Sir Mortimer Part 6

Thus it was that, having, like all English adventurers upon Spanish seas, to trust to strange guides, the _Mere Honour_, the _Cygnet_, the _Marigold_, and the _Phoenix_ shaped their course for the mainland and Nueva Cordoba, where were bars of silver, pearls, and gold crescents, and up in the castle that fierce hawk De Guardiola, who cared little for the town that was young and weak, but much for gold, the fortress, and his own grim will and pleasure.

V

Luiz De Guardiola, magnificent Castilian, proud as Lucifer, still as the water above the reef offsh.o.r.e, and cruel as the black fangs beneath that serenity, looked over the wall of the fortress of Nueva Cordoba. He looked down into the moat well stocked with crocodiles, great fish his mercenaries, paid with flesh, and he looked at the tunal which ringed the moat as the moat ringed the squat white fortress. A deadly girdle was the tunal, of cactus and other th.o.r.n.y things, thick, wide, dark, and impenetrable, a forest of stilettoes, and for its kings the rattlesnake and viper. Nor naked Indian nor mailed white man might traverse that thicket, where wall on wall was met a spiked and iron growth. One opening there was, through which ran the road to the town, but a battery deemed impregnable commanded this approach, forming an effectual clasp for that strong cestus which the fecund, supple, and heated land made possible to all Spanish fortifications. Beyond the tunal the naked hillside fell steeply to a narrow plain, all patched with golden flowers, and from this yellow carpet writhed tall cacti, fantastic as trees seen in a dream. Upon the plain, pearl pink in the sunset light, huddled the town. Palm-trees and tamarinds overhung it; palm-trees, mimosas, and mangroves marked the course of a limpid river. Above the battery at the river's mouth drooped a red cross in a white field.

Caravels there were none in the road, but riding there, close insh.o.r.e, the four s.h.i.+ps that had sunk the caravels and silenced the battery.

High in the air of evening, blown from the town, a trumpet sounded. De Guardiola ground his teeth, for that jubilant silver calling was not for San Jago, but St. George. The notes gathered every memory of the past few days and pressed them upon him in one cup of chagrin. The caravels were gone, the battery at the Bocca gone, the town surrendered to these English dogs who now daily bared their teeth to the fortress itself. De Guardiola admitted the menace, knew from experience in the Low Countries that this breed of the North sprang strongly, held firmly.

"Hounds of h.e.l.l!" he muttered. "Where is the fleet from Cartagena?"

The tropic ocean answered not, and the words of the wind were unintelligible. The sun dropped lower; the plain appeared to move, to roll and welter in the heated air and yellow light. Tall starvelings, the cacti spread their arms; from a mimosa wood arose a cloud of vultures; it was the hour of the Angelus, but no bells rang in the churches of the town. The town sat in fear, shrinking into corners from its cup of trembling. "Ransom!" cried the English from their s.h.i.+ps and from their quarters in the square. "Pay us ransom, or we burn and destroy!" "Mother of G.o.d!" wailed Nueva Cordoba. "Why ask but fifty thousand ducats? As easy to give you the revenue of all the Indies!

Moreover, every peso is housed in the fortress. Day before yesterday we carried there--oh, senors, not our wealth, but our poverty!" Quoth the English: "What has gone up may come down," and sent messengers, both Spanish and English, to Don Luiz de Guardiola, Governor of Nueva Cordoba, who from his stronghold swore that he found himself willing to hang these pirates, but not to dispense to them the King of Spain his treasure. Ransom! What word was that for the lips of Lutheran dogs!

A sea bird flew overhead with a wailing cry; down in the moat a crocodile raised his horrible, fanged snout, then sank beneath the still water. Don Luiz turned his bloodshot eyes upon the town in jeopardy and the bland and mocking ocean, so guileless of those longed-for sails. The four s.h.i.+ps in the river's mouth!--silently he cursed their every mast and spar, the holds agape for Spanish treasure, the decks whereon he saw men moving, the flags and streaming pennants flaunting interrogation of Spain's boasted power. A cold fury mounted from Don Luiz's heart to his brain. Of late he had slept not at all, eaten little, drunken no great amount of wine. Like a shaken carpet the plain rose and fell; a mirage lifted the coasts of distant islands, piling them above the horizon into castles and fortifications baseless as a dream. The sun dipped; up from the east rushed the night. The tunal grew a dark smudge, drawn by a wizard forefinger around De Guardiola, his men-at-arms, the silver bars and the gold crescents from Guiana. Out swung the stars, blazing, mighty, with black s.p.a.ces in between. Again rang the trumpet, a high voice proclaiming eternal endeavor. The wind began to blow, and on the plain the cacti, gloomy and fantastic sentinels, moved their stiff bodies, waved their twisted arms in gestures of strangeness and horror.

