Petra's Ghost Read online

  When they come to Estella, a larger town where Daniel had planned to stay the night, they both agree that the albergues are too crowded, the urban scene not their style. They stop and eat their simple packed lunches on a park bench before continuing on through the city centre and back out of it. They set their sights on Villamayor de Monjardin, where the views are supposed to be spectacular, even though it is still five miles away and their shadows are getting longer on the path. That would turn out to be a big mistake, but they don’t know that now, too at ease with the day and each other’s company.

  Daniel looks at his watch and realizes they have been walking together for hours, but it doesn’t feel like it. They have been so engrossed in sharing their various experiences. His grandfather always told him that “two shorten the road.” He supposes he was right about that, as he was about most things involving the subtle observation of human nature. His grandmother claimed it came from a lifetime of sitting on his arse watching the world go by.

  Ginny’s gone quiet. When he looks over, he notices her lips are held tightly together, suppressing a grin. She’s up to something, but Daniel isn’t sure what until they reach the narrow end of a large rectangular building with a brushed silver-plated recess built into the outer stone wall. Two spigots jut out from raised images of scallop shells, all below a large Spanish coat of arms. The Cross of Saint James with its telltale pointed spade at the base, as if you could pound it into the earth, is etched between the two taps. Ginny had told him earlier she doesn’t like these crosses; they look too much like daggers.

  She rushes up to the wall and stretches out her arms like a girl about to turn letters on a game show. Daniel can read some of what is written around the coat of arms now, bronze on silver, Fuente de Irache.

  “The monastery of Irache was established here about a thousand years ago,” Ginny tells him. “It was built for two reasons. One was to take care of the increasing number of pilgrims that came through on their way to Santiago.”

  “And what was the second reason?”

  “To perfect the recipe for a kick-ass shiraz,” she says.

  Daniel examines more closely the spigots embedded in the wall. He realizes they each have a plaque with a Spanish word mounted above them. One says Agua, the other Vino. He also remembers now what the word Fuente means.

  “Sure, is this what I think it is?” he asks her, not believing what he’s seeing.

  “Yup,” Ginny says, dropping her pack, pulling out her plastic water bottle and dumping the contents out to make room. “It’s a wine fountain.”

  “Aye, now that’s grand,” Daniel says.

  They both fill up their water bottles. And not from the spigot marked Agua.

  Afterward, they make their way up the path behind the fountain laughing, confident in their ability to make it to Villamayor de Monjardin.

  Later, Daniel will wish they had stayed where they were.

  It is starting to cool off as they walk up the hill on a close path through the trees. The warmth of the wine keeps them from putting on their jackets, even as the day starts to fade and the trees block the sun. Ginny bursts out in giggles when a branch pushed aside by Daniel comes back and whacks her in the face. He apologizes but laughs himself. The physical work of walking all day and their increased fatigue have combined with the alcohol to give them both a fairly comfortable buzz.

  “I cannot believe a man can get free wine out of a fountain in this country,” Daniel says. Back in his Trinity days, such a thing would cause a riot. “Did you find out about it through your study of murder and mayhem in the prison library?”

  “No, I’m a California girl. We have the uncanny ability to detect the scent of complimentary wine from a hundred paces.”

  “And I’m Irish, but we can’t sniff out free Guinness, no matter how hard some of my forefathers may have tried.”

  “I read it in the guidebook,” she says. “You really should do more than look at the pictures,” she teases him.

  “Sure, the pictures are the best part,” he teases back.

  They make their way out of the trees and emerge on a wider country road skirting cornfields. The field has not been harvested yet though it is late in the year. Tall stalks of bleached-out yellow leaves rustle with the breeze. No one else is around. Just the two of them. His buzz is starting to fade with the daylight.

  “Why are you here, Daniel?” Ginny asks him, after she swallows another sample of the tart red wine. As she lowers her water bottle, a colourful beaded bracelet with little silver shells trembles on her wrist. It sets off the deep tan of her arms and makes him think of the California beaches she must have grown up on.

