The Fortunate Isles Part 6

The air was fragrant with the essence of the pines that clothed the slopes--at their feet tall pink heath and wild lavender were in bloom.

When Jaime the First built Bellver for a summer palace, he made it an invincible fortress. One thing only could one imagine as more difficult than getting into the Castle, and that would be getting out of it. Yet, had we so willed, on this balmy afternoon the hitherto impregnable stronghold with its deep moat, its implacable walls, might have been ours without even a show of resistance; for when we reached the gateway we found it open and unguarded.

But fortunately for the reputation of Bellver our mood was pacific; and we were content to linger without until an old woman, who had espied us as she was leaving the Castle with what was presumably the was.h.i.+ng of the custodian in a chequered handkerchief under her arm, ran back calling loudly for "Bordoi."

Bordoi appeared in the person of the custodian of the Castle. He was an old soldier, gaunt, lean, courteous, and evidently possessing a genuine pride in his charge.

The first thing to which he called our attention was the grating set high over the entrance, through which, after the endearing fas.h.i.+on of their time, the occupants of the Castle were accustomed to shower a gentle hint to depart, in the form of arrows or boiling water, upon the heads of any visitors whose appearance they did not fancy.

The Castle, which is in the form of a circle, is built round a courtyard containing a great draw-well. Looking down, it was interesting to me to see that the moist sides of the interior were thickly coated with luxuriant maidenhair fern, such as we had years before noticed growing inside the mouth of the well in the house of the maker of amphorae in Pompeii.

Reaching down his long arm, the custodian picked me a frond, explaining that it made a wholesome medicinal drink--"quite as good as sarsaparilla."

And here an odd query occurs to me. Does the office of caretaker conduce to dyspepsia, or does the enforced leisure of the occupation dispose to hypochondria? During a little journey through the Shakespeare country, for instance, it was impossible--even for such very polite people as ourselves--to avoid noticing the boxes of patent pills or of much-vaunted lotions that figured prominently amongst the private possessions of the people who showed us the places of interest.

The stern face of the old keep has frowned on many tragic sights. It was up these rocky slopes that the headless body of the third Jaime was borne, after his luckless attempt, at the battle of Lluchmayor, to wrest his kingdom from a usurper. And it was there, too, that the boy son who had fought so bravely by his father's side was carried, desperately wounded.

In more recent times Bellver has acted the part of a State prison.

Political prisoners, numbering as many as three or four hundred at a time, have been immured within its ma.s.sive walls. It was easy to picture them cl.u.s.tering in the s.p.a.cious courtyard about the well, or pacing the open-sided gallery overlooking it, or lingering on the flat roof, from which such an amazingly comprehensive view may be had.

Seen from beneath, the height of the Castle is dwarfed by its encircling walls. It is only on looking down from the battlements and seeing the immense depths of the surrounding moats that one realizes the strength of the inflexible grip in which captives would be held.

In these days a rescue by means of airs.h.i.+p might be feasible. For an aviator to alight on the vast flat circle of the Castle roof, to pick up a prisoner, and fly off again, would presumably be an easy matter. But in those days airs.h.i.+ps were unknown, and it must have been maddening to be pent so near Palma that every building might be distinguished, to be able to note the coming and going of the s.h.i.+ps, to view the fair fertile country in every direction, and yet know that the deep encompa.s.sing moat rendered any attempt at escape a futility.

In one of the rooms a memorial tablet had been inserted in the wall in remembrance of a deposed Minister of State, who endured six years of incarceration before dying there in 1808.

In his chamber a window, reached by steps and stone-seated, afforded a lovely prospect across the blue waters of the harbour to the stately Cathedral and the town. It was pitiful to see that the gaudy tiles that paved the embrasure were worn bare, and to note that, by some curious coincidence, the face in the bas-relief looked longingly towards the window.

In the immense kitchen the most remarkable feature was the chimney--a s.p.a.ce like a large room--of which the smoke-blackened sides narrowed up and up, until far overhead its orifice appeared a mere eyelet of light against the sky. But this ancient fireplace had been superseded by a long range of charcoal stoves, and the savour of roasting oxen will never again ascend that giant chimney.

The Castle of Bellver is full of interest, but it is the roof that holds the visitor fascinated. On its surface one can walk round and round in perfect security, meeting a fresh and glorious picture at every turn. To the north the high velvet hills bar the view.

Southwards, beyond the cl.u.s.tered roofs of the Terreno, the Mediterranean ripples away towards the African coast. Towards the west amid the hills lies Ben Dinat, where, after the historic battle, the Conquistador dined well off bread and garlic; and east is the lovely plain of Palma, with Santa Catalina and Son Espanolet (and the quite inconspicuous Casa Tranquila) in the middle distance.

Round the battlements many names, both of the bond and of the free, were carven. Our guide proudly pointed out three that, coming amongst the Spanish designations, we read with a curious sense of familiarity:--

"JOHN SUTHERLAND BLACK.

JAMES HUNTER.

JAMES HUNTER, JUNR."

The date was August, 1905. And the owners of the British names, our guide told us, were scientific men who had journeyed to Palma to witness the total eclipse of the sun. And in so doing they a.s.suredly showed wisdom, for it would have been difficult to find a better place from which to observe the phenomenon than this wide roof that seemed so near the sky.

When the men essayed to climb the high tower I waited below on the roof, and was idly leaning over the battlements when a stonecrop fast-rooted in the interstices of the wall attracted me. Wondering what manner of plant would choose to live in that arid situation, I was examining it closely when I discovered that, even in that seemingly inaccessible spot, a caterpillar had found it out, and was busily feeding on its succulent foliage.

