Petra's Ghost, page 11
“How did you fall?” the doctor persists. His English is excellent. Daniel almost wishes that it weren’t. Then he wouldn’t have to explain the situation further. All he wants is to get to the albergue and lie down.
“I thought I saw someone,” Daniel says, looking around the doctor at Ginny, challenging her to say otherwise. She rolls her eyes at him. The doctor turns in her direction and then back toward Daniel without comment.
“Someone that you found necessary to chase through a graveyard?” the doctor asks him. Daniel looks at him, confused, and then realizes.
“You heard me talking in the waiting room,” he says.
“My wife did,” the doctor says, smiling. “She runs the bakery.”
Daniel remembers the woman with flour on her hands who also acted as the clinic receptionist. Feck it, did everyone understand English here? He had thought she was staring at him because she was afraid he’d get blood on the pastries. Turns out she thought he was so unbalanced she had to mention it to her doctor/farmer husband.
“Right then,” Daniel begins, “I’m not at all sure what I saw, but I saw something.” Daniel figures he might as well be honest. “I’ve seen it before,” then he adds, “on the Camino.” He wants to make sure that the doctor doesn’t think this is something he carried with him from home, like a communicable disease he could spread. “It’s a woman. I think she may be following us.”
The doctor looks hard at Daniel, then moves over to the sink to wash his hands. He closes the tap with his elbows and then turns to him with arms raised. The water drips down into the sleeves of his white coat.
“Santa Compaña,” he says to Daniel. “Do you know what this is?”
“I don’t,” says Daniel, wishing for the hundredth time that he knew more Spanish. If Ginny knows what it means, she’s not saying. He sees her sitting in the chair, twisting a piece of thread coming off from the seam of her hiking pants.
“It means ‘Holy Company’ in English,” the doctor says. He turns in Ginny’s direction and then back to Daniel, lowers his hands. “They are also called the ‘Night Ones.’”
“I was after seeing this in the daylight,” Daniel tells him.
“They are called this because they are of the night, not necessarily because they are seen at this time. In Spain people believe they are the tormented souls of the dead. They follow the living.”
Daniel raises an eyebrow at the doctor. Now who is the crazy one.
“You think this is a ridiculous superstition?” the doctor says, smiling. It is a statement more than a question. “I have travelled to many countries that have stories that are the same. In your own country they have beings such as this that accompany death or suffering.”
“Banshees,” Daniel says, colouring a bit.
The doctor nods then turns and begins rifling through the cupboard behind him. He pulls out a small plastic bag, which he fills with antiseptic wipes, gauze, and some surgical tape. He measures out six white pills from a large bottle and drops them in.
“Go on, Doctor, you’re an educated man, surely you don’t believe in the likes of that,” Daniel says.
The doctor closes the cupboard and gathers up the bag of first-aid supplies along with Daniel’s Irish passport with the medical insurance card tucked inside.
“I was educated at Oxford, Mr. Kennedy, but that is not where I learned to believe.” The doctor hands Daniel his things. “There are some painkillers in there. No more than two at time. Take it easy with the walking for a few days.” He picks up a clipboard and ticks off a few boxes with a pen tied to the top with a string.
“The Way of Saint James is a mystical place,” the doctor continues, pausing again before he goes on. “So many would not be drawn here over the centuries if it wasn’t. It may show itself to each pilgrim differently. But my experience has been that the Camino always provides.”
“Provides what?” Daniel asks.
Ginny seems to be paying attention now, having forgotten about the thread.
“Provides what you uniquely need,” the doctor says as he puts the clipboard under his arm. “But not necessarily what you came for.”
He grasps the door handle and opens it. The fresh yeasty smell of the bakery drifts in. The doctor stops and turns to him before he leaves.
“Only some can see the Santa Compaña, Mr. Kennedy,” he says. “If you are one of these, there is a reason for it.”
He walks out, closing the door behind him. They both watch him go. A few seconds later they hear him speaking fluent French to the patient in the next room. Daniel zips the supplies and his passport into his pack and gets down from the exam table.
