DEEP ROMANY
The news which Sergeant Cardono had to communicate was indeed fitted to
shake the strongest nerves. If true, it took away from Rollo at once all
hope of the success of his mission. He saw himself returning disgraced
and impotent to the camp of Cabrera, either to be shot out of hand, or
worse still, to be sent over the frontier as something too useless and
feeble to be further employed.
Briefly, the boy's news as repeated by La Giralda to the Sergeant,
informed Rollo that though the court was presently at La Granja and many
courtiers in the village of San Ildefonso, the royal guards through fear
and hunger had mutinied and marched back to Madrid, and that the gipsies
were gathering among the mountains in order to make a night attack upon
the stranded and forsaken court of Spain.
In the sergeant's opinion not a moment was to be lost. The object of the
hill Gitanos was pure plunder, but they would think nothing of
bloodshed, and would doubtless give the whole palace and town over to
rapine and pillage. Themselves desperate with hunger and isolation, they
had resolved to strike a blow which would ring from one end of Spain to
the other.
It was their intention (so the imp said) to kill the Queen-Regent and
her daughter, to slaughter the ministers and courtiers in attendance, to
plunder the palace from top to bottom and to give all within the
neighbouring town of San Ildefonso to the sword.
The programme, as thus baldly announced, was indeed one to strike all
men with horror, even those who had been hardened by years of
fratricidal warfare in which quarter was neither given nor expected.
Besides the plunder of the palace and its occupants, the leaders of the
gipsies expected that they would obtain great rewards from Don Carlos
for thus removing the only obstacles to his undisputed possession of the
throne of Spain.
The heart of Rollo beat violently. His Scottish birth and training gave
him a natural reverence for the sanctity of sickness and death, and the
idea of these men plotting ghoulishly to utilise "the onlaying of the
hand of Providence" (as his father would have phrased it) for the
purposes of plunder and rapine, unspeakably revolted him.
Immediately he called a council of war, at which, in spite of the frowns
of Sergeant Cardono, little Concha Cabezos had her place.
La Giralda was summoned also, but excused herself saying, "It is better
that I should not know what you intend to do. I am, after all, a
black-blooded Gitana, and might be tempted to reveal your secrets if I
knew them. It is better therefore that I should not. Let me keep my own
place as a servitor in your company, to cut the brushwood for your fire
and to bring the water from the spring. In those things you will find me
faithful. Trust the gipsy no further!"
Rollo, remembering her loyalty in the matter of Dolores at the village
of El Sarria, was about to make an objection, but a significant gesture
from the Sergeant restrained him in time.
Whereupon Rollo addressed himself to the others, setting clearly before
them the gravity of the situation.
John Mortimer shook his head gravely. He could not approve.
"How often has my father told me that the first loss is the least! This
all comes of trying to make up my disappointment about the Abbot's
Priorato!"
Etienne shrugged his shoulders and philosophically quoted a Gascon
proverb to the effect that who buys the flock must take the black sheep
also.
El Sarria simply recollected that his gun and pistols were in good
order, and waited for orders.
The conference therefore resolved itself into a trio of
consultants--Rollo because he was the leader, Sergeant Cardono because
he knew the country, and Concha--because she was Concha!
They were within an hour or two's rapid march of La Granja over a pass
in the Guadarrama. The sergeant volunteered to lead them down into the
gardens in that time. He knew a path often travelled by smugglers on
their way to Segovia.
"It is clear that if we are to carry away the Queen-Regent and her
daughter, we must forestall the gipsies," said Rollo.
Concha clasped her hands pitifully.
"Ah, the poor young Queen!" she cried. "Praise to the saints that I was
not born a princess! It goes to my heart to make her a prisoner!"
The Sergeant uttered a guttural grunt which intimated that in his
opinion the influence of the petticoat on the career of a soldier might
be over-done. Otherwise he maintained his gravity, speaking only when he
was directly appealed to and giving his judgment with due submission to
his superiors.
