Chapter 8 The Hounds of God by Rafael Sabatini
DON PEDRO'S LETTER
Don Pedro was treated at Trevanion Chase with all the consideration due to an honoured guest, and this in a house famed for its hospitality, despite the apparently inhospitable character of its master.
Lord Garth's revenues were by far the greatest of any nobleman in the West of England; his personal expenditure was insignificant; and he gave little thought or care to the manner in which his considerable wealth was laid out by his steward, Francis Trevanion—an impoverished cousin upon whom he had bestowed the office—and Howard Martin, the chamberlain grown old in his service. He trusted these men implicitly, not so much because they were trustworthy or because his own nature was trustful, as because by trusting them he was relieved of those economic cares and minor domestic details which he regarded as the troublesome, necessary futilities of life. His wealth was more than abundant for all that his station might require of him in his household; and whilst of an intense personal frugality, he had no desire that any economy should be practised, regarding such practises, indeed, as an irritating waste of things infinitely more valuable than money.
What the Lady Margaret required for herself or considered should be provided for another, she had merely to signify either to Francis Trevanion or to Martin, according to the nature of the requirement. She was invariably obeyed without question.
By her orders now a servant was appointed to minister to the personal wants of Don Pedro; their guest was provided with fresh linen and what else he lacked for his bodily comfort, and he was afforded a spacious chamber in the south-west wing of the mansion, whence he had a fine view of the downs and the sea, that accursed sea which had played the traitor to him and his fellow-countrymen.
To this chamber Don Pedro was confined for a week by a fever which attacked him on the very evening of his arrival, as a very natural result of all that lately he had undergone. This fever raged so furiously in the course of the next two days that a doctor was fetched from Truro to attend him.
Thus the fact of his presence at Trevanion Chase became bruited abroad and afforded presently matter for sensational discussion in every hamlet between Truro and Smithwick. Soon there were rumours—false rumours—of other Spaniards who had come ashore alive from that galleon, whose wreckage had supplied active and in some instances profitable occupation to the locality, and extravagant stories went up and down the countryside.
The constable came from Truro to pay Lord Garth a visit. He accounted it his duty to inquire into this affair and to suggest to his lordship that it behoved him to lay the matter before the justices.
His lordship was contemptuous of the justices, and arrogantly unable to perceive how anything that happened at Trevanion Chase could be the concern of any but himself. In some respects his outlook was almost feudal. Certainly nothing could have been more remote from his intentions than to seek the justices in this or any other matter.
He expressed himself in some such terms. He adopted a judicial tone. He admitted the presence at Trevanion Chase of a Spanish gentleman who had come ashore from the wreck. But as this coming ashore could not be regarded in the light of an invasion or as a hostile act against the peace of the realm, he was not aware of any statutory enactments under which the justices might take proceedings against Don Pedro. In any case, however, Don Pedro had formally surrendered himself to the Lady Margaret; he was virtually a prisoner at Trevanion Chase, and his lordship accepted whatever responsibility this might entail, and denied the right of anyone to demand of him an account of his actions in this or any other matter.
He was by no means certain that the right did not exist; but he thought that the surest way of saving himself trouble was to deny its existence. To clinch his arguments he presented the constable with a crown and sent him to the kitchen to get drunk.
No sooner was he rid of the constable than he was plagued by Sir John Killigrew, who came to express the unsolicited opinion that this Spanish gentleman should be sent to the Tower to join there his distinguished compatriot Don Pedro Valdez.
His lordship began to experience exasperation. If he refrained from heat, it was because manifestations of heat were foreign to his nature. But he did not mince matters in pointing out to Sir John that he considered the subject of the visit an unwarrantable intrusion, and that he was well able to take order about Don Pedro without advice or assistance from his neighbours. He condescended however to explain that Don Pedro's case was rather exceptional; he deserved some consideration out of regard for his father's attitude towards the Queen in the old days. In this, his lordship asserted confidently, there was at least a score of gentlemen still in England who would support him. Sir John withdrew defeated, to face his kinsman Gervase, who had inspired the visit, and to explain to him its failure.
"After all, it is his own affair. The responsibility lies with him," said Killigrew with an airy tolerance very different from the patriotic indignation in which he had set out. "One Spaniard more or less is no great matter when all is said, and there's no mischief for the fellow's hands here in Cornwall."
Sir Gervase did not at all agree with him He denounced the whole thing as outrageous. At best it was an untidy business, and the young seaman liked things ship-shape and in their proper places. The proper place for Don Pedro de Mendoza y Luna, in his opinion, was the Tower. His hostility to the Spaniard was increased, if not indeed entirely begotten, by the attitude towards himself which her ladyship had taken up concerning the fellow. He failed entirely to perceive that it was his own rather boyish self-sufficiency and almost arrogant assumption of authority which had piqued her into this attitude.
