Petra's Ghost Read online

  “What? I mean no.” Daniel watches her pull the hip belt of the pack tight around her middle, adjust the load lifters on both sides. “I thought,” he pauses, “I thought you were after saying something.” He’s not sure of anything now. Maybe she hadn’t said anything. Maybe he had just run at a woman alone in a secluded spot for no reason. The Camino was usually safe, but there had been incidents lately. No wonder she’d shouted at him.

  “I said, ‘I’d stand upwind if I were you,’” she says, looking down as she snaps the sternum strap across her chest into place. He wasn’t completely mad then. He had heard her speak after all.

  “And why might that be?” Daniel asks. She has managed to annoy him again, despite the fact he’s still shaking.

  “So the ashes don’t blow back on you in the wind,” she says, coming toward him, her thumbs hooked in her shoulder straps, standing impossibly close. He can see the faded sprinkle of freckles along the bridge of her nose, smell the dried overripe fruit of a power bar on her breath. “I saw it happen to a guy earlier. He ended up with his son all over his rain pants.”

  And with that, she walks away from him, making her way down the ridge, her backpack with the attached white scallop shell bouncing with the sway of her hips. It was an enduring symbol of the Way, that shell, representing one of Saint James’s many miracles. Daniel hadn’t attached one to his own pack, though most did. He had never been good with outward symbols, preferring to play his cards and his purposes close.

  He watches the woman slowly sink out of sight, hiking down the other side of the peak. The wind blows his curly black hair into his face when he turns back to look at the valley. She was right about the risk of getting Petra caught in an updraft. This isn’t the right place for her.

  Daniel goes back to get his pack, placing the burlap bag carefully inside. He buries it deep at the bottom beneath his guidebook and passport. Then he pulls out the broad-brimmed hat he wouldn’t be caught wearing anywhere else and pulls it down over his unruly windblown hair.

  When he stands, he lifts the pack onto his shoulders and feels the weight settle into the strength of his back. But he still carries the heavy doubt of the sea in his mind. Just as he carries what’s left of his wife, unable to accept what happened to her any more than the scent in the air. He wonders whether five hundred miles will be enough to finally lay her to rest, when he was the one who killed her.

  The towering wind turbines turn, stoic against a harsh sky, as he follows the path where he has just watched the woman who is not Petra disappear.

  The stones on the way down from Alto del Perdón are slippery with the rain from yesterday. Daniel takes his time picking his way along the trail. He can’t afford to twist an ankle, not when he still has weeks of walking to go. Banked on either side of him are stunted grass and low brush. The occasional huge boulder sits marooned at the side of the trail, as if washed up on the shore of his imagined sea. Gravity rams his toes into the front of his boots. Maybe it is a good thing there is no steel in them.

  He is surprised when he comes around a bend and finds her waiting for him, a curious look on her face. Somewhere between amusement and wariness.

  “You’re different,” she says, leaning against one of the boulders. It is a statement with a hint of a question.

  “How?” Daniel asks her. He stops, braces himself sideways on the hill.

  “Just different.”

  “The accent,” he says, guessing. Daniel’s accustomed to being outed by the sound of his voice. Most people know as soon as he opens his mouth where he’s from; although, there was a lanky American a few days ago that had thought he was English. That and the fact that the guy never shut up made him want to punch him in his skinny gut.

  “Maybe,” she says. Her accent betrays her as well. She is also American. “I thought maybe you were from around here, at first.”

  Daniel’s granny had always said he had “the look of the Spaniard,” an Irish pronouncement reserved for those with dark and not-to-be-trusted attractiveness. “The Spanish Armada did some marauding in my country a few hundred years ago,” he tells her. “Left a fair amount of their gene pool about.”

  She waits awhile before answering as if weighing the pros and cons of marauding gene pools. “Mind if I walk with you?” she says, apparently deciding in favour of his DNA.

  “Free country,” Daniel replies. He’s still a little pissed about how she caught him off guard before. But then again, she did save him from wearing Petra on his jacket.

