CHAPTER XXV
THE MISSION OF THE SENORITA CONCHA
"I too have a mission, I would have you know," said Concha, a dangerouscoquetry showing through her grave demeanour, "a secret mission from theMother Superior of the Convent of the Holy Innocents. Do not attempt topenetrate the secret. I assure you it will be quite useless. And pray donot suppose that only you can adventure forth on perilous quests!"
"I assure you," began Rollo, eagerly, "that I suppose no such thing. Atthe moment when you came up I was wishing with all my heart that theresponsibility of the present undertaking had been laid on any othershoulders than mine!"
Yet in spite of his modesty, certain it is that from that moment Rollorode no longer with his head hanging down like a willow blown by thewind. The reins lay no more lax and abandoned on his horse's neck. Onthe contrary, he sat erect and looked abroad with the air of acommander, and his hand rested oftener on the hilt of Killiecrankie,with the air of pride which Concha privately thought most becoming.
"And in what case left you my wife and babe?" suddenly demanded ElSarria, riding up, and inquiring somewhat imperiously of the newrecruit concerning the matter which touched him most nearly.
"The Senora Dolores is safe with the good sisters, and as in formertimes I was known to have been her companion, it was judged safest thatI should not longer be seen in the neighbourhood. Likewise I was chargedwith the tidings that Luis Fernandez with a company of CristinoMigueletes has been seen riding southward to cut you off from Madrid,whither it is supposed you are bound!"
Rollo turned quickly upon her with some anger in his eye.
"Why did you not tell me that at first?" he said.
Concha smiled a subtle smile and turned her eyes upon the ground.
"If you will remember, I had other matters to communicate to yourExcellency," she said meekly--almost too meekly, Rollo thought. "Thismatter of Luis Fernandez slipped my memory, till it was my good fortuneto be reminded of it by Don Ramon!"
And all the while the long lean Sergeant Cardono, his elbows glued tohis sides, sat his horse as if spiked to the saddle, and chuckled withquiet glee at the scene.
"He will do yet," he muttered; "'twas ever thus that my father told meof the Gran' Lor' before Salamanca. Be he as stiff as a ramrod and asfrigid as his own North Pole, the little one will thaw him--bendhim--make a fool of him for his soul's good. She is not an Andaluse ofthe gipsy blood for nothing! He will make him a soldier yet, this youngman, by the especial grace of San Vicente de Paul, only I do not thinkthat either of them will deserve readmission to the Convent of the HolyInnocents!"
More than once Rollo endeavoured to extract from Concha to what placeher self-assumed mission was taking her, and at what point she wouldleave them. It was in vain. The lady baffled all his endeavours with themost consummate ease.
"You have not communicated to me," she said, "the purport of your ownadventures. How then can I tell at what place our ways divide?"
"I am forbidden to reveal to any save General Cabrera alone my secretinstructions!" said Rollo, with such dignity as he could muster at shortnotice.
"And I," retorted Concha, "am as strictly forbidden to reveal mine toGeneral Cabrera or even to that notable young officer, Colonel Don Rolloof the surname which resembles so much a _borrico's_ serenade!"
That speech would have been undoubtedly rude save for the glance whichaccompanied it, given softly yet daringly from beneath a jetty fringe ofeyelash.
Nevertheless all Rollo Blair's pride of ancestry rose insurgent withinhim. Who was this Andalucian waiting-maid that she should speak lightlyof the descendant of that Blair of Blair Castle who had stood for Bruceand freedom on the field of Bannockburn? It was unbearable--and yet,well, there was something uncommon about this girl. And after all, wasit not the mark of a gentleman to pay no heed to the babbling of women'stongues? If they did not say one thing, they would another. Besides, hecared nothing what this girl might say. A parrot prattling in a cagewould affect him as much.
So they rode on together over the great tawny brick-dusty wastes of OldCastile, silent mostly, but the silence occasionally broken by speech,friendly enough on either side. Behind them pounded La Giralda, gaunt asthe sergeant himself, leather-legginged, booted and spurred, watchingthem keenly out of her ancient, unfathomable gipsy eyes.
And ever as they rode the Guadarrama mountains rose higher and whiterout of the vast and hideous plain, the only interruption to the circlinghorizon of brown and parched corn lands. But at this season scrub-oakand juniper were the only shrubs to be seen, and had there been aCristino outpost anywhere within miles, the party must have beendiscerned riding steadily towards the northern slopes of the mountains.But neither man nor beast took notice of them, and a certain largeuncanny silence brooded over the plain.
