OUR ROLLO TO THE RESCUE
And this was the manner of his going. He sought the Sergeant upon his
balcony, outside which climbed and writhed a great old vine-stem as
thick as a man's leg. He was for taking Killiecrankie by his side,
against the Sergeant's advice.
"Killiecrankie and I," he urged, with the buckle in his hand, "have been
in many frays together, and I have never known him fail me yet."
"A sword like a weaver's beam is monstrously unhandy dangling between
the legs!" replied the Sergeant, "and that you will find before you are
at the foot of yonder vine-stock. Take a pair of pistols and a good
Albacete leech. That is my advice. I think I heard El Sarria say that
you had some skill of knife-play in the Andalusian manner."
"So, so," returned Rollo, modestly. "I should not like to face you--your
left hand to my right. But with most other men I might make bold to hold
my own."
"Good!" said the Sergeant; "now listen. Let yourself down, hand-grip by
hand-grip, clipping the vine-stem as best you may with your knees to
make the less noise. You will be wholly hidden by the outer leaves. Move
slowly, and remember I am here to keep watch and ward. Then stand a
while in the shadow to recover your breath, and when you hear me
whistle thrice like a swallow's twitter underneath the eaves, duck down
as low as you can and make straight for the thickest of the underbrush
over there. I have watched it for an hour and have seen nothing move.
Yet that signifies less than nothing. There may be a score, aye, or a
hundred gipsies underneath the branches, and the frogs croaking
undisturbed upon the twigs above all the while. Yet it is your only
chance. If you find anything there in shape of man, strike and cry
aloud, both with all your might, and in a moment I will be with you,
even as I was before."
Rollo grasped the Sergeant's hand and thanked him silently as brave men
thank one another at such times.
"Nay," said the Sergeant, "let us wait till we return for that. It is
touch and go at the best. But I will stay here till you are safely among
the bushes. And then--I shall have some certain words to speak to Senor
Don Fernando Munoz, Duke of Rianzares and grandee of Spain, Consort in
ordinary to her Majesty the Queen-Regent!"
Even as he spoke, Rollo, whose ears were acute, turned quickly and
dashed into the ante-chamber. He thought he had heard a footstep behind
them as they talked. And at the name of Munoz a suspicion crossed him
that some further treachery was meditated. But the little upper hall was
vague and empty, the scanty furniture scarce sufficient to stumble
against. If any one had been there, he had melted like a ghost, for
neither Rollo's swift decision nor the Sergeant's omniscient cunning
could discover any trace of an intruder.
Rollo attempted no disguise upon his adventure. He wore the same
travel-stained suit, made to fit his slender figure by one of the most
honest tailors in Madrid, in which he first appeared in this history. So
with no more extent of preparation for his adventure than settling his
sombrero a little more firmly upon his head and hitching his waist-belt
a hole or two tighter, Rollo slipped over the edge of the iron balcony
and began to descend by the great twisted vine-stem.
He did not find the task a difficult one. For he was light and agile,
firmed by continuous exercise, and an adept at the climbing art. As he
had been, indeed, ever since, on the east-windy braes of Fife, where
swarming rookeries crown the great hog-back ridges, he had risen
painfully through the clamour of anxious parents to possess himself of a
hatful of speckled bluish-green eggs for the collection wherewith he was
to win the tricksome and skittish heart of Mistress Peggy Ramsay, who
(tell it not in the ducal house which her charms now adorn!) was herself
no inexpert tree-climber in the days when Rollo Blair temporarily broke
his boyish heart for her sake.
So in brief (and without a thought of Peggy) Rollo found himself upon
the ground, his dress a little disordered and his hands somewhat
scratched, but safe behind his screen of leaves. Remembering the advice
of the Sergeant, Rollo waited for the appointed signal to fall upon his
ear from above. He could see nothing indeed across the lawn but the
branches of the pine trees waving low, and beneath them feathery syringa
bushes, upland fern, and evergreens with leathery leaves.
What might be hidden there? In another moment he might rush upon the
points of a hundred knives. Another minute, and, like the good Messire
Francois, cure of Meudon, it might be his to set forth in quest of the
Great Perhaps.
At the thought he shrugged his shoulders and repeated to himself those
other last words of the same learned doctor of Montpellier, "Ring down
the curtain--the farce is over!"
