The Firebrand

They were now waiting only for the royal party, and the time seemed long to impatient Rollo. Were all his plans, so carefully laid, to be made naught because, forsooth, a queen in danger of her life must still keep up the punctilios of a court and cherish the pettishnesses and caprices of a spoilt child? Was his reputation to go down to posterity as that of a man who, being trusted with the lives of a woman and a child, had brought them straight to the shambles?

At last – there! They were coming. But why, for God's sake, could not they make less noise?

With a motion of his hand which directed El Sarria to keep an eye upon the gagged sentries, Rollo went forward to receive the Queen and conduct her to her horse. Muñoz, however, came out first, carrying in his arms the little Princess, who, so soon as she heard Rollo's voice, whispered her desire to be transferred to him. But Rollo had already offered the Queen his arm, and whispering her to tread carefully, led the way to the little hollow where Sergeant Cardono kept the three bridles in his hand, cursing meanwhile the slow movements of crowned heads and ennobled estanco-keepers in Romany of the deepest and blackest.

He had cause to curse another peculiarity of monarchs and spoilt children before many minutes had gone by. Till now the success of the plot had been complete. There remained indeed only to mount and ride. El Sarria brought up the rear, assuring himself for the hundredth time that his weapons were in good order and ready to his hand. No great general, Ramon Garcia was a matchless legionary.

But the Queen-Regent would by no means submit to be assisted to her seat (it was a man's saddle) by Rollo. She called to her husband in a voice clearly audible all about.

"Fernando – my love! Come to me – I want you!"

As Rollo said afterwards – no queen born under the lilies of Bourbon ever ran a nearer chance of having the rude hand of a commoner set over her august mouth than did Maria Cristina of Naples on this occasion.

Nor was the appeal without effect.

Señor Muñoz instantly put the little Princess down upon the ground and hastened to his wife. What happened after that is not very clear, even when the subject has been repeatedly and exhaustively threshed out by the persons most immediately concerned.

Perhaps the little Princess, deposited thus suddenly upon the ground, caught instinctively at one of the long tails of the horses which (in common with those of almost all Spanish horses) almost swept the ground. Perhaps the animals themselves grew suddenly panic-stricken. At all events one of the three lashed out suddenly. The Sergeant bent sideways to snatch Isabel from among their hoofs. In so doing he dropped a rein, and in another moment one of the steeds went clattering up the dry arroyo, scattering the gravel every way with a wild flourishing of heels, and making, as the Sergeant growled, "enough noise to arouse twenty camps."

For a hundred heart-beats all the party held their breath. Then Rollo whispered to Señor Muñoz to mount and take the little Princess before him.

"As for you, you must run for it, Ramon!" he said to El Sarria. "The fat is in the fire now, and all we can do is to hold them back as long as we can. Make straight for the gorge towards Vera. You know the way. May God help you to reach it before they can turn our flank!"

Then it was that the Sergeant received a definite shock of surprise. That queens would be foolish, arbitrary, even absolutely idiotic, was no marvel to him. That they should choose their favourites from estanco-keepers and guardsmen, and elevate them at a day's notice to grandeeships, dukedoms of Spain, and privileges even higher, did not in the least astonish him. But that the person so elevated should after all, in his less corporeal attributes, prove to be a man, was a first-rate surprise to José Maria.

Muñoz was now to furnish the Sergeant with an absolutely new sensation.

"Señor," he said, quietly addressing El Sarria, "be good enough to mount and conduct the Queen to a place of safety. I intend to remain here with these gentlemen!"

Then he went up to Maria Cristina and spoke a few sentences to her in a tone so low that only the last words were audible.

"If not, by the Immaculate Virgin, I swear that you shall never see my face again!"

"Fernando! Fernando! Fernando! You are cruel!" was the answer uttered through choking sobs.

But El Sarria was by this time in the saddle. The little Princess was set in her place in front of him.

"Off with you!" whispered Rollo.

And in this manner the cavalcade began its momentous march.

The Sergeant stood gazing at Muñoz, who rubbed the backs of his hands alternately as if there had been a chill in the night air. Muñoz on his part turned to Rollo.

"Let me have the use of that gentleman's piece," he said; "I do not like this silence. I think we shall have a hot time of it within the next five minutes."

At that moment the escaped charger came cantering back, neighing and alarming all the picketed horses for miles, which snorted back an answer. Sentries meditating in quiet corners became upon a sudden exceedingly awake. One of the two whom Rollo and El Sarria had left triced up at the door of the royal prison at last got the extemporised gag out of his mouth, and found his breath in a lusty shout of warning.

The ex-guardsman was right. Within less than five minutes the entire camp was awake. The escape of the prisoners had been discovered. The recovered sentry pointed out the direction of the barranco as that in which the fugitives had taken their departure.

Whereupon there ensued a hurried rush thither. Indeed, scarcely had the dark forms of the two horses with their riders ceased to break the skyline upon one verge of the ravine, before Cabrera's men were clambering and shouting along the other. Luckily the precipice was sheer immediately opposite, and the pursuers had to try a furlong or two farther down, at a place where a landslide had enabled them on the previous evening to lead their horses to and from the few stagnant pools which now represented those full-fed torrents the spring rains send down from the Sierra de Moncayo.

"Let them have it!" whispered Rollo, as the first straggling groups stood up dark between them and the stars.

