Across the Salt Seas: A Romance of the War of Succession

by John Bloundelle-Burton

CHAPTER XXXI.

ALWAYS TOGETHER NOW.

The frost held beneath a piercing east wind which blew across the mountains that separated Portugal from Leon, so that now the snow was as hard as any road and there was no longer any reason to delay our setting forth. And more especially so was this the case because my beloved appeared to have entirely recovered from the fever into which she had been thrown by the events of the past weeks.

"I am ready, Mervan," she said to me the next day, "ready to depart, to leave forever behind these lands--which I hope never to see again--to dwell always in your own country and near you."

Wherefore I considered in my mind what was best now to be done.

That we were safe here in Portugal we knew very well--only it was not in Portugal that we desired to remain, but rather to escape from; to cross the seas as soon as might be--to reach England or Holland. Yet how to do that we had now to consider.

I had said we were safe here, and of this safety we had sure proof not many hours after her unhappy father had departed on his unknown journey; a journey that led I knew not where, no more than I knew what would be the end of it. And this proof was that, in the afternoon of the same day, the landlord of the inn came running in to us as fast as he could scamper across the already frozen snow; his face twitching with excitement, his voice shaking, too, from the same cause.

"Holy Virgin!" he exclaimed, while he gesticulated like a madman, his wife doing the same thing by his side, "who and what have I sheltered here in my house. Pirates and filibusters, gaol breakers and murderers, women whose vows are made and broken day by day. 'Tis mercy we are not all stabbed to the death in our beds," and again he grimaced and shook and spluttered.

"You are as like," I said sternly, with a tap to my sword hilt, "to be stabbed to the death now, and at once, if you explain not this intrusion and your words, fellow." For he had roused my ire by bursting in on Juana and me in the manner he had done, and by frightening her, as I knew by the way she clung to me. "Answer at once, what mean you?"

"There are at the frontier," he said, speaking now more calmly, also more respectfully as he noted my attitude, while his wife ceased her clamour too, "some half dozen Spaniards from Lugo, all demanding where you are--and--and the wo--the lady; also asking for one they call their Alcáide, as well as another, who, they say, is a hundred-fold assassin. Likewise they vow they will have you back to Lugo."

"Will they! Well, we will see for that! Meanwhile, what say the frontiermen on this side, here in Portugal?"

"They dispute. They refuse. They say 'tis whispered o'er all our land that the king has joined with the English brigands----"

"Fellow! remember." And again I threatened him.

"With the English nation against Spain and France. It may be so or not; I do not know. Yet I think you will be spared to--to--slay----"

Again he halted in his speech, reading danger in my glance, while I, turning to Juana, bade her keep calm and await my return from the border, to which I meant to proceed to see what was a-happening.

At first she would not hear of my doing this; she threw herself upon my neck, she besought me by our newborn love, by all our hopes of happiness in days to come, not to go near those men, Reminded me, too, that even now we were free to escape, to seize upon the horses, push on further into Portugal and to safety. Also she pleaded with me to remember that if aught happened to me, if I was taken again and carried back to Spain, all hope would indeed be gone, no more escape possible. Wept, also, most piteously, and besought me to recollect that if aught such as this befell she would indeed be alone in the world, and must die.

Yet I was firm; forced myself to be so. In my turn, bade her remember that I was a soldier, that soldiers could not skulk and run away when there was naught to fear.

"For," I said, whispering also many other words of love and comfort in her ear, "it may be true that the king has joined with us. For months it has been looked for, expected. And if 'tis not even so, these people hate Spain and all in it with a deep hatred. They cannot harm us, certainly no half dozen can. 'Twould take more than that. Let me go, sweetheart."

And gently I disengaged her arms from my neck and went away amidst her prayers and supplications for my safety; amidst also the mutterings of the landlord to the effect that the Inglés seemed to fear neither devil nor man.

