Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South (4 page)

She stared. The woman was shooting. She was young, strangely dressed in some kind of flowing shift tied up with several thin belts to above her knee. Her hair was tied tight at the nape of her neck. The bow was bent deep, and she sighted along the arrow with a look that made the hair rise all over Mariarta: cool and dangerous, the expression of someone who might do anything she pleased. Beside her, as if tame, stood a beast like a chamois, but with odd branched horns.

Mariarta never heard the renewed laughter above the table, never heard the way the wind moaned to itself in the chimney.
She’s shooting!
  Until now Mariarta had never heard of any woman shooting; this had made her unwilling to ask her bab any more. But here it was, in a book, which meant somewhere it was true. Mariarta felt again the way she always felt when the hunters left town: she wanted to go along, not just to watch. To do it herself, to feel the quarrel leap away from the crossbow, to feel the force leaping away to do her bidding, to strike—

She gulped, shut the book.
Magic—it’s put me under a spell!  Now something terrible will happen—

But nothing happened except that someone banged the table with their cup, and the laughter and talk went on. Mariarta put the book back in the bag, fastened the flap—then began to inch her way into the light. Her mother was drowsing beside the fire. Everyone else’s faces were turned toward Flep, who was filling the wine-cups again. They never saw Mariarta boost herself back up.

“They’ll never bother coming here,” said Flep. “They’ll come up the road from Caschinutta and over the Bridge, stop at Ursera for a week or so, then go up the Munt-Avellin pass. I would make extra butter this season, and more cheese.”

“It would help to have more grass to feed the cows,” said Cla. “Where are we supposed to get
that
?  And what will
we
live on over the winter, when we’ve sold them all our spare cheese?  Coin money eats too hard for me!”

“Damned bridge anyway,” Paol said. “It’s all coming true, the curse.”

“Which one?” said the
scolar
.

“You don’t know the story, you with your book and all?” Laughter, not least from the young man himself.

“Well then.” Gion took a drink. “You know the awful way the Reuss river valley gets there: gorges a hundred fathoms high, the river too fast and deep to sink piers in. But there was the road south from Hospental over the Munt-Avellin pass, and on the other side of it, the wine of Talia—”

“And the money,” someone put in.

“And the armies,” Mariarta’s father said quietly.

“Aye, aye. Everyone wanted an easy way to that southern road: pilgrims, traders, young men wanting to go south to fight and make a few
solidi
for themselves. But how to get at the pass road, with the Reuss running between Ursera and the northern lowlands, no way across, and the mountains blocking both sides?  Anyone wanted to take trade south to Talia, they had to go all the way over to Mustér or Cuera on the east side, or clear over to the end of the Ródan valley, right by Martignei; fifty miles, or seventy, what difference did it make?, because each of those passes had its own road to the lowlands, and Ursera wasn’t getting any of the tolls or trade.”

“So the townsmen called in the great builders?—” said the
scolar
.

Gion smiled. “Every one of them went to the Reuss gorge, and left shaking his head. No way to do it!  The Ursera councillors published a great prize to go to the one who could bridge the river, but the few schemes they looked at on the prize-giving day were no good at all. And old Sievi di Planta, who was
mistral
then, he banged the table in the Treis Retgs and swore that he would pay any price to see that river bridged.

“Then the man with the green feather in his hat came in.”

All looked at one another with pleasurable anticipation, for the green peacock’s feather, the sign of pride, was a sure sign of il Giavel himself, old Malón the Father of Lies. “Well,” Gion said. “In he comes, and they all know him. All dressed as he was like a respectable wealthy man, there’s still nothing he can do about the way the left foot looks, or should I say hoof. He says to them,  ‘I understand you need a bridge built.’  Now all are uneasy at the sight of him, for il Giavel, he’s master of tricks and treachery. But they’re desperate. ‘Yes,’  Sievi says. ‘And what makes you think you can do better than all the other builders who’ve been here?’  ‘Ah,’  the Devil says,  ‘I have my ways.’ ‘If you can do it,’  Sievi says,  ‘the prize is yours.’ ‘I don’t want your trumpery prizes,’  says il Giavel: ‘I want the soul of the first one to cross the bridge. For that payment, I’ll build it in a night. Tomorrow morning, if you like, you can send a rider to Caschinutta and tell them the road through Ursera to Roma is open...after my price is paid.’”