“Let’s go,” he says, opening the door. Ginny grabs her own pack and follows him out. They walk past the doctor’s wife behind the bakery counter as she eyes them suspiciously over freshly baked bread. Daniel keeps on walking, banging the bakery door behind him on the way out, the little bell attached jingling.
At the albergue, Daniel checks in. Ginny already has while he was being cleaned up by the nurse. She had been afraid the albergue might fill up and she would have to sleep out in the lean-to they had built next to the parish church for overflow. Luckily, it is not that crowded, and Daniel gets a room. After taking showers and hanging their washed clothes to dry, the two wander into the large kitchen off the common room. A German man has made a huge pot of chipped beef and mashed potatoes, which he shares around. Despite Daniel’s earlier stomach issues, he cleans the plate, his body taking charge and demanding the calories he needs to cover a day’s worth of walking. Neither he nor Ginny says much. Ginny picks at her meal, meticulously separating the beef from the mashed potatoes with the tine of a plastic fork.
Afterward they go out back and sit with bare feet dangling in the cool water of the “swimming pool,” an example of false advertising that turns out to be an unheated six-by-three-foot cement tub with an anemic fountain at its centre. Still, it is a nice place from which to watch the sun go down with their hiking pants rolled up, the bracing water taking the swelling down in their overworked legs and feet. Daniel’s head still hurts, but he has taken a couple of the painkillers the doctor gave him, and they are starting to work their magic. He pulls out one foot and checks for the blister he was sure he developed earlier, finds just a reddened “hot spot” on the outside of one toe. He’ll have to be more careful tomorrow, apply some petroleum jelly to keep it from chafing further.
“How are you feeling?” Ginny asks him.
“All right, I suppose, all things being considered,” he says.
The muffled clang of a cowbell sounds in the distance. They don’t have cowbells in Ireland. Or at least, they never had them on his farm. When he hears them now he keeps expecting a town crier to come around the corner.
“That’s still quite the bump,” Ginny says.
She brings her hand up and gently rests it on the side of his head, her fingers catching in his dark curls. He feels embarrassed at her closeness.
“Sure, I’ve had worse,” he says, shrugging it off. He waits a moment, then asks her, “What did you think about your man, the doctor?”
“About what he said about your head?” Ginny says, still with her fingers in his hair.
“About what he said about the bleedin’ Santa Compaña,” Daniel says.
“I think it’s a bunch of horseshit.” She takes her hand back.
“A bit of a cynic, you,” Daniel tells her, though not unkindly. He’s not surprised. He thinks it’s a bunch of horseshit, too. Well, at least 90 percent of him does. He did grow up in a country where fairies stole children, or so his granny would threaten when he showed up after dark for dinner.
“I’m not so much a cynic, as a pragmatist, Daniel. Santiago is still over three hundred miles away. I don’t have time for things that go bump in the night.”
“I saw something, Ginny,” he says.
“This woman?” she asks.
“Aye, but more than that.” Daniel hesitates. He’s been keeping one detail from her. He takes a deep swallow before he goes on. “She was after wearing the same bracelet as you, Ginny.” He reaches out and lifts the beads and shells hanging from her wrist with one finger. “The very same one. Sure, I saw it when she was standing over me.”
Ginny stares at him holding up her bracelet. She says nothing for a moment. He takes his hand away after a few seconds but holds her gaze.
“Daniel, when you fell, I came running,” she tells him. “I was the one standing over you.”
He hears her but cannot process what she says right away. It makes no sense.
“The bracelet you saw was the same because it was me, Daniel.”
“It wasn’t you,” he insists.
“You’d hit your head. You were totally incoherent when I found you.”
“It wasn’t you,” he repeats more quietly, turning away. He’ll believe he was hallucinating from a head injury, but there is no way he will believe that his mind turned Ginny into that creature with the hair. He couldn’t have hit his head that hard.