  “On the Camino, you’re saying?”

  “I guess so,” she replies.

  Daniel finishes off the wine in his own bottle and then decides the best way to answer is with brutal honesty.

  “My wife died.” It sounds so flat, so insufficient, using those three loaded words to sum up so much. He thinks he can feel the brown burlap bag at the bottom of his backpack shift with disappointment. He hadn’t thought about Petra or her ashes since he started walking with Ginny this morning. Guilt sets in.

  “I’m so sorry,” Ginny says.

  Daniel clears his throat a few times, but he can’t form the words he wants to say. It would do him good to unload it all to this virtual stranger. But his fear and the guilt in his backpack won’t let him do it.

  He decides to deflect the conversation onto Ginny’s domestic situation. A serpentine move, but the best he can muster on short notice.

  “You married?”

  “I was,” she says, her playfulness at bay for once. “But it’s over.”

  “That’s a shame. What happened?” he asks, trying to keep the focus on her.

  “We were out celebrating our anniversary over dinner, and I suddenly realized I couldn’t think of even one reason why we were together. When I asked him, neither could he.” She watches the western horizon as they walk. The sun is low in the sky, almost touching the tops of the cornstalks. “There’s not much point in staying in a marriage when nobody knows why they’re there.” She shrugs her shoulders. “That and he never laughed at my jokes.”

  “And you being such the card.”

  “Yeah, hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  “Is that why you’re after walking by yourself?”

  She straightens her shoulders, juts out her chin. He’d been trying to keep things light, but the tension in her body denotes a seriousness not present before. Maybe he should have asked if she had any pets instead.

  “I was supposed to come with a friend, but she pulled out at the last minute,” she says, scanning the horizon and the setting sun again. It will be dark soon and they are still two miles from Monjardin.

  “Is that so?” Daniel says. He means the question as empathetic surprise rather than a challenge. But she takes it the wrong way.

  “What, you think I couldn’t get someone to come with me?” Her voice is sharp. For the first time, Daniel’s head starts to suffer from the wine they drank.

  “I only meant, it must be tough, now. To have had to come on your own,” he says, backtracking. He really should shut his mouth. Surely, he had lived with a woman long enough to know when to do that.

  “You’re alone,” she points out.

  “Well, of course, but you’re a woman.”

  The expression on Ginny’s face causes his testicles to retreat slightly.

  “You sound like my mother. Jesus.” She picks up her pace. Her head down, as she walks on ahead of him.

  Shite, Daniel thinks, falling in behind. Next time I’ll just ask if she has a cat.

  They stop so that Ginny can zip the bottoms of her pant legs back on and to put on their jackets. It is hitting dusk, and they are still nowhere near the albergue they were shooting for. Daniel has finally consulted the guidebook and realizes he misjudged the distance to Monjardin back in Estella. The road has become steep, but the endless rows of droopi
ng cornstalks continue beside them up the hill. His head is truly throbbing now, with the remnants of the wine and his own exertion.

  “Do you have a flashlight?” Ginny asks him. “I was going to bring one, but I didn’t want to carry the extra weight.”

  Daniel opens the zippered pouch on his hip belt and extracts what he grew up calling a torch. He pushes the rubber button on the side and a weak beam appears on the road ahead of them. It bounces on the dirt and gravel with each of his steps.

  “Listen, about earlier,” Ginny says, in delayed apology for her outburst. “I guess I’m just tired.”

  So is Daniel. He figures it has been ten hours since he left the little albergue in Obanos. His boots feel as if they’re cast in cement, as he lifts them one in front of the other up the never-ending hill. Since they can’t see to the top in the dark, it really does feel like it could go on forever.

  “No harm,” he tells her. He is less concerned about their squabble than he is about their progress. They need to get somewhere, anywhere, and soon. He thinks he can make out the deep purple outline of buildings off in the distance for a moment, and then decides it’s only wishful thinking. His lips feel dry and cracked. He is thirsty as hell. The two water bottles in his pack went dry a long time ago.

