The Firebrand

But luckily Rollo remembered the giant Ramon Garcia, reckless and simple of heart, Dolóres his wife and her instant needs, and the imprisoned Fernandez family in the strong-room of the mill-house. It was clear even to his warped judgment that these constituted a first charge upon his endeavours, and that the good name of Mistress Concha, despite the dimples on her chin, must be considered so far a side issue.

The mill-house remained as he had left it when he rode away. The sunshine fell broad and strong on its whitewashed walls and green shutters, most of them closed hermetically along the front as was the custom of Sarria, till the power of the sun was on the wane. A workman or two busy down among the vents, and feeding the mouths of the grinding stones, looked up curiously at this unwonted visitor. But these had been too frequent of late, and their master's behaviour too strange for them to suspect anything amiss.

It was now the hottest time of the forenoon, and the heat made Rollo long for some of Don Luis's red wine, which he would drain in the Catalonian manner by holding the vessel well out and pouring a narrow stream in a graceful arch into his mouth. But for this he must wait. A captive quail on the balcony said check-check, and rattled on the bars of his cage to indicate that his water was finished, and that if somebody did not attend to him speedily he would die.

As Rollo went down the little slope, past the corner of the garden where Ramon had spoken first with La Giralda, it seemed to him that over the broiling roofs of the mill-house he caught the glimmer of something cool and white. He halted his horse and stood momentarily up in his stirrups, whereupon the glimmer upon the roof seemed to change suddenly to red and then as swiftly vanished.

Certainly there was something wrong. Rollo hurried on, giving the three knocks which had been agreed upon at the closed outer door of the house. It was opened by La Giralda.

"Who is signalling from the roof?" he asked hurriedly.

The old gipsy stared at him, and then glanced apprehensively at his face. It had grown white with sudden anxiety.

"A touch of sun – you are not accustomed – you are not of the country to ride about at this time of day. No one has been signalling. Don Ramon is with his wife, waiting for you; and, as I think, not finding the time long. I will bring you a drink of wine and water with a tisane in it, very judicious in cases of sun-touch!"

The latter was much in the line of the young man's desires, yet being still unsatisfied, he could not help saying, "But, La Giralda, I saw the thing plainly, a signal, first of white and then of red, waved from the roof, as it seemed, over the mill-wheel."

La Giralda shook her head.

"Eyes," she said, "only eyes and the touch of the sun. But tell me, what of Concha, and how you sped with the Lady Superior?"

But Rollo was not to be appeased till he had summoned El Sarria, and with him examined the strong-room where the prisoners were kept; as before, Don Luis sat listlessly by the table, his brow upon his hand. He did not look up or speak when they entered. But his brother moaned on about his wounded head, and complained that La Tia had drunk all the water. This being replenished, Don Tomas wandered off into muttered confidences concerning his early travels, how he had made love to the Alcalde's daughter of Granada, how he had fought with a contrabandista at Ronda fair – with other things too intimate to be here set down, ever returning, however, to his plea that the Tia Elvira had defrauded him of his fair share of the water-jug.

"Nay, not so," said the Tia, soothingly; "every drop of the water you have drunk, Don Tomas. But it is your head, your poor head. I turned the poultice, and with the water he speaks of moistened the leaves afresh. And how, worthy Señors, is the dear lady? I trust, well. Ah! had she been left in my care, all had gone right with her!"

"In your care! In your care, hell-hag!" cried El Sarria, fiercely, taking a step threateningly towards her, "aye, the kind of safety my child would have experienced had that gentleman, your brother there, been allowed to finish his grave-digging business. Let me not hear another word out of your mouth, lest I do the world a service by cutting short a long life so ill-spent!"

The Tia took the hint and said nothing. But her eyes, cast up to the roof, and her hands spread abroad palm outwards, expressed her conviction that ever thus do the truly good and charitable suffer for their good deeds, their best acts being mistaken and misinterpreted, and their very lives brought into danger by the benevolence of their intentions.

Had Rollo but followed the direction of her gaze he might have had his doubts of La Giralda's theory of sunstroke to explain the signalling from the roof. For there, clearly to be seen out of the half-open trap-door, was a little scarlet strip of cloth stirred by the wind, and doubtless conspicuous from all the neighbouring hills about the village of Sarria.

