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Montezuma's Daughter

by H. Rider Haggard · English · Gutenberg #1848 · 802,729 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Montezuma's Daughter

Author: H. Rider Haggard


        
Release date: May 14, 2006 [eBook #1848]
                Most recently updated: May 9, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1848

Credits: Donald Lainson, Anonymous Volunteers and David Widger


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[Illustration]




Montezuma’s Daughter

by H. Rider Haggard


Contents

 I. WHY THOMAS WINGFIELD TELLS HIS TALE
 II. OF THE PARENTAGE OF THOMAS WINGFIELD
 III. THE COMING OF THE SPANIARD
 IV. THOMAS TELLS HIS LOVE
 V. THOMAS SWEARS AN OATH
 VI. GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART
 VII. ANDRES DE FONSECA
 VIII. THE SECOND MEETING
 IX. THOMAS BECOMES RICH
 X. THE PASSING OF ISABELLA DE SIGUENZA
 XI. THE LOSS OF THE CARAK
 XII. THOMAS COMES TO SHORE
 XIII. THE STONE OF SACRIFICE
 XIV. THE SAVING OF GUATEMOC
 XV. THE COURT OF MONTEZUMA
 XVI. THOMAS BECOMES A GOD
 XVII. THE ARISING OF PAPANTZIN
 XVIII. THE NAMING OF THE BRIDES
 XIX. THE FOUR GODDESSES
 XX. OTOMIE’S COUNSEL
 XXI. THE KISS OF LOVE
 XXII. THE TRIUMPH OF THE CROSS
 XXIII. THOMAS IS MARRIED
 XXIV. THE NIGHT OF FEAR
 XXV. THE BURYING OF MONTEZUMA’S TREASURE
 XXVI. THE CROWNING OF GUATEMOC
 XXVII. THE FALL OF TENOCTITLAN
 XXVIII. THOMAS IS DOOMED
 XXIX. DE GARCIA SPEAKS HIS MIND
 XXX. THE ESCAPE
 XXXI. OTOMIE PLEADS WITH HER PEOPLE
 XXXII. THE END OF GUATEMOC
 XXXIII. ISABELLA DE SIGUENZA IS AVENGED
 XXXIV. THE SIEGE OF THE CITY OF PINES
 XXXV. THE LAST SACRIFICE OF THE WOMEN OF THE OTOMIE
 XXXVI. THE SURRENDER
 XXXVII. VENGEANCE
 XXXVIII. OTOMIE’S FAREWELL
 XXXIX. THOMAS COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD
 XL. AMEN




DEDICATION

My dear Jebb,

Strange as were the adventures and escapes of Thomas Wingfield, once of
this parish, whereof these pages tell, your own can almost equal them
in these latter days, and, since a fellow feeling makes us kind, you at
least they may move to a sigh of sympathy. Among many a distant land
you know that in which he loved and fought, following vengeance and his
fate, and by your side I saw its relics and its peoples, its volcans
and its valleys. You know even where lies the treasure which, three
centuries and more ago, he helped to bury, the countless treasure that
an evil fortune held us back from seeking. Now the Indians have taken
back their secret, and though many may search, none will lift the
graven stone that seals it, nor shall the light of day shine again upon
the golden head of Montezuma. So be it! The wealth which Cortes wept
over, and his Spaniards sinned and died for, is for ever hidden yonder
by the shores of the bitter lake whose waters gave up to you that
ancient horror, the veritable and sleepless god of Sacrifice, of whom I
would not rob you—and, for my part, I do not regret the loss.

What cannot be lost, what to me seem of more worth than the dead hero
Guatemoc’s gems and jars of gold, are the memories of true friendship
shown to us far away beneath the shadow of the Slumbering Woman,[1] and
it is in gratitude for these that I ask permission to set your name
within a book which were it not for you would never have been written.

I am, my dear Jebb,
Always sincerely yours,
H. RIDER HAGGARD.

DITCHINGHAM, NORFOLK, _October_ 5, 1892.
To J. Gladwyn Jebb, Esq.




NOTE


Worn out prematurely by a life of hardship and extraordinary adventure,
Mr. Jebb passed away on March 18, 1893, taking with him the respect and
affection of all who had the honour of his friendship. The author has
learned with pleasure that the reading of this tale in proof and the
fact of its dedication to himself afforded him some amusement and
satisfaction in the intervals of his sufferings.

H. R. H.

_March_ 22, 1893.

 [1] The volcano Izticcihuatl in Mexico.




NOTE


The more unpronounceable of the Aztec names are shortened in many
instances out of consideration for the patience of the reader; thus
“Popocatapetl” becomes “Popo,” “Huitzelcoatl” becomes “Huitzel,” &c.
The prayer in Chapter xxvi. is freely rendered from Jourdanet’s French
translation of Fray Bernardino de Sahagun’s History of New Spain,
written shortly after the conquest of Mexico (Book VI, chap. v.), to
which monumental work and to Prescott’s admirable history the author of
this romance is much indebted. The portents described as heralding the
fall of the Aztec Empire, and many of the incidents and events written
of in this story, such as the annual personation of the god
Tezcatlipoca by a captive distinguished for his personal beauty, and
destined to sacrifice, are in the main historical. The noble speech of
the Emperor Guatemoc to the Prince of Tacuba uttered while they both
were suffering beneath the hands of the Spaniards is also authentic.




Montezuma’s Daughter




CHAPTER I
WHY THOMAS WINGFIELD TELLS HIS TALE


Now glory be to God who has given us the victory! It is true, the
strength of Spain is shattered, her ships are sunk or fled, the sea has
swallowed her soldiers and her sailors by hundreds and by thousands,
and England breathes again. They came to conquer, to bring us to the
torture and the stake—to do to us free Englishmen as Cortes did by the
Indians of Anahuac. Our manhood to the slave bench, our daughters to
dishonour, our souls to the loving-kindness of the priest, our wealth
to the Emperor and the Pope! God has answered them with his winds,
Drake has answered them with his guns. They are gone, and with them the
glory of Spain.

I, Thomas Wingfield, heard the news to-day on this very Thursday in the
Bungay market-place, whither I went to gossip and to sell the apples
which these dreadful gales have left me, as they hang upon my trees.

Before there had been rumours of this and of that, but here in Bungay
was a man named Young, of the Youngs of Yarmouth, who had served in one
of the Yarmouth ships in the fight at Gravelines, aye and sailed north
after the Spaniards till they were lost in the Scottish seas.

Little things lead to great, men say, but here great things lead to
little, for because of these tidings it comes about that I, Thomas
Wingfield, of the Lodge and the parish of Ditchingham in the county of
Norfolk, being now of a great age and having only a short time to live,
turn to pen and ink. Ten years ago, namely, in the year 1578, it
pleased her Majesty, our gracious Queen Elizabeth, who at that date
visited this county, that I should be brought before her at Norwich.
There and then, saying that the fame of it had reached her, she
commanded me to give her some particulars of the story of my life, or
rather of those twenty years, more or less, which I spent among the
Indians at that time when Cortes conquered their country of Anahuac,
which is now known as Mexico. But almost before I could begin my tale,
it was time for her to start for Cossey to hunt the deer, and she said
it was her wish that I should write the story down that she might read
it, and moreover that if it were but half as wonderful as it promised
to be, I should end my days as Sir Thomas Wingfield. To this I answered
her Majesty that pen and ink were tools I had no skill in, yet I would
bear her command in mind. Then I made bold to give her a great emerald
that once had hung upon the breast of Montezuma’s daughter, and of many
a princess before her, and at the sight of it her eyes glistened
brightly as the gem, for this Queen of ours loves such costly
playthings. Indeed, had I so desired, I think that I might then and
there have struck a bargain, and set the stone against a title; but I,
who for many years had been the prince of a great tribe, had no wish to
be a knight. So I kissed the royal hand, and so tightly did it grip the
gem within that the knuckle joints shone white, and I went my ways,
coming back home to this my house by the Waveney on that same day.

Now the Queen’s wish that I should set down the story of my life
remained in my mind, and for long I have desired to do it before life
and story end together. The labour, indeed, is great to one unused to
such tasks; but why should I fear labour who am so near to the holiday
of death? I have seen things that no other Englishman has seen, which
are worthy to be recorded; my life has been most strange, many a time
it has pleased God to preserve it when all seemed lost, and this
perchance He has done that the lesson of it might become known to
others. For there is a lesson in it and in the things that I have seen,
and it is that no wrong can ever bring about a right, that wrong will
breed wrong at last, and be it in man or people, will fall upon the
brain that thought it and the hand that wrought it.

Look now at the fate of Cortes—that great man whom I have known clothed
with power like a god. Nearly forty years ago, so I have heard, he died
poor and disgraced in Spain; he, the conqueror—yes, and I have learned
also that his son Don Martin has been put to the torture in that city
which the father won with so great cruelties for Spain. Malinche, she
whom the Spaniards named Marina, the chief and best beloved of all the
women of this same Cortes, foretold it to him in her anguish when after
all that had been, after she had so many times preserved him and his
soldiers to look upon the sun, at the last he deserted her, giving her
in marriage to Don Juan Xaramillo. Look again at the fate of Marina
herself. Because she loved this man Cortes, or Malinche, as the Indians
named him after her, she brought evil on her native land; for without
her aid Tenoctitlan, or Mexico, as they call it now, had never bowed
beneath the yoke of Spain—yes, she forgot her honour in her passion.
And what was her reward, what right came to her of her wrongdoing? This
was her reward at last: to be given away in marriage to another and a
lesser man when her beauty waned, as a worn-out beast is sold to a
poorer master.

Consider also the fate of those great peoples of the land of Anahuac.
They did evil that good might come. They sacrificed the lives of
thousands to their false gods, that their wealth might increase, and
peace and prosperity be theirs throughout the generations. And now the
true God has answered them. For wealth He has given them desolation,
for peace the sword of the Spaniard, for prosperity the rack and the
torment and the day of slavery. For this it was that they did
sacrifice, offering their own children on the altars of Huitzel and of
Tezcat.

And the Spaniards themselves, who in the name of mercy have wrought
cruelties greater than any that were done by the benighted Aztecs, who
in the name of Christ daily violate His law to the uttermost extreme,
say shall they prosper, shall their evil-doing bring them welfare? I am
old and cannot live to see the question answered, though even now it is
in the way of answering. Yet I know that their wickedness shall fall
upon their own heads, and I seem to see them, the proudest of the
peoples of the earth, bereft of fame and wealth and honour, a
starveling remnant happy in nothing save their past. What Drake began
at Gravelines God will finish in many another place and time, till at
last Spain is of no more account and lies as low as the empire of
Montezuma lies to-day.

Thus it is in these great instances of which all the world may know,
and thus it is even in the life of so humble a man as I, Thomas
Wingfield. Heaven indeed has been merciful to me, giving me time to
repent my sins; yet my sins have been visited on my head, on me who
took His prerogative of vengeance from the hand of the Most High. It is
just, and because it is so I wish to set out the matter of my life’s
history that others may learn from it. For many years this has been in
my mind, as I have said, though to speak truth it was her Majesty the
Queen who first set the seed. But only on this day, when I have heard
for certain of the fate of the Armada, does it begin to grow, and who
can say if ever it will come to flower? For this tidings has stirred me
strangely, bringing back my youth and the deeds of love and war and
wild adventure which I have been mingled in, fighting for my own hand
and for Guatemoc and the people of the Otomie against these same
Spaniards, as they have not been brought back for many years. Indeed,
it seems to me, and this is no rare thing with the aged, as though
there in the far past my true life lay, and all the rest were nothing
but a dream.

From the window of the room wherein I write I can see the peaceful
valley of the Waveney. Beyond its stream are the common lands golden
with gorse, the ruined castle, and the red roofs of Bungay town
gathered about the tower of St. Mary’s Church. Yonder far away are the
king’s forests of Stowe and the fields of Flixton Abbey; to the right
the steep bank is green with the Earsham oaks, to the left the fast
marsh lands spotted with cattle stretch on to Beccles and Lowestoft,
while behind me my gardens and orchards rise in terraces up the turfy
hill that in old days was known as the Earl’s Vineyard. All these are
about me, and yet in this hour they are as though they were not. For
the valley of the Waveney I see the vale of Tenoctitlan, for the slopes
of Stowe the snowy shapes of the volcans Popo and Iztac, for the spire
of Earsham and the towers of Ditchingham, of Bungay, and of Beccles,
the soaring pyramids of sacrifice gleaming with the sacred fires, and
for the cattle in the meadows the horsemen of Cortes sweeping to war.

It comes back to me; that was life, the rest is but a dream. Once more
I feel young, and, should I be spared so long, I will set down the
story of my youth before I am laid in yonder churchyard and lost in the
world of dreams. Long ago I had begun it, but it was only on last
Christmas Day that my dear wife died, and while she lived I knew that
this task was better left undone. Indeed, to be frank, it was thus with
my wife: She loved me, I believe, as few men have the fortune to be
loved, and there is much in my past that jarred upon this love of hers,
moving her to a jealousy of the dead that was not the less deep because
it was so gentle and so closely coupled with forgiveness. For she had a
secret sorrow that ate her heart away, although she never spoke of it.
But one child was born to us, and this child died in infancy, nor for
all her prayers did it please God to give her another, and indeed
remembering the words of Otomie I did not expect that it would be so.
Now she knew well that yonder across the seas I had children whom I
loved by another wife, and though they were long dead, must always love
unalterably, and this thought wrung her heart. That I had been the
husband of another woman she could forgive, but that this woman should
have borne me children whose memory was still so dear, she could not
forget if she forgave it, she who was childless. Why it was so, being
but a man, I cannot say; for who can know all the mystery of a loving
woman’s heart? But so it was. Once, indeed, we quarrelled on the
matter; it was our only quarrel.

It chanced that when we had been married but two years, and our babe
was some few days buried in the churchyard of this parish of
Ditchingham, I dreamed a very vivid dream as I slept one night at my
wife’s side. I dreamed that my dead children, the four of them, for the
tallest lad bore in his arms my firstborn, that infant who died in the
great siege, came to me as they had often come when I ruled the people
of the Otomie in the City of Pines, and talked with me, giving me
flowers and kissing my hands. I looked upon their strength and beauty,
and was proud at heart, and, in my dream, it seemed as though some
great sorrow had been lifted from my mind; as though these dear ones
had been lost and now were found again. Ah! what misery is there like
to this misery of dreams, that can thus give us back our dead in
mockery, and then departing, leave us with a keener woe?

Well, I dreamed on, talking with my children in my sleep and naming
them by their beloved names, till at length I woke to look on
emptiness, and knowing all my sorrow I sobbed aloud. Now it was early
morning, and the light of the August sun streamed through the window,
but I, deeming that my wife slept, still lay in the shadow of my dream
as it were, and groaned, murmuring the names of those whom I might
never see again. It chanced, however, that she was awake, and had
overheard those words which I spoke with the dead, while I was yet
asleep and after; and though some of this talk was in the tongue of the
Otomie, the most was English, and knowing the names of my children she
guessed the purport of it all. Suddenly she sprang from the bed and
stood over me, and there was such anger in her eyes as I had never seen
before nor have seen since, nor did it last long then, for presently
indeed it was quenched in tears.

“What is it, wife?” I asked astonished.

“It is hard,” she answered, “that I must bear to listen to such talk
from your lips, husband. Was it not enough that, when all men thought
you dead, I wore my youth away faithful to your memory? though how
faithful you were to mine you know best. Did I ever reproach you
because you had forgotten me, and wedded a savage woman in a distant
land?”

“Never, dear wife, nor had I forgotten you as you know well; but what I
wonder at is that you should grow jealous now when all cause is done
with.”

“Cannot we be jealous of the dead? With the living we may cope, but who
can fight against the love which death has completed, sealing it for
ever and making it immortal! Still, _that_ I forgive you, for against
this woman I can hold my own, seeing that you were mine before you
became hers, and are mine after it. But with the children it is
otherwise. They are hers and yours alone. I have no part nor lot in
them, and whether they be dead or living I know well you love them
always, and will love them beyond the grave if you may find them there.
Already I grow old, who waited twenty years and more before I was your
wife, and I shall give you no other children. One I gave you, and God
took it back lest I should be too happy; yet its name was not on your
lips with those strange names. My dead babe is little to you, husband!”

Here she choked, bursting into tears; nor did I think it well to answer
her that there was this difference in the matter, that whereas, with
the exception of one infant, those sons whom I had lost were almost
adolescent, the babe she bore lived but sixty days.

Now when the Queen first put it in my mind to write down the history of
my life, I remembered this outbreak of my beloved wife; and seeing that
I could write no true tale and leave out of it the story of her who was
also my wife, Montezuma’s daughter, Otomie, Princess of the Otomie, and
of the children that she gave me, I let the matter lie. For I knew
well, that though we spoke very rarely on the subject during all the
many years we passed together, still it was always in Lily’s mind; nor
did her jealousy, being of the finer sort, abate at all with age, but
rather gathered with the gathering days. That I should execute the task
without the knowledge of my wife would not have been possible, for till
the very last she watched over my every act, and, as I verily believe,
divined the most of my thoughts.

And so we grew old together, peacefully, and side by side, speaking
seldom of that great gap in my life when we were lost to each other and
of all that then befell. At length the end came. My wife died suddenly
in her sleep in the eighty-seventh year of her age. I buried her on the
south side of the church here, with sorrow indeed, but not with sorrow
inconsolable, for I know that I must soon rejoin her, and those others
whom I have loved.

There in that wide heaven are my mother and my sister and my sons;
there are great Guatemoc my friend, last of the emperors, and many
other companions in war who have preceded me to peace; there, too,
though she doubted of it, is Otomie the beautiful and proud. In the
heaven which I trust to reach, all the sins of my youth and the errors
of my age notwithstanding, it is told us there is no marrying and
giving in marriage; and this is well, for I do not know how my wives,
Montezuma’s daughter and the sweet English gentlewoman, would agree
together were it otherwise.

And now to my task.




CHAPTER II
OF THE PARENTAGE OF THOMAS WINGFIELD


I, Thomas Wingfield, was born here at Ditchingham, and in this very
room where I write to-day. The house of my birth was built or added to
early in the reign of the seventh Henry, but long before his time some
kind of tenement stood here, which was lived in by the keeper of the
vineyards, and known as Gardener’s Lodge. Whether it chanced that the
climate was more kindly in old times, or the skill of those who tended
the fields was greater, I do not know, but this at the least is true,
that the hillside beneath which the house nestles, and which once was
the bank of an arm of the sea or of a great broad, was a vineyard in
Earl Bigod’s days. Long since it has ceased to grow grapes, though the
name of the “Earl’s Vineyard” still clings to all that slope of land
which lies between this house and a certain health-giving spring that
bubbles from the bank the half of a mile away, in the waters of which
sick folks come to bathe even from Norwich and Lowestoft. But sheltered
as it is from the east winds, to this hour the place has the advantage
that gardens planted here are earlier by fourteen days than any others
in the country side, and that a man may sit in them coatless in the
bitter month of May, when on the top of the hill, not two hundred paces
hence, he must shiver in a jacket of otterskins.

The Lodge, for so it has always been named, in its beginnings having
been but a farmhouse, faces to the south-west, and is built so low that
it might well be thought that the damp from the river Waveney, which
runs through the marshes close by, would rise in it. But this is not
so, for though in autumn the roke, as here in Norfolk we name ground
fog, hangs about the house at nightfall, and in seasons of great flood
the water has been known to pour into the stables at the back of it,
yet being built on sand and gravel there is no healthier habitation in
the parish. For the rest the building is of stud-work and red brick,
quaint and mellow looking, with many corners and gables that in summer
are half hidden in roses and other creeping plants, and with its
outlook on the marshes and the common where the lights vary continually
with the seasons and even with the hours of the day, on the red roofs
of Bungay town, and on the wooded bank that stretches round the Earsham
lands; though there are many larger, to my mind there is none
pleasanter in these parts. Here in this house I was born, and here
doubtless I shall die, and having spoken of it at some length, as we
are wont to do of spots which long custom has endeared to us, I will go
on to tell of my parentage.

First, then, I would set out with a certain pride—for who of us does
not love an ancient name when we happen to be born to it?—that I am
sprung from the family of the Wingfields of Wingfield Castle in
Suffolk, that lies some two hours on horseback from this place. Long
ago the heiress of the Wingfields married a De la Pole, a family famous
in our history, the last of whom, Edmund, Earl of Suffolk, lost his
head for treason when I was young, and the castle passed to the De la
Poles with her. But some offshoots of the old Wingfield stock lingered
in the neighbourhood, perchance there was a bar sinister on their coat
of arms, I know not and do not care to know; at the least my fathers
and I are of this blood. My grandfather was a shrewd man, more of a
yeoman than a squire, though his birth was gentle. He it was who bought
this place with the lands round it, and gathered up some fortune,
mostly by careful marrying and living, for though he had but one son he
was twice married, and also by trading in cattle.

