Through this gate he passed into the city, which was a city of the dead, with its hundred ruined churches, its empty palaces and silent streets. Ichabod is written large over all these tokens of a bygone glory; where the Jews flying from Jerusalem first set foot; where the Moor reigned unmolested for nearly four hundred years; where the Goth and the Roman and the great Spaniard of the middle ages have trod on each other’s heels. Truly these worn stones have seen the greatness of the greatest nations of the world.
A single lamp hung slowly swinging in the arch of Wamba’s Gate, and the streets were but ill lighted with an oil lantern at an occasional corner. Conyngham had been in Toledo before, and knew his way to the inn under the shadow of the great Alcazar, now burnt and ruined. Here he left his horse; for the streets of Toledo are so narrow and tortuous, so ill-paved and steep, that wheel traffic is almost unknown, while a horse can with difficulty keep his feet on the rounded cobble stones. In this city men go about their business on foot, which makes the streets as silent as the deserted houses.
Julia had selected a spot which was easy enough to find, and Conyngham, having supped, made his way thither without asking for directions.
‘It is at all events worth trying,’ he said to himself, ‘and she can scarcely have forgotten that I saved her life on the Garonne as well as at Ronda.’
But there is often in a woman’s life one man who can make her forget all. The streets were deserted, for it was a cold night, and the cafés were carefully closed against the damp air. No one stirred in the Calle Pedro Martir, and Conyngham peered into the shadow of the high wall of the Church of San Tome in vain. Then he heard the soft tread of muffled feet, and turning on his heel realised Julia’s treachery in a flash of thought. He charged to meet the charge of his assailants. Two of them went down like felled trees, but there were others—four others—who fell on him silently like hounds upon a fox, and in a few moments all was quiet again in the Calle Pedro Martir.
CHAPTER XX
ON THE TALAVERA ROAD
‘Les barrières servent à indiquer où il faut passer.’
An hour’s ride to the west of Toledo, on the road to Torrijos and Talavera, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the village of Galvez, two men sat in the shadow of a great rock, and played cards. They played quietly and without vociferation, illustrating the advantages of a minute coinage. They had gambled with varying fortune since the hour of the siesta, and a sprinkling of cigarette ends on the bare rocks around them testified to the indulgence in a kindred vice.
The elder of the two men glanced from time to time over his shoulder, and down towards the dusty high road which lay across the arid plain beneath them like a tape. The country here is barren and stone-ridden, but to the west, where Torrijos gleamed whitely on the plain, the earth was green with lush corn and heavy blades of maize, now springing into ear. Where the two soldiers sat the herbage was scant and of an aromatic scent, as it mostly is in hot countries and in rocky places. That these men belonged to a mounted branch of the service was evident from their equipment, and notably from the great rusty spurs at their heels. They were clad in cotton—dusky white breeches, dusky blue tunics—a sort of undress, tempered by the vicissitudes of a long war and the laxity of discipline engendered by political trouble at home.
They had left their horses in the stable of a venta, hidden among ilex trees by the roadside, and had clambered to this point of vantage above the highway, to pass the afternoon after the manner of their race. For the Spaniard will be found playing cards amid the wreck of the world and in the intervals between the stupendous events of the last day.