Accordingly, out of the darkness of the barranco, a volley flamed irregularly enough, the rattle of musketry running down the whole front of the line. Six pieces in all spoke out their message to Cabrera's men to halt. For La Giralda, having taken possession of Concha's armament, drew a bead upon her man with probably as much success as any of the others. It was still too dark for accurate shooting, and the worst shot was not much inferior to the best.

But these six bullets sent across the valley from unseen foes, spattering the stones about their feet, checked that first fierce rush of angry men. Some enemy was in force on their front – so much was evident. It would be well to discover of what sort.

"We are holding them," said Rollo, triumphantly, "that is all we can hope for. Pass down the word to fire only when they advance. Time is what El Sarria and his party need. And so far as I can see, unless Concha hurries, a dead Carlist or so more or less will not make much difference to us!"

But Rollo soon found that the men who were opposed to him knew all there was to know about guerrilla warfare. They pushed forward steadily from rock to rock, and as they came on in overwhelming numbers the dauntless six were compelled to retire upwards till they gained the rugged brink of the barranco, from which the uplands swell away in broad unclothed downs in the direction of the gorge of Vera.

Here they took up their several posts in a position of great natural strength, if only they had had a sufficiency of men to defend it.

Already the morning was growing manifestly lighter. The red peaks of Moncayo above their heads began to emerge out of the grey uncoloured night. They could see each other now, and Rollo looked down his line with some pride.

There they were, each behind his shelter, loading and firing according to his liking and the bowels that were in him. The Sergeant was sternly winging each shot with intent to slay, Muñoz firing as if he had been practising at a target for sport and feeling bored for the want of a cigarette, Etienne with swift and contagious gaiety of mood, while John Mortimer did his work with a plain and businesslike devotion to the matter in hand that argued well for his father's spinning mills at Chorley if ever he should return thither – a chance which at present seemed somewhat remote.

La Giralda, like the Sergeant, fired to kill her man, and as for Rollo himself, he did not fire at all unless he could plant a bullet where it would induce a Carlist to alter his mind about advancing further.

The end, however, was clearly only a matter of time. The light came faster up out of the east. Rollo stood on his feet, and heedless of the bullets that buzzed like bees about him looked eagerly towards the gorge of Vera. He could see nothing of Ramon Garcia or of the Queen, and his heart gave a bound of thankful joy.

But there were ups and downs on the rolling moorland country that stretched away to the right. El Sarria and his companions might only be temporarily hidden in the trough of one of these waves.

"We can hold on a while yet, lads!" he cried, and dropped down behind his rock, shaking his rifle into its nook beside his ear to be ready for the next spot of red or white crawling towards them through the dusty arroyo.

But at that moment there came from far away the sound of cheering. A mounted man dashed at full gallop up to the edge of the ravine opposite to them.

"Do not fire," said the Sergeant; "that is Cabrera – he is a brave man!"

But John Mortimer, not caring or not understanding the language, fired promptly, and his rifle bullet threw up a cloud of dust between the horse's feet. The animal reared and almost threw his rider. But in a moment he was erect as ever in the saddle, and Rollo could see him shouting furious commands to his men – apparently ordering them to bear round to the left so as to take the defending party on their least protected side.

For the next few minutes, as Muñoz had foretold, it was hot work enough, and Rollo had no time to look behind him, or he might have seen a sight that would have astonished him – a single horsewoman, riding swiftly towards the barranco, followed at the distance of half a mile by a cloud of mounted men.

Suddenly the General on the opposite bank, who all the while had been darting about hither and thither like a gad-fly, held up his arm, and with astonishing pride of horsemanship (and faith in the soundness of his girths) rode his charger straight down the shelving sides of the ravine, the slaty fragments crumbling and slipping under the iron-shod hoofs.

With a cheer the red boinas of the Estella regiment followed, and then straight up the opposite slopes of shale they dashed towards Rollo and his poor defences.

"Hold your fire!" he cried, first in English, and then in Spanish. "Wait till you are sure of them. We are only half a dozen, and we must wing a man apiece!"

It chanced, however, just as the horseman (who, as the Sergeant had supposed, was Cabrera himself, almost out of his mind with disappointed fury) surmounted the ridge a little to the right of Rollo's position, but close to where the Sergeant lay behind his rock, that Concha threw herself off her charger (or rather one of General Espartero's), and with a joyous shout informed them that the Queen was safe and that twelve hundred Cristino regulars were following close behind her!

Thus these two, the disappointed murderer and the triumphant deliverer, met almost face to face. Cabrera heard Concha's glad proclamation. He saw the plumes of Espartero's troopers already topping the rise, strong well-knit men of the best farming stock in Old Castile mounted on Gallegan horses.

Quite breathless with her headlong course, Concha stood panting, her hand pressed on her breast. Her eyes were wandering every way in search of Rollo, and in her haste and happiness she had left her weapons behind in the camp of Espartero.

"At any rate I will make sure of you!" cried the Butcher of Tortosa, bitterly, and drawing a pistol he covered Concha at point-blank distance. But from behind his rock (as it were out of the ground) arose the tall gaunt form and leathern visage of Sergeant Cardono.

With a sweep of the arm he set Concha behind him, and as the General's pistol went off he received the shot in his own bosom.