Chapter 16 The Hounds of God by Rafael Sabatini
CHARYBDIS
They cast anchor at evening two days later in the spacious bay at Santander, lying sheltered in its green amphitheatre of hills, with Mount Valera in the background thrusting up its detached mass from the range of the Sierras de Isar.
Those last two days aboard the Demoiselle had been days of profound uneasiness under a sullen superficial calm. Frey Luis had made no further attempt to approach the Lady Margaret, and there was something ominous and menacing in his very abstention, and in its implication that he had abandoned the hope of her conversion. Twice he attempted to re-open the subject with Don Pedro, and well might it have been for Don Pedro had he listened and so learned the precise peril in which he stood. But Don Pedro was at the end of his patience in several ways. The fundamental pride and haughtiness of his nature reminded him that he had tolerated from this conventual zealot more insolence already than self-respect permitted. Piety demanded in him a certain measure of submission; but there were limits to the strain to be imposed upon it and those limits had been overpassed by the presumptuous friar. Realising it, Don Pedro became curt and rude with him, asserted his rank and nobility, and dismissed Frey Luis with threats of violence, which but served to confirm the Dominican in the terrible conclusions he had already drawn.
With the Lady Margaret Don Pedro was almost sullen now. Uneasiness began to stir in him. He began to fear the ultimate frustration of his hopes from her calm obduracy, from the firm manner in which she repelled his every advance with the constant reminder that he had by the ingratitude of his conduct made her regret the hospitality her house had afforded him. He would have reasoned her away from this. But she would not suffer him to do so. However he might twist and turn, she brought him ever back to the source.
"We have," she insisted, "a fact, a thing done, which nothing in the world could possibly excuse. Why labour, then, to seek what does not exist?"
Her firmness, the more formidable because of her unbroken outward calm, began to sow in his heart the seed of despair. He thought of what he was, of what he offered her. Enough, surely, to have contented any woman. Her obduracy was exasperating. He brooded over it. It festered in him, and began to warp and transmute his nature, which fundamentally was chivalrous.
The explosion came after those two days of sullen silences and sullen glances. It came when the anchor was being cast on that calm evening of October in the Bay of Santander.
She sat in the great cabin, her anxieties sharpened by the knowledge that the voyage was at an end and that she must gird herself for battle now upon some new ground which she did not yet perceive and for which she was unable to discover any weapons.
"We have arrived," he announced to her. He was pale, angry, his dark eyes aflash.
She weighed her words before she uttered them. "You mean that you have arrived, sir. For me this is not an arrival. It is a stage in the tiresome journey you have forced upon me."
He agreed, deliberately affecting to misunderstand her. "True. To-morrow we continue on land. We have yet some leagues to go. But it is not far. In a few days now we shall be within my own walls at Oviedo."
"I trust not," said she with her outward imperturbability. Her confidence was in Frey Luis. Although for two days he had not approached her; although his latter visits had all been concerned with her conversion to the true faith, yet she trusted to his promise to protect her and to the fundamental virtue and goodness discernible in the man.
"You trust not?" Don Pedro was sneering. He approached her where she sat on the cushioned sea-chest under the tall stern windows. Seated thus her face was little more than a white blur in the shadows. But what little daylight lingered was confronted by him, revealing his countenance and the wicked mockery that writhed on it.
This persistent cold opposition to his imperious will, this utter unresponsiveness to the love which might have made a saint of him, was converting him swiftly into a devil. He realised in that moment that the change had been steadily growing in those days on board the Demoiselle. Standing over her now he perceived that his love was all but transmuted into hate.
For her he would have made the last sacrifice. He would have laid down his life, he assured himself. And all the return he could awaken in her was this glacial scorn, this unchanging attitude of repulsion. His present impulse was to punish this obstinacy and this folly; to render her brutally aware of him; to possess her, merely so that she might learn his dominance; to break her in body and in soul.
"You trust not?" he repeated. "Upon what do you found this trust of yours?"
"Upon God," she answered him.
"God! The God of heretics? Will he move in your defence?"
"He moved in my people's," she reminded him, "when the invincible might of Spain was arrayed against them. Spain thought of England as you think of me. A dream from which there was a rude awakening. Your awakening, Don Pedro, may be as rude."
He swung away from her, wringing his hands, beating fist into palm in a gesture of exasperation. Then he was back again, his mood soft once more, his tone a lover's.