At one point, indeed, they passed near enough to distinguish in the farnorth the snow-flecked buttresses of the Sierra de Moncayo. But these,they knew, were the haunts of their Carlist allies. The towns andvillages of the plain, however, were invariably held by Nationals, andit had often gone hard with them, had not Sergeant Cardono detachedhimself from the cavalcade, and, venturing alone into the midst of theenemy, by methods of his own produced the materials for many anexcellent meal. At last, one day the Sergeant came back to the partywith an added gloom on his long, lean, leathern-textured face. He hadbrought with him an Estramaduran ham, a loaf of wheaten bread, and adouble string of sausages. But upon his descending into the temporarycamp which sheltered the party in the bottom of a _barranco_, or deepcrack in the parched plateau overgrown with scented thyme and dwarfoak, it became obvious that he had news of the most serious import tocommunicate.
He called Rollo aside, and told him how he had made his way into avillage, as was his custom, and found all quiet--the shops open, butnone to attend to them, the customs superintendent in his den by thegate, seated on his easy chair, but dead--the presbytery empty of thepriest, the river bank dotted with its array of worn scrubbing boards,but not a washerwoman to be seen. Only a lame lad, furtively plundering,had leaped backward upon his crutch with a swift drawing of his knifeand a wolfish gleam of teeth. He had first of all warned the Sergeant tokeep off at his peril, but had afterwards changed his tone and confessedto him that the plague was abroad in the valley of the Duero, and thathe was the only being left alive in the village save the vulture and theprowling dog.
"The plague!" Sergeant Cardono had gasped, like every Spaniard strickensick at the very sound of the word.
"Yes, and I own everything in the village," asserted the imp. "If youwant anything here you must pay me for it!"
The Sergeant found it even as the cripple had said. There was not asingle living inhabitant in the village. Here and there a shut door anda sickening smell betrayed the fact that some unfortunates had been leftto die untended. Etienne and John Mortimer were for different reasonsunwilling to taste of the ham and bread he had brought back, thinkingthat these might convey the contagion, but La Giralda and the Sergeantlaughed their fears to scorn, and together retired to prepare theevening meal.
As the others made their preparations for the night, watering theirbeasts and grooming them with the utmost care, the little crook-backedimp from the village appeared on the brink of the _barranco_, hissallow, weazened face peeping suspiciously out of the underbrush, andhis crutch performing the most curious evolutions in the air.
There was something unspeakably eerie in the aspect of the solitarysurvivor of so many living people, left behind to prey like a ghoul onthe abandoned possessions of the fear-stricken living and theuntestamented property of the dead.
Concha shrank instinctively from his approach, and the boy, perceivinghis power over her, came scuttling like a weasel through the brushwood,till little more than a couple of paces interposed between him and thegirl. Frozen stiff with loathing and terror, it was not for some timethat Concha could cry out and look round hastily for Rollo, who(doubtless in his capacity of leader of the expedition) was not slow inhasteni
ng to her assistance.
"That boy--there!" she gasped, "he frightens me--oh hateful! make him goaway!" And she clutched the young man's arm with such a quick nervousgrasp, that a crimson flush rose quickly to Rollo's cheek.
"No," muttered Etienne to himself as he watched the performancecritically, "she was never in love with you, sir! She never did as muchfor you as that. But on the whole, with a temper like Mistress Concha's,I think you are well out of it, Monsieur Etienne!" Which wise dictummight or might not be based on the fox's opinion as to sour grapes.
All unconsciously Rollo reached a protecting hand across to the littlewhite fingers which gripped his arm so tightly.
"Go away, boy," he commanded; "do you not see that you terrify theSenorita?"
"I see--that is why I stay!" cried the amiable youth gleefully,flourishing his crutch about his head as if on the point of launching itat the party.
Rollo laid his hand on the hilt of Killiecrankie with a threateninggesture.
"If you come an inch nearer, I will give you plague!" cried the boy,showing his teeth wickedly, "and your wench also. You will growblack--yes, and swell! Then you will die, both of you. And there will beno one to bury you, like those in the houses back there. Then all youpossess shall be mine, ha, ha!"
And he laughed and danced till a fit of coughing came upon him so thathe actually crowed in a kind of fiendish exaltation. But Rollo Blair wasnot a man to be jested with, either by devil or devil's imp. He drew apistol from his belt, looked carefully to the priming, and with thegreatest coolness in the world pointed it at the misshapen brat.
"Now listen," he said, "you are old enough to know the meaning of words;I give you one minute to betake yourself to your own place and leave usalone! There is no contagion in a pistol bullet, my fine lad, but it isquite as deadly as any plague. So be off before a charge of powdercatches you up!"
The sound of the angry voices had attracted La Giralda, who, looking uphastily from her task of building the fire beneath the gipsy tripod atwhich she and the Sergeant were cooking, advanced hastily with a longwand in her hand.