Mariarta was watching the
scolar
. He had an odd narrowed look about his eyes that she couldn’t quite understand.

“So they sent him out with a cup of red southern wine, and argued it. Some were against dealing with him, but all wanted that road more than anything: so finally they called il Giavel back in and agreed. Off he went smiling. Off the town counselors went, then, each to his own hearth in a hurry: Sievi di Planta went straight to Sontg Kolumban’s church to talk to Bab Ladagar, who was a Capuchin monk before he settled in Ursera. Some who were in on the secret thought that Sievi was afraid for his own soul. But others remembered that Capuchins know how to do more than eat bread, and not all the things priests know are written in the mass-book. All that night, the bells at Sontg Kolumban’s rang through the thunder, for an awful storm came up, and the Reuss rose in its banks and thrashed around like a bull-calf having the nose-ring put in. And toward morning the storm died, and the day came up clear. All the Ursera counselors but Sievi met in the town street, too afraid to go down to the gorge: but Bab Ladagar came  to them. They went along then, half out of shame, half because they thought all their souls had a better chance with the priest along. Then they met Sievi, and went with him all in a huddle to where the road ran closest to the gorge.

“And there it was, a plain arch, but one that seemed to have grown straight out of the stone of the nearer cliff of the gorge, right to the farther one. No pier in the water, just the simple arch of it, very beautiful, and uncanny. And there at the far end of it, picking his teeth and enjoying the sunshine, sits the man with the green feather in his hat.

“‘And have you brought my price?’  says he. ‘Yes,’  says Sievi: ‘here it is!’  And the crowd of them opens up, and with a big kick from Sievi, out jumps the worst goat of his herd, the crazy one that everyone had been calling il Giavel all this while anyway, because of its temper and the horns on it, like knives. This goat goes bounding across the bridge, furious, and the first thing it sees is Old Malón himself; so mad it is, it goes after him with those horns and butts him right off the bridge and ten feet down the road on the far side. He picks himself up, screaming,  ‘You’ll pay for this!’—and at the noise the goat goes after him again, chases him around the bend and out of sight.”

The counselors laughed. “So the price of the bridge was paid,” said the
scolar
. “But no one tricks old Malón that easily.”

“No, no, you’re right there, young man.” Gion had another drink. “Il Giavel, he was furious: he ran right on down the Scalina gorge, and lost the goat finally. At the bottom of the gorge near Caschinutta he picked up the biggest boulder he could find from the glacier-dump there, to drop it on the bridge and destroy it. And he was carrying the thing back up the road when who does he meet but old Duonna Burga, who lived at that old house at Uaul di Bastun south of town, she’s dead now of course, but she saw his foot and signed herself. Il Giavel dropped the rock to hide his face from the Sign, and the thing took root there and wouldn’t be budged. Still a nuisance, they had to move the road to go around it. So he had to leave the Bridge alone, and Punt dil Giavel it is to this day: but he cursed it,  saying that because he was cheated, no good would come of its building.” Gion shrugged.

“Doubtless,” said the
scolar
, “the truth looks otherwise to others. Probably some say that the Austriacs offered to send engineers to build the bridge, and the Ursera counselors agreed: so the deal is a deal with il Giavel in effect, if not in truth. Until the bridge was built, there was no harm in letting this part of the world rule itself. The way to the Pass couldn’t be blocked by anyone here. But now that gold comes through here from the south—“

“And possibly armies,” Mariarta’s father said again.

“Aye,” Gion said. “Ursera controls that bridge, the Hapsburgs think...so Ursera and its country needs controlling itself. Who knows what ideas we might get about striking up friendships with the Talians...or blocking the Hapsburgs’ way south to fight them?  Suddenly we’re a hole in their southern defenses.” He sighed. “It’s late to wish the bridge unbuilt. But I wish they’d stop their foolish warring, the whole pack of them.”

There were mutters of agreement. Mariarta’s father laughed softly. “The Austriac
saltér
,” he said, “even
he
calls it the Devil’s Bridge. Or something that means that—I forget the word.”

“
Teufelsbrücke
,” Mariarta said from the cushion-seat, yawning.

“You still here?” her father said, surprised. “Why aren’t you in bed an hour ago?  Say good night to the gentlemen and be off.”

