The evening of the 4th of December was dull and gloomy. Setting amid saffron haze and shorn of all his beams, the lurid sun looming large and crimson like a wondrous globe, shed a steady light along the waters of the Tormes, a deep stream, which there rolls under a high and ancient bridge, that was afterwards blown up when the British retreated from Burgos.
An old Moorish wall surrounds Alva, which stands on the slope of a hill, and there, above its flat-terraced mansions, rises the great palace of the powerful Dukes of Alva and Berwick, where Ferdinand Alvarez of Toledo, the terror of the Low Countries and the institutor of "the Court of Blood," first saw the light. In an angle of the Moorish rampart, then crumbling in ruins, stands a high round tower of considerable strength and antiquity. Herein was posted the quarter-guard of the 1st Brigade, and in an upper chamber Quentin had his billet, and there he sat alone, after the day's march, left to his own reflections, and these were mournful and gloomy enough.
The aspect of this chamber was little calculated to raise his drooping spirit. Almost destitute of furniture, it was built of massive stone, vaulted, and had three narrow windows, the sides and horse-shoe arches of which were covered with elaborate zigzag Moorish ornaments, arabesques, and uncouth inscriptions, which, though he knew it not, were texts and quotations from the Koran in Arabic. These had probably been gilded and gaudily coloured once, but now were simply coated with mouldy whitewash. One of these windows opened to the hill on the slope of which stands Alva, and afforded a view of its tiled and terraced roofs, all drenched by the recent rain. Another faced the mountains of Leon, and the third showed the narrow gorge through which the red and swollen Tormes lay rolling under the bridge; beyond which, on an eminence, were posted a brigade of field guns and a cavalry picquet; the horses were linked together, and the troops cloaked.
All looked wet and dreary, dull and mournful, and as the December sun went down beyond the dark and purple hills where Salamanca lies, the pipers of the 92nd played "Lochaber no more," their evening retreat, and this air, so sad, so slow and wailing, as they marched along the old Moorish wall, affected Quentin so deeply that he covered his face with his hands and wept.
What would that fine old soldier, courtier, and cavalier, the mirror of old-fashioned courage and honour, Lord Rohallion, say or think, when he heard of his disgrace? What would Lady Winifred—what the old quartermaster, John Girvan? and what would the emotions of Flora Warrender be?
Whether the charges against him were false or true—proved or refuted—she at least would be lost to him for ever, for his career was closed ere it was well begun, and he felt that no other road in life lay open to him. He felt too, instinctively, that Baltasar de Saldos and his sister Donna Isidora were in some manner the secret source of the present evil turn in his fortune; but how or in what fashion he was yet to learn.
The phrase, that the charges involved death or such other punishment as a court-martial might award, was ever before him.
The vagueness of the latter recourse, rather than the terror of the first, cut him to the heart, as all the penalties inflicted by such a court are severe and disgraceful.
Cosmo, he heard, had suggested that he should be handed over to the tender mercies of the Spanish civil authorities; but Sir John Hope insisted that the charges were such as only a military court could take cognizance of; so what on earth were they? Unconscious alike of a mistake or crime, oh, how he longed for the time of trial!
As the darkness of the sombre eve crept on, its gloom was singularly in unison with his own sombre thoughts.