The White Plumes of Navarre Part 42

He met the Abbe John on the doorstep, and taking in at a glance his frayed court suit, his military bearing, and the long sword that swung at his heels, the landlord bowed low, yet with vigilant eyes aslant to measure the chances of this young ruffler having a well-filled purse.

"Your Excellency," he cried, "you do honour to yourself, whoever you may be, by coming to seek lodgings at the hostel of La Cabeladura d'Oro, as we say in our Catalan. Doubtless you have come seeking for a place and pay from Philip our king. A place you may have for the asking--the pay not so surely. It behooves me therefore to ask whether you desire to eat in my house at the Table Solvent or at the Table Expectant?"

"I do not gather your meaning, mine host," said John d'Albret haughtily.

"Nay, I am a plain man," said the landlord, "and you may read my name above my door--Sileno Lorent y Valvidia. That tells all about me.

Therein, you see, you have the advantage of me. I know nothing about you, save that you arrive at my door with a c.o.c.ked bonnet and a long sword."

John d'Albret felt that it was no time to resent this Catalan _brusquerie_. Indeed, he himself was enough of a Gascon to respect the man's aplomb. For what would be rudeness intentional in a Castilian, in a man of Catalonia is only the rough nature of the borderer coming out.

So the Abbe John answered him in kind, using the Languedocean speech which runs like a kind of _Lingua Franca_ from Bayonne to Barcelona.

"I am for the Table Solvent. Bite on that, Master Sileno, and the next time be not so suspicious of a soldier who has fought in many campaigns, and hopes to fight in many another! Now, by my beard which is yet to be, give me a razor and shaving-tackle, that I may make myself fit to call upon the Governor--while do you, Master Sileno, be off and get a good dinner ready!"

The landlord pocketed the coin as an a.s.set towards the lengthy bill he saw unrolling in his mind's eye.

"Our Lord Governor the Count of Livia is at present with the King in Madrid," he said, "so I fear that you will be compelled to await his return, that is, if your business be with him, or has reference to any of the s.h.i.+ps in the harbour, or is connected with supplies or stores military."

Senor Don Sileno, of the Chevelure d'Or, felt that he had given his guest quite sufficient lat.i.tude for entering into an explanation. But the Abbe John only thrust the hilt of his sword hard down, till the point c.o.c.ked itself suggestively under the landlord's nose as he turned his back upon him.

"My business is with the Governor," he said shortly, "and if your house prove a good one and your table well supplied, I may indeed be content to await his return!"

"This bantling mayoral," muttered the landlord, "keeps his mask up. Very well--so much the better, so long as he pays. None gives himself airs in the house of Don Sileno Lorent y Valvidia, hosteller of Rosas, without paying for it! That is the barest justice. But, methinks this young boaster of many campaigns and the long sword, might have a new suit of clothes to go and see the Governor withal. Yet I am not sure--fighting is a curious trade. A good cook is not always known by the cleanliness of his ap.r.o.n."

At this moment the Abbe John roared down the stairs for the hot water.

"Coming, your Excellency!" answered the host, making a wry face; "all that you desire shall be in your chamber as fast as my scullions' legs can bring it."

Shaved, reorganised as to his inner man, daintied as to his outer, the Abbe John looked out of the window of the Golden Chevelure upon the sleeping sea. The Parador was a little house with a trellised flower-garden running down to the beach, and sheltered from the heat of the sun by vine-leaves and trembling acacias.

"That is a strange name you have given your inn," said the Abbe John, taking some oil from the salad-bowl and burnis.h.i.+ng the hilt of his sword with a rag, as became a good cavalier. He had the sign of the Golden Tresses held by Sileno Lorent y Valvidia under his eyes as he spoke.

"You think so, sir?" said the landlord, his former _brusquerie_ returning as soon as it was a question of property; "that shows you are unacquainted with the history of the country in which you desire to practise your trade of war!"

