The Firebrand

But no such series of circumstances as this had ever been thought of; the plague which had fallen so heavily and as it seemed mysteriously and instantaneously upon the town; the precincts of the palace about to be invaded by a foe more fell than Frank or Moor; the guards disappeared like snow in the sun, and the only protection of the lives of the Queen-Regent and her daughter, a band of Carlists sent to capture their persons at all hazards.

Verily the whole situation was remarkably complex.

The briefest look around convinced Rollo that it would be impossible for so small a party to hold the long range of iron palisades which surrounded the palace. These were complete, indeed, but their extent was far too great to afford any hope of keeping out the gipsies without finding themselves taken in the rear. They must hold La Granja itself, that was clear. There remained, therefore, only the problem of finding entrance.

Between the porter's lodge and the great gates near the Colegiata they discovered a ladder left somewhat carelessly against a wall where whitewashing had been going on during the day, some ardent royal tradesman having ventured back, preferring the chance of the plague to the abandonment of his contract.

This they at once appropriated, and Rollo and the Sergeant, being the two most agile of the company, prepared to mount.

If the time had been less critical, and a disinterested observer had been available, it would at this moment have been interesting to observe the demeanour of Concha. Feeling that in a manner she was present on sufferance, she could not of course make any objection to the plan of escalade, nor could she offer to accompany Rollo and the Sergeant, but with clasped hands and tightly compressed lips she stood beneath, repeating under her breath quick-succeeding prayers for the safety of one (or both) of the adventurers.

So patent and eager was her anxiety even in the gloom of the night that La Giralda, to whom her agitation was manifest, laid her hand on the girl's arm and whispered in her ear that she must be brave, a true Andaluse, and not compromise the expedition by any spoken word.

Concha turned indignantly upon her, shaking off her restraining hand as she did so.

"Do you think I am a fool?" she whispered. "I will do nothing to spoil their chances. But oh, Giralda, at any moment he might be shot!"

"Trust José Maria. He hath taken risks far greater than this," said La Giralda in a low voice, wilfully mistaking her meaning. But Concha, quite unconsoled, did nothing but clasp her hands and quicken her supplications to the Virgin.

The ladder was reared against the gilded iron railing and Rollo mounted, immediately dropping lightly down on the further side. The Sergeant followed, and presently both were on the ground. At a word from Rollo, El Sarria pushed the ladder over and the two received it and laid it along the parapet in a place where it would remain completely hidden till wanted.

The two moved off together in the direction of the porter's lodge, at the door of which the Sergeant knocked lightly, and then, obtaining no answer, with more vehemence. A window was lifted and a frightened voice asked who came there at that time of night.

The Sergeant answered with some sharpness that they wished for the key of the great gate.

Upon this the same old woman who had ushered out La Giralda appeared trembling at the lattice, and was but little relieved when the Sergeant, putting on his most serious air, informed her that her life was in the utmost danger, and that she must instantly come downstairs, open the gate, and accompany them to the palace.

"I knew it," quavered the old woman, "I knew it since ever my husband went away with the soldiers and left me here alone. I shall be murdered among you, but my blood will be on his hands. Indeed, sirs, he hath never treated me well, but spent his wages at the wine tavern, giving me but a beggarly pittance. Nay, how do I know but he had an intent in thus deserting me? He hath, and I can prove it, cast eyes of desire on Maria of the pork-shop, only because she is younger and more comely than I, who had grown old and wrinkled bearing him children and cooking him ollas! Aye, and small thanks have I got for either. As indeed I have told him hundreds of times. Such a man! A pretty fellow to be head porter at a Queen's gate! I declare I will inform her Royal Majesty this very night, if I am to go to the palace, that will I!"

"Come down immediately and let us in, my good woman," said the Sergeant, soothingly. For it appeared as if this torrent of accusation against the absent might continue to flow for an indefinite period.

"But how am I to know that you are not the very rogues and thieves of whom you tell?" persisted the old lady with some show of reason.

"Well," said the Sergeant forbearingly, "as to that you must trust us, mother. It is the best you can do. But fear nothing, we will treat you gently as a cat her kitten, and you will come up to the palace with us to show us in what part of it dwell the Queen and her daughter."

"Nay, not if it be to do harm to my lady and the sweet little maid who this very day brought a pail of milk to poor old Rebeca the portress, whose husband hath forsaken her for a pork-shop trull. I would rather die!"

Rollo was about to speak, but the Sergeant whispered that the old lady was now in such good case to admit them, that she might be frighted by his foreign accent.

In a few moments the woman could be heard stiffly and grumblingly descending the stairs, the door was opened, and Rebeca appeared with the key in her hand.

"How many are there of your party?" she asked, her poor hand shaking so that she could scarcely fit the key in the lock, and her voice sunk to a quavering whisper.

"There are five men of us and two women," said the Sergeant, quickly. "Now we are all within, pray give me the key and show us the road to the Queen's apartments."

"Two women!" grumbled the poor old creature, whose mind appeared to be somewhat unhinged; "that will never suit her Royal Highness the Regent, especially if they are young and well-looking. She loves not such, any more than I love the hussy of the pork-shop. Though, indeed, my man hath not the roving eye in his head as her Señor Muñoz hath. Ah, the saints have mercy on all poor deserted women! But what am I saying? If the Lady Cristina heard me speak ill of him, she would set my poor old neck in the garrote. Then – crack – all would be over!"

