He brought over some cups for us and, with this ecumenical distribution of cocoa, the old priest loosened the guard on his own. It seemed rude to not say anything to the old guy, so I said hello.
He studied me for a moment but dismissed me for the cocoa. I looked at Father Thallon. The young priest smiled. “He can be a little incommunicative at times.”
“Kaixo, zer moduz?” Saizarbitoria casually sipped his own hot chocolate and glanced sideways at Jolie Baroja after speaking.
“Zer da hau?” The gravel in the old priest’s voice could have filled a driveway.
Sancho set his mug back down with a tight-lipped smile. “Bai?”
Jolie Baroja’s head slipped to one side, and then he leaned in close to Santiago, placing a hand lightly on the young deputy’s arm. “Ongi-etorri…”
They talked at an impressive rate for a solid five minutes before my translator turned back to me. “Was there anything specific you wanted to know?”
“What was all that about?”
“Cordialities. He thinks I’m a local, and I didn’t dissuade him.”
“Good.” I had watched Sancho carefully, the way he actively listened to what the old man had to say, didn’t interrupt, and maintained eye contact. It was all textbook and well done. It looked as though he had adopted the role of friend and ally with the old priest, a posture that would enable Jolie to speak freely within the coded language they shared.
I looked at Father Thallon, who had been watching the proceedings with great interest, and then back to Saizarbitoria. “Can you gently ask him about his cousin, any family contact he might have had?”
The kid looked at me for an extra moment, then turned and renewed the conversation.
“I had no idea you had deputies that could speak Basque.”
I nodded. “We try and stay close to the constituency.”
The old priest glanced back at me, and Sancho weighed his next words carefully. “He doesn’t like you.”
I glanced at him and then back to Santiago. “He doesn’t even know me.”
“He thinks he does.”
I stood and gestured for the younger priest to lead on. “Well, we know when we’re not wanted.” He paused for only a moment and then led me back into the cathedral. It was small by modern standards, but exquisite. It had been pieced together by the sturdy and articulate hands of not only the Basque but also the Scottish, Polish, Czech, and German faithful. They had been tough men who had brought the old ways with them along with the skills to build beauty such as this. I followed the king’s-bridge truss system of hand-adzed beams that held the roof and admired the wide-plank floors with no board less than a foot wide; the altar and the adjoining walls were local moss stone with the lichens flourishing in the cool of the open stillness.
I took a sip of my cocoa. “Must be tough with all these Basquos around.”
“It’s difficult, especially with the older parishioners; they’re still not sure if I’m going to last.” He smiled. “They have a saying, the Basque. That just because the cat has kittens in the oven, it doesn’t make them biscuits.”
I laughed and looked at him. “You’re probably wondering why we’re here. We’re interested in his relationship with his cousin, Mari. Did you know her?”
Thallon nodded. “Mari? Yes, I did know her. I visited with her last Friday. A terrible shame.”
I nodded. “Do you know any of the rest of the family?”
“I’ve met the granddaughter, the one that owns the bakery. Lana?”
“Seems like a good kid.” The priest remained silent. “Have you met either of the twins?”
“I’ve met Carol; she’s come over to meet with Father Baroja a number of times.”
“How many times?”
He thought. “A half a dozen or so, over a lengthy period. I would imagine that it’s very difficult to visit more often from Florida.”
“Can you remember when she was here last?”
He thought some more and exhaled very slowly. “About two years ago, I think.”
I thought about it. “Was Father Baroja very close with Mari?”
“No.”
“That was a pretty definitive answer.”
“I think there was some tension there.” He glanced back toward the chapel as Saizarbitoria entered from the doorway.
Sancho asked about the church, the congregation, and the community. As they talked, my attention was drawn back to the stained-glass windows. The stone church wouldn’t get long beams of sunshine today; only short blasts of golden light that illuminated first one window, then another. I watched the seemingly random pattern and wondered if I concentrated would I get the message. Probably not.
When I looked back, Father Thallon was looking at me. “They have a name for you, you know.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The Basques around these parts, they have a name for you.”
Saizarbitoria was all ears. “They do?”
We waited a moment, before the priest said it very carefully. “Jentillak.” They both laughed.
I adjusted the heat in the truck and looked at the Basquo. “Well?”
“What do you want to know first? There’s a lot of ground to cover.”
“When is the last time he spoke with his cousin?”
“Nineteen seventy-nine.”
I stared at the fog on the inside of my windshield. “That takes care of a lot of the other questions.”
“That was the last time he saw her alive.”
I turned up the defroster. “And what does that mean?”
“She comes to him in his dreams.” He misinterpreted my stare. “He said that she visits him when he sleeps, that she asks for forgiveness. The dreams he described were very vivid, very detailed.” He turned and smiled at me; he was a handsome kid. “I think the old man may have some demons.”
I thought about my own dreams, about the house and the scarf. “Don’t we all.”
He adjusted his jacket and mindlessly fingered the knob of the glove box. “He said she was immoral. That he had tried to save her his whole life, that the family considered her their greatest failure.”
I drove across the unplowed snowpack of Durant’s side streets. Santiago studied the road ahead. “The old priest doesn’t like you because he thinks you’re Lucian.”
Of course. I nodded and thought about it. “Well, he and Lucian probably didn’t get along.” I thought about filling the kid in, but it still seemed early, so I changed tack. “The old guy seems pretty sharp?”
He paused, the way I was learning that he did whenever you did something to him and he wanted you to know that he knew it. “Well, yeah, kind of.” Santiago sniffed and glanced back at the dash as the windshield began to clear. “He told me to be careful, that there were laminak in the room.”
I turned to look at him. “ Laminak?”
He chewed his lip. “Fairies.”
I sighed and made a turn. I had the Old Cheyenne, he had the fairies, and it was all in how you looked at it. “Anything else?”
“I think that about covers it.”
I pulled out onto the main drag and started for the office, barely being missed by an inattentive truck driver. He slowed after he saw the lights and the stars. “All right, what the hell does Jentillak mean?”
He smiled to himself, happy to know something I didn’t. “There are these dolmens, like Neolithic monuments, all over the mountains back in the Basque lands.” He continued to smile. “The Jentillak are a people that once lived alongside the Basque. One day a strange storm cloud was seen in the east and the wisest of the Jentillak recognized it as an omen that their time had ended. They marched off into the earth, under a dolmen still there in the Arratzaran valley in Navarra.” I glanced at him, and he savored the moment. “Jentillak means giant.”
I drove along silently and thought about it. “Giant, huh?”
“Yeah.” He looked back out. “There was a Jentillak who was left behind whose name was Olentzero, and he explained that they had all left because Kixmi had been born.”
I nodded. “Who was this Kixmi character?”
Santiago looked out into the slight sifting of snow and Christmas lights. “Jesus.”