The imp wheeled about as on a pivot, and positively appeared to shrinkinto his clothing at the sight of her. He stood motionless, however,while La Giralda advanced threateningly towards him with the wand in herhand as if for the purpose of castigation. As she approached he emitteda cry of purely animal terror, and hastily whipping his crutch under hisarm, betook himself, in a series of long hops, to a spot twenty yardshigher up the bank. But La Giralda stopped him by a word or two spokenin an unknown tongue, harsh-sounding as Catalan, but curt and brief as amilitary order.
The boy stood still and answered in the same speech, at first grufflyand unwillingly, with downcast looks and his bare great toe scrabblingin the dust of the hillside.
The dialogue lasted for some time, till at last with a scornful gestureLa Giralda released him, pointing to the upper edge of the _barranco_ asthe place by which he was to disappear: the which he was now as eager todo, as he had formerly been insolently determined to remain.
During this interview Rollo had stood absent-mindedly with his handpressed on Concha's, as he listened to the strange speech of La Giralda.Even his acquaintance with the language of the gipsies of Granada hadonly enabled him to understand a word here and there. The girl's colourslowly returned, but the fear of the plague still ran like ice in herveins. She who feared nothing else on earth, was shaken as with a palsyby the terror of the Black Death, so paralysing was the fear that thevery name of cholera laid upon insanitary Spain.
"Well?" said Rollo, turning to La Giralda, who stood considering withher eyes upon the ground, after her interview with the crook-backeddwarf.
"You must give me time to think," she said; "this boy is one of ourpeople--a Gitano of Baza. He is not of this place, and he tells mestrange things. He swears that the Queen and the court are plague-stayedat La Granja by fear of the cholera. They dare not return to Madrid.They cannot supply themselves with victuals where they are. The veryguards forsake them. And the Gitanos of the hills--but I have no rightto tell that to the foreigner--the Gorgio. For am not I also a Gitana?"
* * * * *
The village where Rollo's command first stumbled upon this dreadful factwas called Frias, in the district of La Perla, and lies upon the easternspurs of the Guadarrama. It was, therefore, likely enough then that theboy spoke truth, and that within a few miles of them the Court of Spainwas enduring privations in its aerial palace of La Granja.
But even when interrogated by El Sarria the old woman remainedobstinately silent as to the news concerning her kinsfolk which she hadheard from the crippled dwarf.
"It has nothing to do with you," she repeated; "it is a matter of theGitanos!"
But there came up from the bottom of the ravine, the lantern-jawedSergeant, long, silent, lean, parched as a Manchegan cow whose pasturehas been burnt up by a summer sun. With one beckoning finger he summonedLa Giralda apart, and she obeyed him as readily as the boy had obeyedher. They communed a long time together, the old gipsy speaking, thecoffee-coloured Sergeant listening with his head a little to the side.
At the end of the colloquy Sergeant Cardono went directly up to Rolloand saluted.
"Is it permitted for me to speak a word to your Excellency concerningthe objects of the expedition?" he said, with his usual deference.
"Certainly!" answered Rollo; "for me, my mission is a secret one, but Ihave no instructions against listening."
The Sergeant bowed his head.
"Whatever be our mission you will find me do my duty," he said; "andsince this cursed plague may interfere with all your plans, it is wellthat you should know what has befallen and what is designed. You willpardon me for saying that it takes no great prophet to discover that ourpurposes have to do with the movements of the court."
Rollo glanced at him keenly.
"Did General Cabrera reveal anything to you before your departure?" heasked.
"Nay," said Sergeant Cardono; "but when I am required to guide a partysecretly to San Ildefonso, where the court of the Queen-Regent issojourning, it does not require great penetration to see the generalnature of the service upon which I am engaged!"
Rollo recovered himself.
"You have not yet told me what you have discovered," he said,expectantly.
"No," replied the Sergeant with great composure--"that can wait."
For little Concha was approaching; and though he had limitlessexpectations of the good influence of that young lady upon the militarycareer of his officer, he did not judge it prudent to communicateintelligence of moment in her presence. Wherein for once he was wrong,since that pretty head of the Andalucian beauty, for all its clusteringcurls, was full of the wisest and most far-seeing counsel--indeed, moreto be trusted in a pinch than the _juntas_ of half-a-dozen provinces.
But the Sergeant considered that when a girl was pretty and aware of it,she had fulfilled her destiny--save as it might be in the making ofmilitary geniuses. Therefore he remained silent as the grave so long asConcha stayed. Observing this, the girl asked a simple question and thenmoved off a little scornfully, only remarking to herself: "As if I couldnot make him tell me whenever I get him by himself!"
She referred (it is needless to state) not to Sergeant Cardono, but tohis commanding officer, Senor Don Rollo Blair of Blair Castle in theself-sufficient shire of Fife.