The Firebrand Part 29

Cabrera felt that he had wasted a great deal of time on a fine morning without shooting somebody, and it would certainly have gone ill with Don Luis or his brother if either of them had been compelled by the flames to issue forth from the burning mill-house of Sarria.

But they were not there. The cur dogs of the village and a few half-starved mongrels that followed the troops had great sport worrying the rats which darted continually from the burning granaries. But of the more important human rats, no sign.

All the inhabitants of the village were there likewise, held back from plundering by the bayonets of the Carlist troops. They stood recounting to each other, wistfully, the stores of clothes, the silk curtains, the uncut pieces of broadcloth, the household linen, the great eight-day clocks in their gilt ormolu cases. Every woman had something to add to the catalogue. Every householder felt keenly the injustice of permitting so much wealth to be given to the crackling flames.

"Yes, it was very well," they said; "doubtless the Fernandez family were vermin to be burned up--smoked out. But they possessed much good gear, the gathering of many years. These things have committed no treason against either Don Carlos or the Regent Cristina. Why then are we not permitted to enter and remove the valuables? It is monstrous. We will represent the matter to General Cabrera--to Don Carlos himself!"

But one glance at the former, as he sat his horse, nervously twisting the reins and watching the destruction from under his black brows, made their hearts as water within them. Their pet Valiant, old Gaspar Perico, too, had judiciously hidden himself. Esteban the supple had accompanied him, and the venta of Sarria was in the hands of the silent, swift-footed, but exceedingly capable maid-servant who had played the trick upon Etienne.

The Sarrians therefore watched the mill-house blaze up, and thanked G.o.d that it stood some way from the other dwellings of the place.

Suddenly Cabrera turned upon them.

"Hearken ye, villagers of Sarria," he cried, "I have burned the home of a traitor. If I hear of any shelter being granted to Luis Fernandez or his brother within your bounds, I swear by the martyred honour of my mother that on my return I will burn every house within your walls and shoot every man of you capable of bearing arms. You have heard of Ramon Cabrera. Let that be enough."

The villagers got apprehensively behind each other, and none answered, each waiting for the other, till with mighty ba.s.s thunder the voice rang out again:

"Have you no answer?" he cried, "no promise? Must I set a dozen of you with your backs against the wall, as I did at Espluga in Francoli, to stimulate those dull country wits of yours?"

Then a young man gaily dressed was thrust to the front. Very unwilling he was to show himself, and at his appearance, with his knees knocking together, a merry laugh rang out from behind Cabrera.

That chieftain turned quickly with wrath in his eye. For it was a sound of a woman's mirth that was heard, and all such were strictly forbidden within his lines.

But at the sight of little Concha, her dark eyes full of light, her hands clapping together in innocent delight, her white teeth disclosed in gay and dainty laughter, a certain _maja_ note of daring unconvention in her costume, she was so exactly all that would have sent him into raptures twenty years before when he was an apprentice in Tortosa, that the grim man only smiled and turned again to the unwilling spokesman of the munic.i.p.ality of Sarria.

A voice from the press before the burning house announced the delegate's quality.

"Don Raphael de Flores, son of our _alcalde_."

"Speak on, Don Raphael," cried Cabrera; "I will not shoot you unless it should be necessary."

Thus encouraged the trembling youth began.

"Your Excellency," he quavered, "we of Sarria have nothing to do with the family of Fernandez. We would not give any one of them a handful of maize or a plate of lentil broth if he were starving. We are loyal men and women--well-wishers to the cause of the only true and absolute King Carlos Quinto."

"I am credibly informed that it is otherwise," said Cabrera, "and that you are a den of red-hot nationals. I therefore impose a fine of two thousand _duros_ on the munic.i.p.ality, and as you are the alcalde's son, we will keep you in durance till they be paid."

Don Raphael fell on his knees. His pale face was reddened by the flames from the mill-house, the fate of which must have afforded a striking object-lesson to a costive magistracy in trouble about a forced loan.

"We are undone," he cried; "I am a married man, your Excellency, and have not a _maravedi_ to call my own. You had better shoot me out of hand, and be done with it. Indeed, we cannot possibly pay."

"Go and find your father," cried Cabrera; "he pocketed half of the price of Don Ramon Garcia's house. I cannot see my namesake suffer. Tell him that two thousand _duros_ is the price up till noon. After that it will have risen to four thousand, and by three of the afternoon, if the money be not paid into the treasury of the only absolute and Catholic sovereign (in the present instance my breeches pocket), I shall be reluctantly compelled to shoot one dozen of the leading citizens of the towns.h.i.+p of Sarria. Let a strong guard accompany this young man till he returns from carrying his message."

In this way did Cabrera replenish the treasury of his master Don Carlos, and with such pleasant argument did he induce reluctant _alcaldes_ to discover the whereabouts of their strong boxes.

For a remarkably shrewd man was General Ramon Cabrera, the butcher of Tortosa.

