The Firebrand

And then, somehow, it appeared to the young man that a kind of waving blackness in wreaths and coils like thick smoke began to invade the room, bellying upwards from the floor and descending from the roof. He seemed to be sinking back into the arms of the Father-Confessor Anselmo, who grimaced at him through the empty eye-sockets and toothless jaws of a skull. There were at least fifty abbots in the room, and a certain hue of dusky red in the shadows of the window curtains first made him shudder to the soul and then affected him with terror unutterable. Finally chaos whirled down darkling and multitudinous, and Rollo knew no more.

When the young man came to himself he was in altogether another place. He lay flat on his back, with something hard under his head. His face seemed cold and wet. The place, as his eyes wandered upward, was full of shifting shadows and uncertain revealings of cobwebby roof-spaces filled with machinery, huge wheels and pulleys, ropes and rings and hooks, on all of which the blown light of candles flickered fitfully.

To one side he could dimly perceive the outlines of what seemed like a great washerwoman's mangle. He remembered in Falkland town turning old Betty Drouthy's for hours and hours, every moment expecting that Peggy Ramsay would come in, basket on arm, the sweetest of Lady Bountifuls, to visit that venerable humbug, who had all her life lived on too much charity and who died at last of too much whiskey. Strange, was it not, that he should think of those far-off days now?

His head, too, was singing and thumping even as poor Betty's must have done many a morning after Rollo had paid her for the privilege of turning the mangle, and Peggy Ramsay secretly bestowed half-a-crown out of her scanty pocket-money upon her, because – well, because she was a widow and everybody spoke ill of her.

After a while Rollo began to see his surroundings more clearly. Some one was sitting at a great table covered with black cloth. A huge crucifix swung over his head – upon it a figure of the Safety of the World, startlingly realistic.

"Who has brought me here?" he said aloud, uncertain whether or not he still dreamed. His voice sounded in his own ears harsh and mechanical.

Then Rollo tried to lift a hand in order to wipe his brow. He could move neither the right nor the left. Both appeared to be fastened firmly to some band or ring let into a framework of wood.

Then he heard a voice from the figure seated under the black crucifix.

"Bring forward the traitor! He shall learn the great mystery!"

Rollo felt himself slowly lifted on to his feet, or rather the entire wooden oblong to which his limbs were lashed was erected by unseen forces. He could discern the breathing of men very close to his ear.

"Listen," said the voice from the tribunal. "You, Rollo Blair, have not only betrayed the sacred cause of the blessed King Carlos, but, what is ten thousand times worse, you have been a traitor to Holy Church, in her battle against much wickedness in high places."

"Who charges me with these things?" cried Rollo, giving up a vain struggle for freedom.

"Out of your own mouth are you condemned," came the answer. "I who speak have heard your confession."

Then Rollo knew that Anselmo, the dark confessor, was his accuser and judge. His executioners he had yet to make acquaintance with. The voice from the tribunal went on, level and menacing.

"The Abbot of Montblanch may forgive a traitor and he will. He may make and unmake pacts with a heretic if it please him. As for me, my conscience shall be clean as were those of blessed San Fernando, of Gimenez, of holy Torquemada, and of the most religious San Vicente Ferrar. Die you shall, as every traitor ought. But since I would not send an immortal soul quick to hell, I offer you this opportunity to be reconciled to Holy Church. I bid you disavow and utterly abhor all your treacheries and heretic opinions!"

"I am sorry enough for my sins, God knows, if so be I must die," said Rollo, making a virtue of necessity; "but I have done no treacheries. And as for heresy – I have none too much religion of any sort. If you can help me to more and better, I shall be grateful, without being too particular as to creed. But my father lived and died a good Presbyterian, and so, Heaven helping me, shall I!"

The gloomy monk rose at these words, made the gesture of washing the hands, and then, turning about, kissed the wood of the black crucifix.

"Lay the young man on the rack," he said; "when he is ready to recant and be reconciled, you know where to find me!"

The two executioners of Anselmo's will were clad in black robes from head to foot, even their hands being hidden. A tall pointed mask with eye-holes alone revealed anything human underneath, as, panting with the exertion, the men raised Rollo to the level of the huge table with the double rollers beneath. Then he felt his hands and feet one by one deftly loosened and refastened. The frame was slipped from underneath him, and Rollo found himself stretched on the rack.