Mariarta stood up, noticing the thoughtful look with which the
scolar
favored her. Earlier, it might have made her nervous. Now she just returned it, and made a curtsy. “
Buna notg,
” she said, and everyone at the table murmured good night to her as she walked to the door. As she went by the
scolar
, he leaned back toward her and said softly, “
Gute nacht, präsidenterin. Erinnern Sie mich.
”

Mariarta smiled at being called “mayoress” again: but she was not sure what the rest of it meant. She went up the stairs, got into bed in the dark, and knew nothing more until she heard dil Curtgin’s cock shrieking
kikiriki
...

•

She rose early, but he had risen earlier. Her mother and Onda Baia were baking, and the
scolar
was gone. “While it was still dark,” Onda Baia muttered.

Mariarta’s mother laughed. “Baia, he’s going home: what traveler wastes time about that?  Mati, we need some water.”

Quiet and thoughtful, Mariarta got the yoke. Everything outside looked as it had yesterday morning, but everything was different, now, because of the
scolar
and his book.

“Did you see it?” a voice hissed behind Stefan’s barn. Mariarta jumped, for her mind had been on the woman with the bow. She turned to see Urs pitching cowshed dung from a cart onto the pile behind the barn. “Did you look in the bag?”

She blinked; the wind was whipping her hair into her eyes. Mariarta wanted to tell him everything. But she felt the woman’s cool eyes upon her. To say anything would be to let someone else in on their secret. “No,” Mariarta said, hurrying away. Behind her, she heard Urs laughing. Soon enough he would tell all the other children that the
mistral’
s daughter wasn’t so brave after all.

Mariarta didn’t care. What someone else thought was more important, now. She headed for the river, and the wind stroked her hair out of her eyes as she went.

The feasts and fasts went around with the seasons, as in all the mountain valleys.
Calandamarz
and the
alpagiada
came and went, the year got old and was born again: two years passed, three years. After the brief times of sun, the snows came and shut the valley away from the rest of the world. And around the time the
föhn
began to blow, when the snow was just beginning to thin on the lower pastures, the third year after the
scolar
had come, Mariarta noticed the old herd.

Everyone knew about those few men who preferred never to come into town at all, but lived on the highest alp that might be green, eating nothing but plain flour
fanz
porridge, and the milk and cheese they got from the cows. Their clothes were all leather, cowskin with the hair left on: their rough boots were hides bound with sinew. Usually these hermit-herdsmen were only seen during storms too violent to weather even in the stout alp huts—especially in the earliest, treacherous part of spring, at the beginning of the
föhn
time. Those storms dropped tons of snow, and brought the avalanches crashing down. It hailed, too, and thundered,  and the
föhn
came screaming over the house-roofs and ripped the tiles away.

It was just rising, that wind, when the last few herders came from the low pastures to the west. With them came the old herd.

The sight of him surprised everybody. No one knew quite what to do with him, except Mariarta’s bab, who was taking charge of everything as usual, hurrying from house to house, telling people to get ready for the storm. He told the old herd he could stay in their shed until the weather broke.

That was when Mariarta first saw him, in the frontway shed, scraping up the straw to make a place to lie, while the cows moved calmly around him. As she peered in at him, he turned. His look fell on Mariarta—and he got a shocked expression, almost a look of outrage. Mariarta hurried away uneasily to the kitchen, where her mother was busy at the fire. “How is he, Mati?”

“He’s making a bed for himself.”

“Good. There’s some wheat porridge for him on the table. And here’s hot milk too. Don’t spill it.”

“Mamli,” Mariarta said, “is he mad?”

Her mother looked thoughtful. “Certainly he doesn’t live like us. But he wouldn’t hurt anyone, if that’s what’s worrying you. And even if he was astray in the wits, we’d need to be kind to him anyway.”

Mariarta nodded, took the porridge, and went to the cowshed, carefully pushing its half-door open. The cows shuffled aside for her. The old herd had made himself comfortable in the corner, with a box he had pulled over to be a table, and he sat on the floor, in a clean spot by the manger. He thanked her, gruff-voiced, for the food. Mariarta fled, afraid that she should see that look of outrage again.

The storm lasted three days. All that time Mariarta brought him his meals, and all that time she felt his eye on her. It made her nervous, but the nervousness had something to do with those grey eyes that watched her sometimes. Mariarta mentioned it to no one, not even Urs, who was filled with curiosity about “the wild man”, and pestered her constantly for details about whether he ate straw or howled.