The Spaniard turned on his heel, went down to his men-at-arms where they kept watch and ward, and at midnight, riding like Death on a great, pale steed, led a hundred hors.e.m.e.n out of the fortress, through the tunal, and so down the hillside to the town.

The English sentries cried alarm. In the square a man with a knot of velvet in his helm swung himself into the saddle of a captured war-horse, waved aside the blue-jerkined boy at the rein, in a word or two cried over his shoulder managed to impart to those behind him sheer a.s.surance of victory, and was off to greet Don Luiz. They met in the wide street leading from the square, De Guardiola with his hundred cavaliers and Mortimer Ferne with his chance medley of horse and foot.

The hot night filled with noise, the scream of wounded steeds and the shouting of men. Lights flared in the windows, and women wailed to all the saints. Stubbornly the English drove back the Spanish, foot by foot, the way they had come, down the street of heat and clamor. In the dark hour before the dawn De Guardiola sounded a retreat, rode with his defeated band up the pallid hillside, through the serpent-haunted tunal, over the dreadfully peopled moat into the court of the white stone fortress. There, grim and gray, with closed lips and glowing eyes, he for a moment sat his horse in the midst of his spent men, then heavily dismounted, and called to him Pedro Mexia, who, several days before, had abandoned the battery at the river's mouth, fleeing with the remnant of his company to the fortress. The two went together into the hall, and there, while his squire unarmed De Guardiola, the lesser man spoke fluently, consigning to all the torments of h.e.l.l the strangers in Nueva Cordoba.

"Go to; you are drunken!" said De Guardiola, coldly. "You speak what you cannot act."

"I have three houses in the town," swore the other. "A reasonable ransom--"

"There is no longer any question of ransom," answered Don Luiz.

"Fellow"--to the armorer,--"fetch me a surgeon."

Mexia sat upright, his eyes widening: "No question of ransom! I thank the saints that I am no hidalgo! Now had simple Pedro Mexia been somewhat roughly handled, unhorsed mayhap, even the foot of an English heretic planted on his breast, I think that talk of the ransom of Nueva Cordoba would not have ceased. But Don Luiz de Guardiola!--quite another matter! Santa Teresa! if the town is burnt I will have payment for my three houses!" His superior snarled, then as the surgeon entered, made signs to the latter to uncover a bruised shoulder and side.

At sunrise a trumpet was blown without the tunal, and the English again made demand of ransom money. The fortress crouching upon the hilltop gave no answer, stayed silent as a sepulchre. Shortly afterwards from one quarter of the town arose together many columns of smoke; a little later an explosion shook the earth. The great magazine of Nueva Cordoba lay in ruins, while around it burned the houses fired by English torches. "Shall we destroy the whole of your city?" demanded the English. "Judge you if fifty thousand ducats will build it again!"

Nueva Cordoba, distracted, sent pet.i.tioners to their Governor. "Pay these h.e.l.l-hounds and pirates and let them sail away!" "Pay," advised also Pedro Mexia, "or presently they may have the fortress as well as the town! The squadron--it is yet at Cartagena! Easier to torment the caciques until more gold flows than to build another Nueva Cordoba.

Scarpines and strappado won't lay stone on stone!"

Don Luiz kept long silence where he stood, a man of iron, cold as the stone his long fingers pressed, venomous as any snake in the tunal, proud as a Spaniard may be, and like the rest of his world very mad for gold; but at last he turned, and despatching to the English camp a white flag, proposed by mouth of his herald a brief cessation of hostilities, and a meeting between himself, Don Luiz de Guardiola, Governor of Nueva Cordoba, and the valorous Senor John Nevil, commandant of Englishmen.

Whereto in answer came, three-piled with courtesy, an invitation to Don Luiz de Guardiola and ten of his cavaliers to sup that evening in Nueva Cordoba with John Nevil and his officers. Truce should be proclaimed, safe-conduct given; for table-talk could be no better subject than the question of ransom.