But Rollo, eager to get to his task of arranging the transport for the evening, so that Dolóres might be taken in safety and comfort to the Convent of the Holy Innocents, was already turning to be gone, while Ramon Garcia, afraid to trust himself long in the same apartment with the traitor, stood outside fingering the key.

"Bring wine and water!" cried Rollo to La Giralda, "and, Don Luis, in an hour I will trouble you to take a little tour of the premises with me, just to show your men that all is right."

Luis Fernandez bowed slightly but said nothing, while the invalid from his couch whined feebly that all the water was for him. The others might have the wine or at least some of it, but he must have all the water.

So Rollo Blair and his companion withdrew into the cool guest-chamber of the mill-house without having seen the little waving strip of red upon the roof. As soon as they were gone, however, Don Luis leaped up, and with a long fishing-pole he flaunted a strip of white beside the red, waving it this way and that for a long time, till in the close atmosphere of the strong-room the sweat rained from him in great drops.

Then he leaped down at last, muttering, "If the General is within twenty miles, as I think he is, that ought to bring him to Sarria. The angels grant that he arrive in time" (here he paused a moment, and then added with a bitter smile), "or the devils either. I am not particular, so be that he come!"

CHAPTER XIX

SIGNALS OF STORM

A long strip of Moorish-looking wall and certain towers that glittered white in the sun, advertised to Rollo that he approached the venta of Sarria. Without, that building might have passed for the palace of a grandee; within – but we know already what it was like within.

Rollo was impatient to find his companions. He had just discovered that he had most scurvily neglected them, and now he was all eagerness to make amends. But the house-place of the Café de Madrid was tenanted only by the Valiant and a clean silently-moving maid, who solved the problem of perpetual motion by finding something to do simultaneously in the kitchen, out in the shady patio among the copper water-vessels, and up in the sleeping chambers above.

Rollo's questioning produced nothing but a sleepy grunt from Don Gaspar Perico.

"Gone – no! They had better not," he muttered, "better not – without paying their score – bread and ham and eggs, to say nothing of the noise and disturbance they had occasioned. The tallest was a spitfire, a dare-devil – ah, your excellency, I did not know – "

Here Don Gaspar the Valiant, who had been muttering in his beard more than half asleep, awoke suddenly to the fact that the dare-devil aforesaid stood before him, fingering his sword-hilt and twisting his moustache.

But he was a stout old soldier, this Gaspar Perico, and had a moustache of his own which he could finger with anybody.

"I crave your pardon, Señor," he said, rising and saluting, "I think I must have been asleep. Until this moment I was not aware of your honourable presence."

"My companions – where are they?" said Rollo, hastily. He had much on his mind, and wished to despatch business. Patience he had none. If a girl refused him he sprang into the first ship and betook himself to other skies and kinder maidens. If a battle went wrong, he would fight on to the death, or at least till he was beaten into unconsciousness. But of the cautious generalship which draws off in safety and lives to fight another day, Rollo had not a trace.

"Your companions – nay, I know nothing of them," said the veteran: "true it is he of the stoutness desired to buy my wine, and when I gave him a sample, fine as iced Manzanilla, strong as the straw-wine of Jerez, he spat it forth upon the ground and vowed that as to price he preferred the ordinary robbers of the highway!"

Rollo laughed a little at this description of John Mortimer's method of doing business, but he was eager to find his comrades, so he hastily excused himself, apologised for his companion's rudeness, setting it down to the Señor Mortimer's ignorance of the language, and turned to go out.

But as he passed into the arcaded patio of the inn, the silent maid-servant passed him with a flash of white cotton gown. Her grass shoes made no noise on the pavement. As she passed, Rollo glanced at her quickly and carelessly, as it was his nature to look at every woman. She was beckoning to him to follow her. There could be no doubt of that. She turned abruptly through a low doorway upon the top of which Rollo nearly knocked out his brains.

The Scot followed down a flight of steps, beneath blossoming oleander bushes, and found himself presently upon a narrow terrace-walk, divided from a neighbouring garden by a lattice of green-painted wood.