CHAPTER XXIV

HOW TO BECOME A SOLDIER

The change in the aspect of affairs would have made a greater difference to most companies of adventurers than it did to that of which Master Rollo Blair of Blair Castle in the s.h.i.+re of Fife was the leader. In the morning they had all risen with the expectation of being shot with the sun-rising. At ten of the clock they were speeding southward on good horses, holding acknowledged rank and position in the army of the only Catholic and religious sovereign.

But they were a philosophic quartette. Rollo drew in the morning air and blew it back again through his nostrils without thinking much of how nearly he had come to kissing the brown earth of Luis Fernandez's garden with a dozen bullets through his heart. Mortimer meditated somewhat sulkily upon his lost onions, rustling pleasantly back there in the cool _patio_ of the nunnery. Etienne sorrowed for his latest love idyll ruthlessly cut short, and as to El Sarria, he thought of nothing save that Dolores had come back to him and that he had yet to reckon with the Fernandez family. The next time he would attend to the whole matter himself, and there would be no mistakes.

It was not without sadness that Rollo looked his last on the white walls of the convent of the Holy Innocents. He was glad indeed to have placed Dolores in safety--glad that she and her child were together, and that the good sisters were responsible for them. Between them the four had made up a purse to be sent by Concha to the Mother Superior, to be applied for the behoof of her guests till the better days should come, and Ramon Garcia be able to claim his wife and first-born son.

But Concha had refused point-blank.

"The babe came through the wicket. The mother arrived by night, a fugitive asking pity, like the Virgin fleeing down to Egypt in the pictures," said Concha. "The convent needs no alms, nor does the Lady Superior sell her help. Keep the money, lads. If I am not a fool you will need it more than the sisterhood of the Holy Innocents before you come to your journey's end."

And with that she blew them each a dainty kiss, distinguis.h.i.+ng no one above the other, dropped a curtsey to the general, whose eyes followed her with more than usual interest, leaped on her white mare and rode off, attended by La Giralda riding astride like a man, in the same fas.h.i.+on in which she had arrived.

So little Concha was gone from his sight, and duty loomed up suddenly gaunt and void of interest before Rollo. To risk his life was nothing.

When he got nearer to the goal, his blood would rise, that he knew. To capture a queen and a regent at one coup, to upset a government, to bring a desolating war to an end--these were all in the day's work. But why, in the name of all that was sanest and most practical, did his heart feel like lead within him and his new dignity turn to Dead Sea ashes in his mouth?

It was not long before Cabrera dropped back, that he might talk over ways and means with the young colonel. It was clear that the _guerrilla_ chieftain did not believe greatly in the project.

"I do not understand all this," he said; "it is not my way. What have we to do with taking women and children prisoners? Let us have no truck, barter, or exchange with the government at Madrid except at the point of the bayonet. That is my way of it, and if my advice had been taken before, my master would at this moment have been in the royal palace of his ancestors. But these secret emba.s.sies in the hands of foreigners--what good can come of them?"

Rollo explained such things as the Abbot of Montblanch had made clear to him--namely, that the Regent and her daughter were by no means averse to Holy Church, nor yet eager to keep the true King out of his own. But, they were in the power of unscrupulous men--Mendizabal, Linares, and others, who for their own ends published edicts and compelled the ladies to sign them. If they were captured and sequestered for their own good, the ministry would break down and Don Carlos would reign undisturbed.

Rollo thought the exposition a marvel of clearness and point. It was somewhat disappointing, therefore, when he had finished to hear from Cabrera the unmoved declaration: "A Cristino is a Cristino whether in the palace of Madrid or on the mountains of Morella. And the quickest way is the best way with such an one, wherever met with!"

"But you do not mean to say that you would shoot the girl-Queen or the mother-Regent if they fell into your hands?" cried Rollo, aghast at the horror.

The deep underlying anger leaped up fiery red into the eyes of the _guerrilla_ chief.

"Aye, that would I," he cried, "as quickly as they slew my own old mother in the barrack yard of Tortosa!"

And thinking of that tragedy and the guilt of Nogueras, Rollo felt there was something to be said for the indomitable, implacable little butcher-general of Don Carlos.

Cabrera was silent for a while after making this speech, and then abruptly demanded of Rollo how many men he would require for his undertaking.

"I am bidden to place my entire command at your service," he said with obvious reluctance, glancing out of his little oblique eyes at the young colonel.

Rollo considered a while before answering.

"It is my opinion that the fewer men concerned in such a venture the greater the chances of success," he said at last; "furnish me with one petty officer intimately acquainted with the country between Zaragoza and San Ildefonso, and I will ask no more."

Cabrera drew a long breath and looked at the young man with infinitely more approval than he had before manifested.

"You are right," he said, "three times right! If you fail, there are fewer to go to the gallows. In prison fewer ill-sewn wine-skins to leak information. If you succeed, there are also fewer to divide the credit and the reward. For my own part, I do not think you will succeed, but I will provide you with the best man in my command for your purpose and in addition heartily wish you well out of your adventure!"