  The night is completely silent, none of the twilight sounds he remembers in the fields of his youth. The reassuring low of cattle as his father called them in from pasture. The noisy chirping of rooks settling in for the evening. The only noise here is the crunch of their footfalls on the hard gravel.

  He is casting his flashlight in its limited range up the road when he sees the crouched human figure in the corn. It runs across the path in front of them and behind a crumbling rock fence.

  “What the fuck was that?” he cries out, looking over at Ginny. She is not moving.

  “Oh shit,” she says.

  The figure runs in front of them again, loping awkwardly back into the cornstalks. Daniel cannot discern much in the dwindling light. A mass of tangled hair, a pair of heavy hiking boots.

  “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Ginny repeats over and over, backing away.

  “Wait here,” he says to her, and takes off into the corn. He moves before thinking. Ginny calls out for him to stay, but he is too furious to respond. He has been walking for miles, it’s late, and his skull feels like it holds back a mushroom cloud. Now some tosser wants to play games with him in the dark. He is not sure what he is going to do as he roughly parts the corn and plunges inside, but it’s not going to be sportsmanlike.

  The quiet night is amplified inside the dense corn. He can hear Ginny faintly, shouting from the road to come back, but the tall dry stalks seal him in with their tight silence, like a vacuum or the lid of a coffin. He continues to move deeper through the rows, holding up the next-to-useless flashlight, watching for bent leaves or other hints of where the figure has gone. He is about to give up when he hears breathing, laboured and raspy, as if the wind pipe were obstructed or had undergone an emergency tracheotomy. His sister had told him about one she had performed in the field, cutting open a man’s throat with a knife and inserting the shaft of a ballpoint pen. Doctors Without Borders were nurses, too.

  Daniel slowly pushes through toward the rasping sound. The outline of a figure in a red fleece sweater comes into view up on his left, standing still in the corn. Is it a child? No, not that small, but not that big either. Probably around the same height as Ginny. Maybe a teenager? Daniel’s anger softens a little. Bloody kids.

  “I don’t know what you’re at, but you scared the hell out of us back there.”

  No response, no movement, just that beleaguered breath. Daniel moves closer, tries again.

  “Listen, I don’t want any trouble, but it’s late, all right?” He takes a deep breath and sighs. Jesus, he’s tired. “Why don’t you clear off home and quit frightening people, mate.”

  Still no response. Maybe the guy doesn’t speak English, Daniel thinks. Although, the young people here were more likely to be bilingual than their parents. He takes a step closer and raises the flashlight beam to the kid’s face.

  Except he can’t see the face. Only what’s left of it, through stringy clumps of hair. A thick protruding tongue sticks out, swollen and bulbous, the cracked lips and teeth only partially visible behind it. Just before Daniel drops the flashlight he sees a large shiny black beetle crawl out of the mouth, then back in again, using the slack grey chin as a bridge.

  He turns and runs through the tall corn with no idea where he is going. Back to the path or farther into the field, he can’t tell. He is moving on primal energy, not toward anything, only away from what he saw. The blade-sharp edges of the scorched leaves cut into his hands, their pointed tips stabbing at his face, as he plunges through the rows of dried-up stalks in the dark.

  When he bursts out onto the road, Ginny is ahead of him, mounting the hill as fast as she can, tripping at times in her haste and exhaustion. He runs after her, catching up just as they enter the walls of the hamlet of Azqueta. When she threatens to fall again, he grabs her by the arm and steadies her. Together they stagger down the only street of the tiny village. The stone houses that line it are closed up for the night, cool and silent. Daniel can see a dimly lit sign up ahead, a black shell with white lettering, La Perla Negra. Hung above it is a blue square plaque with a white letter A, the accommodation symbol for albergue.

  Ginny is openly sobbing now as he pulls her up the street and in through the arch of the entranceway. Just before he slams the heavy oak of the door behind them, he sees the dark figure across the square, hovering at the edge of the village. The head hangs low as it drifts above the moonlit farmer’s field. The tips of its slack hiking boots drag on the feathery tops of the withering corn.