The silent maid-servant jerked her thumb a little contemptuously over her shoulder, elevated her chin, and turning on her heel disappeared again into her own domains.

Rollo stood a moment uncertain whether to advance or retreat. He was in a narrow path which skirted a garden in which fuchsias, geraniums, and dwarf palms grew abundantly. Roses also clambered among the lattice-work, peered through the chinks, and drooped invitingly over the top.

A little to the right the path bent somewhat, and round the corner Rollo could hear a hum of voices. It was in this direction also that the silent handmaid of Gaspar Perico's kitchen had jerked her thumb.

Rollo moved slowly along the path, and presently he came in sight of a pretty damsel on the farther side of the trellis paling, deeply engaged in a most interesting conversation. So far as he could see she was tall and dark, with the fully formed Spanish features, a little heavy perhaps to Rollo's taste, but charming now with the witchery of youth and conscious beauty.

Her hand had been drawn through one of the diamond-shaped apertures of the green trellis-work, which proved how small a hand it was. And, so far as the young Scot could judge from various contributory movements on the lady's part, it was at that moment being passionately kissed by some person unseen.

The low voice he had heard also proceeded from this fervent lover, and the whole performance made Rollo most unreasonably angry.

"What fools!" he muttered, turning on his heel, adding as an afterthought, "and especially at this time of day."

He was walking off in high dudgeon, prepared to give the silent maid a piece of his mind – indeed, a sample most unpleasing, when something in the tone of the lover's voice attracted him.

"Fairest Maria, never have I loved before," the voice was saying. "I have wandered the world heretofore, careless and heart-free, that I might have the more to offer to you, the pearl of girls, the all incomparable Maria of Sarria!"

The fair hand thrust through the lattices was violently agitated at this point. Its owner had caught sight of Rollo standing on the pathway, but the lover's grasp was too firm. As Rollo looked a head was thrust forward and downwards – as it were into the picture. And there, kneeling on the path, was Monsieur Etienne, lately Brother Hilario of Montblanch, fervidly kissing the hand of reluctant beauty.

As Rollo, unwilling to intrude, but secretly resolving to give Master Lovelace no peace for some time, was turning away, a sharp exclamation from the girl caused the kneeling lover to look up. She snatched her hand through the interstices of the palisades on the instant, fled upward through the rose and fuchsia bushes with a swift rustle of skirts, and disappeared into a neighbouring house.

Etienne de Saint Pierre rose in a leisurely manner, dusted the knees of his riding-breeches, twirled his moustache, and looked at Rollo, who stood on the path regarding him.

"Well, what in the devil's name brings you here?" he demanded.

The mirthful mood in which he had watched his comrade kneel was already past with Rollo.

"Come outside, and I will tell you," he said, and without making any further explanation or asking for any from Etienne, he strode back through the courtyard of the venta and out into the sunlit road.

A muleteer was passing, sitting sideways on his beast's back as on an easy-chair, and as he went by he offered the two young men to drink out of a leathern goatskin of wine with a courteous wave of the hand. Rollo declined equally courteously.

Then turning to his friend, who still continued to scowl, he said abruptly, "Where is Mortimer?"

"Nay, that I know not – looking for another meal, I suppose," answered the little Frenchman, shrugging his shoulders, one higher than the other.

Rollo glanced at him from under his gloomy brows.

"Nay," he said, "this is serious. I need your help. Do not fail me to-night, and help me to find Mortimer. I had not the smallest intention of intruding upon you. Indeed, but for that maid at the inn, I should never have found you."

"Ah," commented Etienne, half to himself, "so I owe it to that minx, do I? Yes, it is a mistake – so close as that. But no matter; what can I do for you?"

"It is not for myself," Rollo answered, and forthwith in a low voice told his tale, the Frenchman assenting with a nod of the head as each point was made clear to him.

Unconsciously they had strolled out of the village in the direction of the Convent of the Holy Innocents, and they were almost under its walls when the little Frenchman, looking up suddenly, recognised with a start whither he was being led.

"Let us turn back," he said hastily; "I have forgotten an engagement!"