Now my grandfather was godly-minded even to superstition, and strange
as it may seem, having only one son, nothing would satisfy him but that
the boy should be made a priest. But my father had little leaning
towards the priesthood and life in a monastery, though at all seasons
my grandfather strove to reason it into him, sometimes with words and
examples, at others with his thick cudgel of holly, that still hangs
over the ingle in the smaller sitting-room. The end of it was that the
lad was sent to the priory here in Bungay, where his conduct was of
such nature that within a year the prior prayed his parents to take him
back and set him in some way of secular life. Not only, so said the
prior, did my father cause scandal by his actions, breaking out of the
priory at night and visiting drinking houses and other places; but,
such was the sum of his wickedness, he did not scruple to question and
make mock of the very doctrines of the Church, alleging even that there
was nothing sacred in the image of the Virgin Mary which stood in the
chancel, and shut its eyes in prayer before all the congregation when
the priest elevated the Host. “Therefore,” said the prior, “I pray you
take back your son, and let him find some other road to the stake than
that which runs through the gates of Bungay Priory.”

Now at this story my grandfather was so enraged that he almost fell
into a fit; then recovering, he bethought him of his cudgel of holly,
and would have used it. But my father, who was now nineteen years of
age and very stout and strong, twisted it from his hand and flung it
full fifty yards, saying that no man should touch him more were he a
hundred times his father. Then he walked away, leaving the prior and my
grandfather staring at each other.

Now to shorten a long tale, the end of the matter was this. It was
believed both by my grandfather and the prior that the true cause of my
father’s contumacy was a passion which he had conceived for a girl of
humble birth, a miller’s fair daughter who dwelt at Waingford Mills.
Perhaps there was truth in this belief, or perhaps there was none. What
does it matter, seeing that the maid married a butcher at Beccles and
died years since at the good age of ninety and five? But true or false,
my grandfather believed the tale, and knowing well that absence is the
surest cure for love, he entered into a plan with the prior that my
father should be sent to a monastery at Seville in Spain, of which the
prior’s brother was abbot, and there learn to forget the miller’s
daughter and all other worldly things.

When this was told to my father he fell into it readily enough, being a
young man of spirit and having a great desire to see the world,
otherwise, however, than through the gratings of a monastery window. So
the end of it was that he went to foreign parts in the care of a party
of Spanish monks, who had journeyed here to Norfolk on a pilgrimage to
the shrine of our Lady of Walsingham.

It is said that my grandfather wept when he parted with his son,
feeling that he should see him no more; yet so strong was his religion,
or rather his superstition, that he did not hesitate to send him away,
though for no reason save that he would mortify his own love and flesh,
offering his son for a sacrifice as Abraham would have offered Isaac.
But though my father appeared to consent to the sacrifice, as did
Isaac, yet his mind was not altogether set on altars and faggots; in
short, as he himself told me in after years, his plans were already
laid.

Thus it chanced that when he had sailed from Yarmouth a year and six
months, there came a letter from the abbot of the monastery in Seville
to his brother, the prior of St. Mary’s at Bungay, saying that my
father had fled from the monastery, leaving no trace of where he had
gone. My grandfather was grieved at this tidings, but said little about
it.

Two more years passed away, and there came other news, namely, that my
father had been captured, that he had been handed over to the power of
the Holy Office, as the accursed Inquisition was then named, and
tortured to death at Seville. When my grandfather heard this he wept,
and bemoaned himself that his folly in forcing one into the Church who
had no liking for that path, had brought about the shameful end of his
only son. After that date also he broke his friendship with the prior
of St. Mary’s at Bungay, and ceased his offerings to the priory. Still
he did not believe that my father was dead in truth, since on the last
day of his own life, that ended two years later, he spoke of him as a
living man, and left messages to him as to the management of the lands
which now were his.

And in the end it became clear that this belief was not ill-founded,
for one day three years after the old man’s death, there landed at the
port of Yarmouth none other than my father, who had been absent some
eight years in all. Nor did he come alone, for with him he brought a
wife, a young and very lovely lady, who afterwards was my mother. She
was a Spaniard of noble family, having been born at Seville, and her
maiden name was Donna Luisa de Garcia.

Now of all that befell my father during his eight years of wandering I
cannot speak certainly, for he was very silent on the matter, though I
may have need to touch on some of his adventures. But I know it is true
that he fell under the power of the Holy Office, for once when as a
little lad I bathed with him in the Elbow Pool, where the river Waveney
bends some three hundred yards above this house, I saw that his breast
and arms were scored with long white scars, and asked him what had
caused them. I remember well how his face changed as I spoke, from
kindliness to the hue of blackest hate, and how he answered speaking to
himself rather than to me.

“Devils,” he said, “devils set on their work by the chief of all devils
that live upon the earth and shall reign in hell. Hark you, my son
Thomas, there is a country called Spain where your mother was born, and
there these devils abide who torture men and women, aye, and burn them
living in the name of Christ. I was betrayed into their hands by him
whom I name the chief of the devils, though he is younger than I am by
three years, and their pincers and hot irons left these marks upon me.
Aye, and they would have burnt me alive also, only I escaped, thanks to
your mother—but such tales are not for a little lad’s hearing; and see
you never speak of them, Thomas, for the Holy Office has a long arm.
You are half a Spaniard, Thomas, your skin and eyes tell their own
tale, but whatever skin and eyes may tell, let your heart give them the
lie. Keep your heart English, Thomas; let no foreign devilments enter
there. Hate all Spaniards except your mother, and be watchful lest her
blood should master mine within you.”

I was a child then, and scarcely understood his words or what he meant
by them. Afterwards I learned to understand them but too well. As for
my father’s counsel, that I should conquer my Spanish blood, would that
I could always have followed it, for I know that from this blood
springs the most of such evil as is in me. Hence come my fixedness of
purpose or rather obstinacy, and my powers of unchristian hatred that
are not small towards those who have wronged me. Well, I have done what
I might to overcome these and other faults, but strive as we may, that
which is bred in the bone will out in the flesh, as I have seen in many
signal instances.

There were three of us children, Geoffrey my elder brother, myself, and
my sister Mary, who was one year my junior, the sweetest child and the
most beautiful that I have ever known. We were very happy children, and
our beauty was the pride of our father and mother, and the envy of
other parents. I was the darkest of the three, dark indeed to
swarthiness, but in Mary the Spanish blood showed only in her rich eyes
of velvet hue, and in the glow upon her cheek that was like the blush
on a ripe fruit. My mother used to call me her little Spaniard, because
of my swarthiness, that is when my father was not near, for such names
angered him. She never learned to speak English very well, but he would
suffer her to talk in no other tongue before him. Still, when he was
not there she spoke in Spanish, of which language, however, I alone of
the family became a master—and that more because of certain volumes of
old Spanish romances which she had by her, than for any other reason.
From my earliest childhood I was fond of such tales, and it was by
bribing me with the promise that I should read them that she persuaded
me to learn Spanish. For my mother’s heart still yearned towards her
old sunny home, and often she would talk of it with us children, more
especially in the winter season, which she hated as I do. Once I asked
her if she wished to go back to Spain. She shivered and answered no,
for there dwelt one who was her enemy and would kill her; also her
heart was with us children and our father. I wondered if this man who
sought to kill my mother was the same as he of whom my father had
spoken as “the chief of the devils,” but I only answered that no man
could wish to kill one so good and beautiful.

“Ah! my boy,” she said, “it is just because I am, or rather have been,
beautiful that he hates me. Others would have wedded me besides your
dear father, Thomas.” And her face grew troubled as though with fear.

Now when I was eighteen and a half years old, on a certain evening in
the month of May it happened that a friend of my father’s, Squire
Bozard, late of the Hall in this parish, called at the Lodge on his
road from Yarmouth, and in the course of his talk let it fall that a
Spanish ship was at anchor in the Roads, laden with merchandise. My
father pricked up his ears at this, and asked who her captain might be.
Squire Bozard answered that he did not know his name, but that he had
seen him in the market-place, a tall and stately man, richly dressed,
with a handsome face and a scar upon his temple.

At this news my mother turned pale beneath her olive skin, and muttered
in Spanish:

“Holy Mother! grant that it be not he.”

My father also looked frightened, and questioned the squire closely as
to the man’s appearance, but without learning anything more. Then he
bade him adieu with little ceremony, and taking horse rode away for
Yarmouth.

That night my mother never slept, but sat all through it in her nursing
chair, brooding over I know not what. As I left her when I went to my
bed, so I found her when I came from it at dawn. I can remember well
pushing the door ajar to see her face glimmering white in the twilight
of the May morning, as she sat, her large eyes fixed upon the lattice.

“You have risen early, mother,” I said.

“I have never lain down, Thomas,” she answered.

“Why not? What do you fear?”

“I fear the past and the future, my son. Would that your father were
back.”

About ten o’clock of that morning, as I was making ready to walk into
Bungay to the house of that physician under whom I was learning the art
of healing, my father rode up. My mother, who was watching at the
lattice, ran out to meet him.

Springing from his horse he embraced her, saying, “Be of good cheer,
sweet, it cannot be he. This man has another name.”

“But did you see him?” she asked.

“No, he was out at his ship for the night, and I hurried home to tell
you, knowing your fears.”

“It were surer if you had seen him, husband. He may well have taken
another name.”

“I never thought of that, sweet,” my father answered; “but have no
fear. Should it be he, and should he dare to set foot in the parish of
Ditchingham, there are those who will know how to deal with him. But I
am sure that it is not he.”

“Thanks be to Jesu then!” she said, and they began talking in a low
voice.

Now, seeing that I was not wanted, I took my cudgel and started down
the bridle-path towards the common footbridge, when suddenly my mother
called me back.

“Kiss me before you go, Thomas,” she said. “You must wonder what all
this may mean. One day your father will tell you. It has to do with a
shadow which has hung over my life for many years, but that is, I
trust, gone for ever.”

“If it be a man who flings it, he had best keep out of reach of this,”
I said, laughing, and shaking my thick stick.

“It is a man,” she answered, “but one to be dealt with otherwise than
by blows, Thomas, should you ever chance to meet him.”

“May be, mother, but might is the best argument at the last, for the
most cunning have a life to lose.”

“You are too ready to use your strength, son,” she said, smiling and
kissing me. “Remember the old Spanish proverb: ‘He strikes hardest who
strikes last.’”

“And remember the other proverb, mother: ‘Strike before thou art
stricken,’” I answered, and went.

When I had gone some ten paces something prompted me to look back, I
know not what. My mother was standing by the open door, her stately
shape framed as it were in the flowers of a white creeping shrub that
grew upon the wall of the old house. As was her custom, she wore a
mantilla of white lace upon her head, the ends of which were wound
beneath her chin, and the arrangement of it was such that at this
distance for one moment it put me in mind of the wrappings which are
placed about the dead. I started at the thought and looked at her face.
She was watching me with sad and earnest eyes that seemed to be filled
with the spirit of farewell.

I never saw her again till she was dead.




CHAPTER III
THE COMING OF THE SPANIARD


And now I must go back and speak of my own matters. As I have told, it
was my father’s wish that I should be a physician, and since I came
back from my schooling at Norwich, that was when I had entered on my
sixteenth year, I had studied medicine under the doctor who practised
his art in the neighbourhood of Bungay. He was a very learned man and
an honest, Grimstone by name, and as I had some liking for the business
I made good progress under him. Indeed I had learned almost all that he
could teach me, and my father purposed to send me to London, there to
push on my studies, so soon as I should attain my twentieth year, that
is within some five months of the date of the coming of the Spaniard.

But it was not fated that I should go to London.

Medicine was not the only thing that I studied in those days, however.
Squire Bozard of Ditchingham, the same who told my father of the coming
of the Spanish ship, had two living children, a son and a daughter,
though his wife had borne him many more who died in infancy. The
daughter was named Lily and of my own age, having been born three weeks
after me in the same year. Now the Bozards are gone from these parts,
for my great-niece, the granddaughter and sole heiress of this son, has
married and has issue of another name. But this is by the way.

From our earliest days we children, Bozards and Wingfields, lived
almost as brothers and sisters, for day by day we met and played
together in the snow or in the flowers. Thus it would be hard for me to
say when I began to love Lily or when she began to love me; but I know
that when first I went to school at Norwich I grieved more at losing
sight of her than because I must part from my mother and the rest. In
all our games she was ever my partner, and I would search the country
round for days to find such flowers as she chanced to love. When I came
back from school it was the same, though by degrees Lily grew shyer,
and I also grew suddenly shy, perceiving that from a child she had
become a woman. Still we met often, and though neither said anything of
it, it was sweet to us to meet.

Thus things went on till this day of my mother’s death. But before I go
further I must tell that Squire Bozard looked with no favour on the
friendship between his daughter and myself—and this, not because he
disliked me, but rather because he would have seen Lily wedded to my
elder brother Geoffrey, my father’s heir, and not to a younger son. So
hard did he grow about the matter at last that we two might scarcely
meet except by seeming accident, whereas my brother was ever welcome at
the Hall. And on this account some bitterness arose between us two
brothers, as is apt to be the case when a woman comes between friends
however close. For it must be known that my brother Geoffrey also loved
Lily, as all men would have loved her, and with a better right perhaps
than I had—for he was my elder by three years and born to possessions.
It may seem indeed that I was somewhat hasty to fall into this state,
seeing that at the time of which I write I was not yet of age; but
young blood is nimble, and moreover mine was half Spanish, and made a
man of me when many a pure-bred Englishman is still nothing but a boy.
For the blood and the sun that ripens it have much to do with such
matters, as I have seen often enough among the Indian peoples of
Anahuac, who at the age of fifteen will take to themselves a bride of
twelve. At the least it is certain that when I was eighteen years of
age I was old enough to fall in love after such fashion that I never
fell out of it again altogether, although the history of my life may
seem to give me the lie when I say so. But I take it that a man may
love several women and yet love one of them the best of all, being true
in the spirit to the law which he breaks in the letter.

Now when I had attained nineteen years I was a man full grown, and
writing as I do in extreme old age, I may say it without false shame, a
very handsome youth to boot. I was not over tall, indeed, measuring but
five feet nine inches and a half in height, but my limbs were well
made, and I was both deep and broad in the chest. In colour I was, and
my white hair notwithstanding, am still extraordinarily dark hued, my
eyes also were large and dark, and my hair, which was wavy, was coal
black. In my deportment I was reserved and grave to sadness, in speech
I was slow and temperate, and more apt at listening than in talking. I
weighed matters well before I made up my mind upon them, but being made
up, nothing could turn me from that mind short of death itself, whether
it were set on good or evil, on folly or wisdom. In those days also I
had little religion, since, partly because of my father’s secret
teaching and partly through the workings of my own reason, I had
learned to doubt the doctrines of the Church as they used to be set
out. Youth is prone to reason by large leaps as it were, and to hold
that all things are false because some are proved false; and thus at
times in those days I thought that there was no God, because the priest
said that the image of the Virgin at Bungay wept and did other things
which I knew that it did not do. Now I know well that there is a God,
for my own story proves it to my heart. In truth, what man can look
back across a long life and say that there is no God, when he can see
the shadow of His hand lying deep upon his tale of years?

On this sad day of which I write I knew that Lily, whom I loved, would
be walking alone beneath the great pollard oaks in the park of
Ditchingham Hall. Here, in Grubswell as the spot is called, grew, and
indeed still grow, certain hawthorn trees that are the earliest to blow
of any in these parts, and when we had met at the church door on the
Sunday, Lily said that there would be bloom upon them by the Wednesday,
and on that afternoon she should go to cut it. It may well be that she
spoke thus with design, for love will breed cunning in the heart of the
most guileless and truthful maid. Moreover, I noticed that though she
said it before her father and the rest of us, yet she waited to speak
till my brother Geoffrey was out of hearing, for she did not wish to go
maying with him, and also that as she spoke she shot a glance of her
grey eyes at me. Then and there I vowed to myself that I also would be
gathering hawthorn bloom in this same place and on that Wednesday
afternoon, yes, even if I must play truant and leave all the sick of
Bungay to Nature’s nursing. Moreover, I was determined on one thing,
that if I could find Lily alone I would delay no longer, but tell her
all that was in my heart; no great secret indeed, for though no word of
love had ever passed between us as yet, each knew the other’s hidden
thoughts. Not that I was in the way to become affianced to a maid, who
had my path to cut in the world, but I feared that if I delayed to make
sure of her affection my brother would be before me with her father,
and Lily might yield to that to which she would not yield if once we
had plighted troth.

Now it chanced that on this afternoon I was hard put to it to escape to
my tryst, for my master, the physician, was ailing, and sent me to
visit the sick for him, carrying them their medicines. At the last,
however, between four and five o’clock, I fled, asking no leave. Taking
the Norwich road I ran for a mile and more till I had passed the Manor
House and the church turn, and drew near to Ditchingham Park. Then I
dropped my pace to a walk, for I did not wish to come before Lily
heated and disordered, but rather looking my best, to which end I had
put on my Sunday garments. Now as I went down the little hill in the
road that runs past the park, I saw a man on horseback who looked first
at the bridle-path, that at this spot turns off to the right, then back
across the common lands towards the Vineyard Hills and the Waveney, and
then along the road as though he did not know which way to turn. I was
quick to notice things—though at this moment my mind was not at its
swiftest, being set on other matters, and chiefly as to how I should
tell my tale to Lily—and I saw at once that this man was not of our
country.

He was very tall and noble-looking, dressed in rich garments of velvet
adorned by a gold chain that hung about his neck, and as I judged about
forty years of age. But it was his face which chiefly caught my eye,
for at that moment there was something terrible about it. It was long,
thin, and deeply carved; the eyes were large, and gleamed like gold in
sunlight; the mouth was small and well shaped, but it wore a devilish
and cruel sneer; the forehead lofty, indicating a man of mind, and
marked with a slight scar. For the rest the cavalier was dark and
southern-looking, his curling hair, like my own, was black, and he wore
a peaked chestnut-coloured beard.

By the time that I had finished these observations my feet had brought
me almost to the stranger’s side, and for the first time he caught
sight of me. Instantly his face changed, the sneer left it, and it
became kindly and pleasant looking. Lifting his bonnet with much
courtesy he stammered something in broken English, of which all that I
could catch was the word Yarmouth; then perceiving that I did not
understand him, he cursed the English tongue and all those who spoke
it, aloud and in good Castilian.

“If the señor will graciously express his wish in Spanish,” I said,
speaking in that language, “it may be in my power to help him.”

“What! you speak Spanish, young sir,” he said, starting, “and yet you
are not a Spaniard, though by your face you well might be. Caramba! but
it is strange!” and he eyed me curiously.

“It may be strange, sir,” I answered, “but I am in haste. Be pleased to
ask your question and let me go.”

“Ah!” he said, “perhaps I can guess the reason of your hurry. I saw a
white robe down by the streamlet yonder,” and he nodded towards the
park. “Take the advice of an older man, young sir, and be careful. Make
what sport you will with such, but never believe them and never marry
them—lest you should live to desire to kill them!”

Here I made as though I would pass on, but he spoke again.

“Pardon my words, they were well meant, and perhaps you may come to
learn their truth. I will detain you no more. Will you graciously
direct me on my road to Yarmouth, for I am not sure of it, having
ridden by another way, and your English country is so full of trees
that a man cannot see a mile?”

I walked a dozen paces down the bridle-path that joined the road at
this place, and pointed out the way that he should go, past Ditchingham
church. As I did so I noticed that while I spoke the stranger was
watching my face keenly and, as it seemed to me, with an inward fear
which he strove to master and could not. When I had finished again he
raised his bonnet and thanked me, saying,

“Will you be so gracious as to tell me your name, young Sir?”

“What is my name to you?” I answered roughly, for I disliked this man.
“You have not told me yours.”

“No, indeed, I am travelling incognito. Perhaps I also have met a lady
in these parts,” and he smiled strangely. “I only wished to know the
name of one who had done me a courtesy, but who it seems is not so
courteous as I deemed.” And he shook his horse’s reins.

“I am not ashamed of my name,” I said. “It has been an honest one so
far, and if you wish to know it, it is Thomas Wingfield.”