Considering himself affronted by her disregard, he allowed the days to pass without attempting to approach her. But he had news of her—of her and her prisoner—which did not at all lessen his indignation.
The neighbouring gentry accepted the fact of the Spaniard's presence at Trevanion Chase with an equanimity that appalled him. From the Godolphins, the Tregarths and the younger Tressilian he actually heard the man's graces, wit and accomplishments extolled. This when Don Pedro's fever had abated and he was once more abroad, and being treated—as the reports showed—as an honoured guest. What Sir Gervase overlooked in permitting himself to be fretted by these reports was the fact that the aim of those fribbles was deliberately to stab him by them, and so avenge the hurt to their mean selves proceeding from the honours which had given him an ascendancy over them.
So Gervase sulked at Arwenack and gave his mind ostensibly to matters concerned with the fitting of his ship as if no Lady Margaret existed, until one morning, some twelve days after Don Pedro's coming, a groom rode over from the Chase with a note from her ladyship in which she inquired the reason of Sir Gervase's protracted absence and required him to come in person that very day and explain it to her, That he had registered the irrevocable resolve of sailing for the Indies without seeing her again did not prevent him from instantly obeying the summons of that note, little suspecting that it was in the interest of Don Pedro that his presence and services were required.
The fact was that with the recovery of his strength Don Pedro's mind turned naturally enough to the recovery of his liberty and to his repatriation. He approached the matter skilfully and delicately, as he did all things.
"There is," he informed her ladyship, "a matter of some urgency to be discussed between us, which only my condition has suffered me to postpone until now."
They had lingered at the breakfast-table when the meal was over and after his lordship and Francis Trevanion had withdrawn. The latticed windows stood open, for the weather was still warm. Don Pedro facing them could look out from his seat at the table upon the long stretch of smooth green lawn, brilliant as enamel in the morning sunshine, to the cluster of larches which cast a black shadow along its farther edge.
The Lady Margaret looked up quickly, her attention arrested by the unusual gravity of his tone. He answered the question of that glance.
"It becomes necessary that as my captor your ladyship should settle the ransom that is due."
"The ransom?" she frowned a little in surprise and perplexity. Then she laughed. "I don't perceive the necessity."
"It exists, my lady, none the less, and it is for you to state the sum. And let me add that to state a light one were to pay me a poor compliment."
Her perplexity increased. Her thoughtful eyes seemed to be pondering the table of dark oak with its strip of white napery and the crystal and silver glistening upon it. This, she thought, was to push the comedy a little far. At last she said so.
"Though I accepted your surrender when you made it, because...because, forsooth, it seemed a pretty thing to do, yet in reality you are to account yourself no more than our guest."
A smile flickered over the narrow handsome face.
"Ah no!" he cried. "Do not commit the error, of assuming that I am no more than that, nor the imprudence of announcing it. You must bethink you that if I am your guest, you are guilty of harbouring me, of affording me shelter. You are surely aware that there are heavy penalties already for harbouring Catholics, and no doubt there will be added ones for harbouring Spaniards who have been in arms against England. For your own sake as much as for mine, then, let it be quite clear that I am your prisoner, and that it is as your prisoner that I abide here. You will remember, too, that you are committed to it by what you told Sir Gervase on the morning of my surrender to you. Without that assurance from you and from his lordship, Sir Gervase would have taken me, and I do not care to think how it might have fared with me. I know that sooner than be dragged into some public place, I must have withstood arrest by him; and since he was armed on that occasion with a fowling-piece, it is more than likely he would have shot me. You will see, then, when all this is considered, that honour will not permit me to owe my life and safety to a subterfuge."
It was, of course, a piece of sophistry; for none was more aware than himself that the very nature of his arrest was in itself a subterfuge. The argument, however, sufficed to deceive her, and she confessed to herself that it was unassailably sound.
"I understand," she said. "All this being so, and since you insist, yourself you shall name your ransom."
He smiled mysteriously, thoughtfully fingering the long pearl-drop in his right ear.
"Be it so," he said at length. "Depend upon it, my lady, that I shall do myself the fullest justice. It remains now for you to lend me your aid so that I may procure this ransom."
"Ah yes?" She laughed now, thinking that here surely he must find himself completely baffled.
But he was to reveal the unfailing quality of his resource which already had found a way. He leaned forward across the board. "I will write a letter, and it will be for you to see that it is carried."
"For me?"