Then calmly seating themselves on a raised shelf close to his head, his two executioners removed their tall black hoods, apparently in order that they might wipe their beaded brows. But that they had a further purpose was immediately apparent.

With infinite surprise Rollo recognised Luis Fernandez and his brother Tomas. Luis smiled evilly as his ancient enemy rolled his head in his direction.

"Yes," he said, "I told you my turn would come. I only wish that we had also the pleasure of the company of your friend the outlaw, Ramon Garcia. But after all, that great maundering oaf would never have spoilt my plans but for your cursed interference. Twice, thrice, I had him trapped as surely as a sheep in a slaughter-pen with the butcher's knife at his throat. And then you must needs come in my way. Well, every dog has his day, and now this day I shall square all reckonings."

Fernandez waited for Rollo to reply, but though his Scots instinct was to give back defiance for defiance, he held his peace. After a pause the ex-miller of Sarria rolled a cigarette and continued serenely between the puffs.

"Now listen," he said, "this is my revenge. I have had to pay blood for it, but now it is mine. For this I sold myself to the monks, truckled to them, fetched and carried for them. To poor mad Anselmo, with his antiquated inquisition and holy office, I became a bond-slave. I knew you would come back hither, and now I can do with you as I will. How much the Prior knows or suspects of this pleasant subterranean retreat I am unable to determine. At any rate you cannot expect that he will be very much delighted with your performances. But, mark you, it is I, and not he, who will rack your body till you weep and howl for mercy. I have studied these dainty instruments. I alone put them in order – I, Luis Fernandez, whose home you broke up, whose house you burnt down to the bare blackened walls, whom you made desolate of the love of woman – "

"Nay," cried Rollo, hot on a sudden as El Sarria himself – "the love of Dolóres Garcia never was yours – no, nor ever would have been in a thousand years!"

"It would – I tell you!" responded Fernandez, as fiercely. "I know these soft, still, easy-tempered women. They cannot do without a shoulder to lean upon. In time she would have loved me – aye, and better than ever she did that hulking man-mountain of a Garcia! Do you hear that?"

Rollo heard but did not reply.

"So this is my sweet revenge," Fernandez continued. "The good Father-Confessor prates of heretics and times for repentance. But he is mad – mad – mad as Don Quixote, do you understand? I, Luis Fernandez, am not mad. But if you have any reason for desiring to live – live you shall —on my terms. All I ask is that you answer me one question, or rather two – as the price of your life."

Only Rollo's eyes looked an interrogation. For the rest he held his peace and waited.

"Tell me where you have hidden Dolóres Garcia – and at what hour, and in what place Ramon, her husband, lays him down to sleep! If you declare truthfully these two things, I promise to leave you with three days' water and provisions, and to provide for your liberation at the end of that time. If not, I bid you prepare to die, as the men died who have lain where you lie now!"

Rollo's answer came like the return of a ball at tennis.

"Señor Don Luis," he said, "if I had ten Paradises from which to choose my eternal pleasures, I would not tell you! If I had as many hells from which to select for you the tortures of the damned, I would not speak a word which might aid such a villain in his villany! Let it suffice for you to know that Dolóres Garcia is now where you will never reach her, and as for her husband – why, you cowardly dog, asleep or awake, sick or well, you dare not venture within a mile of him! Nay, I doubt greatly if you dare even face him dead!"

Fernandez rose and motioned his brother to the handle which turned the great wooden wheel at Rollo's feet. Then the young man lay very still, listening to the dismal groaning of the ungreased bearings and wondering almost idly what was about to happen to him.

"God in Heaven, he is here! I tell you I heard him cry! Do you think I do not know his voice? I will tear up the floor with my fingers, if you do not make haste!"

It was Concha who spoke or rather shouted these words along the rabbit-warren of passages which ran this way and that under the Abbey of Montblanch.

