SWORDCRAFT
‘Rien n’est plus courageux qu’un cœur patient, rien n’est plus sûr de
soi qu’un ésprit doux.’
THE General set down his glass, and a queer light came into his eyes,
usually so smiling and pleasant.
‘Ah! Then you are right, my friend. Tell us your story as quickly as
possible.’
‘It appears,’ said Concha, ‘that there has been in progress for many
months a plot to assassinate the Queen Regent and to seize the person of
the little Queen, expelling her from Spain, and bringing in, not Don
Carlos, who is a spent firework, but a Republic—a more dangerous
firework, that usually bursts in the hands of those that light it. This
plot has been finally put into shape by a letter—’
He paused, tapped on the table with his bony fingers, and glanced at
Estella.
‘A letter which has been going the round of all the malcontents in the
Peninsula. Each faction-leader, to show that he has read it and agrees
to obey its commands, initials the letter. It has then been returned to
an intermediary, who sends it to the next—never by post, because the post
is watched—always by hand, and usually by the hand of a person innocent
of its contents.’
‘Yes,’ murmured the General absently, and there was a queer little smile
on Estella’s lips.
‘To think,’ cried Concha, with a sudden fire less surprising in Spain
than in England, ‘to think that we have all seen it—have touched it!
Name of a saint! I had it under my hand in the hotel at Algeciras, and I
left it on the table. And now it has been the round, and all the
initials are placed upon it, and it is for to-morrow night.’
‘Where have you learnt this?’ asked the General in a voice that made
Estella look at him. She had never seen him as his enemies had seen him,
and even they confessed that he was always visible enough in action.
Perhaps there was another man behind the personality of this deprecating,
pleasant-spoken little sybarite—a man who only appeared (oh _rara avis_!)
when he was wanted.
‘No matter,’ replied Concha, in a voice as hard and sharp.
‘No; after all, it is of no matter, so long as your information is
reliable.’
‘You may stake your life on that,’ said Concha, and remembered the words
ever after. ‘It has been decided to make this journey from Seville to
Madrid the opportunity of assassinating the Queen Regent.’
‘It will not be the first time they have tried,’ put in the General.
‘No. But this time they will succeed, and it is to be here—to-morrow
night—in Toledo. After the Queen Regent’s death, and in the confusion
that will supervene, the little Queen will disappear, and then upon the
rubbish-heap will spring up the mushrooms as they did in France; and this
rubbish-heap, like the other, will foul the whole air of Europe.’
He shook his head pessimistically till the long, wispy grey hair waved
from side to side, and his left hand, resting on the wrist-bone on the
table, made an indescribable gesture that showed a fœtid air tainted by
darksome growths.
There was a silence in the room broken by no outside sound but the chink
of champed bits as the horses stood in their traces below. Indeed, the
city of Toledo seemed strangely still this evening, and the very air had
a sense of waiting in it. The priest sat and looked at his lifelong
friend, his furrowed face the incarnation of cynical hopelessness. ‘What
is, is worst,’ he seemed to say. His yellow, wise old eyes watched the
quick face with the air of one who, having posed an insoluble problem,
awaits with a sarcastic humour the admission of failure.
General Vincente, who had just finished his wine, wiped his moustache
delicately with his table-napkin. He was thinking—quickly,
systematically, as men learn to think under fire. Perhaps, indeed, he
had the thoughts half matured in his mind—as the greatest general the
world has seen confessed that he ever had—that he was never taken quite
by surprise. Vincente smiled as he thought: a habit he had acquired on
the field, where a staff, and perhaps a whole army, took its cue from his
face and read the turn of fortune there. Then he looked up straight at
Estella, who was watching him.
‘Can you start on a journey, now—in five minutes?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she answered, rising and going towards the door.
‘Have you a white mantilla among your travelling things?’ he asked again.
Estella turned at the doorway and nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said again.
‘Then take it with you, and a cloak, but no heavy luggage.’
Estella closed the door.