"We are uttering words that should never pass between us. If you will but be reasonable! It is naught but unreason blocks the way. Your obstinacy it is which denies you to me. You will not listen, however humbly I sue, because you have taken an obdurate resolve against it."
"You are modest, sir. You are assuming that you can win any woman who will listen to you."
"That is to corrupt my meaning. It is to forget all that I said to you when first you came on board..."
"When first you dragged me here, you mean."
He went on without heeding the correction. "I told you then of a force outside ourselves, of my persuasion that as it drove me so must it drive you if you would suffer yourself to be driven. Listen, Margaret!" He was down on one knee beside the sea-chest.
"I love you, and you may trust my love to render your life glorious. There is no return for you. Even if I allowed you to go free, it is too late. You have been with me here a week on board this ship, under my hand. You see what must be assumed, what already can be repaired in no way save by marrying me. Let it be done now. There is a priest here who will..."
She interrupted him. "You speak of assumptions! I tell you, man, in England there is no one will assume anything against me when I shall have told my tale."
He rose, inflamed again with anger, casting all courtliness aside. "The assumption might be justified," he threatened. "Only the strength and quality of my love have made me hold my hand."
She came to her feet in a bound, breathing hard. "God! You dare say that to me! You knave! You gentleman!"
"Gentleman?" She heard his tinkling laugh. "Where have you lived not yet to have discovered that gentility is just a garment worn by a man. You may have me in that garment or without it. The choice is yours, madam. Nay! Listen! There is no need for further words. Very soon now you'll lie in my house at Oviedo. How you lie there is a matter for your own determining. But if you are wise you will lie there as my wife; you will marry me before we leave this ship."
On that he departed abruptly, slamming the cabin door so that the bulkheads trembled.
Shaking, outraged, mortified, she sank down again to the seat from which she had risen; and there for the first time she loosed her grip of her self-control, and gave way to tears of anger and of panic.
In that hour of her overwhelming need a figure rose before her, the figure of Gervase, stalwart, laughing, clean-limbed, clean-souled, mirror to her now of all that a gentleman should be. And she had hurt him that she might trifle with this Spanish satyr, by foolish imprudences which gave this man the right to think that he had power to whistle her down the wind when he so chose. She had played with fire, and, by Heaven, the fire had licked out not merely to scorch her, but to consume and destroy her. Little fool that she had been, vain, empty-headed little fool to have found satisfaction in the attentions of one whom she conceived of consequence because he had seen the world and quaffed at many of life's cups. Heavy was the punishment of her heedlessness.
"Gervase! Gervase!" she called in a whisper to the surrounding gloom.
If only he were there, she would cast herself upon her knees before him, purge herself by confession to him of her wilful folly, and acknowledge the love for him which was the only love her life had ever known or would ever know.
Then her mind turned to Frey Luis, and she recovered her shaken courage in the confidence of his protection. Aboard the ship he had been powerless despite the authority of his sacerdotal office. But now that land was reached, he could summon others to enforce that authority if Don Pedro should still attempt to withstand it.
Of this she had confirmation later, when locked in her own cabin she heard through the thin door Don Pedro talking to Duclerc whilst Pablillos was serving supper. She had excused herself when Don Pedro had come to summon her to table, and he had accepted her excuses without argument.
He spoke French with Duclerc, for all that the master was fluent enough in Spanish. But it was characteristic of the cultured Don Pedro that he must be addressing each man in his own language. He asked what kept Frey Luis and why he was not at table.
"Frey Luis went ashore an hour ago, monsiegneur," was the answer.
"Did he so?" grumbled the Spaniard. "And without farewells? Why, then, a good riddance to the croaking raven."
The Lady Margaret's heart leapt within her. She guessed the errand upon which the friar was gone, and she was glad that Don Pedro should have no suspicion of it.
Her guess was correct enough in that Frey Luis had gone ashore on matters concerned with her salvation. But there was this difference, that it was not salvation in the sense in which she understood it.
The manner of it was made manifest early on the following morning Her ladyship had risen betimes after a sleepless night of alternating hope and anxiety; she had dressed and gone on deck long before Don Pedro was astir, so that she might be ready for Frey Luis however early he should come.
That he would come early she was assured; and again her assurance was justified, for early he came; and with him a boatload of gentlemen in black with swords at their sides, and some of them carrying partisans as well.