  “My name’s Virginia,” she says, holding out one gloved hand. “People call me Ginny.”

  “I’m Daniel,” he says, stepping toward her to return the handshake. He can feel the coldness of her fingers through the thin wool. He forces a smile. Then not knowing quite what to do next, he starts back down the hill.

  “Who you got in the bag, Daniel?” she asks, falling in behind him.

  “None of your feckin’ business, that’s who I got in the bag.”

  “That’s a bit harsh.”

  Realizing it probably was, he tries a peace offering.

  “Beef jerky?” he asks, holding out the red-and-black cellophane bag.

  “No, thanks.”

  He puts the hard cured meat back in his pocket. When he pulls out his hand again he rubs it together with the other one, blowing on them. He’s got gloves in his backpack, but he doesn’t bother with them despite the warmth of the autumn sun not yet reaching this side of the valley. He started early this morning while everyone else was still asleep at the albergue, not being a fan of crowds. A result of a rural upbringing with an abundance of space. Also, he’s a bit of an ass before his first cup of coffee. For that reason, it is probably a good thing they don’t talk all the way down. He walks silently, knowing she is behind him. He can hear her ponytail swishing back and forth on the nylon shoulders of her jacket. He remembers the hair he thought he saw flowing down her back up on the ridge, pale and almost to her waist. Wishful thinking is a powerful hallucinogen, he decides.

  Soon the topography begins to change, becoming more and more level, fewer rocks, more gravel. The mist is receding with the day. When they round a final bend, the Camino lies in front of them like a length of grey ribbon undulating through plucked orchards and farm fields burnt brown from a summer of hot Spanish sun. They stop for a moment and take in the new scenery, but not for long. There are still eight miles to go to the next albergue, where Daniel plans to spend the night. He’s in good shape but that doesn’t mean walking six hours a day doesn’t make him feel like an old man by evening.

  He is nervous at first as they switch to walk beside one another. There is something more personal in this than travelling single file. In time, however, he relaxes into the hypnotic beat of the trail, uninterrupted by speech. Their steps strike a hollow rhythm on the tightly packed earth. Gravel kicked up by their hiking boots the only variation in tempo.

  He builds up the courage to steal a glimpse of her. Just a few seconds. He takes in the determined set of her jaw in contrast to the full lips. The little divot on the outside of one slender nostril, betraying the small wildness of a former piercing thought better of. All contrasted with the serious deep-set hazel eyes she had fixed him with back up on the ridge when she had chastised him for frightening her. Ginny said he was different, but he senses she is, too. A woman of contradictions. When she catches him staring, he turns away, embarrassed. Great. Now she’ll think he’s a pervert.

  “I’m sorry for asking you about the ashes,” she says.

  “No mind,” Daniel tells her. “I reckon I’m just a bit sensitive about it.”

  “Just a bit.” She pauses. “Is that why you came on the Camino?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Everyone has a story,” she says with a look of understanding. She’s right. Everyone Daniel has met on the Camino seemed to come with a history. He had met a German guy whose daughter had committed suicide. He carried ashes as well. Then there was the middle-aged woman he
’d walked with for an afternoon whose husband had left her after thirty years of marriage. She had financed her trip by selling off his favourite football card on eBay.

  “Why did you come?” he asks, getting the nerve up to turn and look at her again.

  “To pick up guys,” she says. She bursts out laughing when his face starts to redden. He turns away again and keeps walking. Great, he thinks. I’m walking the Camino with a feckin’ comedian.

  When they enter the first small village, the two still haven’t spoken again. It’s not due to any ill will, more because each has sensed the other needed some quiet time. There are two vital things a pilgrim needs to learn on the Camino. One is how to prevent blisters and the other is when to shut up. But when they pass a noisy bar full of pilgrims eating breakfast, Daniel breaks the silence to tell her he needs to get a coffee. She waits outside for him.