“I thought it,” he cried, and as he spoke his face grew like the face
of a fiend. Then before I could find time even to wonder, he had sprung
from his horse and stood within three paces of me.

“A lucky day! Now we will see what truth there is in prophecies,” he
said, drawing his silver-mounted sword. “A name for a name; Juan de
Garcia gives you greeting, Thomas Wingfield.”

Now, strange as it may seem, it was at this moment only that there
flashed across my mind the thought of all that I had heard about the
Spanish stranger, the report of whose coming to Yarmouth had stirred my
father and mother so deeply. At any other time I should have remembered
it soon enough, but on this day I was so set upon my tryst with Lily
and what I should say to her, that nothing else could hold a place in
my thoughts.

“This must be the man,” I said to myself, and then I said no more, for
he was on me, sword up. I saw the keen point flash towards me, and
sprang to one side having a desire to fly, as, being unarmed except for
my stick, I might have done without shame. But spring as I would I
could not avoid the thrust altogether. It was aimed at my heart and it
pierced the sleeve of my left arm, passing through the flesh—no more.
Yet at the pain of that cut all thought of flight left me, and instead
of it a cold anger filled me, causing me to wish to kill this man who
had attacked me thus and unprovoked. In my hand was my stout oaken
staff which I had cut myself on the banks of Hollow Hill, and if I
would fight I must make such play with this as I might. It seems a poor
weapon indeed to match against a Toledo blade in the hands of one who
could handle it well, and yet there are virtues in a cudgel, for when a
man sees himself threatened with it, he is likely to forget that he
holds in his hand a more deadly weapon, and to take to the guarding of
his own head in place of running his adversary through the body.

And that was what chanced in this case, though how it came about
exactly I cannot tell. The Spaniard was a fine swordsman, and had I
been armed as he was would doubtless have overmatched me, who at that
age had no practice in the art, which was almost unknown in England.
But when he saw the big stick flourished over him he forgot his own
advantage, and raised his arm to ward away the blow. Down it came upon
the back of his hand, and lo! his sword fell from it to the grass. But
I did not spare him because of that, for my blood was up. The next
stroke took him on the lips, knocking out a tooth and sending him
backwards. Then I caught him by the leg and beat him most unmercifully,
not upon the head indeed, for now that I was victor I did not wish to
kill one whom I thought a madman as I would that I had done, but on
every other part of him.

Indeed I thrashed him till my arms were weary and then I fell to
kicking him, and all the while he writhed like a wounded snake and
cursed horribly, though he never cried out or asked for mercy. At last
I ceased and looked at him, and he was no pretty sight to see—indeed,
what with his cuts and bruises and the mire of the roadway, it would
have been hard to know him for the gallant cavalier whom I had met not
five minutes before. But uglier than all his hurts was the look in his
wicked eyes as he lay there on his back in the pathway and glared up at
me.

“Now, friend Spaniard,” I said, “you have learned a lesson; and what is
there to hinder me from treating you as you would have dealt with me
who had never harmed you?” and I took up his sword and held it to his
throat.

“Strike home, you accursed whelp!” he answered in a broken voice; “it
is better to die than to live to remember such shame as this.”

“No,” I said, “I am no foreign murderer to kill a defenceless man. You
shall away to the justice to answer for yourself. The hangman has a
rope for such as you.”

“Then you must drag me thither,” he groaned, and shut his eyes as
though with faintness, and doubtless he was somewhat faint.

Now as I pondered on what should be done with the villain, it chanced
that I looked up through a gap in the fence, and there, among the
Grubswell Oaks three hundred yards or more away, I caught sight of the
flutter of a white robe that I knew well, and it seemed to me that the
wearer of that robe was moving towards the bridge of the “watering” as
though she were weary of waiting for one who did not come.

Then I thought to myself that if I stayed to drag this man to the
village stocks or some other safe place, there would be an end of
meeting with my love that day, and I did not know when I might find
another chance. Now I would not have missed that hour’s talk with Lily
to bring a score of murderous-minded foreigners to their deserts, and,
moreover, this one had earned good payment for his behaviour. Surely,
thought I, he might wait a while till I had done my love-making, and if
he would not wait I could find a means to make him do so. Not twenty
paces from us the horse stood cropping the grass. I went to him and
undid his bridle rein, and with it fastened the Spaniard to a small
wayside tree as best I was able.

“Now, here you stay,” I said, “till I am ready to fetch you;” and I
turned to go.

But as I went a great doubt took me, and once more I remembered my
mother’s fear, and how my father had ridden in haste to Yarmouth on
business about a Spaniard. Now to-day a Spaniard had wandered to
Ditchingham, and when he learned my name had fallen upon me madly
trying to kill me. Was not this the man whom my mother feared, and was
it right that I should leave him thus that I might go maying with my
dear? I knew in my breast that it was not right, but I was so set upon
my desire and so strongly did my heartstrings pull me towards her whose
white robe now fluttered on the slope of the Park Hill, that I never
heeded the warning.

Well had it been for me if I had done so, and well for some who were
yet unborn. Then they had never known death, nor I the land of exile,
the taste of slavery, and the altar of sacrifice.




CHAPTER IV
THOMAS TELLS HIS LOVE


Having made the Spaniard as fast as I could, his arms being bound to
the tree behind him, and taking his sword with me, I began to run hard
after Lily and caught her not too soon, for in one more minute she
would have turned along the road that runs to the watering and over the
bridge by the Park Hill path to the Hall.

Hearing my footsteps, she faced about to greet me, or rather as though
to see who it was that followed her. There she stood in the evening
light, a bough of hawthorn bloom in her hand, and my heart beat yet
more wildly at the sight of her. Never had she seemed fairer than as
she stood thus in her white robe, a look of amaze upon her face and in
her grey eyes, that was half real half feigned, and with the sunlight
shifting on her auburn hair that showed beneath her little bonnet. Lily
was no round-checked country maid with few beauties save those of
health and youth, but a tall and shapely lady who had ripened early to
her full grace and sweetness, and so it came about that though we were
almost of an age, yet in her presence I felt always as though I were
the younger. Thus in my love for her was mingled some touch of
reverence.

“Oh! it is you, Thomas,” she said, blushing as she spoke. “I thought
you were not—I mean that I am going home as it grows late. But say, why
do you run so fast, and what has happened to you, Thomas, that your arm
is bloody and you carry a sword in your hand?”

“I have no breath to speak yet,” I answered. “Come back to the
hawthorns and I will tell you.”

“No, I must be wending homewards. I have been among the trees for more
than an hour, and there is little bloom upon them.”

“I could not come before, Lily. I was kept, and in a strange manner.
Also I saw bloom as I ran.”

“Indeed, I never thought that you would come, Thomas,” she answered,
looking down, “who have other things to do than to go out maying like a
girl. But I wish to hear your story, if it is short, and I will walk a
little way with you.”

So we turned and walked side by side towards the great pollard oaks,
and by the time that we reached them, I had told her the tale of the
Spaniard, and how he strove to kill me, and how I had beaten him with
my staff. Now Lily listened eagerly enough, and sighed with fear when
she learned how close I had been to death.

“But you are wounded, Thomas,” she broke in; “see, the blood runs fast
from your arm. Is the thrust deep?”

“I have not looked to see. I have had no time to look.”

“Take off your coat, Thomas, that I may dress the wound. Nay, I will
have it so.”

So I drew off the garment, not without pain, and rolled up the shirt
beneath, and there was the hurt, a clean thrust through the fleshy part
of the lower arm. Lily washed it with water from the brook, and bound
it with her kerchief, murmuring words of pity all the while. To say
truth, I would have suffered a worse harm gladly, if only I could find
her to tend it. Indeed, her gentle care broke down the fence of my
doubts and gave me a courage that otherwise might have failed me in her
presence. At first, indeed, I could find no words, but as she bound my
wound, I bent down and kissed her ministering hand. She flushed red as
the evening sky, the flood of crimson losing itself at last beneath her
auburn hair, but it burned deepest upon the white hand which I had
kissed.

“Why did you do that, Thomas?” she said, in a low voice.

Then I spoke. “I did it because I love you, Lily, and do not know how
to begin the telling of my love. I love you, dear, and have always
loved as I always shall love you.”

“Are you so sure of that, Thomas?” she said, again.

“There is nothing else in the world of which I am so sure, Lily. What I
wish to be as sure of is that you love me as I love you.”

For a moment she stood quiet, her head sunk almost to her breast, then
she lifted it and her eyes shone as I had never seen them shine before.

“Can you doubt it, Thomas?” she said.

And now I took her in my arms and kissed her on the lips, and the
memory of that kiss has gone with me through my long life, and is with
me yet, when, old and withered, I stand upon the borders of the grave.
It was the greatest joy that has been given to me in all my days. Too
soon, alas! it was done, that first pure kiss of youthful love—and I
spoke again somewhat aimlessly.

“It seems then that you do love me who love you so well.”

“If you doubted it before, can you doubt it _now?_” she answered very
softly. “But listen, Thomas. It is well that we should love each other,
for we were born to it, and have no help in the matter, even if we
wished to find it. Still, though love be sweet and holy, it is not all,
for there is duty to be thought of, and what will my father say to
this, Thomas?”

“I do not know, Lily, and yet I can guess. I am sure, sweet, that he
wishes you to take my brother Geoffrey, and leave me on one side.”

“Then his wishes are not mine, Thomas. Also, though duty be strong, it
is not strong enough to force a woman to a marriage for which she has
no liking. Yet it may prove strong enough to keep a woman from a
marriage for which her heart pleads—perhaps, also, it should have been
strong enough to hold me back from the telling of my love.”

“No, Lily, the love itself is much, and though it should bring no
fruit, still it is something to have won it for ever and a day.”

“You are very young to talk thus, Thomas. I am also young, I know, but
we women ripen quicker. Perhaps all this is but a boy’s fancy, to pass
with boyhood.”

“It will never pass, Lily. They say that our first loves are the
longest, and that which is sown in youth will flourish in our age.
Listen, Lily; I have my place to make in the world, and it may take a
time in the making, and I ask one promise of you, though perhaps it is
a selfish thing to seek. I ask of you that you will be faithful to me,
and come fair weather or foul, will wed no other man till you know me
dead.”

“It is something to promise, Thomas, for with time come changes. Still
I am so sure of myself that I promise—nay I swear it. Of you I cannot
be sure, but things are so with us women that we must risk all upon a
throw, and if we lose, good-bye to happiness.”

Then we talked on, and I cannot remember what we said, though these
words that I have written down remain in my mind, partly because of
their own weight, and in part because of all that came about in the
after years.

And at last I knew that I must go, though we were sad enough at
parting. So I took her in my arms and kissed her so closely that some
blood from my wound ran down her white attire. But as we embraced I
chanced to look up, and saw a sight that frightened me enough. For
there, not five paces from us, stood Squire Bozard, Lily’s father,
watching all, and his face wore no smile.

He had been riding by a bridle-path to the watering ford, and seeing a
couple trespassing beneath the oaks, dismounted from his horse to hunt
them away. Not till he was quite near did he know whom he came to hunt,
and then he stood still in astonishment. Lily and I drew slowly apart
and looked at him. He was a short stout man, with a red face and stern
grey eyes, that seemed to be starting from his head with anger. For a
while he could not speak, but when he began at length the words came
fast enough. All that he said I forget, but the upshot of it was that
he desired to know what my business was with his daughter. I waited
till he was out of breath, then answered him that Lily and I loved each
other well, and were plighting our troth.

“Is this so, daughter?” he asked.

“It is so, my father,” she answered boldly.

Then he broke out swearing. “You light minx,” he said, “you shall be
whipped and kept cool on bread and water in your chamber. And for you,
my half-bred Spanish cockerel, know once and for all that this maid is
for your betters. How dare you come wooing my daughter, you empty
pill-box, who have not two silver pennies to rattle in your pouch! Go
win fortune and a name before you dare to look up to such as she.”

“That is my desire, and I will do it, sir,” I answered.

“So, you apothecary’s drudge, you will win name and place, will you!
Well, long before that deed is done the maid shall be safely wedded to
one who has them and who is not unknown to you. Daughter, say now that
you have finished with him.”

“I cannot say that, father,” she replied, plucking at her robe. “If it
is not your will that I should marry Thomas here, my duty is plain and
I may not wed him. But I am my own and no duty can make me marry where
I will not. While Thomas lives I am sworn to him and to no other man.”

“At the least you have courage, hussey,” said her father. “But listen
now, either you will marry where and when I wish, or tramp it for your
bread. Ungrateful girl, did I breed you to flaunt me to my face? Now
for you, pill-box. I will teach you to come kissing honest men’s
daughters without their leave,” and with a curse he rushed at me, stick
aloft, to thrash me.

Then for the second time that day my quick blood boiled in me, and
snatching up the Spaniard’s sword that lay upon the grass beside me, I
held it at the point, for the game was changed, and I who had fought
with cudgel against sword, must now fight with sword against cudgel.
And had it not been that Lily with a quick cry of fear struck my arm
from beneath, causing the point of the sword to pass over his shoulder,
I believe truly that I should then and there have pierced her father
through, and ended my days early with a noose about my neck.

“Are you mad?” she cried. “And do you think to win me by slaying my
father? Throw down that sword, Thomas.”

“As for winning you, it seems that there is small chance of it;” I
answered hotly, “but I tell you this, not for the sake of all the maids
upon the earth will I stand to be beaten with a stick like a scullion.”

“And there I do not blame you, lad,” said her father, more kindly. “I
see that you also have courage which may serve you in good stead, and
it was unworthy of me to call you ‘pill-box’ in my anger. Still, as I
have said, the girl is not for you, so be gone and forget her as best
you may, and if you value your life, never let me find you two kissing
again. And know that to-morrow I will have a word with your father on
this matter.”

“I will go since I must go,” I answered, “but, sir, I still hope to
live to call your daughter wife. Lily, farewell till these storms are
overpast.”

“Farewell, Thomas,” she said weeping. “Forget me not and I will never
forget my oath to you.”

Then taking Lily by the arm her father led her away.

I also went away—sad, but not altogether ill-pleased. For now I knew
that if I had won the father’s anger, I had also won the daughter’s
unalterable love, and love lasts longer than wrath, and here or
hereafter will win its way at length. When I had gone a little distance
I remembered the Spaniard, who had been clean forgotten by me in all
this love and war, and I turned to seek him and drag him to the stocks,
the which I should have done with joy, and been glad to find some one
on whom to wreak my wrongs. But when I came to the spot where I had
left him, I found that fate had befriended him by the hand of a fool,
for there was no Spaniard but only the village idiot, Billy Minns by
name, who stood staring first at the tree to which the foreigner had
been made fast, and then at a piece of silver in his hand.

“Where is the man who was tied here, Billy?” I asked.

“I know not, Master Thomas,” he answered in his Norfolk talk which I
will not set down. “Half-way to wheresoever he was going I should say,
measured by the pace at which he left when once I had set him upon his
horse.”

“You set him on his horse, fool? How long was that ago?”

“How long! Well, it might be one hour, and it might be two. I’m no
reckoner of time, that keeps its own score like an innkeeper, without
my help. Lawks! how he did gallop off, working those long spurs he wore
right into the ribs of the horse. And little wonder, poor man, and he
daft, not being able to speak, but only to bleat sheeplike, and fallen
upon by robbers on the king’s roads, and in broad daylight. But Billy
cut him loose and caught his horse and set him on it, and got this
piece for his good charity. Lawks! but he was glad to be gone. How he
did gallop!”

“Now you are a bigger fool even than I thought you, Billy Minns,” I
said in anger. “That man would have murdered me, I overcame him and
made him fast, and you have let him go.”

“He would have murdered you, Master, and you made him fast! Then why
did you not stop to keep him till I came along, and we would have haled
him to the stocks? That would have been sport and all. You call me
fool—but if you found a man covered with blood and hurts tied to a
tree, and he daft and not able to speak, had you not cut him loose?
Well, he’s gone, and this alone is left of him,” and he spun the piece
into the air.

Now, seeing that there was reason in Billy’s talk, for the fault was
mine, I turned away without more words, not straight homewards, for I
wished to think alone awhile on all that had come about between me and
Lily and her father, but down the way which runs across the lane to the
crest of the Vineyard Hills. These hills are clothed with underwood, in
which large oaks grow to within some two hundred yards of this house
where I write, and this underwood is pierced by paths that my mother
laid out, for she loved to walk here. One of these paths runs along the
bottom of the hill by the edge of the pleasant river Waveney, and the
other a hundred feet or more above and near the crest of the slope, or
to speak more plainly, there is but one path shaped like the letter O,
placed thus ⬭, the curved ends of the letter marking how the path turns
upon the hill-side.

Now I struck the path at the end that is furthest from this house, and
followed that half of it which runs down by the river bank, having the
water on one side of it and the brushwood upon the other. Along this
lower path I wandered, my eyes fixed upon the ground, thinking deeply
as I went, now of the joy of Lily’s love, and now of the sorrow of our
parting and of her father’s wrath. As I went, thus wrapped in
meditation, I saw something white lying upon the grass, and pushed it
aside with the point of the Spaniard’s sword, not heeding it. Still,
its shape and fashioning remained in my mind, and when I had left it
some three hundred paces behind me, and was drawing near to the house,
the sight of it came back to me as it lay soft and white upon the
grass, and I knew that it was familiar to my eyes. From the thing,
whatever it might be, my mind passed to the Spaniard’s sword with which
I had tossed it aside, and from the sword to the man himself. What had
been his business in this parish?—an ill one surely—and why had he
looked as though he feared me and fallen upon me when he learned my
name?

I stood still, looking downward, and my eyes fell upon footprints
stamped in the wet sand of the path. One of them was my mother’s. I
could have sworn to it among a thousand, for no other woman in these
parts had so delicate a foot. Close to it, as though following after,
was another that at first I thought must also have been made by a
woman, it was so narrow. But presently I saw that this could scarcely
be, because of its length, and moreover, that the boot which left it
was like none that I knew, being cut very high at the instep and very
pointed at the toe. Then, of a sudden, it came upon me that the Spanish
stranger wore such boots, for I had noted them while I talked with him,
and that his feet were following those of my mother, for they had
trodden on her track, and in some places, his alone had stamped their
impress on the sand blotting out her footprints. Then, too, I knew what
the white rag was that I had thrown aside. It was my mother’s mantilla
which I knew, and yet did not know, because I always saw it set
daintily upon her head. In a moment it had come home to me, and with
the knowledge a keen and sickening dread. Why had this man followed my
mother, and why did her mantilla lie thus upon the ground?

I turned and sped like a deer back to where I had seen the lace. All
the way the footprints went before me. Now I was there. Yes, the
wrapping was hers, and it had been rent as though by a rude hand; but
where was she?

With a beating heart once more I bent to read the writing of the
footsteps. Here they were mixed one with another, as though the two had
stood close together, moving now this way and now that in struggle. I
looked up the path, but there were none. Then I cast round about like a
beagle, first along the river side, then up the bank. Here they were
again, and made by feet that flew and feet that followed. Up the bank
they went fifty yards and more, now lost where the turf was sound, now
seen in sand or loam, till they led to the bole of a big oak, and were
once more mixed together, for here the pursuer had come up with the
pursued.

Despairingly as one who dreams, for now I guessed all and grew mad with
fear, I looked this way and that, till at length I found more
footsteps, those of the Spaniard. These were deep marked, as of a man
who carried some heavy burden. I followed them; first they went down
the hill towards the river, then turned aside to a spot where the
brushwood was thick. In the deepest of the clump the boughs, now
bursting into leaf, were bent downwards as though to hide something
beneath. I wrenched them aside, and there, gleaming whitely in the
gathering twilight was the dead face of my mother.




CHAPTER V
THOMAS SWEARS AN OATH


For a while I stood amazed with horror, staring down at the dead face
of my beloved mother. Then I stooped to lift her and saw that she had
been stabbed, and through the breast, stabbed with the sword which I
carried in my hand.

Now I understood. This was the work of that Spanish stranger whom I had
met as he hurried from the place of murder, who, because of the
wickedness of his heart or for some secret reason, had striven to slay
me also when he learned that I was my mother’s son. And I had held this
devil in my power, and that I might meet my May, I had suffered him to
escape my vengeance, who, had I known the truth, would have dealt with
him as the priests of Anahuac deal with the victims of their gods. I
understood and shed tears of pity, rage, and shame. Then I turned and
fled homewards like one mad.

At the doorway I met my father and my brother Geoffrey riding up from
Bungay market, and there was that written on my face which caused them
to ask as with one voice:

“What evil thing has happened?”