'Twas not many moments to the border 'twixt the two countries, and I soon was there--seeing, however, as I hurried toward it, to the priming of my pistols, and that my sword was loose enough in its scabbard for easy drawing forth--and there I perceived that a harangue was going on between the Spanish and Portuguese frontiermen, while, on the side of the former, were also the half-dozen Spaniards, of whom the inn keeper had spoken. And amongst them I recognised two or three of those who had captured us in the inn garden at Lugo.

"Ha!" one of them called out as I approached. "Ha! See, there is one, the second of the brigands, though not the worst. Assassinator!" he shrieked at me, "we must have you back at Lugo."

"Best take me, then," I replied, as I drew close up, "yet 'twill cost you dear," and as I spoke I whipped my sword from out its scabbard.

There was to be neither fight nor attempt to capture me, however; in truth, as you have now to see, my weapon had done its last work in either Spain or Portugal, since the men on this side meant not that the Spaniards should have their way.

"Back, I tell you," shouted the Portuguese chief, "or advance at your peril. We are at war; 'tis known over all our land the Inglés are our allies. You have come on a bootless errand."

Now this, as I learnt later, was not the case in absolute fact, since Portugal joined not with us till the next spring had come, yet it served very well for my purpose; for these Spaniards did doubtless think that they would have got me--and, I suppose, Juana, too--bloodlessly, and have been able to hale us back to Lugo and its accursed braséro. But now they found out their mistake; they would have to fight to get me, and as, I think, they feared my sword as much as the four or five others of my new-found Portuguese friends, they very wisely desisted from any attempt. And so, after many angry words exchanged on both sides, in which I took no part, I went back to the inn, feeling sure that, unless I ever ventured into Spain again, I was free of its clutches.

* * * * * * * * *

Once more, a few hours later, my love and I were on the road as travelling companions, only now we were lovers instead of friends, and the companionship was, by God's mercy, to be for the length of our lives. And sweet it was to me, beyond all doubt, to have her by my side, to hear her soft voice in my ears, and to listen to the words of love that fell from her lips--sweet, too, to me to make reply to them.

For one thing also I was devoutly grateful, namely, that I had not hesitated to tell her that her father still lived; that he had yet, by heaven's grace, many years before him in which to expiate his past; that he had escaped the awful end to which he had been doomed, and which, during some few hours, she imagined he had suffered--devoutly grateful that I had done this, because, now, the sorrow which she felt for the erring man was chastened by the knowledge that it was not too late for him to repent and obtain pardon, and that his death, whatever it might be, could scarce be one of such horror as that from which he had escaped.

After some consideration I had decided that 'twould be best we should make our way to Oporto, where I thought 'twas very like we might find some ship for either England or Holland--perhaps, also, since the trade of that town with England is of such extreme importance, some vessel of war acting as convoy for the merchants. Moreover, the distance was not great in so small a land as this, and by the chart I carried seemed not to be more than thirty or forty leagues, though to compass them we should have to pass over mountains more than once. Yet the horses were fresh--I rode now my own on which Gramont had come and had then exchanged for the black one on which I had escaped, it having been prepared for me ere I took his place--the snow was hard as iron; it was not much to do. And, much or little, it had to be done.

And so we progressed, passing through Mirandella and Murca, striking at last a broad high road that ran straight for Oporto--scaling mountains sometimes, plunging sometimes into deep valleys and crossing streams over shaking wooden bridges that by their appearance seemed scarce strong enough to bear a child, yet over which we got in safety. And, though neither she nor I spoke our thoughts, I think, I know, that the same idea was ever present to her mind as to mine, the idea that we might ere long come upon some sign of her father. For, now and again, as she peered down upon the white track we followed, losing more than once the road, yet finding it again ere long, she would rein in the jennet and look at the tracks frozen in the snow, then shake her head mournfully as we went on once more.

But of Gramont we saw no sign--nor ever saw him again in this world.

Going on and on, however, we drew near as I judged, to the coast, still climbing the mountains and still passing at other times through the valleys, over all of which there lay the vast white pall burying everything beneath it.