The Spanish sailors on the Demoiselle came crowding to the bulwarks to watch the approach of that barge, and a murmur of dread and wonder ran through their ranks, for they were under no misapprehension as to the character of the escort with which Frey Luis returned. These were alguaziles of the Inquisition, the pursuivants of the Holy Office, whose approach was not to be regarded with equanimity by any man, no matter how tranquil his conscience.
Duclerc, the master, hearing that murmur, beholding the excitement among his seamen, despatched a boy to the cabin to inform Don Pedro. The information brought that gentleman swiftly on deck. He came profoundly intrigued, but without anxiety. No doubt this was some formality of the port where foreign vessels were concerned, the result of some new inquisitorial enactment.
He emerged into the open, in the ship's waist, just as Frey Luis, having climbed the entrance ladder, lowered in obedience to his command, was setting foot on deck. At his heels came some six of the black-arrayed pursuivants.
Her ladyship, who had eagerly watched that approach from the heights of the poop, was in the act of descending the companion when Don Pedro came forth. He heard her blithe greeting of the friar called across the deck; he turned in time to see her smile of welcome and the hand-wave of friendliness and understanding. His brows met; a doubt entered his mind. Was there treachery here at work? Was the priest in alliance with this girl to frustrate his ends concerning her? Was this presumptuous Dominican venturing to interfere in the affairs of the Count of Marcos?
Of the nature of this interference Don Pedro's doubts were brief. The priest's answer to her ladyship's welcome was also an answer to the question in Don Pedro's mind.
In response to that friendly hand-wave Frey Luis raised an arm to point her out to those who had followed him aboard. The rigidity of the movement and the sternness of his countenance lent the gesture a denunciatory character. He said some words to his followers rapidly, in Spanish; words which made Don Pedro catch his breath; words of command in response to which they moved forward promptly. Frey Luis stepped aside to observe. The seamen having backed to the other quarter, stood ranged against the bulwarks and some in the ratlines, looking on with round eyes of awe.
Her ladyship faltered, paused in her advance and sensing in all this something ominous and very different from what she had expected, frowned her perplexity. And then, abruptly, Don Pedro stepped between her and those advancing men in black, and by his challenge halted them.
"What's this?" he demanded. "What have you to do with this lady?"
Respect for his high rank gave them pause. One or two of them turned their heads to look for instruction to Frey Luis. It came, addressed to the nobleman.
"Stand aside, Lord Count!" The friar was stern and peremptory. "Do not presume to resist the Holy Office, or you will bring yourself, together with this woman, under its displeasure. At present there is no charge against you, who are but the victim of this woman's enchantments. See to it that you do not, yourself, provide one."
Don Pedro stared at him livid with passion. "Lord God!" he ejaculated, as the full measure of the peril to the Lady Margaret was suddenly unrolled before him. That mention of enchantments revealed it all to him, as if in a sudden flash of light. He remembered how the friar had spoken of witchcraft and demonology. He perceived now the application of that discourse, saw almost in detail the course that would be taken. Whether his rage was fed by this intent to rob him of a cherished possession, or whether it sprang from a sudden anguished realisation of the horror to which his rashness had committed Margaret, it may be difficult at this point to determine But his immediate action and all his subsequent conduct through the affair point to the nobler motive, to a belated forgetfulness of self in his concern for the woman whom I believe that he sincerely loved. His real offence against her was that he loved her too arrogantly; took too much for granted; but this was simply a natural expression of the inherent arrogance of this great gentleman of Spain, this spoilt darling of Fortune.
Certain it is that he was blinded now by fury, driven headlong to a rashness that must imperil his life and even by his own lights—the salvation of his soul. And I prefer to think that he was so driven by his sudden and terrible concern for Margaret.
He advanced a step, very stiff and haughty, his bare head thrown back, his left hand resting heavily upon the pummel of his sword, so that the weapon was thrust horizontally behind him. He had completed his preparations for going ashore, and he was booted and armed for the journey to come, which may be in the circumstances fortunate or unfortunate, according to how you regard the sequel.
His blazing eyes met the calm, almost melancholy glance of Frey Luis. "You will depart this ship," said I >on Pedro through his teeth, "and take your inquisitorial rabble with you before I have you all flung into the water."