Facing the square of Nueva Cordoba was a goodly house, built by the Church for the Church, but now sacrilegiously turned to other uses and become the quarters of Sir John Nevil and Sir Mortimer Ferne, who held the town and menaced the fortress, while Baptist Manwood and Robert Baldry kept the fleet and conquered battery. The place had a great arched refectory, and here the English prepared their banquet.

Indian friends by now had they, for in the town they had found and set at liberty three caciques, penned like beasts, chained with a single chain, scored with marks sickening to look upon. The caciques proved not ungrateful. Down the river this very day had come canoes rowed by men of bronze and filled with spoils of the chase, fish of strange shapes and brilliant hues, golden, luscious fruits, flowers also fairer than amaranth or asphodel, gold beads and green stones. Gold and gems went into the treasure-chests aboard the s.h.i.+ps, but all besides came kindly in for the furnis.h.i.+ng of that rich feast. Nor were lacking other viands, for grain and flesh and wine had been abundant in Nueva Cordoba, whose storehouses now the English held. They hung their borrowed banqueting-hall with garlands of flowers, upon the long table put great candles of virgin wax, with gold and silver drinking-vessels, and brought to the revel of the night a somewhat towering, wild, and freakish humor. Victory una.s.suaged was theirs, and for them Fortune had cogged her dice. They had taken the _San Jose_ and sunk the caravels, they had sacked the pearl-towns and Nueva Cordoba, they had gathered laurels for themselves and England. For the fortress, they deemed that they might yet drain it of h.o.a.rded treasure. The poison of the land and time had touched them. The wind sang to them of conquest; morn and eve, the sun at noon, and at night the phosph.o.r.escent sea, were of the color of gold, and the stars spoke of Fame. The great mountains also, to the south,--how might the eye leap from height to height and the soul not stir? In Time's hornbook ambition is an early lesson, and these scholars had conned it well. Of all that force, scarce one simple soldier or mariner in whom expectation ran not riot, while the gentlemen adventurers in whose company were to sup De Guardiola and his ten cavaliers saw that all things might be done with ease and that evil chances lurked not for them.

The Captain of the _Cygnet_ and the Captain of the _Phoenix_, with Arden and Sedley, awaited beside the great window of the hall their guests'

appearance. The sunset was not yet, but the moment was at hand. The light, dwelling upon naked hillside and the fortress crowning it, made both to seem candescent, hill and castle one heart of flame against the purple mountains that stretched across the south. Very high were the mountains, very still and white that fortress flame; the yellow plain could not be seen, but the palm-trees were gold green above the walls of Nueva Cordoba. The light fell from the hilltop, a solitary trumpet blew, and forth from that guarded opening in the tunal rode De Guardiola on his pale horse, and at his back ten Spanish gentlemen.

"The dark line of them is like a serpent creeping from the tunal," said Henry Sedley. "Last night I dreamed a strange thing.... It concerned my sister Damaris. She came up from the sea, straight from the water like blown spray, and she was dressed in white. She looked down through the sea and her tears fell, and falling, they made music like the mermaiden's singing that we heard. '_Lie still_,' she said. '_Thou under the sea and I under the sod. Lie still: dream well: all's over_.' To whom did she speak?"

"If I were a dead man and she called my name, I would answer," said Ferne. "She under the sod and I under the sea.... So be it! But first one couch, one cup, one garland, the sounded depths of love--"

"I dreamed of home," quoth Baldry, "and of my mother's calling me, a little lad, when at twilight work was done. '_Robert, Robert_!'

she called."

"I had no dreams," said Sir Mortimer. "Now sounds John Nevil's trumpets--our guests have made entry."

"Why, senors," answered Mexia, flattered and flown with wine, "I learned to speak your tongue from a man of your country, who also gave me that knowledge of English affairs which you are pleased to compliment. I make my boast that I am no traveller--I have not been home to Seville these twenty years--yet, as you see, I have some trifling acquaintance--"

"Your learning is of so s.h.i.+ning a quality," quoth Sir Mortimer, with courteous emphasis, "that here and there a flaw cannot mar its curious worth. Smerwick Fort lies in Ireland, senor, not in England. Though verily the best thing I know of Edmund Campion is the courageousness of his end; yet indeed he died not with a halo about his head, nor were miracles wrought with his blood. Her Gracious Majesty the Queen of England hath no such distemperature as that you name, and keepeth no sort of familiar fiend. The Queen of Scots, if a most fair and most unfortunate, is yet a most wicked lady, who, alas! hath trained many a gallant man to a b.l.o.o.d.y and disastrous end."