‘You can come with us?’ said the General to Concha, half command, half
interrogation.
‘If you wish it.’
‘You may be wanted. I have a plan—a little plan,’ and he gave a short
laugh. ‘It may succeed.’
He went to a side table, where some cold meats still stood, and, taking
up a small chicken daintily with a fork, he folded it in a napkin.
‘It will be Saturday,’ he said simply, ‘before we have reached our
journey’s end, and you will be hungry. Have you a pocket?’
‘Has a priest a pocket?’ asked Concha, with a grim humour, and he slipped
the provisions into the folds of his cassock. He was still eating a
biscuit hurriedly.
‘I believe you have no money?’ said the General suddenly.
‘I have only enough,’ admitted the old man, ‘to take me back to Ronda;
whither, by the way, my duty calls me.’
‘I think not. Your Master can spare you for a while; my mistress cannot
do without you.’
At this moment Estella came back into the room ready for her journey.
The girl had changed of late. Her face had lost a little roundness and
had gained exceedingly in expression. Her eyes, too, were different.
That change had come to them which comes to all women between the ages of
twenty and thirty, quite irrespective of their state. A certain
restlessness, or a quiet content, are what one usually sees in a woman’s
face. Estella’s eyes wore that latter look, which seems to indicate a
knowledge of the meaning of life and a contentment that it should be no
different.
Vincente was writing at the table.
‘We shall want help,’ he said, without looking up. ‘I am sending for a
good man.’
And he smiled as he shook the small sand-castor over the paper.
‘May one ask,’ said Concha, ‘where we are going?’
‘We are going to Ciudad Real, my dear friend, since you are so curious.
But we shall come back—we shall come back.’
He was writing another despatch as he spoke, and at a sign from him
Estella went to the door and clapped her hands, the only method of
summoning a servant in general use at that time in Spain. The call was
answered by an orderly, who stood at attention in the doorway for a full
five minutes while the General wrote further orders in his neat, small
calligraphy. There were half a dozen letters in all—curt military
despatches without preamble and without mercy. For this soldier
conducted military matters in a singularly domestic way, planning his
campaigns by the fireside and bringing about the downfall of an enemy
while sitting in his daughter’s drawing-room. Indeed, Estella’s
blotting-book bore the impress of more than one death warrant or an order
as good as such, written casually on her stationery and with her pen.
‘Will you have the goodness to despatch these at once?’ was the message
taken by the orderly to the General’s aide-de-camp, and the gallopers,
who were always in readiness, smiled as they heard the modest request.
‘It will be pleasant to travel in the cool of the evening, provided that
one guards against a chill,’ said the General, making his final
preparations. ‘I require but a moment to speak to my faithful
aide-de-camp, and then we embark.’
The moon was rising as the carriage rattled across the Bridge of
Alcantara, and Larralde, taking the air between Wamba’s Gate and the
little fort that guards the entrance to the city, recognised the equipage
as it passed him. He saw also the outline of Concha’s figure in the
darkest corner of the carriage, with his back to the horses, his head
bowed in meditation. Estella he saw and recognised, while two mounted
attendants clattering in the rear of the carriage testified by their
presence to the fact that the General had taken the road again.
‘It is well,’ said Larralde to himself. ‘They are all going back to
Ronda, and Julia will be rid of their influence. Ronda will serve as
well as Toledo so far as Vincente is concerned. But I will wait to make
sure that they are not losing sight of him.’
So Señor Larralde, cloaked to the eyebrows, leant gracefully against the
wall, and, like many another upon the bridge after that breathless day,
drank in the cool air that rose from the river. Presently—indeed, before
the sound of the distant wheels was quite lost—two horsemen, cloaked and
provided with such light luggage as the saddle can accommodate, rode
leisurely through the gateway and up the incline that makes a short cut
to the great road running southward to Ciudad Real. Larralde gave a
little nod of self-confidence and satisfaction, as one who, having
conceived and built up a great scheme, is pleased to see each component
part of it act independently, and slip into its place.