Thrice I looked at my father before I could speak, for I feared lest
the blow should kill him. But speak I must at last, though I chose that
it should be to Geoffrey my brother. “Our mother lies murdered yonder
on the Vineyard Hill. A Spanish man has done the deed, Juan de Garcia
by name.” When my father heard these words his face became livid as
though with pain of the heart, his jaw fell and a low moan issued from
his open mouth. Presently he rested his hand upon the pommel of the
saddle, and lifting his ghastly face he said:

“Where is this Spaniard? Have you killed him?”

“No, father. He chanced upon me in Grubswell, and when he learned my
name he would have murdered me. But I played quarter staff with him and
beat him to a pulp, taking his sword.”

“Ay, and then?”

“And then I let him go, knowing nothing of the deed he had already
wrought upon our mother. Afterwards I will tell you all.”

“You let him go, son! You let Juan de Garcia go! Then, Thomas, may the
curse of God rest upon you till you find him and finish that which you
began to-day.”

“Spare to curse me, father, who am accursed by my own conscience. Turn
your horses rather and ride for Yarmouth, for there his ship lies and
thither he has gone with two hours’ start. Perhaps you may still trap
him before he sets sail.”

Without another word my father and brother wheeled their horses round
and departed at full gallop into the gloom of the gathering night.

They rode so fiercely that, their horses being good, they came to the
gates of Yarmouth in little more than an hour and a half, and that is
fast riding. But the bird was flown. They tracked him to the quay and
found that he had shipped a while before in a boat which was in waiting
for him, and passed to his vessel that lay in the Roads at anchor but
with the most of her canvas set. Instantly she sailed, and now was lost
in the night. Then my father caused notice to be given that he would
pay reward of two hundred pieces in gold to any ship that should
capture the Spaniard, and two started on the quest, but they did not
find her that before morning was far on her way across the sea.

So soon as they had galloped away I called together the grooms and
other serving men and told them what had chanced. Then we went with
lanterns, for by now it was dark, and came to the thick brushwood where
lay the body of my mother. I drew near the first, for the men were
afraid, and so indeed was I, though why I should fear her lying dead
who living had loved me tenderly, I do not know. Yet I know this, that
when I came to the spot and saw two eyes glowering at me and heard the
crash of bushes as something broke them, I could almost have fallen
with fear, although I knew well that it was but a fox or wandering
hound haunting the place of death.

Still I went on, calling the others to follow, and the end of it was
that we laid my mother’s body upon a door which had been lifted from
its hinges, and bore her home for the last time. And to me that path is
still a haunted place. It is seventy years and more since my mother
died by the hand of Juan de Garcia her cousin, yet old as I am and
hardened to such sad scenes, I do not love to walk that path alone at
night.

Doubtless it was fancy which plays us strange tricks, still but a year
ago, having gone to set a springe for a woodcock, I chanced to pass by
yonder big oak upon a November eve, and I could have sworn that I saw
it all again. I saw myself a lad, my wounded arm still bound with
Lily’s kerchief, climbing slowly down the hill-side, while behind me,
groaning beneath their burden, were the forms of the four serving men.
I heard the murmur of the river and the wind that seventy years ago
whispered in the reeds. I saw the clouded sky flawed here and there
with blue, and the broken light that gleamed on the white burden
stretched upon the door, and the red stain at its breast. Ay, I heard
myself talk as I went forward with the lantern, bidding the men pass to
the right of some steep and rotten ground, and it was strange to me to
listen to my own voice as it had been in youth. Well, well, it was but
a dream, yet such slaves are we to the fears of fancy, that because of
the dead, I, who am almost of their number, do not love to pass that
path at night.

At length we came home with our burden, and the women took it weeping
and set about their task with it. And now I must not only fight my own
sorrows but must strive to soothe those of my sister Mary, who as I
feared would go mad with grief and horror. At last she sobbed herself
into a torpor, and I went and questioned the men who sat round the fire
in the kitchen, for none sought their beds that night. From them I
learned that an hour or more before I met the Spaniard, a
richly-dressed stranger had been seen walking along the church-path,
and that he had tied his horse among some gorse and brambles on the top
of the hill, where he stood as though in doubt, till my mother came
out, when he descended and followed her. Also I learned that one of the
men at work in the garden, which is not more than three hundred paces
from where the deed was done, heard cries, but had taken no note of
them, thinking forsooth that it was but the play of some lover from
Bungay and his lass chasing each other through the woods, as to this
hour it is their fashion to do. Truly it seemed to me that day as
though this parish of Ditchingham were the very nursery of fools, of
whom I was the first and biggest, and indeed this same thought has
struck me since concerning other matters.

At length the morning came, and with it my father and brother, who
returned from Yarmouth on hired horses, for their own were spent. In
the afternoon also news followed them that the ships which had put to
sea on the track of the Spaniard had been driven back by bad weather,
having seen nothing of him.

Now I told all the story of my dealings with the murderer of my mother,
keeping nothing back, and I must bear my father’s bitter anger because
knowing that my mother was in dread of a Spaniard, I had suffered my
reason to be led astray by my desire to win speech with my love. Nor
did I meet with any comfort from my brother Geoffrey, who was fierce
against me because he learned that I had not pleaded in vain with the
maid whom he desired for himself. But he said nothing of this reason.
Also that no drop might be lacking in my cup, Squire Bozard, who came
with many other neighbours to view the corpse and offer sympathy with
my father in his loss, told him at the same time that he took it ill
that I should woo his daughter against his wish, and that if I
continued in this course it would strain their ancient friendship. Thus
I was hit on every side; by sorrow for my mother whom I had loved
tenderly, by longing for my dear whom I might not see, by self-reproach
because I had let the Spaniard go when I held him fast, and by the
anger of my father and my brother. Indeed those days were so dark and
bitter, for I was at the age when shame and sorrow sting their
sharpest, that I wished that I were dead beside my mother. One comfort
reached me indeed, a message from Lily sent by a servant girl whom she
trusted, giving me her dear love and bidding me to be of good cheer.

At length came the day of burial, and my mother, wrapped in fair white
robes, was laid to her rest in the chancel of the church at
Ditchingham, where my father has long been set beside her, hard by the
brass effigies that mark the burying place of Lily’s forefather, his
wife, and many of their children. This funeral was the saddest of
sights, for the bitterness of my father’s grief broke from him in sobs
and my sister Mary swooned away in my arms. Indeed there were few dry
eyes in all that church, for my mother, notwithstanding her foreign
birth, was much loved because of her gentle ways and the goodness of
her heart. But it came to an end, and the noble Spanish lady and
English wife was left to her long sleep in the ancient church, where
she shall rest on when her tragic story and her very name are forgotten
among men. Indeed this is likely to be soon, for I am the last of the
Wingfields alive in these parts, though my sister Mary has left
descendants of another name to whom my lands and fortune go except for
certain gifts to the poor of Bungay and of Ditchingham.

When it was over I went back home. My father was sitting in the front
room well nigh beside himself with grief, and by him was my brother.
Presently he began to assail me with bitter words because I had let the
murderer go when God gave him into my hand.

“You forget, father,” sneered Geoffrey, “Thomas woos a maid, and it was
more to him to hold her in his arms than to keep his mother’s murderer
safely. But by this it seems he has killed two birds with one stone, he
has suffered the Spanish devil to escape when he knew that our mother
feared the coming of a Spaniard, and he has made enmity between us and
Squire Bozard, our good neighbour, who strangely enough does not favour
his wooing.”

“It is so,” said my father. “Thomas, your mother’s blood is on your
hands.”

I listened and could bear this goading injustice no longer.

“It is false,” I said, “I say it even to my father. The man had killed
my mother before I met him riding back to seek his ship at Yarmouth and
having lost his way; how then is her blood upon my hands? As for my
wooing of Lily Bozard, that is my matter, brother, and not yours,
though perhaps you wish that it was yours and not mine. Why, father,
did you not tell me what you feared of this Spaniard? I heard some
loose talk only and gave little thought to it, my mind being full of
other things. And now I will say something. You called down God’s curse
upon me, father, till such time as I should find this murderer and
finish what I had begun. So be it! Let God’s curse rest upon me till I
do find him. I am young, but I am quick and strong, and so soon as may
be I start for Spain to hunt him there till I shall run him down or
know him to be dead. If you will give me money to help me on my quest,
so be it—if not I go without. I swear before God and by my mother’s
spirit that I will neither rest nor stay till with the very sword that
slew her, I have avenged her blood upon her murderer or know him dead,
and if I suffer myself to be led astray from the purpose of this oath
by aught that is, then may a worse end than hers overtake me, may my
soul be rejected in heaven, and my name be shameful for ever upon the
earth!”

Thus I swore in my rage and anguish, holding up my hand to heaven that
I called upon to witness the oath.

My father looked at me keenly. “If that is your mind, son Thomas, you
shall not lack for money. I would go myself, for blood must be wiped
out with blood, but I am too broken in my health; also I am known in
Spain and the Holy Office would claim me there. Go, and my blessing go
with you. It is right that you should go, for it is through your folly
that our enemy has escaped us.”

“Yes, it is right that he should go,” said Geoffrey.

“You say that because you wish to be rid of me, Geoffrey,” I answered
hotly, “and you would be rid of me because you desire to take my place
at the side of a certain maid. Follow your nature and do as you will,
but if you would outwit an absent man no good shall come to you of it.”

“The girl is to him who can win her,” he said.

“The girl’s heart is won already, Geoffrey. You may buy her from her
father but you can never win her heart, and without a heart she will be
but a poor prize.”

“Peace! now is no time for such talk of love and maids,” said my
father, “and listen. This is the tale of the Spanish murderer and your
mother. I have said nothing of it heretofore, but now it must out. When
I was a lad it happened that I also went to Spain because my father
willed it. I went to a monastery at Seville, but I had no liking for
monks and their ways, and I broke out from the monastery. For a year or
more I made my living as I best might, for I feared to return to
England as a runaway. Still I made a living and not a bad one, now in
this way and now in that, but though I am ashamed to say it, mostly by
gaming, at which I had great luck. One night I met this man Juan de
Garcia—for in his hate he gave you his true name when he would have
stabbed you—at play. Even then he had an evil fame, though he was
scarcely more than a lad, but he was handsome in person, set high in
birth, and of a pleasing manner. It chanced that he won of me at the
dice, and being in a good humour, he took me to visit at the house of
his aunt, his uncle’s widow, a lady of Seville. This aunt had one
child, a daughter, and that daughter was your mother. Now your mother,
Luisa de Garcia, was affianced to her cousin Juan de Garcia, not with
her own will indeed, for the contract had been signed when she was only
eight years old. Still it was binding, more binding indeed than in this
country, being a marriage in all except in fact. But those women who
are thus bound for the most part bear no wife’s love in their hearts,
and so it was with your mother. Indeed she both hated and feared her
cousin Juan, though I think that he loved her more than anything on
earth, and by one pretext and another she contrived to bring him to an
agreement that no marriage should be celebrated till she was full
twenty years of age. But the colder she was to him, the more was he
inflamed with desire to win her and also her possessions, which were
not small, for like all Spaniards he was passionate, and like most
gamesters and men of evil life, much in want of money.

“Now to be brief, from the first moment that your mother and I set eyes
on each other we loved one another, and it was our one desire to meet
as often as might be; and in this we had no great difficulty, for her
mother also feared and hated Juan de Garcia, her nephew by marriage,
and would have seen her daughter clear of him if possible. The end of
it was that I told my love, and a plot was made between us that we
should fly to England. But all this had not escaped the ears of Juan,
who had spies in the household, and was jealous and revengeful as only
a Spaniard can be. First he tried to be rid of me by challenging me to
a duel, but we were parted before we could draw swords. Then he hired
bravos to murder me as I walked the streets at night, but I wore a
chain shirt beneath my doublet and their daggers broke upon it, and in
place of being slain I slew one of them. Twice baffled, de Garcia was
not defeated. Fight and murder had failed, but another and surer means
remained. I know not how, but he had won some clue to the history of my
life, and of how I had broken out from the monastery. It was left to
him, therefore, to denounce me to the Holy Office as a renegade and an
infidel, and this he did one night; it was the night before the day
when we should have taken ship. I was sitting with your mother and her
mother in their house at Seville, when six cowled men entered and
seized me without a word. When I prayed to know their purpose they gave
no other answer than to hold a crucifix before my eyes. Then I knew why
I was taken, and the women ceased clinging to me and fell back sobbing.
Secretly and silently I was hurried away to the dungeons of the Holy
Office, but of all that befell me there I will not stop to tell.

“Twice I was racked, once I was seared with hot irons, thrice I was
flogged with wire whips, and all this while I was fed on food such as
we should scarcely offer to a dog here in England. At length my offence
of having escaped from a monastery and sundry blasphemies, so-called,
being proved against me, I was condemned to death by fire.

“Then at last, when after a long year of torment and of horror, I had
abandoned hope and resigned myself to die, help came. On the eve of the
day upon which I was to be consumed by flame, the chief of my
tormentors entered the dungeon where I lay on straw, and embracing me
bade me be of good cheer, for the church had taken pity on my youth and
given me my freedom. At first I laughed wildly, for I thought that this
was but another torment, and not till I was freed of my fetters,
clothed in decent garments, and set at midnight without the prison
gates, would I believe that so good a thing had befallen me through the
hand of God. I stood weak and wondering outside the gates, not knowing
where to fly, and as I stood a woman glided up to me wrapped in a dark
cloak, who whispered ‘Come.’ That woman was your mother. She had
learned of my fate from the boasting of de Garcia and set herself to
save me. Thrice her plans failed, but at length through the help of
some cunning agent, gold won what was denied to justice and to mercy,
and my life and liberty were bought with a very great sum.

“That same night we were married and fled for Cadiz, your mother and I,
but not her mother, who was bedridden with a sickness. For my sake your
beloved mother abandoned her people, what remained to her of her
fortune after paying the price of my life, and her country, so strong
is the love of woman. All had been made ready, for at Cadiz lay an
English ship, the ‘Mary’ of Bristol, in which passage was taken for us.
But the ‘Mary’ was delayed in port by a contrary wind which blew so
strongly that notwithstanding his desire to save us, her master dared
not take the sea. Two days and a night we lay in the harbour, fearing
all things not without cause, and yet most happy in each other’s love.
Now those who had charge of me in the dungeon had given out that I had
escaped by the help of my master the Devil, and I was searched for
throughout the country side. De Garcia also, finding that his cousin
and affianced wife was missing, guessed that we two were not far apart.
It was his cunning, sharpened by jealousy and hate, that dogged us down
step by step till at length he found us.

“On the morning of the third day, the gale having abated, the anchor of
the ‘Mary’ was got home and she swung out into the tideway. As she came
round and while the seamen were making ready to hoist the sails, a boat
carrying some twenty soldiers, and followed by two others, shot
alongside and summoned the captain to heave to, that his ship might be
boarded and searched under warrant from the Holy Office. It chanced
that I was on deck at the time, and suddenly, as I prepared to hide
myself below, a man, in whom I knew de Garcia himself, stood up and
called out that I was the escaped heretic whom they sought. Fearing
lest his ship should be boarded and he himself thrown into prison with
the rest of his crew, the captain would then have surrendered me. But
I, desperate with fear, tore my clothes from my body and showed the
cruel scars that marked it.

“‘You are Englishmen,’ I cried to the sailors, ‘and will you deliver me
to these foreign devils, who am of your blood? Look at their
handiwork,’ and I pointed to the half-healed scars left by the red-hot
pincers; ‘if you give me up, you send me back to more of this torment
and to death by burning. Pity my wife if you will not pity me, or if
you will pity neither, then lend me a sword that by death I may save
myself from torture.’

“Then one of the seamen, a Southwold man who had known my father,
called out: ‘By God! I for one will stand by you, Thomas Wingfield. If
they want you and your sweet lady they must kill me first,’ and seizing
a bow from the rack he drew it out of its case and strung it, and
setting an arrow on the string he pointed it at the Spaniards in the
boat.

“Then the others broke into shouts of:

“‘If you want any man from among us, come aboard and take him, you
torturing devils,’ and the like.

“Seeing where the heart of the crew lay, the captain found courage in
his turn. He made no answer to the Spaniards, but bade half of the men
hoist the sails with all speed, and the rest make ready to keep off the
soldiers should they seek to board us.

“By now the other two boats had come up and fastened on to us with
their hooks. One man climbed into the chains and thence to the deck,
and I knew him for a priest of the Holy Office, one of those who had
stood by while I was tormented. Then I grew mad at the thought of all
that I had suffered, while that devil watched, bidding them lay on for
the love of God. Snatching the bow from the hand of the Southwold
seaman, I drew the arrow to its head and loosed. It did not miss its
mark, for like you, Thomas, I was skilled with the bow, and he dived
back into the sea with an English yard shaft in his heart.

“After that they tried to board us no more, though they shot at us with
arrows, wounding one man. The captain called to us to lay down our bows
and take cover behind the bulwarks, for by now the sails began to draw.
Then de Garcia stood up in the boat and cursed me and my wife.

“‘I will find you yet,’ he screamed, with many Spanish oaths and foul
words. ‘If I must wait for twenty years I will be avenged upon you and
all you love. Be assured of this, Luisa de Garcia, hide where you will,
I shall find you, and when we meet, you shall come with me for so long
as I will keep you or that shall be the hour of your death.’

“Then we sailed away for England, and the boats fell astern.

“My sons, this is the story of my youth, and of how I came to wed your
mother whom I have buried to-day. Juan de Garcia has kept his word.”

“Yet it seems strange,” said my brother, “that after all these years he
should have murdered her thus, whom you say he loved. Surely even the
evilest of men had shrunk from such a deed!”

“There is little that is strange about it,” answered my father. “How
can we know what words were spoken between them before he stabbed her?
Doubtless he told of some of them when he cried to Thomas that now they
would see what truth there was in prophecies. What did de Garcia swear
years since?—that she should come with him or he would kill her. Your
mother was still beautiful, Geoffrey, and he may have given her choice
between flight and death. Seek to know no more, son”—and suddenly my
father hid his face in his hands and broke into sobs that were dreadful
to hear.

“Would that you had told us this tale before, father,” I said so soon
as I could speak. “Then there would have lived a devil the less in the
world to-day, and I should have been spared a long journey.”

Little did I know how long that journey would be!




CHAPTER VI
GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART


Within twelve days of the burial of my mother and the telling of the
story of his marriage to her by my father, I was ready to start upon my
search. As it chanced a vessel was about to sail from Yarmouth to
Cadiz. She was named the “Adventuress,” of one hundred tons burden, and
carried wool and other goods outwards, purposing to return with a cargo
of wine and yew staves for bows. In this vessel my father bought me a
passage. Moreover, he gave me fifty pounds in gold, which was as much
as I would risk upon my person, and obtained letters from the Yarmouth
firm of merchants to their agents in Cadiz, in which they were advised
to advance me such sums as I might need up to a total of one hundred
and fifty English pounds, and further to assist me in any way that was
possible.

Now the ship “Adventuress” was to sail on the third day of June.
Already it was the first of that month, and that evening I must ride to
Yarmouth, whither my baggage had gone already. Except one my farewells
were made, and yet that was the one I most wished to make. Since the
day when we had sworn our troth I had gained no sight of Lily except
once at my mother’s burial, and then we had not spoken. Now it seemed
that I must go without any parting word, for her father had sent me
notice that if I came near the Hall his serving men had orders to
thrust me from the door, and this was a shame that I would not risk.
Yet it was hard that I must go upon so long a journey, whence it well
might chance I should not return, and bid her no goodbye. In my grief
and perplexity I spoke to my father, telling him how the matter stood
and asking his help.

“I go hence,” I said, “to avenge our common loss, and if need be to
give my life for the honour of our name. Aid me then in this.”

“My neighbour Bozard means his daughter for your brother Geoffrey, and
not for you, Thomas,” he answered; “and a man may do what he wills with
his own. Still I will help you if I can, at the least he cannot drive
me from his door. Bid them bring horses, and we will ride to the Hall.”

Within the half of an hour we were there, and my father asked for
speech with its master. The serving man looked at me askance,
remembering his orders, still he ushered us into the justice room where
the Squire sat drinking ale.

“Good morrow to you, neighbour,” said the Squire; “you are welcome
here, but you bring one with you who is not welcome, though he be your
son.”

“I bring him for the last time, friend Bozard. Listen to his request,
then grant it or refuse it as you will; but if you refuse it, it will
not bind us closer. The lad rides to-night to take ship for Spain to
seek that man who murdered his mother. He goes of his own free will
because after the doing of the deed it was he who unwittingly suffered
the murderer to escape, and it is well that he should go.”