She doesn’t say anything more, only gazes out to the horizon. Eventually, he does as well, and they both sit, stoically watching as the sun dips below the rolling silhouette of hills. The cowbells fade with the day and go silent. Daniel thinks how romantic a scene it is — that is, if they hadn’t just been arguing about whether he saw a woman with a dangling eyeball.
“I think I’ll turn in for the night,” he tells Ginny just as she reaches for his hand.
Back in his room, Daniel pulls the prescription bottle he got in the States out of his pack and opens it for the first time. He throws two of the little blue pills into the back of his throat and swallows them down using the warm water left in his bottle. Lying down on the bed on top of his sleeping bag, he shuts his eyes and waits for sleep to come. Between the little blue pills and the painkillers he took earlier, that release comes quickly.
He doesn’t hear his roommate come in to bed. Nor does he hear Ginny say goodnight through the door. He doesn’t see the woman or think of Petra or of Ginny or of anything at all. He just sleeps without dreams, while those that are of the night lie in wait, their reasons still secret, guarded until he is ready to hear them.
CHAPTER 7
Azofra to Grañón
“HELLO, DANIEL!” The Dutchman walks across the Plaza del Santo still carrying his carved wooden walking stick.
Daniel and Ginny have stopped for lunch at one of the patios on the square.
“Hi, Rob.” Daniel rises from the table, relieved to see his calming friend. They shake hands and Daniel pulls out a chair. Rob leans his stick against the rubble wall of the café behind them and sits down. He greets Ginny then turns and notices the bandage on Daniel’s head.
“What have you done to yourself, my friend?” His easy smile has turned to a frown of concern. He looks to Ginny, as if she might provide an explanation, and then back at Daniel.
“I fell,” Daniel says, touching the bandage, feeling embarrassed.
Ginny might like to say more, but Daniel’s quick look in her direction makes it clear that she shouldn’t. The Dutchman waits for a beat or two of silence and then tries to make light of what he senses is a touchy subject.
“You should be taking better care of him, Ginny from California,” he says with a wink in her direction.
Ginny winks back, then takes another sip of her coffee. Crisis averted.
“Apparently, he is the one taking care of me,” she says, giving Daniel a cautionary glance.
“Chivalry is a right terrible disability,” Daniel says, and she laughs then. So does he. The tension of the day before is starting to fall away with the sunshine and the exercise from this morning’s walk to Santo Domingo. The additional pills he’s taken this morning don’t hurt either.
The medieval town is in keeping with the others but full of modern amenities. The original monastery pilgrim hostel has been made into a Parador hotel with extravagant rooms and a nightly price tag that approaches the cost of Daniel’s plane ticket to Europe. This combined with the busy plaza, shops, and cafés makes the Santa Compaña and the woman in the graveyard seem very far way. They are shadows from the past that don’t relate to this sunny modern world any more than the formerly stark monastic pilgrim hostel bears resemblance to the opulent rooms of the Parador.
“Where have you been, Rob?” Daniel asks him. He is surprised they haven’t bumped into one another over the last couple of days.
“Oh, many places.” The Dutchman adjusts his painter’s cap and squints into the sun. “Such warm weather for the fall. I slept outside last night in a field.”
“Aren’t you worried about sleeping out in the open?” Ginny asks him, toying with the salt shaker on the table in an attempt to make her inquiry appear more casual than it is.
Daniel has learned she is a woman ashamed of fear, which is why he thinks she is lying about the woman following them. She might not be Santa Compaña, but she’s something to Ginny. He just hasn’t yet figured out what.
“Afraid?” Rob tilts his head and looks pensive. “I have not really thought of this. What should I be afraid of?”
“Sure, around here, perhaps being trampled by cows,” Daniel says, taking a sip of his Coke. He never was a fan of soda but it seems to hit the spot these days. He’ll have to drop the habit when he gets back home, or he’ll end up with the spare tire he teases his older brothers about. Home. It seems so far away. Does he really have a home anymore with Petra gone?