Finally it was judged that they should make a night march over the
mountains, find some suitable place to lie up in during the day, and in
the morning send in La Giralda and the Sergeant to San Ildefonso in the
guise of fagot sellers to find out if the gipsy boy of Baza had spoken
the truth.
* * * * *
San Ildefonso and La Granja are two of the most strangely situated
places in Spain. A high and generally snow-clad Sierra divides them from
Madrid and the south. The palace is one of the most high-lying upon
earth, having originally been one of the mountain granges of the monks
of Segovia to which a king of Spain took a fancy, and, what is more
remarkable, for which he was willing to pay good money.
Upon the site a palace has been erected, a miniature Versailles,
infinitely more charming than the original, with walks, fountains,
waterfalls all fed by the cold snow water of the Guadarrama, and fanned
by the pure airs of the mountains. This Grange has been for centuries a
favourite resort of the Court of Spain, and specially during these last
years of the Regent Cristina, who, when tired with the precision and
etiquette of the Court of Madrid, retired hither that she might do as
she pleased for at least two or three months of the year.
Generally the great park-gates stood hospitably open, and the little
town of San Ildefonso, with its lodgings and hostels, was at this season
crowded with courtiers and hangers-on of the court. Guards circulated
here and there, or clattered after the Queen-Regent as she drove out on
the magnificent King's highway which stretched upwards over the
Guadarrama towards Madrid, or whirled down towards Segovia and the
plains of Old Castile. Bugles were never long silent in _plaza_ or
barrack yard. Drums beat, fifes shrilled, and there was a continuous
trampling of horses as this ambassador or that was escorted to the
presence of Queen Cristina, widow of Fernando VII., mother of Isabel the
Second, and Regent of Spain.
A word of historical introduction is here necessary, and it shall be but
a word. For nearly a quarter of a century Fernando, since he had been
restored to a forfeited throne by British bayonets, had acted on the
ancient Bourbon principle of learning nothing and forgetting nothing.
His tyrannies became ever more tyrannical, his exactions more shameless,
his indolent arrogance more oppressive. Twice he had to invoke the aid
of foreign troops, and once indeed a French army marched from one end of
Spain to the other.
But with the coming of his third wife, young Maria Cristina of Naples,
all this was changed. Under her influence Fernando promptly became meek
and uxorious. Then he revoked the ordinance of a former King which
ordained that no woman should reign in Spain. He recalled his
revocation, and again promulgated it according as his hope of offspring
waxed or waned.
Finally a daughter was born to the ill-mated pair, and Don Carlos, the
King's brother and former heir-apparent, left the country. Immediately
upon the King's death civil war divided the state. The stricter
legitimists who stood for Don Carlos included the church generally and
the religious orders. To these were joined the northern parts of Navarra
and the Basque countries whose privileges had been threatened, together
with large districts of the ever-turbulent provinces of Aragon and
Catalunia.
Round the Queen-Regent and her little daughter collected all the liberal
opinion of the peninsula, most of the foreign sympathy, the influence of
the great towns and sea-ports, of the capital and the government
officials, the regular army and police with their officers--indeed all
the organised and stated machinery of government.
But up to the time of our history these advantages had been to some
extent neutralised by the ill-success of the governmental generalship
and by the brilliant successes of two great Carlist leaders--Tomas
Zumalacarregui and Ramon Cabrera.
These men perfectly understood the conditions of warfare among their
native mountains, and had inflicted defeat upon defeat on every Cristino
general sent against them.
But a cloud had of late overspread the fair prospects of the party.
Their great general, Tomas Zumalacarregui, had been killed by a cannon
ball at the siege of Bilbao, and Cabrera, though unsurpassed as a
guerrilla leader, had not the swift Napoleonic judgment and breadth of
view of his predecessor. Add to this that a new premier, Mendizabal, and
a new general, Espartero, were directing operations from Madrid. The
former, already half English, had begun to carry out his great scheme of
filling the pockets of the civil and military authorities by conveying
to the government all the property belonging to the religious orders
throughout Spain, who, like our friend the Abbot of Montblanch, had
resolutely and universally espoused the cause of Don Carlos.