But at that same moment he thought of little Concha up aloft and the
bitterness died out of his heart as quickly as it had come.
No, the play was not yet played out, and it had been no farce. There was
yet other work for him--perhaps another life better than this
cut-and-thrust existence, ever at the mercy of bullet and sword's point.
He stood up straight and listened, hearing for the first five minutes
nothing but the soft wind of the night among the leaves, and from the
town the barking of the errant and homeless curs which, in the streets
and gutters, yelped, scrambled, and tore at each other for scraps of
offal and thrice-gnawed bone.
From above came the contented twitter of a swallow nestling under the
leaves, yet with a curious carrying quality in it too, at once low and
far-reaching. It was the Sergeant's signal for his attempt.
Rollo set his teeth hard, thought of Concha, bent his head low, and,
like a swift-drifting shadow, sped silently across the smooth upland
turf. The thick leaves of the laurel parted before him, the sword-flower
of Spain pricked him with its pointed leaves, and then closed like a
spiked barrier behind him. A blackbird fled noisily to quieter haunts.
The frogs ceased their croaking. Panting, Rollo lay still under the
branches, crushing out the perfume of the scrubby, scented geranium,
which in the watered wildernesses of La Granja takes root everywhere.
But among the leaves nothing moved hand or foot against him. Nor gipsy
nor mountaineer stirred in the thicket. So that when Rollo, after
resting a little, explored quietly and patiently the little plantation,
going upon all fours, not a twig of pine crackling under his palms, no
hostile knife sheathed itself between his ribs.
For, as was now clear, the gipsies had not concealed themselves among
the bushes. They had all night before them in which to carry out their
projects. Doubtless (thought the young man) they had gone to possess
themselves of the town. After that the palace would lie at their mercy,
a nut to be cracked at their will.
From the first Rollo was resolved to find the little pavilion of which
La Giralda had spoken. It was in his mind that the girl might, if free
and unharmed, as he hoped, make her way thither. He had indeed only the
most vague and general idea of its locality. The old gipsy had told him
that it was near to the northern margin of the gardens, and that by
following the mountain stream which supplied the great waterfall he
could not fail to come upon it.
But ere he had ventured forth from his hiding-place, he heard again the
swallow's twitter, louder than before, and evidently meant for his ear.
Could it be a natural echo or his own disordered fancy which caused a
whistle exactly similar to reach him from the exact locality he meant to
search?
Rollo moved to that extremity of the thicket from whence the more
regular gardens were visible. He concealed himself behind a pomegranate
tree, and, while he stood and listened, mellow and clear the call came
again from the vicinity of the waterfall.
But Rollo was not of those who turn back. Good-byes are difficult things
to say twice within the same half-hour. No, he had burnt his boats and
would rather go forward into the camp of a thousand gipsies than climb
up the vine-stem and face the Sergeant and Concha with his task undone.
Shame of this kind has often more to do with acts of desperate courage
than certain other qualities more besung by poets.
It was obvious, therefore, that the gipsies were still within the
enclosure of the palace, so Rollo gave up the idea of keeping straight
up the little artificial rivulet, whose falls gleamed wanly before him,
each square and symmetrical as a flag hung out of the window on a still
day.
To the left, however, there were thickets of red geranium, the Prince's
Flower of Old Castilian lore, five or six feet high. Among these Rollo
lost himself, passing through them like a shadow, his head drooped a
little, and his knife ready to his hand.
When he was halfway along the edge of the royal demesne he saw across
the open glade a strange sight, yet one not unwelcome to him.
The palace storehouses had been broken into. Lights moved to and fro
from door to door, and above from window to window. A train of mules and
donkeys stood waiting to be loaded. Thieves' mules they were, without a
single bell or bit jingling anywhere about their accoutrements.
Then Rollo understood in a moment why no further attack had been made
upon the palace. To the ordinary gipsy of the roads and hills--half
smuggler, half brigand, the stores of Estramenian hams, the granaries
full of fine wheat of the Castiles, of maize and rice ready to be loaded
upon their beasts, were more than all possible revenges upon queens and
grandees of Spain.
In losing the daughter of Munoz they had lost both inspiration and
cohesion, and now the natural man craved only booty, and that as
plentifully and as safely as possible. So there in the night torches
were lighted, and barn and byre, storehouse and cellar were ransacked
for those things which are most precious to men gaunt and lantern-jawed
with the hunger of a plague-stricken land.