  When he comes back outside with his steaming Styrofoam cup, the street is empty. He looks up and down the road but can’t find her. Then she speaks from behind him and scares the shite out of him for a second time. Where the hell did she come from?

  “You notice they are all bars here,” she says.

  Daniel wipes his hand where he spilled a bit of the hot liquid on it when she startled him. “The canteens, you mean?” He takes a deep sip of the café con leche, steadying himself. Feckin’ heaven. “I have. Saw two fellas yesterday knocking back shots at seven in the morning with their tea and croissant.”

  “I’ve seen the same thing. They’re always so serious though. Like alcoholism is a job they had to show up for when they’d rather stay in bed.”

  “You got to admire their work ethic,” he says, taking another sip. This time when she laughs, he smiles instead of blushing.

  The two follow the yellow arrows and scallop shells that take them through the small village and keep them on the Camino. Some of the signs and symbols are painted roughly on the walls of old stone buildings. Some are built into the pavement beneath their feet. They meander through village streets and alleyways on a route used by pilgrims for over a millennium. It leads not just to the cathedral in Santiago, but past most of the churches within walking distance. Daniel can see the belfry of one coming up on the right. When he looks up, he can make out a huge nest perched precariously on the top. Every church in Spain seemed to have at least one resident stork. Daniel watches to see if the bird is roosting as he walks by, but the nest is abandoned. If there are any eggs, they have been left unattended.

  “Why do you think they brought babies?”

  “Huh?” His response to her question is inelegant but authentic. Babies are the last thing on his mind, despite his concern for the eggs.

  “Why do you think they always said that the storks brought the babies?” she explains, pointing at the nest.

  “They were there,” he says, musing. “It’s always easiest to put the blame on whatever’s close at hand.”

  Her eyes flash approval. “I suppose it is. Although not necessarily fair.”

  “Life isn’t fair,” Daniel says, and then regrets it. What a downer he is. He tries to recover from looking like a depressing git, even though for the last year he has probably been one. “Did your parents blame the storks?”

  “My mother gave me a detailed explanation at the age of four, complete with a discussion of the missionary position and a picture book with fallopian tubes.”

  “Impressive,” Daniel says, and he means it.

  “I forgot it all by the time I was six and had to have it explained again.”

  “Did you remember it after that?” he asks her.

  “I can still sketch a vas deferens from memory,” she tells him, smiling.

  God, that smile. Playful but challenging. It could set a man off his balance.

  “What did your parents tell you about where babies came from?” she asks.

  “Nothing,” Daniel tells her, fiddling with the straps of his pack.

  “How could your parents tell you nothing?” she asks, pressing him.

  “I asked my mother that once,” he says, remembering the conversation. He was a grown man by then. “She told me, ‘You grew up on a farm, Daniel, with the bull let loose on the poor cows in the field each spring. You’d think a clever chiseler like yourself might figure a thing or two out.’” He plays up his mother’s Irish accent. She was from the town and had a different dialect than the rest of them.

  “And did you figure it out?” Ginny asks him, completely deadpan.

  “I suppose,” he says. “But from my experience, I’d say women are a fair bit different from cows.”

  She stares at him now, and he wonders if he has gone too far comparing women to livestock and mimicking his mother with an exaggerated accent like a stock Irish moron. He really needs to get out more.

  She continues to fix him with those penetrating grey-green eyes. For a moment, the pupils seem to widen, swallowing up each iris entirely. The wide black circles make him take a step back. Then she’s smiling again, and the healthy hazel returns, the earlier absence of colour a trick of the light.

  “Are you interested in a side trip, Daniel?” she says with a raised brow above a perfectly normal eye.

  He nods dumbly. Then recovers. “Where to?”