On the fourth day, the storm began to clear. The wind was still blowing, but the sun peered through the flying patches of grey. That afternoon, ashamed of her fear, Mariarta paused on her way to fetch water from the river, looking over the half-door.

The old herd was sitting there unwrapping something from that bundle of rags. She saw him bring out a crossbow and run his hands over it—down the stock of it, down the long groove on top of the stock, where the bolt would lie. Then he saw Mariarta.

“Do you like it?” he said.

Mariarta swallowed, nodded. Her fear of him was fighting with her desire to touch the bow the same way he did.

He smiled. “I saw that in you,” he said. “The shooting.”

Mariarta’s heart leapt. Did he know about the woman in her head?   “I want to—” Her voice died in her throat.

The old herd shook his head, looking somehow pitying. “
Bischuna, bischuna,
” he said, “so young to be ridden.”

“I want to learn!” Mariarta said.

“A girl has work,
mistral
’s daughter. Hard to sneak away to the alp—”

That was true. Mariarta knew her father would not approve. She would have to make sure no one in the village found out. She looked at the crossbow lying there in the herder’s lap—the smooth layers of horn welded together, the soft gleam of the wood in the filtered daylight that came in through the cracks of the cowbarn; the soft oiled-sinew sheen of the bridle and wrapping of the bow. She had to shoot it. She had to.

“I’ll find a way,” she said. “Where do you stay?”

“The lower alp. Surpalits hut, until May. Then—” He shrugged. “We go too high for a
mistral
’s daughter to come except once in a while.”

She nodded. Still, it would be two months of learning. “And in the fall—”

“September,” the old herd said. “Two months then, until that starts again.” He gestured with his eyes at the weather.

“I’ll come,” Mariarta said. “Not every day. They can’t know.”

He nodded. Mariarta heard her mother’s step coming from the kitchen toward the entryway. Hurriedly, she ran off.

•

She couldn’t come every day. But Mariarta said to herself, 
I’m the
mistral
’s daughter: what’s all this schooling for if not to make me clever?
  And clever she became. Her lessons went so well that she was often done early. Her tutor praised her—very unlike him. She sang as she pounded the washing in the big tub, and about all chores showed such a good will that all the children in Tschamut were disgusted with her, for she was endlessly held up as a good example.

In the afternoons, when they were still dawdling about their own chores, Mariarta would slip away—carefully, to make sure no eye caught her going. Then she would hurry up the cow-trail that led over Crappa da Scharina to the lower alp. Only the old herd was there as yet. None of the other herders were so averse to human company that they cared to be there so early.

The herd was as good as his word. He taught Mariarta the bow.  But first he made her build one.

It was no light business, and took days. The herd brought lengths of cured alder from his hut, and the plane, adze and chisels to shape them. He taught Mariarta how to choose wood for strength. He showed her how to carve the stock and set the bow in it; how to twine the bridle of sinew or rope, fastening bow and stock together with it in the cunning way that would absorb the shock of the released bow and quarrel. The herd taught her how to carve the “nut” that would release the drawn string when the trigger was pressed. Most difficult of all, he taught her how to carve the trigger that kept the nut in place until pressed, and he beat her in a friendly way until she got exactly right the crossbow’s most important part, the socket out of which the trigger-tooth fell, letting the nut turn and releasing the string.  

Then came the finicky business of making quarrels for the bow to shoot—planing them straight, setting the feathers in them; learning to carve quarrels that needed no feathers, but had gouges carefully whittled into them so that the wood itself stood out like fins. The crossbow Mariarta finally finished and armed was crude, not much of a thing to shoot with—but making it had taught her how to fix one that was: like his.

The herd’s bow was a thing of price. The nut was carved of chamois horn. The bow itself was horn of the ibex, rare in these parts, but common near Cuera of the prince-Bishops. Someone there had sawn the straightest part of one of those horns thin—five, six, eight times—then glued the layers together: not flat, to bend with the way the bow drew, but vertically,
against
the draw. The herd made her the carved-horn hook that hooked through your belt, which an archer used to draw the bow. You stood with your feet on the bow-arch itself, inside it, and bent till the hook at your belt caught the string. Then you straightened up. It was the straightening, the strength of your legs, not your arms, that pulled the string far enough for you to latch it over the nut. Then you chose your target.

