fur rug. Gunesh went straight over to the rug and buried his nose in it, sniffing all around the edges. The texture of the hair and the color of it—gray speckled with black and white—suggested only one animal to Rose: a wolf.

“I hope you’re not thinking I was responsible for those.” Zoltan gestured to the horns as he came through the door. “I do shoot the odd rabbit for the pot—but I’d never kill a magnificent creature like that.”

“What was it?”

“An ibex. They’re like goats, only much bigger. I see them sometimes up on the ridge above the house.” He dropped to his knees, patting the wolf-skin rug. “As for this fellow, I assume he was making a nuisance of himself. Probably came looking for food, not expecting to run into a bunch of armed men.”

“You think some of the partisans were living here?”

“They were certainly coming here.” He took a poker from a hook on the wall and prodded the fire back to life. “The bunkers were the focus of activity—I think this place was used for preparing food and stabling animals. I found the boxes of documents under a pile of straw. It looked as if they’d been hidden there by someone who’d had to make a hasty escape.” He unhooked the stew pot, hanging a kettle in its place. “Shall I get the boxes? You must be desperate to know if there’s anything of your brother’s there.”