  “The site of a massacre,” she says. “It’ll be more interesting than cows.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Uterga to Obanos

  THE SIDE TRAIL AT Muruzábal only adds a couple of miles to Daniel’s planned route. It is not every day you get to see a building associated with the Knights Templar. The Church of Santa Maria de Eunate is twelfth-century Romanesque and octagon shaped, a miniature of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem it was modelled on. The ruins of its external cloister surround the small chapel with crumbling columns and archways. According to the guidebook, the name translates to “Saint Mary of a Hundred Doors.” Daniel counts thirty-three as he approaches. Being Irish, he’s not too offended by the exaggeration. He wants to tell Ginny all this but doesn’t want to bore her with his need to spew facts. Instead he keeps the knowledge to himself. This effort requires a force of will that almost brings the coffee back up his throat.

  Although there is a large parking lot in front for tourists, the place looks empty. This is the off-season, and the building looks gloomy and abandoned. It rests at the base of a series of rolling foothills.

  “So, where’s the massacre?” he asks Ginny as they cross the main road to the parking lot.

  “You know Friday the thirteenth?” she says, not bothering to look both ways as they cross the highway.

  “The date or the horror movie?” he asks her.

  “The date,” she says. “It was the day the Knights Templar were wiped out by the Catholic Church in a bloody mass execution.”

  “Is that why it’s considered unlucky?”

  “Sure was unlucky for the knights,” she says. It is not lost on him that she appears to share his enthusiasm for random facts. He wonders if she knows what the longest street in the world is.

  “They were the financial arm of the Church, of course.”

  “Yes,” she says, nodding, pleased. “Their castles and churches used to be all along the Camino. A place of refuge for the medieval pilgrims, starving half the time and sick. Or injured from attacks by roving bands of thieves.” She does a sweep of the parking lot with her eyes, as if roving thieves may still be an issue, then pushes a stray hair from her ponytail behind one ear. “But the money the Templars held made them too powerful. The pope had to get rid of them.”

  “Is that who is buried in the cemetery there, the massacred knights?” Daniel points at the small graveyard on the west side of the church just now coming into view.

  “No,” she says.

  “Who’d be buried there, then?” he asks.

  “The pilgrims who didn’t make it.”

  As they approach, they see the site is not entirely deserted. Sitting on a low stone wall between the graveyard and the church is a lone pilgrim. He is
dressed much like they are, convertible hiking pants, warm fleece and jacket, and a painter’s cap to keep off the sun. He sports a beard as most men do on the Camino, shaving being one of the first daily grooming habits to go. This man’s red-brown beard is better kept than Daniel’s. He probably had it before he came. The man lifts his arm and waves at them in greeting. His lengthy legs jut out in front of him, one well-worn hiking boot crossed over the other.

  “Hola. Buen Camino!” he calls out as they get closer.

  “Buen Camino,” both Ginny and Daniel respond, but it is Ginny who continues.

  “Está abierto?” she asks him.

  “No hablo español,” the man tells her. “Soy holandés.”

  “Dutch,” she tells Daniel and then addresses the pilgrim again. “Do you speak English?”

  “Yes,” he says, and smiles at her. “Although not as well as German. But much better than Spanish.” He has a Swiss Army knife open, slicing up a red apple. The sharp blade moves deftly in his large hands. On the stone wall he has laid out a checkered linen napkin with a large hunk of dark-skinned cheese and a crusty loaf of bread.

  “The church will not open for another quarter hour. We must wait,” he tells them. Daniel eyes the white juicy flesh of the apple. They hadn’t stopped for breakfast, and it’s nearly lunchtime. He tries not to visibly drool.

  The Dutchman gestures with an open hand to the food. “Please join me,” he says with a gentleman’s flair. This is something Daniel has noticed about the Dutch, their graceful thoughtfulness. It is a stereotype that becomes the Netherlands, much like tulips.

  “Thanks, but we wouldn’t want to be disturbing your meal,” Daniel says, now eying the fresh rind of the cheese as well as the apple. He doesn’t want to take the man’s lunch although he probably shouldn’t have answered on Ginny’s behalf. She doesn’t appear to have noticed, though, as she sits down and tears a good-sized piece of bread from the loaf and pops it into her mouth.