A Set of Rogues/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
How we were entertained in the mountains, and stand in a fair way to have our throats cut.
"We will go on when you are ready," says Don Sanchez, turning to us.
"Aye," growled Jack in my ear, "with all my heart. For if these friends be of the same kidney as Don Lopez, we may be persuaded to take a better road, which God forbid if this be a sample of their preference."
So being in our saddles forth we set once more and on a path no easier than before, but worse—like a very house-top for steepness, without a tinge of any living thing for succour if one fell, but only sharp, jagged rocks, and that which now added to our peril was here and there a patch of snow, so that the mules must cock their ears and feel their way before advancing a step, now halting for dread, and now scuttling on with their tails betwixt their legs as the stones rolled under them.
But the longest road hath an end, and so at length reaching that gap we had seen from below, to our great content we beheld through an angle in the mountain a tract of open country below, looking mighty green and sweet in the distance. And at the sight of this, Moll clapt her hands and cried out with joy; indeed, we were all as mad as children with the thought that our task was half done. Only the Don kept his gravity. But turning to Moll, he stretches out his hand towards the plain and says with prodigious pride, " My country!"
And now we began the descent, which was actually more perilous than the ascent, but we made light of it, being very much enlivened by the high mountain air and the relief from dread uncertainty, shouting out our reflections one to another as we jolted down the rugged path.
"After all, Jack," says I to him at the top of my voice, being in advance and next to Don Sanchez; "after all, Don Lopez was not such a bad friend to us."
Upon which, the Don, stopping his mule at the risk of being cast down the abyss, turns in his saddle, and says:
"Fellow, Don Lopez is a Spaniard. A Castilian of noble birth—" but here his mule deciding that this was no fit place for halting, bundled onward at a trot to overtake the guides, and obliged his rider to turn his attention to other matters.
By the look of the sun it must have been about two in the afternoon when, rounding a great bluff of rock, we came upon a kind of tableland which commanded a wide view of the plain below, most dazzling to our eyes after the gloomy recesses of the pass; and here we found trees growing and some rude attempt at cultivation, but all very poor and stunted, being still very high and exposed to the bleak winds issuing from the gorges.
Our guides, throwing themselves on the ground, repaired once more to their store of onions, and we, nothing loath to follow their examples, opened our saddle bags, and with our cold meat and the hogskin of wine made another good repast and very merry. And the Don, falling into discourse with the guides, pointed out to us a little white patch on the plain below, and told us that was Ravellos, where we should find one of the best posadas in the world, which added to our satisfaction. "But," says he, "'tis yet four hours' march ere we reach it, so we had best be packing quickly."
Thereupon we finished our meal in haste, the guides still lying on the ground eating onions, and when we were prepared to start they still lay there and would not budge. On this ensued another discussion, very indignant and passionate on the part of Don Sanchez, and as cool and phlegmatic on the side of the guides, the upshot of which was, as we learned from Don, that these rascals maintained they had fulfilled their bargain in bringing us over into Spain, but as to carrying us to Ravellos they would by no means do that without the permission of their zefe, who was one of those they had whistled to from our last halting place, and whom they were now staying for.
Then, beginning to quake a bit at the strangeness of this treatment, we looked about us to see if we might venture to continue our journey alone. But Lord! one might as easily have found a needle in a bundle of hay as a path amidst this labyrinth of rocks and horrid fissures that environed us; and this was so obvious that the guides, though not yet paid for their service, made no attempt to follow or to stay us, as knowing full well we must come back in despair. So there was no choice but to wait the coming up of the zefe, the Don standing with his legs astride and his arms folded, with a very storm of passion in his face, in readiness to confront the tardy zefe with his reproaches for this delay and the affront offered to himself, we casting our eye longingly down at Ravellos, and the guides silently munching their onions. Thus we waited until the fine ear of our guides catching a sound, they rose to their feet muttering the word "zefe," and pull off their hats as two men mounted on mules tricked out like our own, came round the corner and pulled up before us. But what was our surprise to see that the foremost of these fellows was none other than the Don Lopez de Calvados we had entertained to supper the night before, and of whose noble family Don Sanchez had been prating so highly, and not a thread better dressed than when we saw him last, and full as dirty. That which gave us most uneasiness, however, was to observe that each of these "friends" carried an ugly kind of musket slung across his back, and a most unpleasant long sheath knife in his waist cloth.