"Who is that Englishman, your teacher?" came from the head of the board the Admiral's grave voice.

"He is dead," said De Guardiola at his right hand.

"Of his fate, valiant senors," began the fuddled Mexia, "you alone may be precisely aware--"

"He is dead," again stated with deliberation Don Luiz. "I know, senors, the pool where these fish were caught and the wood where alone grows this purple fruit. So you set at liberty those three slaves, the caciques?... Well, I had reason to believe that they had hidden gold."

"Where is Master Francis Sark?" demanded Nevil, of Ferne. "I did command his attendance here to-night."

"He plead a tertian fever--would not mar our warmth with his s.h.i.+vering,"

said the other. "I sent the chirurgeon to his cell--for indeed the man shook like a reed."

It would appear that Francis Sark was an unknown name to their guests, for no flicker of recognition pa.s.sed over the countenance of any Spaniard. They sat at the long table, and foe drank to foe while fiddle and hautboy made music and the candles slowly wasted and in the hot night the garlands withered. Perfumes were lit in the room, and the smoke of their burning made a violet haze through which quivered the heart-shaped candle flames. The music had a wild ring, and laughter as wild came easily to a man's lips. The English laughed for that their spirits were turned thistle-down, and the Spaniards laughed because a man's foe should not see his chagrin.

For a while compliment and courtesy led each party in chains; they masked distrust and hatred beneath cloth-of-gold ceremoniousness, punctiliously accepted a Roland for an Oliver, extravagantly praised the prowess of men and nations whom they much desired to sweep from the face of the earth. But as time wore on and the wine went round, this cloak of punctilio began to grow threadbare and the steel beneath to gleam dangerously. There was thunder in the air, and men were ready to play at ball with the apples of discord, though as yet they but tossed to each other the poisonous flowers which should grow that fruit. "How mightily on such a day did your little island!" cried the Spaniards. "Ah, senors, the invincibleness of your conquistadores!" ran the English testimony.

"El Draco, Juan Acles, yourselves, valorous gentlemen, what daring past most pirates to sail the King of Spain his seas!" came the Spanish retort.

"The King of Spain his seas!" an Englishman echoed, softly.

"Why, had you not heard?" said Arden. "G.o.d gave them to him on creation morning."

"Pirates! That is a p.r.i.c.kly word!" swore Baldry.

"Why do you smile, senor?" demanded De Guardiola of the gentleman opposite him, this being Sir Mortimer Ferne.

"Did I smile, senor? I but chanced to think of a hound of mine who once was king of the pack, but now grows old." The Englishman shrugged. "True he thinks himself yet the fleetest and the strongest, but the younger dogs outstrip him. Presently they will s.n.a.t.c.h from him every bone."

"Now, by the Mother of G.o.d, I agree not with you!" said De Guardiola.

"Now, by the power of G.o.d, yet will it come to pa.s.s!" affirmed Sir Mortimer.

The Admiral, to whom Pedro Mexia, an easy man, was making voluble narration of the latest futile search for Manoa, turned his glance for a moment from that frank Spaniard. But Mortimer Ferne sat at ease, a smile upon his beautiful mouth, and his hand, palm uppermost, upon the board. Opposite him Don Luiz de Guardiola also smiled, and if that widening of the lips was somewhat tigerish, why, if all accounts were true, the man himself was of that quality, as cruel, stealthy, and remorseless as any jaguar in those deep woods behind his castle. The Admiral returned to his discourse with Mexia, who might drop some useful hints as to the road to El Dorado.

"We have met before," said De Guardiola. "It was you who led your landing-party, capturing the battery."

"The fortune of war, senior! What says your proverb--"

"I gave ground, it is true.... There may come an hour when with a whip of iron I will drive you from Nueva Cordoba. Did you lead the attack upon the town?"

"Not so, senor. Sir John Nevil very valiantly held that honor, and to him Nueva Cordoba surrendered."