After this discovery the young Scot moved much more freely and
fearlessly. For it explained what had been puzzling him, how it came
about that so far no sustained or concerted attack had been made upon
the palace.
And this same careless confidence of his, for a reason which will
presently appear, had well-nigh wrecked his plans. All suddenly Rollo
came upon the open door of a little low building, erected something
after the model of a Greek temple. It was undoubtedly the pavilion which
had been mentioned by La Giralda as the place where the goats had been
milked.
Of this Rollo was further assured by the collection of shining silver
utensils which were piled for removal before the door. A light burned
dimly within. It was a dark lantern set on a shelf, among broken
platters and useless crockery. The door was open and its light fell on
half a dozen dusky figures gathered in a knot about some central object
which the young man was not able to see.
Rollo recoiled into the reeds as if a serpent had bitten him. Then
parting the tall tasselled canes carefully, he gazed out upon the
curious scene. A window stood open in the rear of the building, and the
draught blew the flame of the open lantern about, threatening every
moment to extinguish it.
One of the gipsies, observing this, moved to the bracket-shelf to close
the glass bull's-eye of the lantern.
A couple of others looked after him to see what he was about, and
through the gap thus made Rollo saw, with only a shawl thrown over her
white night-gear, the little Queen herself, held fast in a gipsy's bare
and swarthy arms.
"I have told you before," he heard her say in her clear childish treble,
"I know nothing--I will tell nothing. I have nothing to give you, and if
I had a whole world I would not give a _maravedi's_ worth to you. You
are bad men, and I hate you!"
Rollo could not hear what the men said in reply, but presently as one
dusky ruffian bent over the girl, a thin cord in his hand, high and
bitter rose a child's cry of pain.
It went straight to Rollo's heart. He had heard nothing like it since
Peggy Ramsay got a thorn in her foot the day he had wickedly persuaded
her to strip and run barefoot over the meadows of Castle Blair. He
compressed his lips, and moved his knife to see that the haft came
rightly to his hand. Then as calmly as if practising at a mark he
examined his pistols and with the utmost deliberation drew a bead upon
the burly ruffian with the cord. The first pistol cracked, and the man
dropped silently. Instantly there ensued a great commotion within. The
most part of the gipsies rushed to the door, standing for a moment
clear against the lighted interior.
Rollo, all on fire with the idea that the villains had been torturing a
child, fired his second pistol into the thick of them, upon which arose
a sudden sharp shriek and a furious rushing this way and that. The lamp
was blown out or knocked over in the darkness, and Rollo, hesitating not
a moment, snapped back the great Albacetan blade into its catch and
rushed like a charging tiger at the door. Twice on his way was he run
against and almost overturned by fugitives from the pavilion. On each
occasion his opponents' fear of the mysterious fusillade, aided by a
sharp application of the point of the _Albacete_, cleared Rollo's front.
He stumbled over a body prone on the ground, caught his hand on the cold
stone lintel, and in a moment was within.
He said aloud, "Princess Isabel, I am your friend! Trust me! I have come
to deliver you from these wicked people!"
But there was no answer, nor did he discover the little Queen's
hiding-place till an uncontrollable sobbing guided him to the spot.
The child was crouching underneath the polished stove with which in
happier days she had so often played. Rollo took the little maid in his
arms.
"Do not be afraid," he whispered, "I, Rollo Blair, am your friend; I
will either take you to your friends or lay down my life for you. Trust
me!--Do what I tell you and all will be well!"
"Your voice sounds kind, though I cannot see your face," she whispered;
"yes, I will go with you!"
He lifted her up on his left arm, while in his right hand he held the
knife ready to be plunged to the hilt into any breast that withstood
him.
One swift rush and they were without among the reeds.
"I will take you to your mother--I promise it," he said, "but first you
must come through the town with me to the Hermitage of the good friars.
The palace is surrounded with wicked men to-night. We cannot go back
there, but to-morrow I will surely take you to your mother!"
"I do not want to go to my mother," whispered the little Queen, "only
take me to my dear, _dearest_ Dona Susana!"
And then it was that Rollo first realised that he had undertaken
something beyond his power.