“There it is, Señor,” murmured Castro, scowling all round, as if every wall of the room was an enemy. “He holds all the people in his hand in some way. Even I must be cautious, though I am a humble, trusted friend of the Casa!”
“What harm could he do you?” I asked.
“He is civil to me. Amigo Castro here, and Amigo Castro there. Bah! The devil, alone, is his friend! He could deliver me to justice, and get my life sworn away. He could———Quien sabe? What need he care what he does—a man that can get absolution from the archbishop himself if he likes.”
He meditated. “No! there is only one remedy for him.” He tiptoed to my ear. “The knife!”
He made a pass in the air with his blade, and I remembered vividly the cockroach he had impaled with such accuracy on board the Thames. His baneful glance reminded me of his murderous capering in the steerage, when he had thought that the only remedy for me was the knife.
He went to the loop-hole, and passed the steel thoughtfully on the stone edge. I had not moved.
“The knife; but what would you have? Before, when I talked of this to Don Carlos, he only laughed at me. That was his way in matters of importance. Now they will not let me come in to him. He is too near God—and the Señorita—why, she is too near the saints for all the great nobility of her spirit. But, que dia-bleria, when I—in my devotion—opened my mouth to her I saw some of that spirit in her eyes....”
There was a slight irony in his voice. “No! Me—Castro! to be told that an English Señora would have dismissed me forever from her presence for such a hint. ‘Your Excellency,’ I said, ‘deign, then, to find it good that I should avoid giving offence to that man. It is not my desire to run my neck into the iron collar.’”
He looked at me fixedly, as if expecting me to make a sign, then shrugged his shoulders.
“Bueno. You see this? Then look to it yourself, Señor. You are to me even as Don Carlos—all except for the love. No English body is big enough to receive his soul. No friend will be left that would risk his very honour of a noble for a man like Tomas Castro. Let me warn you not to leave the Casa, even if a shining angel stood outside the gate and called you by name. The gate is barred, now, night and day. I have dropped a hint to Cesar, and that old African knows more than the Señor would suppose. I cannot tell how soon I may have the opportunity to talk to you again.”