“I had not thought of cows, but of course this could be a problem.” The Dutchman appears to be taking Daniel’s comment about cattle trampling seriously.
Then again, he should. Daniel and Ginny have been surprised by large herds crossing the trail more than once, and they often hide in the early morning mist of the mountains. You didn’t see them until they were practically stepping on your hiking boots. Daniel remembers how the sound of cow bells in the Pyrenees would warn him like a ship’s foghorn before an animal suddenly appeared, a huge furred prow with horns emerging out of the dense white clouds.
“I was thinking more of a human threat,” Ginny says. Both the men glance at each other. They live in a world where women must be more uneasy about these things than they are, and they know it. It’s not fair, but it’s the truth.
“I used to worry more about this,” Rob says kindly, not dismissing Ginny’s concerns but mirroring them. “But I do not worry anymore. This is what they call blind faith, I think.” He chuckles to himself. “I love these English sayings.”
Ginny smiles. “Yes, why not deaf faith,” she says, getting into the spirit of the Dutchman’s pun. “Or mute faith?”
“Or faith with no sense of smell at all,” Daniel adds. He sniffs the pizza he purchased in the café to underline his comment then takes another bite. It tastes as if it came frozen in a box — nothing like the fresh bocadillo he had savoured with Rob that day in the grassy field. Cuisine can be up and down on the Camino, just like the terrain.
“Speaking of faith,” Ginny says, reaching for her guidebook. She flips through with her thumb and stops on a page that has a little blue pen mark at the top. “I want to take a tour of the cathedral.” She locates a passage with her index finger.
Daniel peers over her shoulder and makes out Capilla de la Magdalena printed in italics, not without difficulty. His vision is getting blurry. “Visiting your favourite saint, are we?” Daniel says, nudging her.
She gives him a playful push in the arm. The change in him from last night makes him feel bipolar. Yesterday his concussed brain had thought she was a decomposing corpse standing over him. Today he’s a primary-school boy yanking at her pigtails. It could be the painkillers that he took before setting out this morning or the prescription from home he downed on a visit to the café’s toilet. Still, he feels saner — even a little detached, but in a good way. He is safely distanced from the frightening scenes of the last few days, like when you watch a thunderstorm from indoors or a prize fight on the television. He hates the idea of safe barriers and other crutches, particularly the pharmaceutical kind, and once his head is better, he’ll dump the pills. He can handle his own nerves. Plus, he stumbled a bit when he went to get pizza.
“Sure, there’s more in the cathedral than the chapel of Mary Mag. There are chickens,” he says, chuckling to himself.
Ginny looks at him strangely. He thinks he may have spoken this too loudly, makes a mental note to up his self-monitoring.
“Yes, I have heard of these chickens,” Rob chimes in, rescuing him. He has remained quiet up until now, observing the interaction between Daniel and Ginny. “They live in the cathedral, yes? There is a shrine?” He clasps his hands together and waits for confirmation.
“Aye.” Daniel leans back dangerously in his chair. “And a legend to go with them.”
“I’m intrigued,” Ginny says. She gets up and bends over to put the guidebook away in her backpack. Her body creates an attractively rounded ninety-degree angle that Daniel never remembers learning about in math class.
“Let’s go then,” Daniel says as he takes the last bite of his cardboard pizza and reaches for his pack.
“This church I will go see,” the Dutchman says, standing to join them.
“I thought they were all the same,” Ginny teases.
“They are,” Rob says, retrieving his walking stick. “But in this one, if a chicken crows while you are there, they say you will have a blessed Camino.”
“You’re having me on.” Daniel looks at Rob. He knows the legend but not this part.
Ginny leans in and cups one hand around Daniel’s ear. Her lips dance dangerously close to the sensitive lobe. “C’mon, we can use all the help we can get,” she whispers, before pulling away and starting in the direction of the cathedral.
Daniel can still feel the closeness of her breath after she walks away. It sends a delicious chill through his increasingly sedated body as he and Rob follow her through the square.