"What, another?" cried Rollo. "If we stay here three days you will have the whole village on your hands, and at least half a dozen knives in your back. But if you are afraid of the Señorita Concha, I think I can promise you that she is not breaking her heart on your account!"

In spite of this assurance, however, Etienne was not easy in his mind till they had turned about and were returning towards the village. But they had not left the white walls of the Convent behind, before they were hailed in English by a stentorian voice.

"Here, you fellows," it said, "here's a whole storehouse of onions as big as a factory – strings and strings of 'em. I wanted to go inside to make an offer for the lot, and the old witch at the gate slammed it in my face."

Looking round, they saw John Mortimer standing on one leg to eke out his stature, and squinting through a hole in the whitewashed wall. One hand was beckoning them frantically forward, while with the other he was trying to render his position on a sun-dried brick less precarious.

"I suppose we must go back," said Etienne, with a sigh; "imagine standing on a brick and getting so hot and excited – in the blazing sun, too – all for a few strings of onions. I declare I would not do it for the prettiest girl in Spain!"

But there could be no doubt whatever that the Englishman was in earnest. Indeed, he did not move from his position till they were close upon him, and then only because the much-enduring brick resolved itself into its component sand and sun-dried clay.

"Just look there!" he cried eagerly; "did you ever see the like of that – a hundred double strings hung from the ceiling to the floor right across! And the factory nearly a hundred and fifty yards long. There's a ship-load of onions there, a solid cargo, I tell you, and I want to trade. I believe I could make my thousand pounds quicker that way, and onions are as good as wine any day! Look in, look in!"

To satisfy his friend, Rollo applied his eye to the aperture, and saw that one of the Convent buildings was indeed filled with onions, as John Mortimer had said. It was a kind of cloister open at one side, and with rows of pillars. The wind rustling through the pendant strings filled the place with a pleasant noise, distinctly audible even outside the wall.

"A thousand pounds, Rollo," moaned John Mortimer, "and that old wretch at the wicket only laughed at me, and snapped the catch in my face. They don't understand business here. I wish I had them apprenticed to my father at Chorley for six months, only for six months. They'd know the difference!"

Rollo took his friend's arm and drew him away.

"This is not the time for it," he said soothingly, "wait. We are going to the Convent to-night. The Mother Superior has permitted the lady on whose account we are here to be removed there after dark, and we want your help."

"Can I speak to the old woman about the onions then?"

"Certainly, if there is an opportunity," said Rollo, smiling.

"Which I take leave to doubt," thought Etienne to himself, as he meditated on his own troubles in the matter of little Concha and the maiden of the green lattice.

"Very well, then," said Mortimer, "I'm your man; I don't mind doing a little cloak-and-dagger considered as trimmings – but business is business."

The three friends proceeded venta-wards, and just as they passed the octroi gate the same muleteer who had passed them outward bound, went in before them with the same leathern bottle in his hand. And as he entered he tossed his hand casually towards Gaspar Perico, who sat in the receipt of custom calmly reading an old newspaper.

"Now that's curious," said John Mortimer, "that fellow had a red and white cloth in his hand. And all the time when I was skirmishing about after those onions in the nuns' warehouse, they were waving red and white flags up on the hills over there —wig wag like that!"

And with his hand he illustrated the irregular and arbitrary behaviour of the flags upon the hills which overlooked the village of Sarria to the south.

And at the sound of his words Rollo started, and his countenance changed. It was then no mere delusion of the eye and brain that he had seen when he entered the precincts of the mill-house of Sarria, as La Giralda would fain have persuaded him. The thought started a doubt in his mind.

Who after all was that old woman? And what cause had El Sarria for trusting her? None at all, so far as Rollo knew, save that she hated the Tia Elvira. Then that flicker of red and white on the hillside to the south among the scattered boulders and juniper bushes, and the favour of the same colour in the muleteer's hand as he went through the gate!

Verily Rollo had some matter for reflection, as, with his comrades, one on either hand of him, he strolled slowly back to the venta.

"I wonder," said John Mortimer, as if to himself, "if that young woman who walks like a pussycat will have luncheon ready for us. I told her to roast the legs of the lamb I bought at the market this morning, and make an olla of the rest. But I don't believe she understands her own language – a very ignorant young woman indeed."