He explained himself. "From the estuary below, from Smithwick and elsewhere, fishing yawls and other such craft are daily putting out to sea. It is amongst these that we must find a messenger to bear my letter. It is in this that of necessity I must depend upon your ladyship."
"You think I could prevail upon an English seaman to make a Spanish port at such a time as this?"
"That were, of course, a ludicrous suggestion, and I am not being ludicrous. I am earnest. All is well between England and France, and my letter shall be addressed to one who is known to me in the port of Nantes. The rest we may leave to him. He will forward it to its ultimate destination."
"You have it all thought out!" said she, eyeing him almost mistrustfully.
He rose, slim and very elegant in his Spanish clothes, which the care of the efficient Martin had restored to their pristine quiet splendour. "Could I suffer myself to remain indefinitely a burden upon your noble hospitality?" he protested, his attitude one of dismay at a thought that did him wrong. But his eyes very watchful of her.
She laughed quite freely at that, and rose in her turn. On the gravel outside she had caught the approaching crunch of hooves, and knew the sound to herald the approach of groom and falconer. They were to ride that morning on the open moorland, and Don Pedro was to see for himself how hawks are trained in England.
"A courtly dissimulation of your haste to leave us," she rallied him.
"Ah, not that!" he exclaimed with a sudden fervour. "It is not charitable to think so of me, who am so little master of my destinies."
She turned her shoulder to him, and looked out of the window. "Here is Ned with the horses, Don Pedro."
A slow smile lifted a little his black moustachios as he considered the back of her neat head. He thought he detected annoyance in her when she discovered how maturely he had considered his plans for removing himself. Her manner had turned frosty, and her subsequent laughing indifference had been so much feminine dissimulation to cover her self-betrayal. Thus reasoned Don Pedro and took satisfaction in this reasoning. It received a check when, as they rode that morning, she told him that if he would write his letter, she thought she knew of a channel by which it could be set upon its journey. After her flash of resentment at his intentions he had hardly expected such ready acquiescence in measures which were to lead to his ultimate departure.
Thus it fell out that on the morrow when he had written his letter—couched in Latin so that it might baffle any vulgar person who might be tempted to investigate its contents—she dispatched her little note to Sir Gervase.
He came at once, arriving at eleven, just as they were sitting down to dine, for they kept country hours at Trevanion Chase. At table he had leisure to observe for himself the courtly grace, the urbane charm and ready easy wit which had been reported to him of Don Pedro. And as if perceiving the tactical error of his earlier downrightness where the Spaniard was concerned and seeking to make amends, he employed towards him a studied courtesy which Don Pedro returned with interest.
When dinner was done, and the earl had withdrawn in strict accordance with his inveterate habit, her ladyship desired Sir Gervase to come and admire with her the last of the year's roses. Sir Gervase, asking nothing better, departed with her, leaving Don Pedro and Francis Trevanion alone at table.
There were certain harsh truths she was to hear from Sir Gervase by way of chastisement upon which forgiveness would follow the more sweetly. But as they paced her rose-garden, enclosed within tall and trimly-cut hedges of yew to shelter the blooms from the sea gales, she adopted towards him so distracting and unusual an air of shyness that the remnants of his ill-humour were dissipated unuttered, and all the ill things he had rehearsed to tell her were forgotten.
"Where have you tarried all these days, Gervase?" she asked him presently, and by this question, for which once he had hoped so that he might return one of the dozen scathing answers he had prepared, flung him into some slight confusion.
"I have had affairs," he excused himself. "The fitting of my ship has engaged me closely with Sir John. And then...I did not think that you would be needing me."
"Do you come only when you think you are needed?"
"Only when I think I am welcome, which is much the same thing."
She gasped. "The unkind imputation!" she cried. "You are welcome, then, only when you are needed? Fie!"
His confusion increased. As usual she was putting him in the wrong where he knew that he was right.
"There was your Spaniard here to beguile your leisures," he said gruffly, angling for a contradiction.
"A courtly person, is he not, Gervase?"
"Oh, courtly enough!" he growled impatiently.
"I find him vastly diverting. There is a man who has seen the world."
"Why, so have I. Was I not with Drake when he sailed...?"
"Yes, yes. But the world I mean, the world of his knowledge, is different from yours, Gervase."
"The world is the world," said Gervase sententiously. "And if it comes to that, I've seen a deal more of it than ever has he."
"Of the savage world, yes, Gervase. His knowledge is of the civilised, cultured world, as his person shows. He has been to all the courts of Europe and is learned in their ways and in many other ways. He speaks all the languages of the world, and plays the lute like an angel, and sings...Should'st hear him sing, Gervase! And he..."
But Gervase had heard enough, and interrupted her. "How long does he abide here, this marvel of the ages?"