The General’s first thought was for Estella’s comfort, and he utilised
the long hill which they had to ascend on leaving the town to make such
arrangements as space would allow for their common ease.
‘You must sleep, my child,’ he said. ‘We cannot hope to reach Ciudad
Real before midday to-morrow, and it is as likely as not that we shall
have but a few hours’ rest there.’
And Estella, who had travelled vast distances over vile roads so long as
her memory went back, who had never known what it is to live in a country
that is at peace, leant back in her corner and closed her eyes. Had she
really been disposed to sleep, however, she could scarcely have done it,
for the General’s solicitude manifested itself by a hundred little
devices for her greater repose. For her comfort he made Concha move.
‘An old traveller like you must shift for yourself,’ he said gaily.
‘No need to seek shelter for an old ox,’ replied Concha, moving into the
other corner, where he carefully unfolded his pocket-handkerchief and
laid it over his face, where his long nose, protruding, caused it to fall
into fantastic folds. He clasped his hands upon his hat, which lay on
his knee, and, leaning back, presently began to snore gently and
regularly—a peaceful, sleep-inducing sound, and an excellent example.
The General, whose sword seemed to take up half the carriage, still
watched Estella, and if the air made her mantilla flutter, drew up the
window with the solicitude of a lover and a maternal noiselessness.
Then, with one hand on hers, and the other grasping his sword, he leant
back, but did not close his eyes.
Thus they travelled on through the luminous night. The roads were
neither worse nor better than they are to-day in Spain—than they were in
England in the Middle Ages—and their way lay over the hill ranges that
lie between the watersheds of the Tagus and the Guadiana. At times they
passed through well-tended valleys, where corn and olives and vines
seemed to grow on the same soil, but for the greater part of the night
they ascended and descended the upper slopes, where herds of goats, half
awakened as they slept in a ring about their guardian, looked at them
with startled eyes. The shepherds and goatherds, who, like those of old,
lay cloaked upon the ground, and tended their flocks by night, did not
trouble to raise their heads.
Concha alone slept, for the General had a thousand thoughts that kept him
awake and bright-eyed, while Estella knew from her father’s manner and
restlessness that these were no small events that now stirred Spain, and
seemed to close men’s mouths, so that near friends distrusted one
another, and brother was divided against brother. Indeed, others were on
the road that night, and horsemen passed the heavy carriage from time to
time.
In the early morning a change of horses was effected at a large inn near
the summit of a pass above Malagon, and here an orderly, who seemed to
recognise the General, was climbing into the saddle as the Vincentes
quitted their carriage and passed into the common room of the venta for a
hasty cup of coffee.
‘It is the Queen’s courier,’ said the innkeeper grandly, ‘who takes the
road before her Majesty in order to secure horses.’
‘Ah,’ said the General, breaking his bread and dropping it into his cup.
‘Is that so? The Queen Regent, you mean?’
‘Queen or Queen Regent, she requires four horses this evening,
Excellency—that is all my concern.’
‘True, my friend; true. That is well said. And the horses will be
forthcoming, no doubt.’
‘They will be forthcoming,’ said the man. ‘And the Excellency’s carriage
is ready.’
In the early morning light they drove on, now descending towards the
great valley of the Guadiana, and at midday, as Vincente had foreseen,
gained a sight of the ancient city of Ciudad Real lying amid trees below
them. Ciudad Real is less interesting than its name, and there is little
that is royal about its dirty streets and ill-kept houses. No one gave
great heed to the travelling-carriage, for this is a great centre where
travellers journeying east or west, north or south, must needs pause for
a change of horses. At the inn there were vacant rooms, and that hasty
welcome accorded to the traveller at wayside houses where none stay
longer than they can help.
‘No,’ said the landlord, in answer to the General’s query. ‘We are not
busy, though we expect a lady who will pass the hour of the siesta here
and then proceed northward.’