“He is a young hound to run such a quarry to earth, and in a strange
country,” said the Squire. “Still I like his spirit and wish him well.
What would he of me?”

“Leave to bid farewell to your daughter. I know that his suit does not
please you and cannot wonder at it, and for my own part I think it too
early for him to set his fancy in the way of marriage. But if he would
see the maid it can do no harm, for such harm as there is has been done
already. Now for your answer.”

Squire Bozard thought a while, then said:

“The lad is a brave lad though he shall be no son-in-law of mine. He is
going far, and mayhap will return no more, and I do not wish that he
should think unkindly of me when I am dead. Go without, Thomas
Wingfield, and stand under yonder beech—Lily shall join you there and
you may speak with her for the half of an hour—no more. See to it that
you keep within sight of the window. Nay, no thanks; go before I change
my mind.”

So I went and waited under the beech with a beating heart, and
presently Lily glided up to me, a more welcome sight to my eyes than
any angel out of heaven. And, indeed, I doubt if an angel could have
been more fair than she, or more good and gentle.

“Oh! Thomas,” she whispered, when I had greeted her, “is this true that
you sail oversea to seek the Spaniard?”

“I sail to seek the Spaniard, and to find him and to kill him when he
is found. It was to come to you, Lily, that I let him go, now I must
let you go to come to him. Nay, do not weep, I have sworn to do it, and
were I to break my oath I should be dishonoured.”

“And because of this oath of yours I must be widowed, Thomas, before I
am a wife? You go and I shall never see you more.”

“Who can say, my sweet? My father went over seas and came back safe,
having passed through many perils.”

“Yes, he came back and—not alone. You are young, Thomas, and in far
countries there are ladies great and fair, and how shall I hold my own
in your heart against them, I being so far away?”

“I swear to you, Lily—”

“Nay, Thomas, swear no oaths lest you should add to your sins by
breaking them. Yet, love, forget me not, who shall forget you never.
Perhaps—oh! it wrings my heart to say it—this is our last meeting on
the earth. If so, then we must hope to meet in heaven. At the least be
sure of this, while I live I will be true to you, and father or no
father, I will die before I break my troth. I am young to speak so
largely, but it shall be as I say. Oh! this parting is more cruel than
death. Would that we were asleep and forgotten among men. Yet it is
best that you should go, for if you stayed what could we be to each
other while my father lives, and may he live long!”

“Sleep and forgetfulness will come soon enough, Lily; none must await
them for very long. Meanwhile we have our lives to live. Let us pray
that we may live them to each other. I go to seek fortune as well as
foes, and I will win it for your sake that we may marry.”

She shook her head sadly. “It were too much happiness, Thomas. Men and
women may seldom wed their true loves, or if they do, it is but to lose
them. At the least we love, and let us be thankful that we have learned
what love can be, for having loved here, perchance at the worst we may
love otherwhere when there are none to say us nay.”

Then we talked on awhile, babbling broken words of love and hope and
sorrow, as young folks so placed are wont to do, till at length Lily
looked up with a sad sweet smile and said:

“It is time to go, sweetheart. My father beckons me from the lattice.
All is finished.”

“Let us go then,” I answered huskily, and drew her behind the trunk of
the old beech. And there I caught her in my arms and kissed her again
and yet again, nor was she ashamed to kiss me back.

After this I remember little of what happened, except that as we rode
away I saw her beloved face, wan and wistful, watching me departing out
of her life. For twenty years that sad and beautiful face haunted me,
and it haunts me yet athwart life and death. Other women have loved me
and I have known other partings, some of them more terrible, but the
memory of this woman as she was then, and of her farewell look,
overruns them all. Whenever I gaze down the past I see this picture
framed in it and I know that it is one which cannot fade. Are there any
sorrows like these sorrows of our youth? Can any bitterness equal the
bitterness of such good-byes? I know but one of which I was fated to
taste in after years, and that shall be told of in its place. It is a
common jest to mock at early love, but if it be real, if it be
something more than the mere arising of the passions, early love is
late love also; it is love for ever, the best and worst event which can
befall a man or woman. I say it who am old and who have done with
everything, and it is true.

One thing I have forgotten. As we kissed and clung in our despair
behind the bole of the great beech, Lily drew a ring from her finger
and pressed it into my hand saying, “Look on this each morning when you
wake, and think of me.” It had been her mother’s, and to-day it still
is set upon my withered hand, gleaming in the winter sunlight as I
trace these words. Through the long years of wild adventure, through
all the time of after peace, in love and war, in the shine of the camp
fire, in the glare of the sacrificial flame, in the light of lonely
stars illumining the lonely wilderness, that ring has shone upon my
hand, reminding me always of her who gave it, and on this hand it shall
go down into the grave. It is a plain circlet of thick gold, somewhat
worn now, a posy-ring, and on its inner surface is cut this quaint
couplet:

Heart to heart,
Though far apart.


A fitting motto for us indeed, and one that has its meaning to this
hour.

That same day of our farewell I rode with my father to Yarmouth. My
brother Geoffrey did not come with us, but we parted with kindly words,
and of this I am glad, for we never saw each other again. No more was
said between us as to Lily Bozard and our wooing of her, though I knew
well enough that so soon as my back was turned he would try to take my
place at her side, as indeed happened. I forgive it to him; in truth I
cannot blame him much, for what man is there that would not have
desired to wed Lily who knew her? Once we were dear friends, Geoffrey
and I, but when we ripened towards manhood, our love of Lily came
between us, and we grew more and more apart. It is a common case
enough. Well, as it chanced he failed, so why should I think unkindly
of him? Let me rather remember the affection of our childhood and
forget the rest. God rest his soul.

Mary, my sister, who after Lily Bozard was now the fairest maiden in
the country side, wept much at my going. There was but a year between
us, and we loved each other dearly, for no such shadow of jealousy had
fallen on our affection. I comforted her as well as I was able, and
telling her all that had passed between me and Lily, I prayed her to
stand my friend and Lily’s, should it ever be in her power to do so.
This Mary promised to do readily enough, and though she did not give
the reason, I could see that she thought it possible that she might be
able to help us. As I have said, Lily had a brother, a young man of
some promise, who at this time was away at college, and he and my
sister Mary had a strong fancy for each other, that might or might not
ripen into something closer. So we kissed and bade farewell with tears.

And after that my father and I rode away. But when we had passed down
Pirnhow Street, and mounted the little hill beyond Waingford Mills to
the left of Bungay town, I halted my horse, and looked back upon the
pleasant valley of the Waveney where I was born, and my heart grew full
to bursting. Had I known all that must befall me, before my eyes beheld
that scene again, I think indeed that it would have burst. But God, who
in his wisdom has laid many a burden upon the backs of men, has saved
them from this; for had we foreknowledge of the future, I think that of
our own will but few of us would live to see it. So I cast one long
last look towards the distant mass of oaks that marked the spot where
Lily lived, and rode on.

On the following day I embarked on board the “Adventuress” and we
sailed. Before I left, my father’s heart softened much towards me, for
he remembered that I was my mother’s best beloved, and feared also lest
we should meet no more. So much did it soften indeed, that at the last
hour he changed his mind and wished to hold me back from going. But
having put my hand to the plough and suffered all the bitterness of
farewell, I would not return to be mocked by my brother and my
neighbours. “You speak too late, father,” I said. “You desired me to go
to work this vengeance and stirred me to it with many bitter words, and
now I would go if I knew that I must die within a week, for such oaths
cannot be lightly broken, and till mine is fulfilled the curse rests on
me.”

“So be it, son,” he answered with a sigh. “Your mother’s cruel death
maddened me and I said what I may live to be sorry for, though at the
best I shall not live long, for my heart is broken. Perhaps I should
have remembered that vengeance is in the hand of the Lord, who wreaks
it at His own time and without our help. Do not think unkindly of me,
my boy, if we should chance to meet no more, for I love you, and it was
but the deeper love that I bore to your mother which made me deal
harshly with you.”

“I know it, father, and bear no grudge. But if you think that you owe
me anything, pay it by holding back my brother from working wrong to me
and Lily Bozard while I am absent.”

“I will do my best, son, though were it not that you and she have grown
so dear to each other, the match would have pleased me well. But as I
have said, I shall not be long here to watch your welfare in this or
any other matter, and when I am gone things must follow their own fate.
Do not forget your God or your home wherever you chance to wander,
Thomas: keep yourself from brawling, beware of women that are the snare
of youth, and set a watch upon your tongue and your temper which is not
of the best. Moreover, wherever you may be do not speak ill of the
religion of the land, or make a mock of it by your way of life, lest
you should learn how cruel men can be when they think that it is
pleasing to their gods, as I have learnt already.”

I said that I would bear his counsel in mind, and indeed it saved me
from many a sorrow. Then he embraced me and called on the Almighty to
take me in His care, and we parted.

I never saw him more, for though he was but middle-aged, within a year
of my going my father died suddenly of a distemper of the heart in the
nave of Ditchingham church, as he stood there, near the rood screen,
musing by my mother’s grave one Sunday after mass, and my brother took
his lands and place. God rest him also! He was a true-hearted man, but
more wrapped up in his love for my mother than it is well for any man
to be who would look at life largely and do right by all. For such
love, though natural to women, is apt to turn to something that
partakes of selfishness, and to cause him who bears it to think all
else of small account. His children were nothing to my father when
compared to my mother, and he would have been content to lose them
every one if thereby he might have purchased back her life. But after
all it was a noble infirmity, for he thought little of himself and had
gone through much to win her.

Of my voyage to Cadiz, to which port I had learned that de Garcia’s
ship was bound, there is little to be told. We met with contrary winds
in the Bay of Biscay and were driven into the harbour of Lisbon, where
we refitted. But at last we came safely to Cadiz, having been forty
days at sea.




CHAPTER VII
ANDRES DE FONSECA


Now I shall dwell but briefly on all the adventures which befell me
during the year or so that I remained in Spain, for were I to set out
everything at length, this history would have no end, or at least mine
would find me before I came to it.

Many travellers have told of the glories of Seville, to which ancient
Moorish city I journeyed with all speed, sailing there up the
Guadalquivir, and I have to tell of lands from which no other wanderer
has returned to England, and must press on to them. To be short then;
foreseeing that it might be necessary for me to stop some time in
Seville, and being desirous to escape notice and to be at the smallest
expense possible, I bethought me that it would be well if I could find
means of continuing my studies of medicine, and to this end I obtained
certain introductions from the firm of merchants to whose care I had
been recommended, addressed to doctors of medicine in Seville. These
letters at my request were made out not in my own name but in that of
“Diego d’Aila,” for I did not wish it to be known that I was an
Englishman. Nor, indeed, was this likely, except my speech should
betray me, for, as I have said, in appearance I was very Spanish, and
the hindrance of the language was one that lessened every day, since
having already learned it from my mother, and taking every opportunity
to read and speak it, within six months I could talk Castilian except
for some slight accent, like a native of the land. Also I have a gift
for the acquiring of languages.

When I was come to Seville, and had placed my baggage in an inn, not
one of the most frequented, I set out to deliver a letter of
recommendation to a famous physician of the town whose name I have long
forgotten. This physician had a fine house in the street of Las Palmas,
a great avenue planted with graceful trees, that has other little
streets running into it. Down one of these I came from my inn, a quiet
narrow place having houses with _patios_ or courtyards on either side
of it. As I walked down this street I noticed a man sitting in the
shade on a stool in the doorway of his _patio_. He was small and
withered, with keen black eyes and a wonderful air of wisdom, and he
watched me as I went by. Now the house of the famous physician whom I
sought was so placed that the man sitting at this doorway could command
it with his eyes and take note of all who went in and came out. When I
had found the house I returned again into the quiet street and walked
to and fro there for a while, thinking of what tale I should tell to
the physician, and all the time the little man watched me with his keen
eyes. At last I had made up my story and went to the house, only to
find that the physician was from home. Having inquired when I might
find him I left, and once more took to the narrow street, walking
slowly till I came to where the little man sat. As I passed him, his
broad hat with which he was fanning himself slipped to the ground
before my feet. I stooped down, lifted it from the pavement, and
restored it to him.

“A thousand thanks, young sir,” he said in a full and gentle voice.
“You are courteous for a foreigner.”

“How do you know me to be a foreigner, señor?” I asked, surprised out
of my caution.

“If I had not guessed it before, I should know it now,” he answered,
smiling gravely. “Your Castilian tells its own tale.”

I bowed, and was about to pass on, when he addressed me again.

“What is your hurry, young sir? Step in and take a cup of wine with me;
it is good.”

I was about to say him nay, when it came into my mind that I had
nothing to do, and that perhaps I might learn something from this
gossip.

“The day is hot, señor, and I accept.”

He spoke no more, but rising, led me into a courtyard paved with marble
in the centre of which was a basin of water, having vines trained
around it. Here were chairs and a little table placed in the shade of
the vines. When he had closed the door of the _patio_ and we were
seated, he rang a silver bell that stood upon the table, and a girl,
young and fair, appeared from the house, dressed in a quaint Spanish
dress.

“Bring wine,” said my host.

The wine was brought, white wine of Oporto such as I had never tasted
before.

“Your health, señor?” And my host stopped, his glass in his hand, and
looked at me inquiringly.

“Diego d’Aila,” I answered.

“Humph,” he said. “A Spanish name, or perhaps an imitation Spanish
name, for I do not know it, and I have a good head for names.”

“That is my name, to take or to leave, señor?”—And I looked at him in
turn.

“Andres de Fonseca,” he replied bowing, “a physician of this city, well
known enough, especially among the fair. Well, Señor Diego, I take your
name, for names are nothing, and at times it is convenient to change
them, which is nobody’s business except their owners”. I see that you
are a stranger in this city—no need to look surprised, señor, one who
is familiar with a town does not gaze and stare and ask the path of
passers-by, nor does a native of Seville walk on the sunny side of the
street in summer. And now, if you will not think me impertinent, I will
ask you what can be the business of so healthy a young man with my
rival yonder?” And he nodded towards the house of the famous physician.

“A man’s business, like his name, is his own affair, señor,” I
answered, setting my host down in my mind as one of those who disgrace
our art by plying openly for patients that they may capture their fees.
“Still, I will tell you. I am also a physician, though not yet fully
qualified, and I seek a place where I may help some doctor of repute in
his daily practice, and thus gain experience and my living with it.”

“Ah is it so? Well, señor, then you will look in vain yonder,” and
again he nodded towards the physician’s house. “Such as he will take no
apprentice without the fee be large indeed; it is not the custom of
this city.”

“Then I must seek a livelihood elsewhere, or otherwise.”

“I did not say so. Now, señor, let us see what you know of medicine,
and what is more important, of human nature, for of the first none of
us can ever know much, but he who knows the latter will be a leader of
men—or of women—who lead the men.”

And without more ado he put me many questions, each of them so shrewd
and going so directly to the heart of the matter in hand, that I
marvelled at his sagacity. Some of these questions were medical,
dealing chiefly with the ailments of women, others were general and
dealt more with their characters. At length he finished.

“You will do, señor,” he said; “you are a young man of parts and
promise, though, as was to be expected from one of your years, you lack
experience. There is stuff in you, señor, and you have a heart, which
is a good thing, for the blunders of a man with a heart often carry him
further than the cunning of the cynic; also you have a will and know
how to direct it.”

I bowed, and did my best to hold back my satisfaction at his words from
showing in my face.

“Still,” he went on, “all this would not cause me to submit to you the
offer that I am about to make, for many a prettier fellow than yourself
is after all unlucky, or a fool at the bottom, or bad tempered and
destined to the dogs, as for aught I know you may be also. But I take
my chance of that because you suit me in another way. Perhaps you may
scarcely know it yourself, but you have beauty, señor, beauty of a very
rare and singular type, which half the ladies of Seville will praise
when they come to know you.”

“I am much flattered,” I said, “but might I ask what all these
compliments may mean? To be brief, what is your offer?”

“To be brief then, it is this. I am in need of an assistant who must
possess all the qualities that I see in you, but most of all one which
I can only guess you to possess—discretion. That assistant would not be
ill-paid; this house would be at his disposal, and he would have
opportunities of learning the world such as are given to few. What say
you?”

“I say this, señor, that I should wish to know more of the business in
which I am expected to assist. Your offers sound too liberal, and I
fear that I must earn your bounty by the doing of work that honest men
might shrink from.”

“A fair argument, but, as it happens, not quite a correct one. Listen:
you have been told that yonder physician, to whose house you went but
now, and these”—here he repeated four or five names—“are the greatest
of their tribe in Seville. It is not so. I am the greatest and the
richest, and I do more business than any two of them. Do you know what
my earnings have been this day alone? I will tell you; just over
twenty-five gold pesos,[2] more than all the rest of the profession
have taken together, I will wager. You want to know how I earn so much;
you want to know also, why, if I have earned so much, I am not content
to rest from my labours. Good, I will tell you. I earn it by
ministering to the vanities of women and sheltering them from the
results of their own folly. Has a lady a sore heart, she comes to me
for comfort and advice. Has she pimples on her face, she flies to me to
cure them. Has she a secret love affair, it is I who hide her
indiscretion; I consult the future for her, I help her to atone the
past, I doctor her for imaginary ailments, and often enough I cure her
of real ones. Half the secrets of Seville are in my hands; did I choose
to speak I could set a score of noble houses to broil and bloodshed.
But I do not speak, I am paid to keep silent; and when I am not paid,
still I keep silent for my credit’s sake. Hundreds of women think me
their saviour, I know them for my dupes. But mark you, I do not push
this game too far. A love philtre—of coloured water—I may give at a
price, but not a poisoned rose. These they must seek elsewhere. For the
rest, in my way I am honest. I take the world as it comes, that is all,
and, as women will be fools, I profit by their folly and have grown
rich upon it.

 [2] About sixty-three pounds sterling.


“Yes, I have grown rich, and yet I cannot stop. I love the money that
is power; but more than all, I love the way of life. Talk of romances
and adventure! What romance or adventure is half so wonderful as those
that come daily to my notice? And I play a part in every one of them,
and none the less a leading part because I do not shout and strut upon
the boards.”

“If all this is so, why do you seek the help of an unknown lad, a
stranger of whom you know nothing?” I asked bluntly.

“Truly, you lack experience,” the old man answered with a laugh. “Do
you then suppose that I should choose one who was _not_ a stranger—one
who might have ties within this city with which I was unacquainted. And
as for knowing nothing of you, young man, do you think that I have
followed this strange trade of mine for forty years without learning to
judge at sight? Perhaps I know you better than you know yourself. By
the way, the fact that you are deeply enamoured of that maid whom you
have left in England is a recommendation to me, for whatever follies
you may commit, you will scarcely embarrass me and yourself by
suffering your affections to be seriously entangled. Ah! have I
astonished you?”

“How do you know?” I began—then ceased.

“How do I know? Why, easily enough. Those boots you wear were made in
England. I have seen many such when I travelled there; your accent also
though faint is English, and twice you have spoken English words when
your Castilian failed you. Then for the maid, is not that a betrothal
ring upon your hand? And when I spoke to you of the ladies of this
country, my talk did not interest you overmuch as at your age it had
done were you heart-whole. Surely also the lady is fair and tall? Ah! I
thought so. I have noticed that men and women love their opposite in
colour, no invariable rule indeed, but good for a guess.”

“You are very clever, señor.”

“No, not clever, but trained, as you will be when you have been a year
in my hands, though perchance you do not intend to stop so long in
Seville. Perhaps you came here with an object, and wish to pass the
time profitably till it is fulfilled. A good guess again, I think.
Well, so be it, I will risk that; object and attainment are often far
apart. Do you take my offer?”

“I incline to do so.”

“Then you will take it. Now I have something more to say before we come
to terms. I do not want you to play the part of an apothecary’s drudge.
You will figure before the world as my nephew, come from abroad to
learn my trade. You will help me in it indeed, but that is not all your
duty. Your part will be to mix in the life of Seville, and to watch
those whom I bid you watch, to drop a word here and a hint there, and
in a hundred ways that I shall show you to draw grist to my mill—and to
your own. You must be brilliant and witty, or sad and learned, as I
wish; you must make the most of your person and your talents, for these
go far with my customers. To the hidalgo you must talk of arms, to the
lady, of love; but you must never commit yourself beyond redemption.
And above all, young man”—and here his manner changed and his face grew
stern and almost fierce—“you must never violate my confidence or the
confidence of my clients. On this point I will be quite open with you,
and I pray you for your own sake to believe what I say, however much
you may mistrust the rest. If you break faith with me, _you die_. You
die, not by my hand, but you die. That is my price; take it or leave
it. Should you leave it and go hence to tell what you have heard this
day, even then misfortune may overtake you suddenly. Do you
understand?”

