The Firebrand Part 47

The great well-fed beasts, white oxen of the finest Castilian breed, a gift of the Queen-Regent to the brethren, were under perfect control; and though Rollo had only once or twice before handled the guiding staff, he had not the least difficulty in conducting the cart towards the town.

Indeed, so often had the animals taken the same road of late, that they seemed to know their destination by instinct, and gave the tall young monk in the hood no trouble whatever. The wheels, however, being of solid wood of a style ancient as the Roman occupation, creaked with truly Spanish _crescendo_ to the agony point. For in all countries flowing with oil and wine no man affords so much as a farthing's worth of grease for his waggon-wheels. But upon this occasion the lack was no loss--nay, rather a gain. For even before Rollo's shout gained a.s.surance and sonorousness, the creaking of the wheels of the cart far-heard scattered various groups of marauders about the streets of the town as if it had been the wings of the angel of death himself.

"_Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!_"

Certainly it was a solemn and awful cry heard echoing through the streets in the chilly hours of the night. Here and there at the sound a lattice opened, and some bereaved one cried down to the monk to stop.

Then staggering down the staircase, lighted (it may be) by some haggard crone with a guttering candle, or only stumbling blindly in the dark with their load, the bearers would come. In a very few cases these were two men, more frequently a man and a woman, and most frequently of all two women.

"_Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!_"

"Brother, we cannot!" a shrill voice came from high above; "come up hither and help us, for G.o.d's sake and the Holy Virgin's! She is our mother, and we are two young maids, children without strength."

Rollo looked up and saw the child that called down to him. Another at her shoulder held a lighted candle with a trembling hand.

"She is so little and light, brother," she pleaded, "and went so regularly to confession. Brother Jeronimo gave her the sacrament but an hour before she parted from us. Come up and help us, for dear Mary's sake!"

It went to Rollo's heart to refuse, but he could not well leave his oxen. He was a stranger to them and they to him; and his work, though well begun, was yet to finish.

While he stood in doubt, his mind swaying this way and that, a figure darted across to him from the opposite side of the street, a boy dressed in a suit of the royal liveries, but with a cloak thrown about his shoulders and a sailor's red cap upon his head.

"Give me the stick," he said in a m.u.f.fled voice; "go up and bring down the woman. If need be, I will help you."

Without pausing to consider the meaning of this curious circ.u.mstance, where all circ.u.mstances were curious, Rollo darted up the staircase, his military boots clattering on the stone steps, strangely out of harmony with his priestly vocation.

He found the little maiden with the candle waiting at the door for him.

She appeared to be about eight years old, but struck him as very small-bodied for her age. Her sister had remained within. She was older--perhaps ten or twelve. She it was who had pleaded the cause of the dead.

"Indeed, good brother," she began, "we did our best. We tried to carry her, and moved her as far as the chair. Then, being weak, we could get no farther. But do you help, and it will be easy!"

Rollo, growing accustomed to death and its sad victims, lifted the shrouded burden over his shoulder without a shudder. He was in the mood to take things as they came. The two little girls sank on their knees on the floor, wailing for their lost mother, and imploring his blessing in alternate breaths.

"Our mother--our dear mother!" they cried, "pray for us and her, most holy father!"

"G.o.d in heaven bless you," Rollo said aloud in English, and strode down the stairs. A knot of straggling gipsies furtively expectant stood about the door. The cart was still in the middle of the street with its attendant boy, in the exact place where Rollo had left it.

"Here, lend me a hand," he cried in a voice of command, as he emerged into their midst with his white-wrapped burden.

But at the mere sight of the monk's habit and of the thing he carried on his shoulder, the gipsies dispersed, running in every direction as if the very plague-spectre were on their track. The boy in the red cap, however, crossed the road towards him, and at the same moment the elder of the little girls sobbingly opened the lattice, holding the candle in her hand to take a last look at her mother.

The feeble rays fell directly on the boy's upturned face. At the sight Rollo stumbled and almost fell with his burden. The youth put out his hand to stay him. His fingers almost touched the dead.

"Hands off!" thundered Rollo, in fierce anger. "Concha Cabezos, how dare you come hither?"

The boy looked up at the man and answered simply and clearly--

"Rollo, I came because _you_ dared!"