It was an early rumour of this intention which had so stirred the
resentment of Don Baltasar Varela, and caused him to look about for some
instrument of vengeance to prevent the accomplishment of the designs of
"that _burro_ of the English Stock Exchange," as his enemies freely
named Mendizabal.
But Cristina of Naples was a typical woman of the Latin races, and,
however strongly she might be determined to establish her daughter on
the throne of Spain, she was also a good Catholic, and any oppression of
Holy Church was abhorrent to her nature.
Upon this probability, which amounted to certainty in his mind, the
Abbot of Montblanch resolved to proceed.
Moreover, it was an open secret that a few months after the death of her
husband Fernando, Cristina had married Munoz, one of the handsomest
officers of her bodyguard. For this and other Bourbon delinquencies,
conceived in the good old Neapolitan manner, the Spaniards generally had
the greatest respect--not even being scandalized when the Queen created
her new partner Duke of Rianzares, or when, in her _role_ of honorary
colonel of dragoons, she appeared in a uniform of blue and white,
because these were the colours of the "Immaculate Conception."
But enough has been said to indicate the nature of the adventure which
our hero had before him, when after a toilsome march the party halted in
the grey of the dawn in a tiny dell among the wild mountains of
Guadarrama.
The air was still bleak and cold, though luckily there was no wind.
Concha, the child of the south, shivered a little as Rollo aided her to
dismount, and this must be the young man's excuse for taking his blue
military cloak from its coil across his saddle-bow, and wrapping it
carefully and tenderly about her.
Concha raised her eyes once to his as he fastened its chain-catch
beneath her chin, and Rollo, though the starlight dimmed the brilliance
of the glance, felt more than repaid. In the background Etienne smiled
bitterly. The damsel of the green lattice being now left far behind at
Sarria, he would have had no scruples about returning to his allegiance
to Concha. But the chill indifference with which his advances were
received, joined to something softer and more appealing in her eyes when
she looked at Rollo, warned the much-experienced youth that he had
better for the future confine his gallantries to the most common and
ordinary offices of courtesy.
Yet it was certainly a restraint upon the young Frenchman, who, almost
from the day he had been rid of his Jesuit tutor, had made it a maxim to
make love to the prettiest girl of any company in which he happened to
find himself.
When, therefore, he found himself reduced to a choice between an
inaccessible Concha and La Giralda, riding astride in her leathern
leg-gear and sack-like smock, the youth bethought himself of his
religious duties which he had latterly somewhat neglected; and, being
debarred from earthly love by Concha's insensibility and La Giralda's
ineligibility, it did not cost him a great effort to become for the
nonce the same Brother Hilario who had left the monastery of Montblanch.
So, much to the astonishment of John Mortimer, who moved a little
farther from him, as being a kind of second cousin of the scarlet woman
of the Seven Hills, Etienne pulled out his rosary and, falling on his
knees, betook him to his prayers with vigour and a single mind.
Sergeant Cardono had long ago abandoned all distinctive marks of his
Carlist partisanship and military rank. Moreover, he had acquired, in
some unexplained way, a leathern Montera cap, a short many-buttoned
jacket, a flapped waistcoat of red plush, and leathern small-clothes of
the same sort as those worn by La Giralda. Yet withal there remained
something very remarkable about him. His great height, his angular
build, the grim humour of his mouth, the beady blackness of eyes which
twinkled with a fleck of fire in each, as a star might be reflected in a
deep well on a moonless night--these all gave him a certain distinction
in a country of brick-dusty men of solemn exterior and rare speech.
Also there was something indescribably daring about the man, his air and
carriage. There was the swagger as of a famous _matador_ about the way
he carried himself. He gave a cock to his plain countryman's cap which
betokened one of a race at once quicker and more gay--more passionate
and more dangerous than the grave and dignified inhabitants of Old
Castile through whose country they were presently journeying.