"I am none so entirely ignorant of it as you suppose," said John d'Albret.

"Yes, as ignorant as my carving-fork," said the landlord, pointing with that useful and newly-invented piece of cutlery to the sign below. "Now if you are a man of the pen as well as of the sword, what would you draw from that sign?"

"Why," said the Abbe John, smiling, "that you are named, curiously enough, Sileno--that your father's name was Lorent and your mother's Valvidia--that you are tenant of a well-provisioned inn called with equal curiosity the Golden Chevelure, and that you lodge (as you put it) both 'on horseback or on foot.' That is a good deal of printing to pay for at a penny a letter!"

"As I foretold, your Excellency knows nothing of the matter--and indeed, how should you? For by your tongue I would wager that you are from the Navarrese provinces--therefore a speaker of two languages and a wanderer over the face of the earth--your sword your bedfellow, a sack of fodder for your beast your best couch, and the loot of the last town taken by a.s.sault the only provender for your purse----"

"Let my purse alone," quoth the Abbe John, "you will find that there is enough therein to pay you, and--for a bottle of good wine on occasion for the pleasure of your company."

This mixture of hauteur and familiarity appeared to enchant the landlord, and he laid down on the bed the dishes he was carrying.

"I will explain," he said; "it is not every day that you can hear such a tale as mine for nothing."

"Bring a bottle of your best!" said John, who was disposed to talk, hoping that by-and-by he might receive also the best of informations as to the s.h.i.+ps in the harbour, their incomings and outgoings, their captains and merchandises, together with the ports to which they sailed.

The wine was brought, and the host began his tale.

"This hostelry of mine was my father's also, and his father's before him for many generations. They were of n.o.ble blood--of the Llorients of Collioure, though the rolling of vulgar tongues has shortened it a little in these days. And my mother's name was Valvidia, being of one of the best houses of Spain. I am therefore of good blood on either side--you hear, Senor the Soldier?"

The Abbe John nodded. There was nothing remarkable in that. Every Spaniard counts himself so born, and it must be owned, so far at least as politeness is concerned, comports himself as such.

But the Chevelure d'Or, its carefully-mixed wine, and the tale thereto attached proved so soporific, that when John d'Albret awoke, he found himself chained to a bench in a long, low, evil-smelling place. A huge oar-handle was before him, upon which he was swaying drunkenly to and fro. He had on his left two companions who were doing the work of the rowing, and, erected upon a bench behind, a huge man with a fierce countenance walked to and fro with a whip in his hand.

"Where am I?" said John d'Albret feebly, his voice appearing to himself to come from an infinite distance, and sounding through the buzzing and racking of many windmills, like those of Jean-Marie the Miller-Alcalde when upon their beams and sails the mistral does its bitter worst.

"Hus.h.!.+" whispered his neighbour, "the _comite_ will flog you if you talk when at work. You are on the King of Spain's galley _Conquistador_, going south from Rosas to Barcelona. And as for me, I am a fellow-sufferer with you for the religion. I am Francis Agnew, the Scot!"

CHAPTER XLII.

SECRETS OF THE PRISON HOUSE

"But Francis Agnew is dead! With my own eyes I saw him lie dead, in the robing-room of Professor Anatole----"

"_Row, you skulking 'Giffe'!_" cried the "comite," bringing down his whip upon the Abbe John's shoulders, which were bare, with a force that convinced him that he at least was both alive and awake.

So he kept silence and rowed in his place next the side of the vessel.

And even his wonder in the matter of Claire's father could not prevent his cursing in his heart the man who had brought him to this pa.s.s--the talkative, hospitable, and far-descended Don Sileno Lorent y Valvidia, of the Parador of the Cabeledura d'Oro in the town of Rosas.

The galley of the first cla.s.s, _Conquistador_, was one of the few which had been left behind in the Mediterranean at the time of the Great Armada. Most of the others had been carried northward for coast defence, and now lagged idly in port for lack of crews to navigate them. So that it became a quaint dilemma of King Philip's how to obtain sufficient heretics for his _autos de fe_ without impoveris.h.i.+ng too greatly his marine.

