‘He’s done it before?’
She blushed. Then she quickly added: ‘He usually hangs out in Bilbao or Bayonne – with the other ETA leaders. He rarely comes to Navarre, might get seen. We were just very very unlucky. And anyhow I’m not going to let that bastard chase me away.’
Her final words were defiant: the slender nose uptilted, eyes wide and angry.
David saw the conviction and the sense in her statement; but he still felt queasy and tense. Just sitting here in the autumn breeze. Doing nothing.
‘OK. Let’s go and see the churches on my map.’
Amy nodded, and rose; when they climbed in the car the first flickers of drizzle were spitting on the windscreen.
‘How quickly it changes. In the autumn.’
The rain was a majorette’s drum-roll on the car roof. David reached in the glovebox and took out the precious paper; carefully unfolding the leaves, he showed her the map that had brought him halfway round the world.
He noticed her fingernails were bitten, as she pointed at the asterisks.
‘Here. Arizkun.’
‘You know it?’
‘I know of it. One of the most traditional Basque villages. Way up in the mountains.’ She looked squarely at David. ‘I can show you.’
David reversed the car. He followed Amy’s lucid directions: towards France and the frontier, and the louring mountains. Towards the Land Beyond.
The villages thinned as they raced uphill. Ghosts of fog were floating over the steeply sloping fields, melancholy streamers of mist, like the pennants of a departing and spectral army.
‘We’re right near the border…’ she said. ‘Smugglers used to come over here. And rebels. Witches. Terrorists.’
‘So which way?’
‘There.’
Amy was indicating a tiny winding turn off – with a sign above it, just perceptible through the mist.
The road to Arizkun was the narrowest yet: high mountain hedges with great rock boulders hemmed them in, like bigger people trying to bully them into a corner. More mountain peaks stretched away to the west, a recession of summits in the mist.
‘On a clear day you can see right into France,’ said Amy.
‘Can barely see the damn road.’
They were entering a tiny and very Basque village square. It had the usual Basque pelota court, several terraces of medieval stone houses, and a bigger stone mansion, adorned with a sculpted coat of arms. A wyvern danced across the damp heraldic stone: a dragon with a vicious coiling tail, and feminine claws.
The village was desolately empty. They parked by the mansion, which was spray-painted with ETA graffiti.
Eusak Presoak, Eusak Herrira.
Beneath this slogan was an even larger slash of graffiti. Written in the traditional jagged and ancient Basque script, the word was unmistakable.
Otsoko.
Next to the word was a black stencil of a wolf’s head.
The Wolf.
Amy was standing next to David, looking at the graffito.
‘Some of the Basque kids worship him…’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Cause he’s so perfectly ruthless. A brilliant killer…who comes and goes. Who never gets caught.’
She was visibly shivering. She added:
‘And they admire the cruelty. Of course.’
‘Miguel is…especially cruel?’
‘Rhapsodically. Voluptuously. Poetically. The Spanish torture Basque radicals, but Miguel tortures them right back. He frightens the fuck out of the Spanish police. Even the anti terrorists.’
Amy leaned to look at the graffito. David asked:
‘What kind of tortures?’
Her fringe of blonde hair was dewed with water in the mist. ‘He buried one Guardia Civil guy in quicklime.’
‘To destroy the evidence?’
‘No no no. Miguel buried the man alive, in quicklime, up to his neck. Basically he dissolved him. Alive.’
Abruptly, she walked on. David jogged after her, together they walked down a damp stony path, between two of the older Basque houses. David looked left and right. Brown and thorny sunflowers decorated the damp wooden doors, hammered fiercely to the planks. Some of the wayside thistles had been made into man shapes. Manikins made out of thistles.
The silence of the village was unnerving. As they paced through the clinging mist, the echo of their footsteps was the only noise.
‘Where the hell is everyone?’
‘Killed. Died. America.’
They were at the end of the lane. The houses had dwindled, and they were surrounded by rocks and thickets. Somewhere out there was France, and the ocean – and cities and trains and airports.
Somewhere.
Abruptly, a church appeared through the mist. Grey-stoned and very old, and perched above a ravine which was flooded with fog. The windows were gaunt, the location austere.
‘Not exactly welcoming. The house of God?’
Amy pushed at a rusty iron gate. ‘The churches are often like this. They used to build them on older sites, pagan sites. For the ambience, maybe.’
David paused, perplexed. Odd circular stones, like circles balanced on squares, were set along the path to the church door. The stones were marked with lauburus – the mysterious and aethereal swastika. David had never seen circular gravestones before.
‘Let’s try inside,’ he said.
They walked down the slippery cobbled path to the humble wooden church door. It was black, old, wet – and locked.
‘Damn.’
Amy walked left, around the side of the church – shrouding herself with mist. David followed. There was a second, even smaller door. She twisted the rusty handle; it opened. David felt the lick of moisture on his neck; it was cold now, as well as gloomy. He wanted to get inside.
But the interior of the church was as unalluring as the exterior. Dank and shadowy, with unpainted wooden galleries of seating. The reek of rotten flower-water was intense; five stained glass windows filtered the chill and foggy daylight.
‘Curious,’ said Amy, pointing up. One of the stained glass windows showed a large bull, a burning tree, and a white Basque house. Then she elaborated, still pointing at the window.
‘The Basques are very devout, very Catholic. But they were pagan until the tenth century, and they keep a lot of their pre-Christian imagery. Like that. That house – there –’ she gestured to the main window ‘– that’s the exte, the family house, the sacred cornerstone of heathen Basque culture. The souls of the Basque dead are said to return to a Basque house, through subterranean passages…’
David stared. The stained glass tree was burning in the cold glass light.
‘And the woman? In the other window.’
‘That’s Mari, the lady of the witches.’
‘The…’
‘Goddess of the witches. The Basque witches. We do not exist, yes we do exist, we are fourteen thousand strong.’ She looked at him, her eyes blue and icy in the hanging light. ‘That was their famous – or infamous – saying.