It was nearly two weeks before the old herd let her shoot even once. Mariarta’s impatience drove her wild. A hundred times before the herd had shown her how, she lifted her eyes, hunting something to shoot at—to aim at, to strike. The urge made Mariarta feel the way she felt when the
föhn
blew hot in spring—the itch under the skin, the testy, edgy wildness. It frightened her.

And there were distractions. Urs caught her, one afternoon, going up the cow-trail. She spun him some wild story about going out to look for the first
steilalva
of the year. Mariarta was furious when, instead of going away, Urs insisted on helping her look.

This happened several times, until Mariarta realized that Urs was watching for her departures. He would follow her, accepting whatever crazed story she told him; when he came back to Tschamut, though he would be beaten for slacking, he would just grin that odd grin and go off to his chores.
He’s lonely,
  she thought one day, while doing the washing. Urs had to spend all day mucking out the stalls or bringing water for the cows from the river. Come the summer, he would go to the alp with the other men: nothing but days of milking, stoking the fires for the cheesemaking, scouring pots....

Mariarta stopped, staring at the wash-house wall.
When did I last see
any
of us on the mountain?
  she thought.
All the ones I envied while I was having lessons. Paol and Cla, they’re cowherds now too; Duri hardly sets foot out of the mill...
It had never occurred to her that all their childhoods had ended—that what she was doing now would be what she would do until she died. Washing, cooking, cleaning, mending, tending the garden behind the house.... Mariarta’s lessons, which had made it possible for her to escape up the mountain, were only a cruel mockery. What use would they ever be?  What use was speaking Daoitscha, except to old wheezing Reiskeipf the
saltér
?  Not that she particularly cared to talk to him. Once or twice now she had caught him looking at her out of those little eyes like a man eyeing a dish with his dinner in it. ...But all the rest of it, the counting and reckoning, the lists of kings and their great lords...it was useless to her. The only thing that remained
hers
was the shooting.  

Mariarta considered the tub with its worn splitting staves, the dirty water in it, the bowl of wood-ash soap, the splashed gray flags of the floor. Then she thought of the alp, and her bow. Slowly, with determination, she began to scrub again.

•

That night, late, the wind woke her; and there were voices in it.

When the wind rose, it often hissed past the carved eaves, moaned to itself in the chimney. When half asleep, hearing the soft hiss of it in the pines, you could imagine long sorrowful stories being told, a voice like her mother’s saying “Su, su, su....” about something that couldn’t be helped.

This time, she heard the wind say “Su, su....” ...in her mother’s voice.

At first, it didn’t seem odd that the wind should sound like her mother. But slowly, in the dark, Mariarta realized the wind had never talked about
this
kind of thing before.

“We’ve got to start thinking of it, Cilgia.”

“It’s too early.”

“It’s not. Look at the way she’s gone up, this past year!”

It was her bab’s voice. Mariarta lay wide-eyed in the darkness. Voices could not be heard clearly through these walls—

“It is. But, Fadri, the body may be old when the heart’s still young.”

“I know.... It still has to be thought about. And the prospects aren’t good around here.”

“But there are plenty of likely young men—”

“They’re none of them likely, Cilgia. Don’t think I haven’t seen Urs chasing after her. The boy has no hope of finding a trade. All he’ll ever have is someone’s hay to sleep in, and a penny or two from his share of the cheesemaking each year. No. There are only three serious possibilities. Duri—I won’t have it—you see the way the father works himself at the mill, and the son doesn’t work unless he’s beaten. Mati would wind up being miller and mother both, and die before her time. Flep di Plan—”

Her mother’s voice sounded alarmed. “That
I
won’t have. The father never lifts his eyes from counting his money, but he hasn’t a crust for a poor man. And his son’s cruel: did you see what Flep did to dil Curtgin’s cat, as a joke?  Or he called it a joke. I won’t see Mati married into that place.”

Her bab snorted. “I can’t say I disagree with you, but we’ve still her bodily comfort to think of. That would be taken care of, even if the son never did another lick of work—”

“So that’s two. But who else—”

“Well.” Her father sounded uneasy. “I haven’t had her schooled for nothing. I want her... I want her to get
out
. Have a better chance, somewhere else.”

Now her mother sounded really shocked. “Not in Selva, surely!  You know how those people are!”

Her bab sounded reluctant again. “I had been thinking...well, if Reiskeipf—”

“Fadri. He’s an
Austriac
.”