We heard also the great river that is called the Douro, rolling and humming and swirling beneath the roof of frozen snow which, in some places, stretched across it from bank to bank. In some places, too, where the road we traversed approached nearer to the stream, we saw it cleaving its way through banks so narrowed by their coating of ice that it o'erleapt and foamed above the sides, while with a great swish, such as a huge tide makes upon a shingly beach, its waters spread out with a hissing splash from their eddies and swept over the borders on either side. Yet, because the way this river rushed was likewise our way to peace and happiness--the road toward the great sea we hoped so soon to traverse--we regarded it with interest.

"See," I said to Juana, as now we rode close to it, so that at this time our horses' feet were laved by its overflow, "see how it bears down with it great trees from far inland, from where we have come; also other things, the wooden roof of some peasant's hut, some household goods too. I fear it has swept over the country, has burst in places from its narrow frost-bound sides."

'Twas true--such must have happened--for even as I spoke, there went by the body of a horse--the creature's sides all torn and lacerated, doubtless by some narrow passage in which the spears of ice would be as sharp as swords' points; then, next--oh! piteous sight!--a little dead babe rolled over and over as the waves bore it along in their swift flight.

"Look, look," she murmured, pointing forward to where the river broadened, but out into the breadth of which there projected a spur, or tongue of land; "look! that catches much of what comes down--see! the dead horse's progress is stopped upon it--and Mervan, the little babe is also rolled on to that slip of land while there are many other things besides; more bodies of both men and animals."

There were, in solemn truth. As we rode nearer to that jutting promontory, we saw that much of what the Douro had brought down was stopped by it; upon the frozen tongue of land protruding were mixed in confusion many things. The dead horse and another which had preceded it; some poor sheep, a dog, the little babe which had just passed before our eyes, and two or three dead men; some on their backs, their arms extended on that frozen refuge--one on his face.

Mostly they were peasants; their garb told that, also their rough, coarse hands, which showed black against the leper whiteness of the ice and snow beneath them. But he who lay upon his face was none such, his scarlet coat, guarded with galloon, had never graced a peasant's back, no more than any peasant had worn that sword (with now both blade and scabbard broken) that was by his side.

And halting upon the little ridge which made the summit of that promontory and gazing upon that man, I knew as well as if I could see his down-turned face, whose body it was stretched out there upon its icy bier.

Also I saw that she knew, too. Neither scarlet coat nor battered weapon was strange to her.

"I will descend," I said, speaking in a low voice, such as those assume who stand in presence of the dead. "I will descend and make sure," whereupon she bowed her head in reply, making no demur. At that moment she, perhaps, thought it best to make sure that he who had sought her soul's degradation would never traffic with another woman's honour.

But as I went down on foot now to that tongue of land on which the drowned reposed, I had another reason besides this of making sure that the body was that of her tempter, the Alcáide. I desired to discover if 'twas by the river alone that he had come to his death (borne down and into it by some streamlet nearer the Spanish border), and not by the avenging weapon of him who said that I should never have spared him, have never let him quit my side with life. For they might have met, I knew; the one who went first might have been belated on his road--snowbound; the second might have overtaken him, his vengeance have been swift and sure.

Stepping across the bodies of the drowned animals, avoiding those of the peasants, and putting gently aside that of the little babe, I reached him, recognising as I did so the coal black hair flecked and streaked with grey, the rings upon the hands stretched out, backs upward. Then I turned him over, seeing that the face was torn and cut by the jagged ice through which he had been hurried, also bruised and discoloured. But in all the body no sign of rapier wound, nor pistol shot, nor of avenging finger marks upon the throat.

So I went back to her and took my reins from her hands and once more we set out upon our way.

But the dark, lustrous eyes as they gazed into mine asked silent and unworded questions--so that I guessed my thoughts had been in her mind, too!--and when I answered with as equal a silence I knew that I had brought comfort to her heart.