Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South Read Online Free PDF

they had to go all the way over to Mustér or Cuera on the east side, or clear over to the end of the Ródan valley, right by Martignei; fifty miles, or seventy, what difference did it make?, because each of those passes had its own road to the lowlands, and Ursera wasn’t getting any of the tolls or trade.”
    “So the townsmen called in the great builders?—” said the scolar .
    Gion smiled. “Every one of them went to the Reuss gorge, and left shaking his head. No way to do it!  The Ursera councillors published a great prize to go to the one who could bridge the river, but the few schemes they looked at on the prize-giving day were no good at all. And old Sievi di Planta, who was mistral then, he banged the table in the Treis Retgs and swore that he would pay any price to see that river bridged.
    “Then the man with the green feather in his hat came in.”
    All looked at one another with pleasurable anticipation, for the green peacock’s feather, the sign of pride, was a sure sign of il Giavel himself, old Malón the Father of Lies. “Well,” Gion said. “In he comes, and they all know him. All dressed as he was like a respectable wealthy man, there’s still nothing he can do about the way the left foot looks, or should I say hoof. He says to them,  ‘I understand you need a bridge built.’  Now all are uneasy at the sight of him, for il Giavel, he’s master of tricks and treachery. But they’re desperate. ‘Yes,’  Sievi says. ‘And what makes you think you can do better than all the other builders who’ve been here?’  ‘Ah,’  the Devil says,  ‘I have my ways.’ ‘If you can do it,’  Sievi says,  ‘the prize is yours.’ ‘I don’t want your trumpery prizes,’  says il Giavel: ‘I want the soul of the first one to cross the bridge. For that payment, I’ll build it in a night. Tomorrow morning, if you like, you can send a rider to Caschinutta and tell them the road through Ursera to Roma is open...after my price is paid.’”
    Mariarta was watching the scolar . He had an odd narrowed look about his eyes that she couldn’t quite understand.
    “So they sent him out with a cup of red southern wine, and argued it. Some were against dealing with him, but all wanted that road more than anything: so finally they called il Giavel back in and agreed. Off he went smiling. Off the town counselors went, then, each to his own hearth in a hurry: Sievi di Planta went straight to Sontg Kolumban’s church to talk to Bab Ladagar, who was a Capuchin monk before he settled in Ursera. Some who were in on the secret thought that Sievi was afraid for his own soul. But others remembered that Capuchins know how to do more than eat bread, and not all the things priests know are written in the mass-book. All that night, the bells at Sontg Kolumban’s rang through the thunder, for an awful storm came up, and the Reuss rose in its banks and thrashed around like a bull-calf having the nose-ring put in. And toward morning the storm died, and the day came up clear. All the Ursera counselors but Sievi met in the town street, too afraid to go down to the gorge: but Bab Ladagar came  to them. They went along then, half out of shame, half because they thought all their souls had a better chance with the priest along. Then they met Sievi, and went with him all in a huddle to where the road ran closest to the gorge.
    “And there it was, a plain arch, but one that seemed to have grown straight out of the stone of the nearer cliff of the gorge, right to the farther one. No pier in the water, just the simple arch of it, very beautiful, and uncanny. And there at the far end of it, picking his teeth and enjoying the sunshine, sits the man with the green feather in his hat.
    “‘And have you brought my price?’  says he. ‘Yes,’  says Sievi: ‘here it is!’  And the crowd of them opens up, and with a big kick from Sievi, out jumps the worst goat of his herd, the crazy one that everyone had been calling