Episode 1

The House of Ulloa

Emilia Pardo Bazán

-I-

However much the rider tried to rein it in by clutching with all his might at the single rope rein and whispering soothing, gentle words, the shaggy nag persisted in descending the hill at a bone-shaking hog-trot that unhinged his entrails, when not breaking into the wildly uneven strides of a mad gallop. And steep indeed was that slope of the highway from Santiago to Orense, so much so that wayfarers on passing it shook their heads, muttering that it had a far greater gradient than the whatever-per-cent prescribed by law, and that in carrying the road in such a direction the engineers must have known full well what they were about, and that some political dignitary’s country estate or some heavy electoral influence must needs be near at hand.

The rider was flushed, not like a red pepper, but like a strawberry—that flushing peculiar to lymphatic temperaments. Being young, delicate of limb, and without a hair of beard, he might have seemed a child had not his sacerdotal habit belied the presumption. Although covered in the yellow dust kicked up by the nag’s trot, it was easy to see that the young man’s suit was of plain black cloth, cut with that looseness and lack of grace that distinguishes secular garments worn by clerics. His gloves, already frayed by the rough bridle, were likewise black and brand new, as was his bowler hat, which he wore pulled down to his eyebrows for fear that the jolting of the trot might bounce it to the ground, which would be the greatest embarrassment in the world. From beneath the collar of his ill-fitting frock coat peered a finger’s breadth of clerical collar, embroidered with glass beads. The rider displayed scant equestrian skill: leaning over the pommel with knees drawn up and within two inches of being pitched over the horse’s ears, as much terror of the nag was readable upon his face as if it were some untamed steed overflowing with fierce and fiery spirit.

When the steep descent came to an end, the nag resumed its habitual tranquil gait, and the horseman was able to straighten himself upon the round pack-saddle, whose immeasurable breadth had disjointed all the bones of his sacro-iliac region. He drew breath, took off his hat, and received upon his sweat-covered brow the cold evening air. The rays of the sun were already falling obliquely upon the briars and hedgerows, and a road-mender in shirtsleeves, with his jacket laid upon a granite boundary stone, was dealing languid strokes with his hoe at the weeds sprouting along the edge of the ditch. The rider pulled upon the halter to stop his mount, and the beast, having left behind its desire to trot on the downhill slope, halted immediately. The laborer raised his head, and the brass plaque on his cap gleamed for an instant.

“Would you have the goodness to tell me if it is far to the house of the Marquis of Ulloa?”

“To the House of Ulloa?” replied the road-mender, repeating the question.

“Just so.”

“The House of Ulloa is over yonder,” he murmured, stretching out his hand to point toward a spot on the horizon. “If the beast walks well, the road that remains is soon covered.... Now you must keep on as far as that pine grove—see it?—and then you must turn to the left, and then you must go down to the right by a little shortcut, as far as the wayside cross.... At the cross you cannot go astray, for you can see the Pazos, a most prodigious great building....”

“But... about how far will it be?” asked the clergyman with uneasiness.

The road-mender shook his sunburnt head.

“A mere mouthful, a mere mouthful....”

And without further explanations he took up his languid task once more, wielding the hoe just as though it weighed a hundredweight.

The traveler resigned himself to remain in ignorance of how many leagues go to make up a mouthful, and dug his heels into the nag. The pine wood was not far off, and through the center of its dark mass wound a narrow track into which mount and rider plunged. The path, buried in the gloomy depths of the pine grove, was almost impassable; but the nag, in nowise belying the special aptitude of the Galician horse breed for negotiating bad ground, advanced with extreme caution, hanging its head and feeling with its hoofs to circumvent warily the ruts made by cart-wheels, boulders, and felled pine trunks lying across the path where they were least needed. They made headway little by little, and were already emerging from the thickets into a more open trail, cut between sapling pines and heath-clad hills, without having encountered a single tilled field or cabbage patch that might betoken human life. Suddenly the horse’s hoofs ceased to clatter and sank into a soft carpet: it was a layer of vegetable compost spread, according to the custom of the country, before a peasant’s hovel. At the door a woman was suckling an infant. The rider drew rein.

“Good woman, do you know if I am on the right road for the house of the Marquis of Ulloa?”

“You are going right, yes....”

“And... is it far yet?”

An arching of eyebrows, a look between apathy and curiosity, and an ambiguous answer in dialect:

“A dog’s little run....”

“A fine state of affairs! thought the traveler, who, if unable to calculate how far a dog goes in a run, suspected it must be a goodly distance for a horse. Well, once at the wayside cross he would see the House of Ulloa..... His whole mind was bent on finding the shortcut to the right..... Not a sign of it. The path, broadening out, penetrated into mountainous country dotted with patches of oak woods and here and there a chestnut tree still laden with fruit; to right and left bushes of heather grew scattered and dark. The rider experienced an indefinable unease, excusable in one born and bred in a quiet, sleepy town, who finds himself for the first time face to face with the rough and majestic solitude of nature, and recalls stories of robbed travelers and people murdered in deserted places.”