  Daniel holds both of his hands fast against the rough wood planks of the door when he shuts it, as if he can hold back what he has seen with his own brute strength. He can feel splinters beginning to embed in his palms. He only takes his hands away when he hears the hospitaleiro call from up the stairs. Daniel turns to face him, the terror still in his eyes, but the middle-aged man in his house sandals doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Dónde has estado, peregrino?” the man says.

  Daniel doesn’t understand him, of course. He looks all around the foyer of the albergue for Ginny to translate. He cannot see her.

  “I don’t understand,” Daniel says. Not able to conjure up any of his limited Spanish. He looks up the stairs. Ginny must have run up to the top floor while he was trying to hold hell back with his bare hands and an oak door.

  “Dónde has estado, peregrino?” the man repeats again. The canned laughter from a television drifts out from a room off the landing behind him. His private flat. A son in his twenties steps out through the doorway and stands alongside his father.

  “He said, ‘Where have you been, pilgrim?’” The young man translates using perfect English.

  And Daniel must admit to himself that in that moment, he no longer knows.

  CHAPTER 4

  Azqueta to Torres del Rio

  IN THE MORNING DANIEL paces back and forth on a thick braided oval rug in the common room of the albergue, waiting for Ginny. He hadn’t even made it to a bed in the men’s quarters last night. After settling with the hospitaleiro and going upstairs in a daze, he had dropped his pack and collapsed on the overgrown loveseat a few steps away. Beyond that he remembers nothing until he woke up and saw the spackled whitewashed walls of the common room glinting in the morning sun. Earthy clayware and rustic Spanish accents surround him on all sides. It feels like being trapped in a Bonanza-themed window display for Pottery Barn. Up in the far corner of the room a bird’s nest is built into the wall where it meets the adobe ceiling. He imagines the windows thrown open in summertime to allow barn swallows to fly in and out, a calming, pastoral thought. Then he remembers what he saw in the corn and goes to make sure the sashes are locked.

  Frustrated, he drops heavily into a wood and le
ather armchair, pushing aside the colourful striped blanket draped over the back. Azqueta wasn’t even supposed to have any lodging for pilgrims. Daniel had checked earlier in the guidebook. That’s why they had set their sights on Monjardin yesterday.

  He wishes he could go see what is keeping Ginny, but he is barred by the invisible line drawn across the entrance to the women’s bedroom. Pilgrims aren’t usually divided by gender, but the albergue is under capacity, allowing for separate quarters. A treat for the women, he’s sure. The two Spanish guys in Obanos had waited outside the communal showers with their junk hanging out the day before yesterday. Daniel considers himself more of a gentleman than that, so he waits impatiently outside the bedroom door.

  A porcelain jug of water has been set out on a long oak table by the stairs. He goes over and pours himself a glass, choking down a couple of Aspirin for his growing headache. What he really needs is coffee and some breakfast, but there is nowhere to get food in Azqueta. He’s asked. Even if there were, he can’t step out and run the risk of missing Ginny. He needs to talk to her about what happened last night. Who else can he discuss it with? The hospitaleiro is already giving him suspicious looks and not just because he knocked over a large potted cactus before he passed out on the loveseat.

  The bedroom door finally opens and a spindly middle-aged woman emerges. It is hard for Daniel to believe she has the muscle mass to walk the Camino. Her limbs look like twigs that might snap at any moment. Between that and her deep mahogany tan, she bears a startling resemblance to the beef jerky in his pocket.

  “Excuse me,” Daniel says, standing.

  “Yes?” the twig woman answers. Her stiff accent is laced with a faint hostility. He recognizes her now. She had poked her head out the bedroom door when he checked in the night before, asked what time it was, first in German and then in English. He had ignored her, too scattered inside his own mind to form an answer in any language. She obviously has chosen not to forget the slight.