“I understand. For my own sake I will respect your confidence.”

“Young sir, I like you better than ever. Had you said that you would
respect it because it was a confidence, I should have mistrusted you,
for doubtless you feel that secrets communicated so readily have no
claim to be held sacred. Nor have they, but when their violation
involves the sad and accidental end of the violator, it is another
matter. Well now, do you accept?”

“I accept.”

“Good. Your baggage I suppose is at the inn. I will send porters to
discharge your score and bring it here. No need for you to go, nephew,
let us stop and drink another glass of wine; the sooner we grow
intimate the better, nephew.”

It was thus that first I became acquainted with Señor Andres de
Fonseca, my benefactor, the strangest man whom I have ever known.
Doubtless any person reading this history would think that I, the
narrator, was sowing a plentiful crop of troubles for myself in having
to deal with him, setting him down as a rogue of the deepest, such as
sometimes, for their own wicked purposes, decoy young men to crime and
ruin. But it was not so, and this is the strangest part of the strange
story. All that Andres de Fonseca told me was true to the very letter.

He was a gentleman of great talent who had been rendered a little mad
by misfortunes in his early life. As a physician I have never met his
master, if indeed he has one in these times, and as a man versed in the
world and more especially in the world of women, I have known none to
compare with him. He had travelled far, and seen much, and he forgot
nothing. In part he was a quack, but his quackery always had a meaning
in it. He fleeced the foolish, indeed, and even juggled with astronomy,
making money out of their superstition; but on the other hand he did
many a kind act without reward. He would make a rich lady pay ten gold
pesos for the dyeing of her hair, but often he would nurse some poor
girl through her trouble and ask no charge; yes, and find her honest
employment after it. He who knew all the secrets of Seville never made
money out of them by threat of exposure, as he said because it would
not pay to do so, but really because though he affected to be a selfish
knave, at bottom his heart was honest.

For my own part I found life with him both easy and happy, so far as
mine could be quite happy. Soon I learned my role and played it well.
It was given out that I was the nephew of the rich old physician
Fonseca, whom he was training to take his place; and this, together
with my own appearance and manners, ensured me a welcome in the best
houses of Seville. Here I took that share of our business which my
master could not take, for now he never mixed among the fashion of the
city. Money I was supplied with in abundance so that I could ruffle it
with the best, but soon it became known that I looked to business as
well as to pleasure. Often and often during some gay ball or carnival,
a lady would glide up to me and ask beneath her breath if Don Andres de
Fonseca would consent to see her privately on a matter of some
importance, and I would fix an hour then and there. Had it not been for
me such patients would have been lost to us, since, for the most part,
their timidity had kept them away.

In the same fashion when the festival was ended and I prepared to wend
homewards, now and again a gallant would slip his arm in mine and ask
my master’s help in some affair of love or honour, or even of the
purse. Then I would lead him straight to the old Moorish house where
Don Andres sat writing in his velvet robe like some spider in his web,
for the most of our business was done at night; and straight-way the
matter would be attended to, to my master’s profit and the satisfaction
of all. By degrees it became known that though I was so young yet I had
discretion, and that nothing which went in at my ears came out of my
lips; that I neither brawled nor drank nor gambled to any length, and
that though I was friendly with many fair ladies, there were none who
were entitled to know my secrets. Also it became known that I had some
skill in my art of healing, and it was said among the ladies of Seville
that there lived no man in that city so deft at clearing the skin of
blemishes or changing the colour of the hair as old Fonseca’s nephew,
and as any one may know this reputation alone was worth a fortune. Thus
it came about that I was more and more consulted on my own account. In
short, things went so well with us that in the first six months of my
service I added by one third to the receipts of my master’s practice,
large as they had been before, besides lightening his labours not a
little.

It was a strange life, and of the things that I saw and learned, could
they be written, I might make a tale indeed, but they have no part in
this history. For it was as though the smiles and silence with which
men and women hide their thoughts were done away, and their hearts
spoke to us in the accents of truth. Now some fair young maid or wife
would come to us with confessions of wickedness that would be thought
impossible, did not her story prove itself; the secret murder perchance
of a spouse, or a lover, or a rival; now some aged dame who would win a
husband in his teens, now some wealthy low-born man or woman, who
desired to buy an alliance with one lacking money, but of noble blood.
Such I did not care to help indeed, but to the love-sick or the
love-deluded I listened with a ready ear, for I had a fellow-feeling
with them. Indeed so deep and earnest was my sympathy that more than
once I found the unhappy fair ready to transfer their affections to my
unworthy self, and in fact once things came about so that, had I willed
it, I could have married one of the loveliest and wealthiest noble
ladies of Seville.

But I would none of it, who thought of my English Lily by day and
night.




CHAPTER VIII
THE SECOND MEETING


It may be thought that while I was employed thus I had forgotten the
object of my coming to Spain, namely to avenge my mother’s murder on
the person of Juan de Garcia. But this was not so. So soon as I was
settled in the house of Andres de Fonseca I set myself to make
inquiries as to de Garcia’s whereabouts with all possible diligence,
but without result.

Indeed, when I came to consider the matter coolly it seemed that I had
but a slender chance of finding him in this city. He had, indeed, given
it out in Yarmouth that he was bound for Seville, but no ship bearing
the same name as his had put in at Cadiz or sailed up the Guadalquivir,
nor was it likely, having committed murder in England, that he would
speak the truth as to his destination. Still I searched on. The house
where my mother and grandmother had lived was burned down, and as their
mode of life had been retired, after more than twenty years of change
few even remembered their existence. Indeed I only discovered one, an
old woman whom I found living in extreme poverty, and who once had been
my grandmother’s servant and knew my mother well, although she was not
in the house at the time of her flight to England. From this woman I
gathered some information, though, needless to say, I did not tell her
that I was the grandson of her old mistress.

It seemed that after my mother fled to England with my father, de
Garcia persecuted my grandmother and his aunt with lawsuits and by
other means, till at last she was reduced to beggary, in which
condition the villain left her to die. So poor was she indeed, that she
was buried in a public grave. After that the old woman, my informant,
said she had heard that de Garcia had committed some crime and been
forced to flee the country. What the crime was she could not remember,
but it had happened about fifteen years ago.

All this I learned when I had been about three months in Seville, and
though it was of interest it did not advance me in my search.

Some four or five nights afterwards, as I entered my employer’s house I
met a young woman coming out of the doorway of the _patio;_ she was
thickly veiled and my notice was drawn to her by her tall and beautiful
figure and because she was weeping so violently that her body shook
with her sobs. I was already well accustomed to such sights, for many
of those who sought my master’s counsel had good cause to weep, and I
passed her without remark. But when I was come into the room where he
received his patients, I mentioned that I had met such a person and
asked if it was any one whom I knew.

“Ah! nephew,” said Fonseca, who always called me thus by now, and
indeed began to treat me with as much affection as though I were really
of his blood, “a sad case, but you do not know her and she is no paying
patient. A poor girl of noble birth who had entered religion and taken
her vows, when a gallant appears, meets her secretly in the convent
garden, promises to marry her if she will fly with him, indeed does go
through some mummery of marriage with her—so she says—and the rest of
it. Now he has deserted her and she is in trouble, and what is more,
should the priests catch her, likely to learn what it feels like to die
by inches in a convent wall. She came to me for counsel and brought
some silver ornaments as the fee. Here they are.”

“You took them!”

“Yes, I took them—I always take a fee, but I gave her back their weight
in gold. What is more, I told her where she might hide from the priests
till the hunt is done with. What I did not like to tell her is that her
lover is the greatest villain who ever trod the streets of Seville.
What was the good? She will see little more of him. Hist! here comes
the duchess—an astrological case this. Where are the horoscope and the
wand, yes, and the crystal ball? There, shade the lamps, give me the
book, and vanish.”

I obeyed, and presently met the great lady, a stout woman attended by a
duenna, gliding fearfully through the darkened archways to learn the
answer of the stars and pay many good pesos for it, and the sight of
her made me laugh so much that I forgot quickly about the other lady
and her woes.

And now I must tell how I met my cousin and my enemy de Garcia for the
second time. Two days after my meeting with the veiled lady it chanced
that I was wandering towards midnight through a lonely part of the old
city little frequented by passers-by. It was scarcely safe to be thus
alone in such a place and hour, but the business with which I had been
charged by my master was one that must be carried out unattended. Also
I had no enemies whom I knew of, and was armed with the very sword that
I had taken from de Garcia in the lane at Ditchingham, the sword that
had slain my mother, and which I bore in the hope that it might serve
to avenge her. In the use of this weapon I had grown expert enough by
now, for every morning I took lessons in the art of fence.

My business being done I was walking slowly homeward, and as I went I
fell to thinking of the strangeness of my present life and of how far
it differed from my boyhood in the valley of the Waveney, and of many
other things. And then I thought of Lily and wondered how her days
passed, and if my brother Geoffrey persecuted her to marry him, and
whether or no she would resist his importunities and her father’s. And
so as I walked musing I came to a water-gate that opened on to the
Guadalquivir, and leaning upon the coping of a low wall I rested there
idly to consider the beauty of the night. In truth it was a lovely
night, for across all these years I remember it. Let those who have
seen it say if they know any prospect more beautiful than the sight of
the August moon shining on the broad waters of the Guadalquivir and the
clustering habitations of the ancient city.

Now as I leaned upon the wall and looked, I saw a man pass up the steps
beside me and go on into the shadow of the street. I took no note of
him till presently I heard a murmur of distant voices, and turning my
head I discovered that the man was in conversation with a woman whom he
had met at the head of the path that ran down to the water-gate.
Doubtless it was a lovers’ meeting, and since such sights are of
interest to all, and more especially to the young, I watched the pair.
Soon I learned that there was little of tenderness in this tryst, at
least on the part of the gallant, who drew continually backwards toward
me as though he would seek the boat by which doubtless he had come, and
I marvelled at this, for the moonlight shone upon the woman’s face, and
even at that distance I could see that it was very fair. The man’s face
I could not see however, since his back was towards me for the most
part, moreover he wore a large _sombrero_ that shaded it. Now they came
nearer to me, the man always drawing backward and the woman always
following, till at length they were within earshot. The woman was
pleading with the man.

“Surely you will not desert me,” she said, “after marrying me and all
that you have sworn; you will not have the heart to desert me. I
abandoned everything for you. I am in great danger. I—” and here her
voice fell so that I could not catch her words.

Then he spoke. “Fairest, now as always I adore you. But we must part
awhile. You owe me much, Isabella. I have rescued you from the grave, I
have taught you what it is to live and love. Doubtless with your
advantages and charms, your great charms, you will profit by the
lesson. Money I cannot give you, for I have none to spare, but I have
endowed you with experience that is more valuable by far. This is our
farewell for awhile and I am brokenhearted. Yet

‘’Neath fairer skies
Shine other eyes,’


and I—” and again he spoke so low that I could not catch his words.

As he talked on, all my body began to tremble. The scene was moving
indeed, but it was not that which stirred me so deeply, it was the
man’s voice and bearing that reminded me—no, it could scarcely be!

“Oh! you will not be so cruel,” said the lady, “to leave me, your wife,
thus alone and in such sore trouble and danger. Take me with you, Juan,
I beseech you!” and she caught him by the arm and clung to him.

He shook her from him somewhat roughly, and as he did so his wide hat
fell to the ground so that the moonlight shone upon his face. By
Heaven! it was he—Juan de Garcia and no other! I could not be mistaken.
There was the deeply carved, cruel face, the high forehead with the
scar on it, the thin sneering mouth, the peaked beard and curling hair.
Chance had given him into my hand, and I would kill him or he should
kill me.

I took three paces and stood before him, drawing my sword as I came.

“What, my dove, have you a bully at hand?” he said stepping back
astonished. “Your business, señor? Are you here to champion beauty in
distress?”

“I am here, Juan de Garcia, to avenge a murdered woman. Do you remember
a certain river bank away in England, where you chanced to meet a lady
you had known, and to leave her dead? Or if you have forgotten, perhaps
at least you will remember this, which I carry that it may kill you,”
and I flashed the sword that had been his before his eyes.

“Mother of God! It is the English boy who—” and he stopped.

“It is Thomas Wingfield who beat and bound you, and who now purposes to
finish what he began yonder as he has sworn. Draw, or, Juan de Garcia,
I will stab you where you stand.”

De Garcia heard this speech, that to-day seems to me to smack of the
theatre, though it was spoken in grimmest earnest, and his face grew
like the face of a trapped wolf. Yet I saw that he had no mind to
fight, not because of cowardice, for to do him justice he was no
coward, but because of superstition. He feared to fight with me since,
as I learned afterwards, he believed that he would meet his end at my
hand, and it was for this reason chiefly that he strove to kill me when
first we met.

“The duello has its laws, señor,” he said courteously. “It is not usual
to fight thus unseconded and in the presence of a woman. If you believe
that you have any grievance against me—though I know not of what you
rave, or the name by which you call me—I will meet you where and when
you will.” And all the while he looked over his shoulder seeking some
way of escape.

“You will meet me now,” I answered. “Draw or I strike!”

Then he drew, and we fell to it desperately enough, till the sparks
flew, indeed, and the rattle of steel upon steel rang down the quiet
street. At first he had somewhat the better of me, for my hate made me
wild in my play, but soon I settled to the work and grew cooler. I
meant to kill him—more, I knew that I should kill him if none came
between us. He was still a better swordsman than I, who, till I fought
with him in the lane at Ditchingham, had never even seen one of these
Spanish rapiers, but I had the youth and the right on my side, as also
I had an eye like a hawk’s and a wrist of steel.

Slowly I pressed him back, and ever my play grew closer and better and
his became wilder. Now I had touched him twice, once in the face, and I
held him with his back against the wall of the way that led down to the
water-gate, and it had come to this, that he scarcely strove to thrust
at me at all, but stood on his defence waiting till I should tire.
Then, when victory was in my hand disaster overtook me, for the woman,
who had been watching bewildered, saw that her faithless lover was in
danger of death and straightway seized me from behind, at the same time
sending up shriek after shriek for help. I shook her from me quickly
enough, but not before de Garcia, seeing his advantage, had dealt me a
coward’s thrust that took me in the right shoulder and half crippled
me, so that in my turn I must stand on my defence if I would keep my
life in me. Meanwhile the shrieks had been heard, and of a sudden the
watch came running round the corner whistling for help. De Garcia saw
them, and disengaging suddenly, turned and ran for the water-gate, the
lady also vanishing, whither I do not know.

Now the watch was on me, and their leader came at me to seize me,
holding a lantern in his hand. I struck it with the handle of the
sword, so that it fell upon the roadway, where it blazed up like a
bonfire. Then I turned also and fled, for I did not wish to be dragged
before the magistrates of the city as a brawler, and in my desire to
escape I forgot that de Garcia was escaping also. Away I went and three
of the watch after me, but they were stout and scant of breath, and by
the time that I had run three furlongs I distanced them. I halted to
get my breath and remembered that I had lost de Garcia and did not know
when I should find him again. At first I was minded to return and seek
him, but reflection told me that by now it would be useless, also that
the end of it might be that I should fall into the hands of the watch,
who would know me by my wound, which began to pain me. So I went
homeward cursing my fortune, and the woman who had clasped me from
behind just as I was about to send the death-thrust home, and also my
lack of skill which had delayed that thrust so long. Twice I might have
made it and twice I had waited, being overcautious and over-anxious to
be sure, and now I had lost my chance, and might bide many a day before
it came again.

How should I find him in this great city? Doubtless, though I had not
thought of it, de Garcia passed under some feigned name as he had done
at Yarmouth. It was bitter indeed to have been so near to vengeance and
to have missed it.

By now I was at home and bethought me that I should do well to go to
Fonseca, my master, and ask his help. Hitherto I had said nothing of
this matter to him, for I have always loved to keep my own counsel, and
as yet I had not spoken of my past even to him. Going to the room where
he was accustomed to receive patients, I found he had retired to rest,
leaving orders that I was not to awake him this night as he was weary.
So I bound up my hurt after a fashion and sought my bed also, very
ill-satisfied with my fortune.

On the morrow I went to my master’s chamber where he still lay abed,
having been seized by a sudden weakness that was the beginning of the
illness which ended in his death. As I mixed a draught for him he
noticed that my shoulder was hurt and asked me what had happened. This
gave me my opportunity, which I was not slow to take.

“Have you patience to listen to a story?” I said, “for I would seek
your help.”

“Ah!” he answered, “it is the old case, the physician cannot heal
himself. Speak on, nephew.”

Then I sat down by the bed and told him all, keeping nothing back. I
told him the history of my mother and my father’s courtship, of my own
childhood, of the murder of my mother by de Garcia, and of the oath
that I had sworn to be avenged upon him. Lastly I told him of what had
happened upon the previous night and how my enemy had evaded me. All
the while that I was speaking Fonseca, wrapped in a rich Moorish robe,
sat up in the bed holding his knees beneath his chin, and watching my
face with his keen eyes. But he spoke no word and made no sign till I
had finished the tale.

“You are strangely foolish, nephew,” he said at length. “For the most
part youth fails through rashness, but you err by over-caution. By
over-caution in your fence you lost your chance last night, and so by
over-caution in hiding this tale from me you have lost a far greater
opportunity. What, have you not seen me give counsel in many such
matters, and have you ever known me to betray the confidence even of
the veriest stranger? Why then did you fear for yours?”

“I do not know,” I answered, “but I thought that first I would search
for myself.”

“Pride goeth before a fall, nephew. Now listen: had I known this
history a month ago, by now de Garcia had perished miserably, and not
by your hand, but by that of the law. I have been acquainted with the
man from his childhood, and know enough to hang him twice over did I
choose to speak. More, I knew your mother, boy, and now I see that it
was the likeness in your face to hers that haunted me, for from the
first it was familiar. It was I also who bribed the keepers of the Holy
Office to let your father loose, though, as it chanced, I never saw
him, and arranged his flight. Since then, I have had de Garcia through
my hands some four or five times, now under this name and now under
that. Once even he came to me as a client, but the villainy that he
would have worked was too black for me to touch. This man is the
wickedest whom I have known in Seville, and that is saying much, also
he is the cleverest and the most revengeful. He lives by vice for vice,
and there are many deaths upon his hands. But he has never prospered in
his evil-doing, and to-day he is but an adventurer without a name, who
lives by blackmail, and by ruining women that he may rob them at his
leisure. Give me those books from the strong box yonder, and I will
tell you of this de Garcia.”

I did as he bade me, bringing the heavy parchment volumes, each bound
in vellum and written in cipher.

“These are my records,” he said, “though none can read them except
myself. Now for the index. Ah! here it is. Give me volume three, and
open it at page two hundred and one.”

I obeyed, laying the book on the bed before him, and he began to read
the crabbed marks as easily as though they were good black-letter.

“De Garcia—Juan. Height, appearance, family, false names, and so on.
This is it—history. Now listen.”

Then came some two pages of closely written matter, expressed in secret
signs that Fonseca translated as he read. It was brief enough, but such
a record as it contained I have never heard before nor since. Here, set
out against this one man’s name, was well nigh every wickedness of
which a human being could be capable, carried through by him to gratify
his appetites and revengeful hate, and to provide himself with gold.

In that black list were two murders: one of a rival by the knife, and
one of a mistress by poison. And there were other things even worse,
too shameful, indeed, to be written.

“Doubtless there is more that has not come beneath my notice,” said
Fonseca coolly, “but these things I know for truth, and one of the
murders could be proved against him were he captured. Stay, give me
ink, I must add to the record.”

And he wrote in his cipher: “In May, 1517, the said de Garcia sailed to
England on a trading voyage, and there, in the parish of Ditchingham,
in the county of Norfolk, he murdered Luisa Wingfield, spoken of above
as Luisa de Garcia, his cousin, to whom he was once betrothed. In
September of the same year, or previously, under cover of a false
marriage, he decoyed and deserted one Donna Isabella of the noble
family of Siguenza, a nun in a religious house in this city.”

“What!” I exclaimed, “is the girl who came to seek your help two nights
since the same that de Garcia deserted?”

“The very same, nephew. It was she whom you heard pleading with him
last night. Had I known two days ago what I know to-day, by now this
villain had been safe in prison. But perhaps it is not yet too late. I
am ill, but I will rise and see to it. Leave it to me, nephew. Go,
nurse yourself, and leave it to me; if anything may be done I can do
it. Stay, bid a messenger be ready. This evening I shall know whatever
there is to be known.”