The party now advanced towards the palace, which in the gloom of a starless night was still entirely hidden from their sight, save as a darker mass set square against the black vault of heaven.

By this time Concha and La Giralda had taken the trembling portress by the arms, and were bringing her along in the van, whispering comfort in her ears all the way. The sergeant and Rollo came next, with Mortimer and Etienne behind, a naked blade in the hand of each, for Rollo had whispered the word to draw swords. This, however, El Sarria interpreted to mean his faithful Manchegan knife, to which he trusted more than to any sword of Toledo that ever was forged.

At any other time they could not have advanced a score of yards without being brought to a stand-still by the challenge of a sentry, the whistle of a rifle bullet, or the simultaneous turning out of the guard. But now no such danger was to be apprehended. All was still as a graveyard before cock-crow.

It is hard, in better and wiser days, when things are beginning to be traced to their causes, to give any idea of the effect of the first appearance of Black Cholera among a population at once so simple and so superstitious as that of rural Spain. The inhabitants of the great towns, the Cristino armies in the field, the country-folk of all opinions were universally persuaded that the dread disease was caused by the monks in revenge for the despites offered to them; especially by the hated Jesuits, who were supposed to have thrown black cats alive into rivers and wells in order to produce disease by means of witchcraft and diabolical agency.

So universal was this belief that so soon as the plague broke out in any city or town the neighbouring monasteries were immediately plundered, and the priors and brethren either put to death or compelled to flee for their lives.

Some such panic as this had stampeded the troops stationed in and about the little town of San Ildefonso, when the first cases of cholera proved fatal little more than a week before. A part of these had rushed away to plunder the rich monastery of El Parral a few miles off, lying in the hollow beneath Segovia. Others, breaking up into parties of from a dozen to a hundred, had betaken themselves over the mountains in the direction of Madrid.

So the Queen-Regent and the handsome Señor Muñoz remained perforce at La Granja, for the two-fold reason that the palace of Madrid was reported to be in the hands of a rebellious mob, and that the disbanding troops had removed with them every sort and kind of conveyance, robbed the stables of the horses, and plundered the military armoury of every useful weapon.

They had not, however, meddled with the treasures of the palace, nor offered any indignity to the Queen-Regent, or to any of the inmates of La Granja. But as the Sergeant well knew, not thus would these be treated by the roving bands of gipsies, who in a few hours would be storming about the defenceless walls. No resource of oriental torture, no refinement of barbarity would be omitted to compel the Queen and her consort to give up the treasures without which it was well known that they never travelled. Obviously, therefore, there was no time to be lost.

They went swiftly round the angle of the palace, their feet making no sound on the clean delicious sward of those lawns which make the place such a marvel in the midst of tawny, dusty, burnt-up Spain. In a brief space the party arrived unnoted and unchecked under the wall of the northern part.

Lights still burnt in two or three windows on the second floor, though all was dark on the face which the palace turned towards the south and the town of San Ildefonso.

"These are the windows of the rooms occupied by my lady the Queen-Regent," whispered the portress, Rebeca, pointing upwards; "but promise me to commit no murder or do any hurt to the little maid."

"Be quiet, woman," muttered Rollo, more roughly than was his wont; "we are come to save both of them from worse than death. Sergeant Cardono, bring the ladder!"

The Sergeant disappeared, and it was not many seconds before he was back again adjusting its hooks to the side of an iron balcony in front of one of the lighted rooms. Almost before he had finished Rollo would have mounted, impetuously as was his custom, but the Sergeant held him back by the arm.

"I crave your forgiveness," he whispered, "but if you will pardon me saying so, I have much more experience in such matters than you. Permit me in this single case to precede you! We know not what or whom we may meet with above!"

Nevertheless, though the Sergeant mounted first, Rollo followed so closely that his hands upon the rounds of the ladder were more than once in danger of being trodden upon by the Sergeant's half-boots.

Presently they stood together on the iron balcony and peered within. A tall dark man leaned against an elaborately carved mantelpiece indolently stroking his glossy black whiskers. A lady arrayed in a dressing-gown of pink silk reaching to her feet was seated on a chair, and submitting restlessly enough to the hands of her maid, who was arranging her hair for the night, in the intervals of a violent but somewhat one-sided quarrel which was proceeding between the pair.

Every few moments the lady would start from her seat and with her eyes flashing fire she would advance towards the indolent dandy by the mantelpiece as if with purpose of personal assault. At such seasons the stout old Abigail instantly remitted her attentions and stood perfectly well trained and motionless, with the brush and comb in her hand, till it pleased her lady to sit down again.

All the while the gentleman said no word, but watched the development of the scene with the utmost composure, passing his beautiful white fingers through his whiskers and moustache after the fashion of a comb. The lady's anger waxed higher and higher, and with it her voice also rose in an equal ratio. What the end would have been it is difficult to prophesy, for the Sergeant, realising that time was passing quickly, produced an instrument with a broad flat blade bent at an acute angle to the handle, and inserting it sharply into the crack of the French window, opened it with a click which must have been distinctly audible within, even in the height of the lady's argument.