“How came they to open for him?”
“His office, lord, is a key that opens all doors at any hour of day or night. They dared not detain or delay him.”
“Ha!” grunted the Infante. “We will go after him, then.” And he made haste to complete his dressing. Then he buckled on his great sword, and they departed.
In the courtyard of the alcazar, he summoned Sancho Nunes and a half-dozen men-at-arms to attend him, mounted a charger and with Emigio Moniz at his side and the others following, he rode out across the draw-bridge into the open space that was thronged with the clamant inhabitants of the stricken city.
A great cry went up when he showed himself—a mighty appeal to him for mercy and the remission of the curse. Then silence fell, a silence that invited him to answer and give comfort.
He reined in his horse, and standing in his stirrups very tall and virile, he addressed them.
“People of Coimbra,” he announced, “I go to obtain this city’s absolution from the ban that has been laid upon it. I shall return before sunset. Till then do you keep the peace.”
The voice of the multitude was raised again, this time to hail him as the father and protector of the Portuguese, and to invoke the blessing of Heaven upon his handsome head.
Riding between Moniz and Nunes, and followed by his glittering men-at-arms, he crossed the city and took the road along the river by which it was known that the legate had departed. All that morning they rode briskly amain, the Infante fasting, as he had risen, yet unconscious of hunger and of all else but the purpose that was consuming him. He rode in utter silence, his face set, his brows stern; and Moniz, watching him furtively the while, wondered what thoughts were stirring in that rash, impetuous young brain, and was afraid.
Towards noon at last they overtook the legate’s party. They espied his mule-litter at the door of an inn in a little village some ten miles beyond the foothills of the Bussaco range. The Infante reined up sharply, a hoarse, fierce cry escaping him, akin to that of some creature of the wild when it espies its prey.