The caterpillar might be a common one--I have little knowledge of entomology--but it was new to me; and its appearance was so unusually gay as to appear to merit description. The body, which showed alternate stripes of light and dark grey, was girdled by black bands, which were further decorated by spots of vivid scarlet; while the head--or was it the tail?--flaunted a double scarlet plume.

When the men again joined me, I drew the attention of the custodian to the gaudy insect, and asked if he knew the species.

He shook his head dubiously, confessing that he had never noticed one like it before. Then his eyes caught sight of the plant on which it fed, and he instantly brightened up.

"I know that plant," he said. "It is valuable, senora, very valuable. It makes a good medicine."

Our next visit was to the Lonja. In the good old days when Palma was a great mercantile centre--the days when thirty thousand sailors found employment from its port--a Majorcan architect designed the Lonja to serve as an exchange.

This old-time architect and his builders must have been past masters of their art, for though hundreds of years have slipped by since then, and the Lonja no more serves any active purpose, it still survives to delight by the simple grandeur of its design. Seen as it stands with only a wide thoroughfare separating it from the sparkling waters of the port, with its palm-trees in front and a cloudless blue sky overhead, the antique building is one of the most beautiful sights in a city that abounds in beautiful things.

We had been told that the Lonja was open to the public on the afternoons of Thursdays and Sundays. So one Sunday evening, early in our stay, the Man and I stopped in front of the great door, and tried to push it open. It did not yield a hair's-breadth. Indeed, it seemed to wear an expression of stolid immobility, as though secretly defying our puny efforts to induce it to reveal the treasures it guarded.

Sitting in a chair in the shadow of the building an old policeman was dozing. Him the Man roused and interrogated.

He shook his head over the idea of the Lonja being on view on stated days. But the Lonja was at the _disposicion_ of the senor. The senor could see it on any day. He would fetch the keeper of the keys.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Palma, from the Woods of Bellver]

Toddling off across the square of the palm-trees, he disappeared, and in a few minutes returned, followed by that official, bearing the emblem of his office in the form of a ma.s.sive key.

The great door opened and closed behind us, and we found ourselves in a vast square hall, from whose dark marble floor six n.o.ble pillars rose to meet the high vaulted roof.

Like the Cathedral, the Lonja was built of the warm, buff-hued native stone, and the marble flooring was also of Majorcan origin, for it was quarried in the mountains of the island. The materials used in the construction were the same; but while the Cathedral impresses by its solemn majesty of conception, the Lonja charms with its beautiful simplicity of design, its inspiriting sense of light and air. The four wide windows were partly boarded up, the light entering only through the open carving at the tops. Yet the hall was so well illuminated that it was easy to see every detail of the pictures that covered a great portion of the walls.

The collection of pictures, though of no great importance, one imagines might be better hung, better framed, and in some way catalogued. Certain of the canva.s.ses lacked frames. A soiled card inscribed with the name of the artist was stuck in the frames of others. One portion of the wall-s.p.a.ce was covered by interesting old paintings that had been removed from the antique church of San Domingo. And a large modern picture by a well-known Spanish painter attracted us both by the excellence of its workmans.h.i.+p and by the peculiarity of its subject: a bride and bridegroom--the man old, uninviting, and with strangely deformed feet; the woman young, attractive, and evidently of a lower social position--were standing before a brilliantly lit altar joining hands in marriage. On the bride's left stood her peasant mother, proud almost to arrogance at the wealthy marriage her pretty daughter was making. Behind were two workmen brothers, whispering and giggling.

The satire of the artist's intention was revealed in the t.i.tle, _En el nombre del Padre, y del Higo, y del Espiritu Santo_, which was conspicuously painted on the frame.

High on the wall over the door that opens on to the garden two grotesque gargoyles look down on a finely sculptured bas-relief of the Virgin and Child. Across the little enclosure with its fruit-laden palm-tree, its tired-looking olive--how is it that olives always seem to pine for mountain slopes?--and its aloes, is a strikingly antique gate.

As the keeper of the keys pointed out, it was the original gate of the mole of the ancient port, and when in the seventeenth century the harbour was reconstructed, it was wisely deemed worthy of preservation. Behind it is the antique Concilio del Mar, which is now the Escuela Superior de Comercio.

Showing us a door leading to a staircase, the custodian suggested that the view to be obtained from the roof of the Lonja was fine.

He did not attempt to join our climb, and when we had mounted the eighty-two steps of the spiral stair we did not wonder that he had refrained. But the sight from the path which extended round the four sides of the square roof was wonderful. Each point of view held fresh interest--whether it was the harbour with the s.h.i.+pping and the s.h.i.+ning sea beyond, or the grand Cathedral seen across the lively Marina, or the eight-storey-high houses, whose upper-floor dwellings opened to roof terraces or blossomed out in poultry-houses and dove-cots. But best of all, I think, was the vista of the road leading towards Santa Catalina, and the Terreno, and the Castle of Bellver, behind which the sun was setting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Second Cla.s.s]

VI

THE FAIR AT INCA

Our first experience of the Majorcan railway system was a curious and unexpected one.

Having a fancy to see Inca, a thriving town situated in the very heart of the island, we called at Palma station one November day and asked for a time-table. The one handed us--it was the latest issued--bore the date of July, 1907. But even although it was well over two years old there appeared to have been no alteration either in the hours of departure or of arrival.

Learning that Thursday was the market-day at Inca, we got up before sunrise on a Thursday morning and reached the station in good time for the train that was timed to leave at 7.40. The _other_ train, for only two trains a day leave Palma, was out of the question, as it did not start until two o'clock.

We had imagined that the paucity of trains argued a corresponding scarcity of travellers, but to our surprise the station was already crowded with a pleasantly excited mob of people, all in gala dress.