That night Fonseca sent for me again.

“I have made inquiries,” he said. “I have even warned the officers of
justice for the first time for many years, and they are hunting de
Garcia as bloodhounds hunt a slave. But nothing can be heard of him. He
has vanished and left no trace. To-night I write to Cadiz, for he may
have fled there down the river. One thing I have discovered, however.
The Señora Isabella was caught by the watch, and being recognised as
having escaped from a convent, she was handed over to the executories
of the Holy Office, that her case may be investigated, or in other
words, should her fault be proved, to death.”

“Can she be rescued?”

“Impossible. Had she followed my counsel she would never have been
taken.”

“Can she be communicated with?”

“No. Twenty years ago it might have been managed, now the Office is
stricter and purer. Gold has no power there. We shall never see or hear
of her again, unless, indeed, it is at the hour of her death, when,
should she choose to speak with me, the indulgence may possibly be
granted to her, though I doubt it. But it is not likely that she will
wish to do so. Should she succeed in hiding her disgrace, she may
escape; but it is not probable. Do not look so sad, nephew, religion
must have its sacrifices. Perchance it is better for her to die thus
than to live for many years dead in life. She can die but once. May her
blood lie heavy on de Garcia’s head!”

“Amen!” I answered.




CHAPTER IX
THOMAS BECOMES RICH


For many months we heard no more of de Garcia or of Isabella de
Siguenza. Both had vanished leaving no sign, and we searched for them
in vain. As for me I fell back into my former way of life of assistant
to Fonseca, posing before the world as his nephew. But it came about
that from the night of my duel with the murderer, my master’s health
declined steadily through the action of a wasting disease of the liver
which baffled all skill, so that within eight months of that time he
lay almost bedridden and at the point of death. His mind indeed
remained quite clear, and on occasions he would even receive those who
came to consult him, reclining on a chair and wrapped in his
embroidered robe. But the hand of death lay on him, and he knew that it
was so. As the weeks went by he grew more and more attached to me, till
at length, had I been his son, he could not have treated me with a
greater affection, while for my part I did what lay in my power to
lessen his sufferings, for he would let no other physician near him.

At length when he had grown very feeble he expressed a desire to see a
notary. The man he named was sent for and remained closeted with him
for an hour or more, when he left for a while to return with several of
his clerks, who accompanied him to my master’s room, from which I was
excluded. Presently they all went away, bearing some parchments with
them.

That evening Fonseca sent for me. I found him very weak, but cheerful
and full of talk.

“Come here, nephew,” he said, “I have had a busy day. I have been busy
all my life through, and it would not be well to grow idle at the last.
Do you know what I have been doing this day?”

I shook my head.

“I will tell you. I have been making my will—there is something to
leave; not so very much, but still something.”

“Do not talk of wills,” I said; “I trust that you may live for many
years.”

He laughed. “You must think badly of my case, nephew, when you think
that I can be deceived thus. I am about to die as you know well, and I
do not fear death. My life has been prosperous but not happy, for it
was blighted in its spring—no matter how. The story is an old one and
not worth telling; moreover, whichever way it had read, it had all been
one now in the hour of death. We must travel our journey each of us;
what does it matter if the road has been good or bad when we have
reached the goal? For my part religion neither comforts nor frightens
me now at the last. I will stand or fall upon the record of my life. I
have done evil in it and I have done good; the evil I have done because
nature and temptation have been too strong for me at times, the good
also because my heart prompted me to it. Well, it is finished, and
after all death cannot be so terrible, seeing that every human being is
born to undergo it, together with all living things. Whatever else is
false, I hold this to be true, that God exists and is more merciful
than those who preach Him would have us to believe.” And he ceased
exhausted.

Often since then I have thought of his words, and I still think of them
now that my own hour is so near. As will be seen Fonseca was a
fatalist, a belief which I do not altogether share, holding as I do
that within certain limits we are allowed to shape our own characters
and destinies. But his last sayings I believe to be true. God is
merciful, and death is not terrible either in its act or in its
consequence.

Presently Fonseca spoke again. “Why do you lead me to talk of such
things? They weary me and I have little time. I was telling of my will.
Nephew, listen. Except certain sums that I have given to be spent in
charities—not in masses, mind you—I have left you all I possess.”

“You have left it to _me!_” I said astonished.

“Yes, nephew, to you. Why not? I have no relations living and I have
learned to love you, I who thought that I could never care again for
any man or woman or child. I am grateful to you, who have proved to me
that my heart is not dead, take what I give you as a mark of my
gratitude.”

Now I began to stammer my thanks, but he stopped me. “The sum that you
will inherit, nephew, amounts in all to about five thousand gold pesos,
or perhaps twelve thousand of your English pounds, enough for a young
man to begin life on, even with a wife. Indeed there in England it may
well be held a great fortune, and I think that your betrothed’s father
will make no more objection to you as a son-in-law. Also there is this
house and all that it contains; the library and the silver are
valuable, and you will do well to keep them. All is left to you with
the fullest formality, so that no question can arise as to your right
to take it; indeed, foreseeing my end, I have of late called in my
moneys, and for the most part the gold lies in strong boxes in the
secret cupboard in the wall yonder that you know of. It would have been
more had I known you some years ago, for then, thinking that I grew too
rich who was without an heir, I gave away as much as what remains in
acts of mercy and in providing refuge for the homeless and the
suffering. Thomas Wingfield, for the most part this money has come to
me as the fruit of human folly and human wretchedness, frailty and sin.
Use it for the purposes of wisdom and the advancing of right and
liberty. May it prosper you, and remind you of me, your old master, the
Spanish quack, till at last you pass it on to your children or the
poor. And now one word more. If your conscience will let you, abandon
the pursuit of de Garcia. Take your fortune and go with it to England;
wed that maid whom you desire, and follow after happiness in whatever
way seems best to you. Who are you that you should mete out vengeance
on this knave de Garcia? Let him be, and he will avenge himself upon
himself. Otherwise you may undergo much toil and danger, and in the end
lose love, and life, and fortune at a blow.”

“But I have sworn to kill him,” I answered, “and how can I break so
solemn an oath? How could I sit at home in peace beneath the burden of
such shame?”

“I do not know; it is not for me to judge. You must do as you wish, but
in the doing of it, it may happen that you will fall into greater
shames than this. You have fought the man and he has escaped you. Let
him go if you are wise. Now bend down and kiss me, and bid me farewell.
I do not desire that you should see me die, and my death is near. I
cannot tell if we shall meet again when in your turn you have lain as I
lie now, or if we shape our course for different stars. If so, farewell
for ever.”

Then I leant down and kissed him on the forehead, and as I did so I
wept, for not till this hour did I learn how truly I had come to love
him, so truly that it seemed to me as though my father lay there dying.

“Weep not,” he said, “for all our life is but a parting. Once I had a
son like you, and ours was the bitterest of farewells. Now I go to seek
for him again who could not come back to me, so weep not because I die.
Good-bye, Thomas Wingfield. May God prosper and protect you! Now go!”

So I went weeping, and that night, before the dawn, all was over with
Andres de Fonseca. They told me that he was conscious to the end and
died murmuring the name of that son of whom he spoke in his last words
to me.

What was the history of this son, or of Fonseca himself, I never
learned, for like an Indian he hid his trail as step by step he
wandered down the path of life. He never spoke of his past, and in all
the books and documents that he left behind him there is no allusion to
it. Once, some years ago, I read through the cipher volumes of records
that I have spoken of, and of which he gave me the key before he died.
They stand before me on the shelf as I write, and in them are many
histories of shame, sorrow, and evil, of faith deluded and innocence
betrayed, of the cruelty of priests, of avarice triumphant over love,
and of love triumphant over death—enough, indeed, to furnish half a
hundred of true romances. But among these chronicles of a generation
now past and forgotten, there is no mention of Fonseca’s own name and
no hint of his own story. It is lost for ever, and perhaps this is
well. So died my benefactor and best friend.

When he was made ready for burial I went in to see him and he looked
calm and beautiful in his death sleep. Then it was that she who had
arrayed him for the grave handed to me two portraits most delicately
painted on ivory and set in gold, which had been found about his neck.
I have them yet. One is of the head of a lady with a sweet and wistful
countenance, and the other the face of a dead youth also beautiful, but
very sad. Doubtless they were mother and son, but I know no more about
them.

On the morrow I buried Andres de Fonseca, but with no pomp, for he had
said that he wished as little money as possible spent upon his dead
body, and returned to the house to meet the notaries. Then the seals
were broken and the parchments read and I was put in full possession of
the dead man’s wealth, and having deducted such sums as were payable
for dues, legacies, and fees, the notaries left me bowing humbly, for
was I not rich? Yes, I was rich, wealth had come to me without effort,
and I had reason to desire it, yet this was the saddest night that I
had passed since I set foot in Spain, for my mind was filled with
doubts and sorrow, and moreover my loneliness got a hold of me. But sad
as it might be, it was destined to seem yet more sorrowful before the
morning. For as I sat making pretence to eat, a servant came to me
saying that a woman waited in the outer room who had asked to see his
late master. Guessing that this was some client who had not heard of
Fonseca’s death I was about to order that she should be dismissed, then
bethought me that I might be of service to her or at the least forget
some of my own trouble in listening to hers. So I bade him bring her
in. Presently she came, a tall woman wrapped in a dark cloak that hid
her face. I bowed and motioned to her to be seated, when suddenly she
started and spoke.

“I asked to see Don Andres de Fonseca,” she said in a low quick voice.
“You are not he, señor.”

“Andres de Fonseca was buried to-day,” I answered. “I was his assistant
in his business and am his heir. If I can serve you in any way I am at
your disposal.”

“You are young—very young,” she murmured confusedly, “and the matter is
terrible and urgent. How can I trust you?”

“It is for you to judge, señora.”

She thought a while, then drew off her cloak, displaying the robes of a
nun.

“Listen,” she said. “I must do many a penance for this night’s work,
and very hardly have I won leave to come hither upon an errand of
mercy. Now I cannot go back empty-handed, so I must trust you. But
first swear by thine blessed Mother of God that you will not betray
me.”

“I give you my word,” I answered; “if that is not enough, let us end
this talk.”

“Do not be angry with me,” she pleaded; “I have not left my convent
walls for many years and I am distraught with grief. I seek a poison of
the deadliest. I will pay well for it.”

“I am not the tool of murderers,” I answered. “For what purpose do you
wish the poison?”

“Oh! I must tell you—yet how can I? In our convent there dies to-night
a woman young and fair, almost a girl indeed, who has broken the vows
she took. She dies to-night with her babe—thus, oh God, thus! by being
built alive into the foundations of the house she has disgraced. It is
the judgment that has been passed upon her, judgment without
forgiveness or reprieve. I am the abbess of this convent—ask not its
name or mine—and I love this sinner as though she were my daughter. I
have obtained this much of mercy for her because of my faithful
services to the church and by secret influence, that when I give her
the cup of water before the work is done, I may mix poison with it and
touch the lips of the babe with poison, so that their end is swift. I
may do this and yet have no sin upon my soul. I have my pardon under
seal. Help me then to be an innocent murderess, and to save this sinner
from her last agonies on earth.”

I cannot set down the feelings with which I listened to this tale of
horror, for words could not carry them. I stood aghast seeking an
answer, and a dreadful thought entered my mind.

“Is this woman named Isabella de Siguenza?” I asked.

“That name was hers in the world,” she answered, “though how you know
it I cannot guess.”

“We know many things in this house, mother. Say now, can this Isabella
be saved by money or by interest?”

“It is impossible; her sentence has been confirmed by the Tribunal of
Mercy. She must die and within two hours. Will you not give the
poison?”

“I cannot give it unless I know its purpose, mother. This may be a
barren tale, and the medicine might be used in such a fashion that I
should fall beneath the law. At one price only can I give it, and it is
that I am there to see it used.”

She thought a while and answered: “It may be done, for as it chances
the wording of my absolution will cover it. But you must come cowled as
a priest, that those who carry out the sentence may know nothing. Still
others will know and I warn you that should you speak of the matter you
yourself will meet with misfortune. The Church avenges itself on those
who betray its secrets, señor.”

“As one day its secrets will avenge themselves upon the Church,” I
answered bitterly. “And now let me seek a fitting drug—one that is
swift, yet not too swift, lest your hounds should see themselves
baffled of the prey before all their devilry is done. Here is something
that will do the work,” and I held up a phial that I drew from a case
of such medicines. “Come, veil yourself, mother, and let us be gone
upon this ‘errand of mercy.’”

She obeyed, and presently we left the house and walked away swiftly
through the crowded streets till we came to the ancient part of the
city along the river’s edge. Here the woman led me to a wharf where a
boat was in waiting for her. We entered it, and were rowed for a mile
or more up the stream till the boat halted at a landing-place beneath a
high wall. Leaving it, we came to a door in the wall on which my
companion knocked thrice. Presently a shutter in the woodwork was
drawn, and a white face peeped through the grating and spoke. My
companion answered in a low voice, and after some delay the door was
opened, and I found myself in a large walled garden planted with orange
trees. Then the abbess spoke to me.

“I have led you to our house,” she said. “If you know where you are,
and what its name may be, for your own sake I pray you forget it when
you leave these doors.”

I made no answer, but looked round the dim and dewy garden.

Here it was doubtless that de Garcia had met that unfortunate who must
die this night. A walk of a hundred paces brought us to another door in
the wall of a long low building of Moorish style. Here the knocking and
the questioning were repeated at more length. Then the door was opened,
and I found myself in a passage, ill lighted, long and narrow, in the
depths of which I could see the figures of nuns flitting to and fro
like bats in a tomb. The abbess walked down the passage till she came
to a door on the right which she opened. It led into a cell, and here
she left me in the dark. For ten minutes or more I stayed there, a prey
to thoughts that I had rather forget. At length the door opened again,
and she came in, followed by a tall priest whose face I could not see,
for he was dressed in the white robe and hood of the Dominicans that
left nothing visible except his eyes.

“Greeting, my son,” he said, when he had scanned me for a while. “The
abbess mother has told me of your errand. You are full young for such a
task.”

“Were I old I should not love it better, father. You know the case. I
am asked to provide a deadly drug for a certain merciful purpose. I
have provided that drug, but I must be there to see that it is put to
proper use.”

“You are very cautious, my son. The Church is no murderess. This woman
must die because her sin is flagrant, and of late such wickedness has
become common. Therefore, after much thought and prayer, and many
searchings to find a means of mercy, she is condemned to death by those
whose names are too high to be spoken. I, alas, am here to see the
sentence carried out with a certain mitigation which has been allowed
by the mercy of her chief judge. It seems that your presence is needful
to this act of love, therefore I suffer it. The mother abbess has
warned you that evil dogs the feet of those who reveal the secrets of
the Church. For your own sake I pray you to lay that warning to heart.”

“I am no babbler, father, so the caution is not needed. One word more.
This visit should be well feed, the medicine is costly.”

“Fear not, physician,” the monk answered with a note of scorn in his
voice; “name your sum, it shall be paid to you.”

“I ask no money, father. Indeed I would pay much to be far away
to-night. I ask only that I may be allowed to speak with this girl
before she dies.”

“What!” he said, starting, “surely you are not that wicked man? If so,
you are bold indeed to risk the sharing of her fate.”

“No, father, I am not that man. I never saw Isabella de Siguenza except
once, and I have never spoken to her. I am not the man who tricked her
but I know him; he is named Juan de Garcia.”

“Ah!” he said quickly, “she would never tell his real name, even under
threat of torture. Poor erring soul, she could be faithful in her
unfaith. Of what would you speak to her?”

“I wish to ask her whither this man has gone. He is my enemy, and I
would follow him as I have already followed him far. He has done worse
by me and mine than by this poor girl even. Grant my request, father,
that I may be able to work my vengeance on him, and with mine the
Church’s also.”

“‘Vengeance is mine,’ saith the Lord; ‘I will repay.’ Yet it may be,
son, that the Lord will choose you as the instrument of his wrath. An
opportunity shall be given you to speak with her. Now put on this
dress”—and he handed me a white Dominican hood and robe—“and follow
me.”

“First,” I said, “let me give this medicine to the abbess, for I will
have no hand in its administering. Take it, mother, and when the time
comes, pour the contents of the phial into a cup of water. Then, having
touched the mouth and tongue of the babe with the fluid, give it to the
mother to drink and be sure that she does drink it. Before the bricks
are built up about them both will sleep sound, never to wake again.”

“I will do it,” murmured the abbess; “having absolution I will be bold,
and do it for love and mercy’s sake!”

“Your heart is too soft, sister. Justice _is_ mercy,” said the monk
with a sigh. “Alas for the frailty of the flesh that wars against the
spirit!”

Then I clothed myself in the ghastly looking dress, and they took lamps
and motioned to me to follow them.




CHAPTER X
THE PASSING OF ISABELLA DE SIGUENZA


Silently we went down the long passage, and as we went I saw the eyes
of the dwellers in this living tomb watch us pass through the gratings
of their cell doors. Little wonder that the woman about to die had
striven to escape from such a home back to the world of life and love!
Yet for that crime she must perish. Surely God will remember the doings
of such men as these priests, and the nation that fosters them. And, in
deed, He does remember, for where is the splendour of Spain to-day, and
where are the cruel rites she gloried in? Here in England their fetters
are broken for ever, and in striving to bind them fast upon us free
Englishmen she is broken also—never to be whole again.

At the far end of the passage we found a stair down which we passed. At
its foot was an iron-bound door that the monk unlocked and locked again
upon the further side. Then came another passage hollowed in the
thickness of the wall, and a second door, and we were in the place of
death.

It was a vault low and damp, and the waters of the river washed its
outer wall, for I could hear their murmuring in the silence. Perhaps
the place may have measured ten paces in length by eight broad. For the
rest its roof was supported by massive columns, and on one side there
was a second door that led to a prison cell. At the further end of this
gloomy den, that was dimly lighted by torches and lamps, two men with
hooded heads, and draped in coarse black gowns, were at work, silently
mixing lime that sent up a hot steam upon the stagnant air. By their
sides were squares of dressed stone ranged neatly against the end of
the vault, and before them was a niche cut in the thickness of the wall
itself, shaped like a large coffin set upon its smaller end. In front
of this niche was placed a massive chair of chestnut wood. I noticed
also that two other such coffin-shaped niches had been cut in this same
wall, and filled in with similar blocks of whitish stone. On the face
of each was a date graved in deep letters. One had been sealed up some
thirty years before, and one hard upon a hundred.

These two men were the only occupants of the vault when we entered it,
but presently a sound of soft and solemn singing stole down the second
passage. Then the door was opened, the mason monks ceased labouring at
the heap of lime, and the sound of singing grew louder so that I could
catch the refrain. It was that of a Latin hymn for the dying. Next
through the open door came the choir, eight veiled nuns walking two by
two, and ranging themselves on either side of the vault they ceased
their singing. After them followed the doomed woman, guarded by two
more nuns, and last of all a priest bearing a crucifix. This man wore a
black robe, and his thin half-frenzied face was uncovered. All these
and other things I noticed and remembered, yet at the time it seemed to
me that I saw nothing except the figure of the victim. I knew her
again, although I had seen her but once in the moonlight. She was
changed indeed, her lovely face was fuller and the great tormented eyes
shone like stars against its waxen pallor, relieved by the carmine of
her lips alone. Still it was the same face that some eight months
before I had seen lifted in entreaty to her false lover. Now her tall
shape was wrapped about with grave clothes over which her black hair
streamed, and in her arms she bore a sleeping babe that from time to
time she pressed convulsively to her breast.

On the threshold of her tomb Isabella de Siguenza paused and looked
round wildly as though for help, scanning each of the silent watchers
to find a friend among them. Then her eye fell upon the niche and the
heap of smoking lime and the men who guarded it, and she shuddered and
would have fallen had not those who attended her led her to the chair
and placed her in it—a living corpse.

Now the dreadful rites began. The Dominican father stood before her and
recited her offence, and the sentence that had been passed upon her,
which doomed her, “to be left alone with God and the child of your sin,
that He may deal with you as He sees fit.“[3] To all of this she seemed
to pay no heed, nor to the exhortation that followed. At length he
ceased with a sigh, and turning to me said:

“Draw near to this sinner, brother, and speak with her before it is too
late.”