The _Conquistador_ kept close company with the _Puerto Reale_, another of the same cla.s.s, but with only two hundred slaves aboard to the three hundred and fifty of the _Conquistador_. The "comite," or master-in-charge of the slaves, walked up and down a long central bench.

His whip was hardly ever idle, but it did not fall again upon John d'Albret--not from any pity for a newcomer, but because the s.h.i.+p's purser had let out the fact that a considerable sum in gold was in his hands to the credit of the newcomer. For King Philip, though he persecuted the heretic with fire and sword, fine, imprisonment, and the galleys, did not allow his subordinates to interfere with his monopoly.

And indeed, as the Abbe John learned, more than one officer had swung from the forty-foot yard of his own mainmast for intromitting wrongfully with a prisoner's money.

As to the captains, they were for the most part impoverished grandees or younger sons of dukes and marquises. Most were knights of Malta and so apparent bachelors, whose money would go to the Order at their death. In the meantime, therefore, they spent royally their revenues. The captain of the _Conquistador_ was the young Duke of Err, recently succeeded to the amba.s.sadorial t.i.tle, and it was said of him that he counted the life of a galley-slave no more than that of a black-beetle beneath his seigneurial heel.

So long as the boat remained at sea, there was no sleep for any slave.

Neither, indeed, for any of the "comites" or sub-officers, who consequently grew snappish and drove their slaves to the very limit of endurance, so that they might the sooner reach the harbour. Yet it was full morning before the awnings were spread within the roads of Barcelona, and the Abbe John could stretch his limbs--so far, that is, as the chain allowed. He had been placed, at the request of the senior oarsman of his mess, Francis Agnew, in the easiest place, that next to the side of the galley. Here not only was the stroke of the oar shortest, but at night, or in the intervals of sleep, the curve of the s.h.i.+p's side made a couch, if not luxurious, at least, comparatively speaking, tolerable.

The "comite" hoisted his hammock across the broad _coursier_ or _estrada_ which ran the length of the s.h.i.+p, overlooking and separating the two banks of oars, and formed the only pa.s.sage from the high p.o.o.p to the higher stern. It was also useful in rough seas, when the waves broke right across the s.h.i.+p, and (a mere detail) over the rowers also. For the only communication with the hold was by gangways descending from either end of the _coursier_.

The Abbe John heard the sound of the chief "comite's" whistle with astonishment--so varied were its tones, the quick succession of its notes, that the prompt understanding and obedience of the slaves and sailors, at whatever part of the deck they were placed, seemed as magic to him.

"Do as I do," said Francis Agnew, noticing his bewilderment. So the Abbe John halted and pulled, raised his oar level or backed water at the word of Claire's father. And all the while he kept looking sideways at the Dead-come-to-Life-again with speechless wonder and the sense of walking in a dream. Only the sound of the "comite's" lash on his comrades' backs kept him convinced of the general reality of things.

Francis Agnew was a strong and able-bodied rower, much remarked and approved by his chiefs. At various periods of an adventurous life he had served on the French and other galleys, even including those of Turkey.

So that all the commands and disciplines came easily to him. He had even been charged with the provisioning of the rowers of the whole port side, and on occasion he could take the "comite's" whistle and pipe upon it, to the admiration of all.

Claire's father began his tale as soon as he had arranged his great grey cloak of woollen stuff commodiously, and laid the pillow (which he had by favour) close to the Abbe John's ear.

"The servants of the Sorbonne who were employed to carry my body to the vault were greedy rascals. It was their thought at first to sell my body to the younger surgeons for the purpose of their researching. But after stripping me of my apparel, it chanced that they cast a bucket of water over me to help me to 'keep'--the weather being hot in those Barricade Days in the city of Paris."