As Cardono and La Giralda departed out of the camp, the Sergeant driving
before him a donkey which he had picked up the night before wandering by
the wayside, El Sarria looked after them with a sardonic smile which
slowly melted from his face, leaving only the giant's usual placid good
nature apparent on the surface. The mere knowledge that Dolores was
alive and true to him seemed to have changed the hunted and desperate
outlaw almost beyond recognition.
"Why do you smile, El Sarria?" said Concha, who stood near by, as the
outlaw slowly rolled and lighted a _cigarrillo_. "You do not love this
Sergeant. You do not think he is a man to be trusted?"
El Sarria shrugged his shoulders, and slowly exhaled the first long
breathing of smoke through his nostrils.
"Nay," he said deliberately, "I have been both judged and misjudged
myself, and it would ill become me in like manner to judge others. But
if that man is not of your country and my trade, Ramon Garcia has lived
in vain. That is all."
Concha nodded a little uncertainly.
"Yes," she said slowly, "yes--of my country. I believe you. He has the
Andalucian manner of wearing his clothes. If he were a girl he would
know how to tie a ribbon irregularly and how to place a bow-knot a
little to the side in the right place--things which only Andalucians
know. But what in the world do you mean by 'of your profession'?"
El Sarria smoked a while in silence, inhaling the blue cigarette smoke
luxuriously, and causing it to issue from his nostrils white and
moisture-laden with his breath. Then he spoke.
"I mean of my late profession," he explained, smiling on Concha; "it
will not do for a man on the high-road to a commission to commit himself
to the statement that he has practised as a bandit, or stopped a coach
on the highway in the name of King Carlos Quinto that he might examine
more at his ease the governmental mail bags. But our Sergeant--well, I
am man-sworn and without honour if he hath not many a time taken
blackmail without any such excuse!"
Concha seemed to be considering deeply. Her pretty mouth was pursed up
like a ripe strawberry, and her brows were knitted so fiercely that a
deep line divided the delicately arched eyebrows.
"And to this I can add somewhat," she began presently; "they say (I know
not with what truth) that I have some left-handed gipsy blood in me--and
if that man be not a Gitano--why, then I have never seen one. Besides,
he speaks with La Giralda in a tongue which neither I nor Don Rollo
understand."
"But I thought," said El Sarria, astonished for the first time, "that
both you and Don Rollo understood the crabbed gipsy tongue! Have I not
heard you speak it together?"
"As it is commonly spoken--yes," she replied, "we have talked many a
time for sport. But this which is spoken by the Sergeant and La Giralda
is deep Romany, the like of which not half a dozen in Spain understand.
It is the old-world speech of the Rom, before it became contaminated by
the jargon of fairs and the slang of the travelling horse-clipper."
"Then," said El Sarria, slowly, "it comes to this--'tis you and not I
who mistrust these two?"
"No, that I do not," cried Concha, emphatically; "I have tried La
Giralda for many years and at all times found her faithful, so that her
bread be well buttered and a draught of good wine placed alongside it.
But the Sergeant is a strong man and a secret man----"
"Well worth the watching, then?" said El Sarria, looking her full in the
face.
Concha nodded.
"Carlist or no, he works for his own hand," she said simply.
"Shall ye mention the matter to Don Rollo?" asked El Sarria.
"Nay--what good?" said Concha, quickly; "Don Rollo is brave as a bull of
Jaen, but as rash. You and I will keep our eyes open and say nothing.
Perhaps--perhaps we may have doubted the man somewhat over-hastily. But
as for me, I will answer for La Giralda."
"For me," said El Sarria, sententiously, "I will answer for no
woman--save only Dolores Garcia!"
Concha looked up quickly.
"I also am a woman," she said, smiling.
"And quite well able to answer for yourself, Senorita!" returned El
Sarria, grimly.
For the answers of Ramon Garcia were not at all after the pattern set by
Rollo the Scot.