"I, on the other hand, think she knows too much," murmured Etienne to himself.

But Rollo, the red and white flutter of the mysterious signal flags before his eyes, seen between him and the white-hot sky of day, only sighed, and wished that the night would anticipate itself by a few hours.

And so, dinner being over, and even John Mortimer satisfied, the drowsy afternoon of Sarria wore on, the clack of the mill-wheel down at the mill, and the clink of the anvil where Jaime Casanovas, the smith, was shoeing a horse, being the only sounds without; while in the venta itself the whisk of the skirts of the silent handmaid, who with a perfectly grave face went about her work, alone broke the silence. But Monsieur Etienne's ears tingled red, for he was conscious that as often as she passed behind his chair, she smiled a subtle smile.

He thought on the green lattices and the path so near and so cool. But with all his courage he could not go out under the observant eyes of Rollo and with that abandoned Abigail smiling her ironic smile. So, perforce, he had to sit uneasily with his elbows on the table and watch the dreary game of dominoes which his companions were playing with the chipped and greasy cubes belonging to the venta of Gaspar and Esteban Perico.

And outside, though they knew it not, the red and white pennon was still flying from the roof of the mill-house of Sarria, and on the hills to the south, through the white sun-glare, flickered at intervals an answering signal.

Meanwhile in a hushed chamber the outlaw sat with his wife's hand in his, and thought on nothing, save that for him the new day had come.

CHAPTER XX

THE BUTCHER OF TORTOSA

Upon the village of Sarria and upon its circling mountains night descended with Oriental swiftness. The white houses grew blurred and indistinct. Red roofs, green shutters, dark window squares, took on the same shade of indistinguishable purple.

But in the west the rich orange lingered long, the typical Spanish after-glow of day edging the black hills with dusky scarlet, and extending upwards to the zenith sombre and mysterious, like her own banner of gold and red strangely steeped in blood.

In the mill-house of Sarria they were not idle. Ramon Garcia and Rollo had constructed a carrying couch for Dolóres, where, on a light and pliant framework of the great bulrush cañas that grew along the canal edges, her mattress might be laid.

It was arranged that, after Dolóres had been conveyed with Concha and La Giralda in attendance to the Convent of the Holy Innocents, the three young men and El Sarria should return in order to release and warn the brothers Fernandez of the consequences of treachery. Thereafter they were to ride out upon their mission.

Crisp and clear the night was. The air clean-tasting like spring water, yet stimulating as a draught of wine long-cooled in cellar darkness.

Very gently, and as it were in one piece like a swaddled infant, Dolóres was lifted by El Sarria in his arms and laid upon the hastily-arranged ambulance. The four bearers fell in. La Giralda locked the doors of the mill-house, and by a circuitous route, which avoided the village and its barking curs, they proceeded in the direction of the convent buildings.

As often as the foot of any of the bearers slipped upon a stone, Ramon grew sick with apprehension, and in a whisper over his shoulder he would inquire of Dolóres if all was well.

"All is well, beloved," the voice, weak and feeble, would reply. "You are here – you are not angry with me. Yes, all is well."

They moved slowly through the darkness, La Giralda, with many crooning encouragements, waiting upon Dolóres, now lifting up the corner of a cover-lid and now anxiously adjusting a pillow.

It was done at last, and with no more adventure than that once when they were resting the carrying couch under a wall, a muleteer passed, and cried, "Good-night to you, folk of peace!" To which El Sarria grunted a reply, and the man passed on, humming a gay Aragonese ditty, and puffing his cigarette, the red point of which glowed like a fire-fly long after both man and beast had been merged in the general darkness of the valley.

They were soon passing under the eastern side of the convent.

"Ah, I can smell them," murmured John Mortimer, exstatically, "a hundred tons, if not more. I wonder if I could not tackle the old lady to-night about them?"

He spoke meditatively, but no one of the party took the least notice. For Rollo was busy with the future conduct of the expedition. Etienne was thinking of the girl behind the green lattices, while the others did not understand a word of what he said.