The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

were now in such a state that those who left him made up their mind not to come back.’ For this reason, his account of Pedro the Cruel, whom he had betrayed, is suspect. * As we gaze at the tranquil river the words of Froissart come to our minds: ‘Than the Englysshmen and Gascons lept a horsebake, and began to chase the Spanyards who fledde away sore discomfyted to the great ryver; and at the entry of the bridge of Navaret, there was a hideous sheddinge of blood, and many a man slain and drowned, for divers lept into the water, the which was deep and hideous, they thought they had as lieve to be drowned as slain... and it was said, as I heard after reported of some of them that were there present, that one might have seen the water that ran by Naveret to be of the colour of red, with the blood of men and horse that were there slayne.’
    So vivid was the conflict, as described by Froissart and Ayala, that, as I walked in the evening through the plain by the river, where it took place on April 3, 1366, I became like the traveller in the ancient legend who fell asleep in a valley where a battle once had been fought, and in the moonlight heard all of a sudden the neighing of horses, the sound of trampling, the faint clarions, the clash of steel, the ghostly whirr of coundess goose-winged arrows and in the dusk faint figures thronging the banks of the river on either side.

CHAPTER 8

    ST. MILLÁN OF THE COWL AND HIS MINSTREL *

    ‘ L ET me have a companion of my way’, says Sterne, ‘were it but to j remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines.’ Alas, there was no sun, but heavy clouds and a piercing wind to speed me on my way out of Nájera, and not a soul to be seen for miles as I plodded forlornly through sleet and slush. My next halting-place would be the Monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla, which nestles in a mountain valley, three leagues to the south of the Road of St. James from Pamplona to Burgos, a mere bagatelle of a deviation to a hardened Jacobean foot-slogger, but the leagues in this part of Spain, I must remark, are as capricious as the French leagues of Rabelais, for though the signposts marked sixteen kilometres to San Millán’s shrine I counted twenty-four by the time I reached the monastery. However, it is all for a good cause, for no true Jacobean pilgrim would dare to face the Apostle in Compostella if he had neglected to call upon the ‘Twin Moor-Slayer’, who likewise rode a white charger through the clouds and hurled destruction upon the enemy beneath.

    Now he that bore the crozier, and the papal crown had on Was the glorified Apostle, the brother of Saint John;
    And he that held the crucifix, and wore the monkish hood,
    Was the holy San Millán of Cogolla’s neighbourhood. *

    Such was the description given by San Millán’s biographer, Gonzalo de Berceo, the father of Castilian poetry, who grew up in the shadow of the monastery, founded by the Saint near his birthplace, Berceo.
    At the village of Arenzana I halted at a tavern and roused my drooping spirits with a couple of chiquitos of raw aniseed brandy. I was in luck, for standing at the counter was a jovial carter, who became my Good Samaritan.
    “You look as if you’d been sleeping in a cemetery,” said he as I shook the water from my coat and hat. “Come on, cheer up, and help me to drink up this porrón of Rioja.” The rich dark wine thawed me rapidly: first my feet felt warm, then my head and then my heart. The carter and the bartender laughed as I gulped the wine, sputtering and spilling a good deal over myself, for a porrón is a squat-bellied glass vessel with a long spout, and it needs practice to drink from it without letting one’s lips touch the spout and without spilling the contents over coat and shirt. Soon I ceased to be a sorrowful pilgrim and became a roystering minstrel.
    “Give us a tune,” said the bartender. I took out my fiddle and played a jota for the company. The wine gave me new heart, but did not give me new legs; my legs, in fact, were the only part of my body that lacked steadiness and they refused to bear me.
    “Now that you have taken away the use of my legs,” I said to the jovial carter, “you’ll have to carry me with you.”
    “I’ll carry you to Kingdom Come,” said the carter as he raised his eyes heavenwards and allowed the wine from the porrón to gurgle down his throat. His cart was a big dray drawn by two mules, and piled sky-high with branches and twigs for