“Ah!” said the priest, looking at them with interest, “then what relation to her is the marquis? Well, perhaps I had better not ask, for this is no confessional, is it? I understand that you are anxious, for that great grandee has the reputation of being gay—an excellent son of the Church, but without doubt very gay,” and he shook his shaven head and smiled. “But come up to the village, Señors, where you can rest and have your hurts attended to; afterwards we will talk.”
“We had best go,” said Castell in English to Peter. “There are no horses on this beach, and we cannot walk to Granada in our state.”
Peter nodded, and, led by the priest, whose name they discovered to be Henriques, they started.
On the crest of the hill a few hundred paces away they turned and looked back, to see that every able-bodied inhabitant of the village seemed by now to be engaged in plundering the stranded vessel.
“They are paying themselves for the mules and horses,” said Fray Henriques with a shrug. “So I see,” answered Castell, “but you——” and he stopped.
“Oh, do not be afraid for me,” replied the priest with a cunning little smile. “The Church does not loot; but in the end the Church gets her share. These are a pious folk. Only when he learns that the caravel did not sink after all, I fear the marquis will demand an account of us.”
Then they limped on over the hill, and presently saw the white-walled and red-roofed village beneath them on the banks of the river.
Five minutes later their guide stopped at a door in a roughly paved street, which he opened with a key.
“My humble dwelling, when I am in residence here, and not at Granada,” he said, “in which I shall be honoured to receive you. Look, near by is the church.”
Then they entered a patio, or courtyard, where some orange-trees grew round a fountain of water, and a life-sized crucifix stood against the wall. As he passed this sacred emblem Peter bowed and crossed himself, an example that Castell did not follow. The priest looked at him sharply.