“What a country of wolves!” he said to himself, dismally impressed.

His heart was gladdened by the sight of the shortcut, which was descried on his right, narrow and steep, between a double stone wall that marked the boundary of two hills. He was descending, trusting to the nag’s skill to avoid stumbles, when he caught sight almost within arm’s reach of something that made him shudder: a wooden cross, painted black with white fillets, half fallen already upon the stone wall that supported it. The clergyman knew that such crosses mark the spot where a man met with a violent death; and crossing himself, he said an Our Father, while the horse, doubtless scenting the track of some fox, trembled slightly, pricking up its ears, and broke into a fearful little trot which soon brought him to a crossroads. Framed by the branches of a colossal chestnut tree, the wayside cross rose up.

Rude, of common stone, so ill-carved that at first sight it looked like a Romanesque monument—though in reality it was only a century old, being the handiwork of some stonemason with pretensions to sculpture—the wayside cross, in such a place, at such an hour, and beneath the natural canopy of that magnificent tree, was poetic and beautiful. The horseman, reassured and filled with devotion, pronounced as he bared his head: ‘We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee, because by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world’; and while praying, his eyes sought in the distance the House of Ulloa, which must needs be that great rectangular building with towers yonder at the bottom of the valley. Short-lived was his contemplation, and the cleric was within an ace of kissing the earth, thanks to the bolt the jade made, with ears erect, frantic with terror. The occasion was grave enough: two shots had rung out at very short range.

The rider remained frozen with fear, clutching the pommel, without daring even to search the brushwood to discover where the assailants might be lurking; but his anguish was brief, for down the embankment behind the cross a group of three men was already descending, preceded by three bird-dogs, whose presence was enough to show that their masters’ fowling pieces threatened only the game of the mountain.

The huntsman who walked in front appeared to be twenty-eight or thirty years of age: tall and well-bearded, his neck and face were sunburnt, but as he came with unbuttoned shirt and hat in hand, the whiteness of skin not exposed to the weather could be seen upon his forehead and chest, whose breadth indicated a robust constitution—a supposition confirmed by the patch of curly hair dividing the two breasts. Stout leather gaiters buckled up to the thigh protected his legs; over his right groin swung the twine netting of a well-filled game-bag, and on his left shoulder rested a modern double-barreled shotgun. The second huntsman seemed a man of mature age and low condition, servant or tenant-farmer: no buckles on his gaiters, no game-bag beyond a coarse sack of tow; hair cropped close to the scalp, an ancient percussion-cap gun tied with cords; and in his face, clean-shaven and lean, with energetic rectilinear features, an expression of concealed sagacity, of savage cunning, more proper to a Red Indian than to a European. As for the third hunter, the horseman was astonished to perceive that he was a priest. Wherein was it recognizable? Certainly not in the tonsure, effaced by a forest of bristly gray hair; nor in the shaving, for the stiff bristles of his bluish beard must have been a month old; still less in the collar, which he wore not, nor in his garments, which were like those of his hunting companions, with the addition of a pair of cowhide riding boots, very cracked and creased with wrinkles. And yet he breathed the cleric, the formidable seal of holy orders revealing itself—that seal which not even the flames of hell can efface—in some indefinable cast of countenance, in the air and posture of his body, in his gaze, in his walk, in everything. There was no room for doubt: he was a priest.

The horseman approached the group and repeated his customary inquiry:

“Can you tell me if I am on the right road for the house of the Marquis of Ulloa?”

The tall huntsman turned toward the others with familiarity and command.

“What a coincidence!” he exclaimed. “Here we have the stranger..... You, Primitivo.... Well, you have drawn the lottery prize: tomorrow I was planning to send you to Cebre to fetch the gentleman.... And you, Señor Abbot of Ulloa.... here you have someone to help you set the parish in order!”

As the rider remained hesitant, the hunter added:

“I presume you are the one recommended by my uncle, the Señor de la Lage?”

“Your servant and chaplain...” replied the ecclesiastic joyfully, attempting to dismount, an arduous operation in which the abbot assisted him. “And you...” he exclaimed, confronting his interlocutor—are the Marquis?

“How is my uncle? You came... on horseback from Cebre, eh?” replied the latter evasively, while the chaplain looked at him with an interest bordering on keen curiosity. There was no doubt that thus, manly in his disarray, his skin moist with light sweat, his gun slung across his shoulder, the Marquis was a fine figure of a man; and yet his arrogant person gave off a certain wild, woodland savor, and the hardness of his look contrasted with the affable and easy tone of his welcome.

The chaplain, exceedingly respectful, was profuse in explanations.

“Yes, sir, precisely.... At Cebre I left the stagecoach and they gave me this mount, which has such tackle—God preserve us!.... The Señor de la Lage, as good as ever, and in that same humor of his.... He would make stones laugh.... And handsome for his years.... I am just reflecting that if he were your own father, he could not be more like you.... The young ladies are very well, very happy and in excellent health.... Of the young master, who is in Segovia, good news. And before I forget....”