 [3] Lest such cruelty should seem impossible and unprecedented, the
 writer may mention that in the museum of the city of Mexico, he has
 seen the desiccated body of a young woman, which was found immured in
 the walls of a religious building. With it is the body of an infant.
 Although the exact cause of her execution remains a matter of
 conjecture, there can be no doubt as to the manner of her death, for
 in addition to other evidences, the marks of the rope with which her
 limbs were bound in life are still distinctly visible. Such in those
 days were the mercies of religion!


Then he bade all present gather themselves at the far end of the vault
that our talk might not be overheard, and they did so without wonder,
thinking doubtless that I was a monk sent to confess the doomed woman.

So I drew near with a beating heart, and bending over her I spoke in
her ear.

“Listen to me, Isabella de Siguenza!” I said; and as I uttered the name
she started wildly. “Where is that de Garcia who deceived and deserted
you?”

“How have you learnt his true name?” she answered. “Not even torture
would have wrung it from me as you know.”

“I am no monk and I know nothing. I am that man who fought with de
Garcia on the night when you were taken, and who would have killed him
had you not seized me.”

“At the least I saved him, that is my comfort now.”

“Isabella de Siguenza,” I said, “I am your friend, the best you ever
had and the last, as you shall learn presently. Tell me where this man
is, for there is that between us which must be settled.”

“If you are my friend, weary me no more. I do not know where he is.
Months ago he went whither you will scarcely follow, to the furthest
Indies; but you will never find him there.”

“It may still be that I shall, and if it should so chance, say have you
any message for this man?”

“None—yes, this. Tell him how we died, his child and his wife—tell him
that I did my best to hide his name from the priests lest some like
fate should befall him.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes. No, it is not all. Tell him that I passed away loving and
forgiving.”

“My time is short,” I said; “awake and listen!” for having spoken thus
she seemed to be sinking into a lethargy. “I was the assistant of that
Andres de Fonseca whose counsel you put aside to your ruin, and I have
given a certain drug to the abbess yonder. When she offers you the cup
of water, see that you drink and deep, you and the child. If so none
shall ever die more happily. Do you understand?”

“Yes—yes,” she gasped, “and may blessings rest upon you for the gift.
Now I am no more afraid—for I have long desired to die—it was the way I
feared.”

“Then farewell, and God be with you, unhappy woman.”

“Farewell,” she answered softly, “but call me not unhappy who am about
to die thus easily with that I love.” And she glanced at the sleeping
babe.

Then I drew back and stood with bent head, speaking no word. Now the
Dominican motioned to all to take the places where they had stood
before and asked her:

“Erring sister, have you aught to say before you are silent for ever?”

“Yes,” she answered in a clear, sweet voice, that never even quavered,
so bold had she become since she learned that her death would be swift
and easy. “Yes, I have this to say, that I go to my end with a clean
heart, for if I have sinned it is against custom and not against God. I
broke the vows indeed, but I was forced to take those vows, and,
therefore, they did not bind. I was a woman born for light and love,
and yet I was thrust into the darkness of this cloister, there to
wither dead in life. And so I broke the vows, and I am glad that I have
broken them, though it has brought me to this. If I was deceived and my
marriage is no marriage before the law as they tell me now, I knew
nothing of it, therefore to me it is still valid and holy and on my
soul there rests no stain. At the least I have lived, and for some few
hours I have been wife and mother, and it is as well to die swiftly in
this cell that your mercy has prepared, as more slowly in those above.
And now for you—I tell you that your wickedness shall find you out, you
who dare to say to God’s children—‘Ye shall not love,’ and to work
murder on them because they will not listen. It shall find you out I
say, and not only you but the Church you serve. Both priest and Church
shall be broken together and shall be a scorn in the mouths of men to
come.”

“She is distraught,” said the Dominican as a sigh of fear and wonder
went round the vault, “and blasphemes in her madness. Forget her words.
Shrive her, brother, swiftly ere she adds to them.”

Then the black-robed, keen-eyed priest came to her, and holding the
cross before her face, began to mutter I know not what. But she rose
from the chair and thrust the crucifix aside.

“Peace!” she said, “I will not be shriven by such as you. I take my
sins to God and not to you—you who do murder in the name of Christ.”

The fanatic heard and a fury took him.

“Then go unshriven down to hell, you—” and he named her by ill names
and struck her in the face with the ivory crucifix.

The Dominican bade him cease his revilings angrily enough, but Isabella
de Siguenza wiped her bruised brow and laughed aloud a dreadful laugh
to hear.

“Now I see that you are a coward also,” she said. “Priest, this is my
last prayer, that you also may perish at the hands of fanatics, and
more terribly than I die to-night.”

Then they hurried her into the place prepared for her and she spoke
again:

“Give me to drink, for we thirst, my babe and I!”

Now I saw the abbess enter that passage whence the victim had been led.
Presently she came back bearing a cup of water in her hand and with it
a loaf of bread, and I knew by her mien that my draught was in the
water. But of what befell afterwards I cannot say certainly, for I
prayed the Dominican to open the door by which we had entered the
vault, and passing through it I stood dazed with horror at some
distance. A while went by, I do not know how long, till at length I saw
the abbess standing before me, a lantern in her hand, and she was
sobbing bitterly.

“All is done,” she said. “Nay, have no fear, the draught worked well.
Before ever a stone was laid mother and child slept sound. Alas for her
soul who died unrepentant and unshriven!”

“Alas for the souls of all who have shared in this night’s work,” I
answered. “Now, mother, let me hence, and may we never meet again!”

Then she led me back to the cell, where I tore off that accursed monk’s
robe, and thence to the door in the garden wall and to the boat which
still waited on the river, and I rejoiced to feel the sweet air upon my
face as one rejoices who awakes from some foul dream. But I won little
sleep that night, nor indeed for some days to come. For whenever I
closed my eyes there rose before me the vision of that beauteous woman
as I saw her last by the murky torchlight, wrapped in grave clothes and
standing in the coffin-shaped niche, proud and defiant to the end, her
child clasped to her with one arm while the other was outstretched to
take the draught of death. Few have seen such a sight, for the Holy
Office and its helpers do not seek witnesses to their dark deeds, and
none would wish to see it twice. If I have described it ill, it is not
that I have forgotten, but because even now, after the lapse of some
seventy years, I can scarcely bear to write of it or to set out its
horrors fully. But of all that was wonderful about it perhaps the most
wonderful was that even to the last this unfortunate lady should still
have clung to her love for the villain who, having deceived her by a
false marriage, deserted her, leaving her to such a doom. To what end
can so holy a gift as this great love of hers have been bestowed on
such a man? None can say, but so it was. Yet now that I think of it,
there is one thing even stranger than her faithfulness.

It will be remembered that when the fanatic priest struck her she
prayed that he also might die at such hands and more terribly than she
must do. So it came about. In after years that very man, Father Pedro
by name, was sent to convert the heathen of Anahuac, among whom,
because of his cruelty, he was known as the “Christian Devil.” But it
chanced that venturing too far among a clan of the Otomie before they
were finally subdued, he fell into the hands of some priests of the war
god Huitzel, and by them was sacrificed after their dreadful fashion. I
saw him as he went to his death, and without telling that I had been
present when it was uttered, I called to his mind the dying curse of
Isabella de Siguenza. Then for a moment his courage gave way, for
seeing in me nothing but an Indian chief, he believed that the devil
had put the words into my lips to torment him, causing me to speak of
what I knew nothing. But enough of this now; if it is necessary I will
tell of it in its proper place. At least, whether it was by chance, or
because she had a gift of vision in her last hours, or that Providence
was avenged on him after this fashion, so it came about, and I do not
sorrow for it, though the death of this priest brought much misfortune
on me.

This then was the end of Isabella de Siguenza who was murdered by
priests because she had dared to break their rule.

So soon as I could clear my mind somewhat of all that I had seen and
heard in that dreadful vault, I began to consider the circumstances in
which I found myself. In the first place I was now a rich man, and if
it pleased me to go back to Norfolk with my wealth, as Fonseca had
pointed out, my prospects were fair indeed. But the oath that I had
taken hung like lead about my neck. I had sworn to be avenged upon de
Garcia, and I had prayed that the curse of heaven might rest upon me
till I was so avenged, but in England living in peace and plenty I
could scarcely come by vengeance. Moreover, now I knew where he was, or
at least in what portion of the world I might seek him, and there where
white men are few he could not hide from me as in Spain. This tidings I
had gained from the doomed lady, and I have told her story at some
length because it was through it and her that I came to journey to
Hispaniola, as it was because of the sacrifice of her tormentor, Father
Pedro, by the priests of the Otomie that I am here in England this day,
since had it not been for that sacrifice the Spaniards would never have
stormed the City of Pines, where, alive or dead, I should doubtless
have been to this hour; for thus do seeming accidents build up the
fates of men. Had those words never passed Isabella’s lips, doubtless
in time I should have wearied of a useless search and sailed for home
and happiness. But having heard them it seemed to me, to my undoing,
that this would be to play the part of a sorry coward. Moreover,
strange as it may look, now I felt as though I had two wrongs to
avenge, that of my mother and that of Isabella de Siguenza. Indeed none
could have seen that young and lovely lady die thus terribly and not
desire to wreak her death on him who had betrayed and deserted her.

So the end of it was that being of a stubborn temper, I determined to
do violence to my own desires and the dying counsels of my benefactor,
and to follow de Garcia to the ends of the earth and there to kill him
as I had sworn to do.

First, however, I inquired secretly and diligently as to the truth of
the statement that de Garcia had sailed for the Indies, and to be
brief, having the clue, I discovered that two days after the date of
the duel I had fought with him, a man answering to de Garcia’s
description, though bearing a different name, had shipped from Seville
in a _carak_ bound for the Canary Islands, which _carak_ was there to
await the arrival of the fleet sailing for Hispaniola. Indeed from
various circumstances I had little doubt that the man was none other
than de Garcia himself, which, although I had not thought of it before,
was not strange, seeing that then as now the Indies were the refuge of
half the desperadoes and villains who could no longer live in Spain.
Thither then I made up my mind to follow him, consoling myself a little
by the thought that at least I should see new and wonderful countries,
though how new and wonderful they were I did not guess.

Now it remained for me to dispose of the wealth which had come to me
suddenly. While I was wondering how I could place it in safety till my
return, I heard by chance that the “Adventuress” of Yarmouth, the same
ship in which I had come to Spain a year before, was again in the port
of Cadiz, and I bethought me that the best thing I could do with the
gold and other articles of value would be to ship them to England,
there to be held in trust for me. So having despatched a message to my
friend the captain of the “Adventuress,” that I had freight of value
for him, I made my preparations to depart from Seville with such speed
as I might, and to this end I sold my benefactor’s house, with many of
the effects, at a price much below their worth. The most of the books
and plate, together with some other articles, I kept, and packing them
in cases, I caused them to be transported down the river to Cadiz, to
the care of those same agents to whom I had received letters from the
Yarmouth merchants.

This being done I followed thither myself, taking the bulk of my
fortune with me in gold, which I hid artfully in numerous packages. And
so it came to pass that after a stay of a year in Seville, I turned my
back on it for ever. My sojourn there had been fortunate, for I came to
it poor and left it a rich man, to say nothing of what I had gained in
experience, which was much. Yet I was glad to be gone, for here Juan de
Garcia had escaped me, here I had lost my best friend and seen Isabella
de Siguenza die.

I came to Cadiz in safety and without loss of any of my goods or gold,
and taking boat proceeded on board the “Adventuress,” where I found her
captain, whose name was Bell, in good health and very glad to see me.
What pleased me more, however, was that he had three letters for me,
one from my father, one from my sister Mary, and one from my betrothed,
Lily Bozard, the only letter I ever received from her. The contents of
these writings were not altogether pleasing however, for I learned from
them that my father was in broken health and almost bedridden, and
indeed, though I did not know it for many years after, he died in
Ditchingham Church upon the very day that I received his letter. It was
short and sad, and in it he said that he sorrowed much that he had
allowed me to go upon my mission, since he should see me no more and
could only commend me to the care of the Almighty, and pray Him for my
safe return. As for Lily’s letter, which, hearing that the
“Adventuress” was to sail for Cadiz, she had found means to despatch
secretly, though it was not short it was sad also, and told me that so
soon as my back was turned on home, my brother Geoffrey had asked her
in marriage from her father, and that they pushed the matter strongly,
so that her life was made a misery to her, for my brother waylaid her
everywhere, and her father did not cease to revile her as an obstinate
jade who would fling away her fortune for the sake of a penniless
wanderer.

“But,” it went on, “be assured, sweetheart, that unless they marry me
by force, as they have threatened to do, I will not budge from my
promise. And, Thomas, should I be wedded thus against my will, I shall
not be a wife for long, for though I am strong I believe that I shall
die of shame and sorrow. It is hard that I should be thus tormented,
and for one reason only, that you are not rich. Still I have good hope
that things may better themselves, for I see that my brother Wilfred is
much inclined towards your sister Mary, and though he also urges this
marriage on me to-day, she is a friend to both of us and may be in the
way to make terms with him before she accepts his suit.” Then the
writing ended with many tender words and prayers for my safe return.

As for the letter from my sister Mary it was to the same purpose. As
yet, she said, she could do nothing for me with Lily Bozard, for my
brother Geoffrey was mad with love for her, my father was too ill to
meddle in the matter, and Squire Bozard was fiercely set upon the
marriage because of the lands that were at stake. Still, she hinted,
things might not always be so, as a time might come when she could
speak up for me and not in vain.

Now all this news gave me much cause for thought. More indeed, it awoke
in me a longing for home which was so strong that it grew almost to a
sickness. Her loving words and the perfume that hung about the letter
of my betrothed brought Lily back to me in such sort that my heart
ached with a desire to be with her. Moreover I knew that I should be
welcome now, for my fortune was far greater than my brother’s would
ever be, and parents do not show the door to suitors who bring more
than twelve thousand golden pieces in their baggage. Also I wished to
see my father again before he passed beyond my reach. But still between
me and my desire lay the shadow of de Garcia and my oath. I had brooded
on vengeance for so long that I felt even in the midst of this strong
temptation that I should have no pleasure in my life if I forsook my
quest. To be happy I must first kill de Garcia. Moreover I had come to
believe that did I so forsake it the curse which I had invoked would
surely fall upon me.

Meanwhile I did this. Going to a notary I caused him to prepare a deed
which I translated into English. By this deed I vested all my fortune
except two hundred pesos that I kept for my own use, in three persons
to hold the same on my behalf till I came to claim it. Those three
persons were my old master, Doctor Grimstone of Bungay, whom I knew for
the honestest of men, my sister Mary Wingfield, and my betrothed, Lily
Bozard. I directed them by this deed, which for greater validity I
signed upon the ship and caused to be witnessed by Captain Bell and two
other Englishmen, to deal with the property according to their
discretion, investing not less than half of it in the purchase of lands
and putting the rest out to interest, which interest with the rent of
the lands was to be paid to the said Lily Bozard for her own use for so
long as she remained unmarried.

Also with the deed I executed a will by which I devised the most of my
property to Lily Bozard should she be unmarried at the date of my
death, and the residue to my sister Mary. In the event of the marriage
or death of Lily, then the whole was to pass to Mary and her heirs.

These two documents being signed and sealed, I delivered them, together
with all my treasure and other goods, into the keeping of Captain Bell,
charging him solemnly to hand them and my possessions to Dr. Grimstone
of Bungay, by whom he would be liberally rewarded. This he promised to
do, though not until he had urged me almost with tears to accompany
them myself.

With the gold and the deeds I sent several letters; to my father, my
sister, my brother, Dr. Grimstone, Squire Bozard, and lastly to Lily
herself. In these letters I gave an account of my life and fortunes
since I had come to Spain, for I gathered that others which I had sent
had never reached England, and told them of my resolution to follow de
Garcia to the ends of the earth.

“Others,” I wrote to Lily, “may think me a madman thus to postpone, or
perchance to lose, a happiness which I desire above anything on earth,
but you who understand my heart will not blame me, however much you may
grieve for my decision. You will know that when once I have set my mind
upon an object, nothing except death itself can turn me from it, and
that in this matter I am bound by an oath which my conscience will not
suffer me to break. I could never be happy even at your side if I
abandoned my search now. First must come the toil and then the rest,
first the sorrow and then the joy. Do not fear for me, I feel that I
shall live to return again, and if I do not return, at least I am able
to provide for you in such fashion that you need never be married
against your will. While de Garcia lives I must follow him.”

To my brother Geoffrey I wrote very shortly, telling him what I thought
of his conduct in persecuting an undefended maiden and striving to do
wrong to an absent brother. I have heard that my letter pleased him
very ill.

And here I may state that those letters and everything else that I sent
came safely to Yarmouth. There the gold and goods were taken to
Lowestoft and put aboard a wherry, and when he had discharged his ship,
Captain Bell sailed up the Waveney with them till he brought them to
Bungay Staithe and thence to the house of Dr. Grimstone in Nethergate
Street. Here were gathered my sister and brother, for my father was
then two months buried—and also Squire Bozard and his son and daughter,
for Captain Bell had advised them of his coming by messenger, and when
all the tale was told there was wonder and to spare. Still greater did
it grow when the chests were opened and the weight of bullion compared
with that set out in my letters, for there had never been so much gold
at once in Bungay within the memory of man.

And now Lily wept, first for joy because of my good fortune, and then
for sorrow because I had not come with my treasure, and when he had
seen all and heard the deeds read by virtue of which Lily was a rich
woman whether I lived or died, the Squire her father swore aloud and
said that he had always thought well of me, and kissed his daughter,
wishing her joy of her luck. In short all were pleased except my
brother, who left the house without a word and straightway took to evil
courses. For now the cup was dashed from his lips, seeing that having
come into my father’s lands, he had brought it about that Lily was to
be married to him by might if no other means would serve. For even now
a man can force his daughter into marriage while she is under age, and
Squire Bozard was not one to shrink from such a deed, holding as he did
that a woman’s fancies were of no account. But on this day, so great is
the power of gold, there was no more talk of her marrying any man
except myself, indeed her father would have held her back from such a
thing had she shown a mind to it, seeing that then Lily would have lost
the wealth which I had settled on her. But all talked loudly of my
madness because I would not abandon the chase of my enemy but chose to
follow him to the far Indies, though Squire Bozard took comfort from
the thought that whether I lived or died the money was still his
daughter’s. Only Lily spoke up for me, saying “Thomas has sworn an oath
and he does well to keep it, for his honour is at stake. Now I go to
wait until he comes to me in this world or the next.”

But all this is out of place, for many a year passed away before I
heard of these doings.




CHAPTER XI
THE LOSS OF THE CARAK


On the day after I had given my fortune and letters into the charge of
Captain Bell, I watched the “Adventuress” drop slowly round the mole of
Cadiz, and so sad was I at heart, that I am not ashamed to confess I
wept. I would gladly have lost the wealth she carried if she had but
carried me. But my purpose was indomitable, and it must be some other
ship that would bear me home to the shores of England.

As it chanced, a large Spanish _carak_ named “Las Cinque Llagas,” or
“The Five Wounds,” was about to sail for Hispaniola, and having
obtained a licence to trade, I took passage in her under my assumed
name of d’Aila, passing myself off as a merchant. To further this
deception I purchased goods the value of one hundred and five pesos,
and of such nature as I was informed were most readily saleable in the
Indies, which merchandise I shipped with me. The vessel was full of
Spanish adventurers, mostly ruffians of varied career and strange
history, but none the less good companions enough when not in drink. By
this time I could speak Castilian so perfectly, and was so Spanish in
appearance, that it was not difficult for me to pass myself off as one
of their nation and this I did, inventing a feigned tale of my
parentage, and of the reasons that led me to tempt the seas. For the
rest, now as ever I kept my own counsel, and notwithstanding my
reserve, for I would not mingle in their orgies, I soon became well
liked by my comrades, chiefly because of my skill in ministering to
their sicknesses.

Of our voyage there is little to tell except of its sad end. At the
Canary Isles we stayed a month, and then sailed away for Hispaniola,
meeting with fine weather but light winds. When, as our captain
reckoned, we were within a week’s sail of the port of San Domingo for
which we were bound, the weather changed, and presently gathered to a
furious tempest from the north that grew more terrible every hour. For
three days and nights our cumbrous vessel groaned and laboured beneath
the stress of the gale, that drove us on rapidly we knew not whither,
till at length it became clear that, unless the weather moderated, we
must founder. Our ship leaked at every seam, one of our masts was
carried away, and another broken in two, at a height of twenty feet
from the deck. But all these misfortunes were small compared to what
was to come, for on the fourth morning a great wave swept off our
rudde

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