"Only a little while longer, I fear."
"You fear?" Disgust ineffable rang in his voice.
"What have I said?" she wondered. "Have I angered you, Gervase?"
He snorted impatiently and strode on, planting his feet 'with ferocity. For all that he had sailed with Drake, seen much of the world and learnt many things, there had been few opportunities upon that voyage to study the tortuous ways of woman.
"What are you going to do with him," he asked. "Has your father reached a resolve?"
"It is no concern of my father's. Don Pedro is my prisoner. I am holding him to ransom, and he shall go home so soon as the ransom comes."
This first took him by surprise, then afforded him some slight matter for mirth.
"If you are waiting for that, there's no ground for your fears that he'll soon be leaving you."
"You make too sure. He has writ a letter to a man in Nantes, who will proceed to Spain to obtain the ransom."
Sir Gervase was utterly discourteous. "Bah!" he sneered. "It would become you better to send to Truro for the constable and deliver Don Pedro up to the law of the land."
"And is that all you've learnt of the usages of chivalry in your sailings with Sir Francis Drake? I think you had better sail again and travel farther."
"Chivalry!" said he. "Moonshine!" Then from futile contempt he turned again to more practical considerations. "He has writ a letter you say. And who's to carry the letter?"
"That is a difficulty, of course. He perceives it himself."
"Oh, he does, does he? He must indeed be a man of perceptions. He can actually see an object when it stands before him. There's discernment!" And Sir Gervase laughed well-pleased to have found this weakness in the Spaniard's equipment.
He was less pleased when Margaret pointed out the consequence. They had come to the end of the enclosed garden, to a semi-circular stone seat that was half-recessed into the thick yew hedge. With a sigh of resignation, she seated herself.
"He bides here for ever, then, it seems!" She sighed again. "A pity! I am sorry for him, poor gentleman. To be a prisoner in a foreign land can be no enviable fate. It is like being a thrush in a cage. But there! We will ease his condition all we can, and for myself I am well content that he should remain. I like his company."
"Oh, you like his company? You confess to that?"
"What woman would not? He is a man whom most women would find adorable. I was lonely until he came, with my father always at his books, and no one to bear me company but such foolish fellows as Lionel Tressilian, Peter Godolphin or Ned Tregarth. And if you are going a-sailing again, as you say you are, I shall soon be lonely once more."
"Margaret!" He was leaning over her, in his eyes all the ardour aroused by that unusual confession.
She looked up at him, and smiled with some tenderness. "There! I've said it! I didn't mean to say so much."
He slipped into the seat beside her and put his arm about her shoulders.
"You understand, Gervase, don't you, that I should desire to keep so welcome a companion as Don Pedro by me?" His arm fell away as if it had been water. "I mean when you are gone, Gervase. You wouldn't have me lonely. Not if you love me."
"This is to consider," said he.
"What is to consider?"
He sat forward now, his elbows on his knees. "This letter that he has written: what exactly did he hope from it?"
"Why his ransom and the means to return to Spain."
"And he had no thought of how it might be got to Nantes?"
"Oh yes. He thought the skipper of some yawl or fishing boat might carry it. His difficulty lay in inducing such a skipper to do him this service. But no doubt Don Pedro's wits will find a way. He's very shrewd and resourceful, Gervase, and he..."
"Yes, yes," said Gervase. "Perhaps I can save him trouble."
"You, Gervase? What trouble can you save him?"
He got to his feet abruptly. "Where is this letter?"
She considered him round-eyed. "Why, what now? What is the letter to you, Gervase?"
"I'll find a skipper to carry it to Nantes. It shall be there within a week at most. Another week or two to get his ransom here, and he may go his ways again to Spain or to the devil."
"Would you really do so much for him, Gervase?" said her innocent ladyship.
Gervase smiled grimly. "Get me the letter. I know of a boat that sails with the tide to-night, and if the price will warrant it her skipper will even run to the Loire."
She rose. "Oh, the price will warrant it. Fifty ducats for the bearer, to be delivered to him against the letter by the person to whom it is addressed."
"Fifty ducats! 'Sdeath! He's a wealthy man, this Spaniard!"
"Wealthy? His wealth is incalculable. He is a Grandee of Spain. The half of the Asturias are his property and he has vast vineyards in Andalusia. He is a nephew of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, he possesses the close friendship of the King of Spain, and..."
"To be sure, to be sure," said Gervase. "Get me this letter, and leave the rest to me."
He could be depended upon to act zealously in the matter, for by now no one could have been more completely persuaded than Sir Gervase Crosby of the propriety of speeding so illustrious, wealthy, accomplished, highly-connected and attractive a gentleman from Trevanion Chase.