Quietly Frey Luis admonished him. "You speak in anger, sir. I will forget your words. Once again I warn you against implicating yourself by resistance with this heretical witch whom it is our business to arrest. Be warned, Don Pedro!"
"Warned! You insolent friar, be you warned that there are presumptions from the consequences of which not even your sweat-reeking habit can protect you." Harshly, peremptorily, he raised his voice. "Don Diego!"
His intendant appeared from the other side of the companion. The man started forward at the call, livid and trembling visibly. Don Pedro's orders were brisk. There were muskets in the mainmast rack. There were men to handle them in plenty. Let this rabble be swept overboard at once.
Don Diego hesitated. Great was his awe of the count, his master. But greater still his awe of the Church Militant which could ride roughshod over nobility, over royalty itself. The seamen, too, were horror-stricken. Not one of them would move foot or hand to obey such a command if spoken by any below the rank of the king himself.
Lest they should be tempted to do so, Frey Luis spoke a word of warning sharply, and almost in the same breath commanded the pursuivants to take the woman in despite of any opposition that might be offered.
They advanced again. Don Pedro swept her into the gangway behind him, whilst himself he blocked the entrance to it. The Lady Margaret suffered this because she had not understood the altercation; she had perceived clearly enough in the friar's face and manner that whatever his intention it was not friendly to herself. She was bewildered, not knowing here who was her friend, or who her foe; and she found no confidence inspiring her in these men in black with the white cross embroidered on their doublets who moved in obedience to the friar's commands.
Out flashed Don Pedro's sword, whilst his left hand plucked the heavy dagger from his hip.
"Sacrilege!" she heard the friar denounce the act, and understood the word.
"Stand!" raged Don Pedro to the pursuivants, who were standing already, halted by his naked weapons.
But they paused for no more than to draw their swords. This done they advanced again, calling upon him to yield, reminding him of the penalties to which this sacriligious resistance was exposing him.
He answered them with furious mockery, with wild vituperation. Again he summoned Don Diego and the crew to stand beside him, and because they would not stir, but stood huddled like scared sheep, he called them dogs and cowards and by the foulest epithets that one man may cast upon another. Alone, then, his back protected by the gangway, whence Margaret, white and agitated, looked on in horror, he defied the alguaziles. He invited them to journey on his sword to the Paradise of their dreams or to the Hell of which Frey Luis had preached. He said blasphemous things which it would seem to those who heard them must doom him irrevocably when they came to be repeated to the Inquisitors of the Faith.
When at last they fell upon him, he stabbed one in the neck with his dagger and sheathed his sword in the bowels of another before they closed with him, bore him to the deck, knelt upon him and trussed him with leather thongs into a helpless human bundle.
They left him then to give their attention to the woman, to this heretical witch who had been the only original object of their quest.
Stiff and straight she stood as they advanced and laid rough hands upon her. They would have used violence to drag her forward, had she resisted; but so as to be spared this, she made haste to advance of her own free will.
"What does it mean?" she demanded of Frey Luis. "Is this the protection you afford a lady in distress, a maid who cast herself upon your pity, trusted to your priestly office? What does it mean, sir?"
The compassion of all the ages was in his great sombre eyes.
"My sister, you have been grievously misled. The heretical godlessness of your native land is answerable. But the poison has entered into you. Come with me, and you shall be made sound and whole. This poison shall be expurgated, so that you may come to be filled with grace, delivered from the abominable practices in which Satan the seducer has prompted you. In the bosom of the Faith you shall find infinite compassion. I lave no fear, my sister."
To her senses all this was fantastic: the tall, lean friar with his gaunt face and smouldering pitiful eyes; the two black pursuivants, coarse and bearded who stood on either side of her; the other two, between whom stood Don Pedro, gagged and bound, his doublet torn from neck to waist; the black, sprawling figure on the deck, in a puddle of blood from which a trickle was crawling snakewise towards the scuppers; the other on his knees, tended by Don Diego, who was staunching the blood that flowed from the wound in his neck; the huddle of stricken, staring seamen in the background; the masts and spars and shrouds above; and before her across the stretch of opalescent limpid water, a green hillside dotted with white houses set in gardens or amid terraced vineyards, a straggling town dominated by a great castle, all lying in the peaceful sparkle of the morning sun.
This was that fabulous land of Spain, the mistress of the world.