But it had been through Ezquerra and La Giralda that the dread rumour of danger to Rollo had first come to Sarria. The gipsies have strange ways of knowledge – mole-runs and rat-holes beneath, birds of the air to carry the matter above. Some servitor in the Monastery, with a drop of black blood in him, had heard a word let fall by Don Tomas Fernandez in his cups. The brothers, so he boasted, would not now have long to wait. The cherry had dropped into their mouths of its own accord – thus Don Tomas, half-seas-over, averred – or at least his confessorship would shake the bough and the fruit would come down with a run. This silly Tomas also knew who was to have Rollo's horse when all was over – a tostado not met with every day.

It was enough – more than enough. From Sarria to Espluga in Francoli Concha raged through the villages like fire through summer grass. The Abbey – the Friars, the accumulated treasure of centuries, the power of pit and gallows, of servitude and Holy Office – all these were to end on the twentieth of the month. Meantime a man was being tortured, done to death by ghouls – a friend of El Sarria, a friend of José Maria – nay, the saviour of two Queens and the beloved of generals and Prime Ministers! Would they help to save him? Ah, would they not!

Other rumours came up, thick and rank as toadstools on dead wood. There was such-an-one of the village of Esplena, such-an-other of Campillo in the nether Francoli – they refused the Friars this, that, and the other! Well, did not they enter the Monastery walls, never to be heard of more?

Given the ignorant prejudices of villagers, the hopes of plunder awakened by a lawless time and an uncertain government, Concha a prophetess volleying threats and promises – and what wonder is it that in an hour or two a band of a thousand men was pouring through the gates of the great Abbey, clambering over the tiles, and with fierce outcries diving down to the deepest cellars! But from gateway to gateway not a brother was found. All had been warned in time. All had departed – whither no man knew.

El Sarria, by his reputation for desperate courage, for a while kept the mob from deeds of violence and spoliation. But still Rollo was not found.

Concha, pale of face and with deep circles under her eyes, ran this way and that, her fingers bleeding and bruised. In her despair she flung herself upon one obstacle after another, calling for this door and that to be forced. And strong men followed and did her will without halt or question.

But of all others it was the cool practical John Mortimer who hit upon the trail. He remembered how, on their first visit to Montblanch, Rollo himself, at a certain place near the door of the strong-room in which the relics were kept, had declared that he heard a sound like a groan. And there in that very place Concha was driven wild by hearing, she knew not whence, the voice of her lover. It seemed to her that he called her by name.

Men ran for crowbars and forehammers. The floor was forced up by mere strength of arm. The dislodging of a heavy stone gave access to an underground passage, and men swarmed down one after the other, El Sarria leading the way, a bar of iron like a weaver's beam in his hand.

The searchers found themselves in a strange place. The vaulting which they had broken through so rudely, enabled them to scramble downward amongst great beams and wheels to a raised platform covered with moth-eaten black. The groaning which Concha had heard was stilled, but as El Sarria held up his hand for silence they could hear something scuffling away along the dark passages like rats behind a wainscot.

Without regarding for the moment something vague and indefinite which lay stretched out on a strange mechanism of wood, El Sarria darted like a sleuth-hound on the trail up one of the passages into which he had seen a fugitive disappear. It was no long chase. The pursued doubled to the right under a low archway. The dim passage opened suddenly upon a kind of gallery, one side of which was supported on pillars and looked out upon the great gulf of air and space on the verge of which the Monastery was built.

The quarry came into view as they reached the sunlight, dazzled and blinking – a smallish lithe man, running and dodging with terror in his eyes. But he was no match for his pursuer, and before he had gained the end of the gallery, the giant's hand closed upon the neck of his enemy.

Then Luis Fernandez, knowing his hour, screamed like a rabbit taken in a snare.

And through the manifold corridors of the Abbey, and up from underground, rang the dread cry "Torture!" "They have been torturing him to death in their accursed dungeons! Kill! Kill! Death to the Friars wherever found!"

For the blind mouths of down-trodden villages, long dumb, had at last found a universal tongue.

Ramon Garcia looked once only into the face which glared up at him. In that glance Luis Fernandez read his fate. Without a word of anger or any sound save his own footsteps, El Sarria walked to the nearest open arcade of the gallery and threw his enemy over with one hand, with the contemptuous gesture of a man who flings carrion to the dogs.