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

THE DEAD STAND SENTINEL

They walked on for a while in silence, Rollo too much thunderstruck and confounded to speak a word. His whole being was rent with the most opposite feelings. He was certainly angry with Concha. So much was clear to him. It was rash, it was unmaidenly to follow him at such a time and in such a guise. Yet, after all the girl had come. She was risking a terrible death for his sake. Well, what of that? It was right and natural that he should hold his life in his hands. All his life he had loved adventure as men their daily bread--not pa.s.sionately, but as a necessity of existence.

But this--it was too great for him, too mighty, too surprising. For his sake! Because he dared! All the girls to whom he had made love--ay, even Peggy Ramsay herself, running barefoot in the braes of Falkland--instantly vanished. Life or death became no great matter--almost, as it seemed to him then, the same thing. For here was one who held all the world as well lost for him.

Meanwhile Concha walked silently alongside, the ox-staff still in her hands, but dimly understanding what was pa.s.sing in his mind. Love to her was exceedingly simple. Her creed contained but two articles, or rather the same truth, brief, pregnant, uncontrovertible, stated in different ways: "_If he live, I will live with him! If he die, I will die with him!_"

So with her eyes on the oxen and her goad laid gently on this side and that of the meek heads, Concha guided them along the silent streets.

Nevertheless, she was keenly aware of Rollo also, and observed him closely. She did not understand what he was doing in the garb of a friar, collecting the dead of the plague on the streets of San Ildefonso. But it did not matter, it was sufficient that he was doing it, and that (thank G.o.d!) she had escaped from the beleaguered palace in time to help him. She even reminded him of his duty, without asking a single question as to why he did it--self-abnegation pa.s.sing wonderful in a woman!

"You have forgotten to cry," she whispered, dropping back from the ox's head. "We have pa.s.sed two alleys without a warning!"

And so once more there rang down the streets of the town of San Ildefonso that dolorous and terrible cry which was to be heard in the dread plague-years, not only in the Iberian peninsula but also in England and Rollo's own Scotland, "_Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!_"

It chanced that in the next street, the last of the little town, they made up their full complement. The heads of the oxen were directed once more towards the Hermitage. They turned this corner and that slowly and decorously till, with a quickening of pace and a forward inclination of the meek, moist nostrils, the pair struck into the woodland path towards their stable at the Hermitage.

Not one word either of love or of reproach had Rollo spoken since those into which he had been startled by the fear lest the girl should set her hand upon the dead of the plague. Nor did they speak even now. Rollo only put out his gloved hand to steady the cart here and there in the deeper ruts, motioning Concha to remain at the head of the oxen, where no breath of the dead might blow upon her.

Thus, no man saying them nay, they arrived at the Hermitage of San Ildefonso. It was quiet even as they had left it.

As they came round to the front of the building, the Basque at the door was before them. He met them on the steps, a lantern in his hand.

"Who is this?" he asked, with a significant gesture towards Concha.

"Carlos--a lad of our company, an Andalucian," said Rollo, in answer. "I met him by chance in the town, and he has helped me with the oxen."

The friar nodded and, letting down the rear flap of the cart, he surveyed the melancholy harvest.

"Twelve!" he said. "Not many, but enough. The dead will guard us well from the evil men! Ay, better than an army of twelve thousand living!"

And attiring himself in an ap.r.o.n of tarred stuff similar to the gloves, he fastened another of the same material upon Rollo.

"We will now proceed to set our sentries!" he said, grimly.

As Rollo put on the gauntlets and approached to help Brother Teodoro to draw out the corpses, Concha hovered near, half timid, and yet with a certain decision of manner. The timidity was lest she should be refused in that which it was upon her tongue to ask.

"Let me help the brother," she said at last; "I have nursed many--no plague will touch me!"

The monk stared at the lad in wonder as he proffered his request. But Rollo roughly and angrily ordered Concha back to the heads of the oxen, which, with true Spanish fort.i.tude, stood chewing the cud till they should be set free and returned to their stalls.

"Is this boy by any chance your brother?" said the monk, as between them they settled the first sheeted dead in his niche by the side of the great door.

"Nay," said Rollo, "not my brother."