Not a word says our Don Sanchez, but feigning still to believe him a man of quality, he returns the other Don's salutation with all the ceremony possible. Then Don Lopez, smiling from ear to ear, begs us (as I learnt afterwards) to pardon him for keeping us waiting, which had not happened, he assures us, if we had not suffered him to oversleep himself. He then informs us that we are now upon his domain, and begs us to accept such hospitality as his castillo will furnish, in return for our entertainment of last night. To this Don Sanchez replies with a thousand thanks that we are anxious to reach Ravellos before nightfall, and that, therefore, we will be going at once if it is all the same to him. With more bowing and scraping Don Lopez amiably but firmly declines to accept any refusal of his offer or to talk of business before his debt of gratitude is paid. With that he gives a sign to our guides, who at once lead off our mules at a brisk trot, leaving us to follow on foot with Don Lopez and his companion, whom he introduces as Don Ruiz del Puerto, as arrant a cut-throat rascal to look at as ever I clapt eyes on.
So we with very dismal forebodings trudge on, having no other course to take, Don Sanchez, to make the best of it, warranting that no harm shall come to us while we are under the hospitable protection of a Spaniard, but to no great effect—our faith being already shaken in his valuation of Spaniards.
Quitting the tableland, ten minutes of leaping and scrambling brought us to a collection of miserable huts built all higgledy-piggledy along the edge of a torrent, overtopped by a square building of more consequence, built of grey stone and roofed with slate shingles, but with nothing but ill-shaped holes for windows; and this, Don Lopez with some pride told us was his castillo. A ragged crew of women and children, apprised of our coming by the guide, maybe, trooped out of the village to meet us and hailed our approach with shouts of joy, "for all the world like a pack of hounds at the sight of their keeper with a dish of bones," whispers Jack Dawson in my ear ominously. But it was curious to see how they did all fall back in two lines, those that had hats taking them off as Don Lopez passed, he bowing to them right and left, like any prince in his progress.
So we up to the castillo, where all the men of the village are assembled and all armed like Don Lopez, and they greet us with cries of "Hola!" and throwing up of hats. They making way for us with salutations on both sides, we enter the castillo, where we find one great ill-paved room with a step-ladder on one side leading to the floor above, but no furniture save a table and some benches of wood, all black and shining with grease and dirt. But indeed the walls, the ceiling, and all else about us was beyond everything for blackness, and this was easily to be understood, for a wench coming in with a cauldron lights a faggot of wood in a corner, where was no chimney to carry off the smoke, but only a hole in the wall with a kind of eaves over it, so that presently the place was so filled with the fumes 'twas difficult to see across it.
Don Lopez (always as gracious as a cat with a milkmaid) asks Moll through Don Sanchez if she would like to make her toilette, while dinner is preparing, and at this offer all of us jump—choosing anything for a change; so he takes us up the step-ladder to the floor above, which differs from that below in being cut up into half a dozen pieces by some low partition of planks nailed loosely together like cribs for cattle, with some litter of dry leaves and hay in each, but in other respects being just as naked and grimy, with a cloud of smoke coming up through the chinks in the floor.
"You will have the sole use of these chambers during your stay," says Don Lopez, "and for your better assurance you can draw the ladder up after you on retiring for the night."
But for the gravity of our situation and prospects I could have burst out laughing when Don Sanchez gave us the translation of this promise, for the idea of regarding these pens as chambers was not less ludicrous than the air of pride with which Don Lopez bestowed the privilege of using 'em upon us.
Don Lopez left us, promising to send a maid with the necessary appointments for Moll's toilette.
"A plague of all this finery!" growled Dawson. "How long may it be, think you, Señor, ere we can quit this palace and get to one of those posadas you promised us?"
Don Sanchez hunched his shoulders for all reply and turned away to hide his mortification. And now a girl comes up with a biggin of water on her head, a broken comb in her hand, and a ragged cloth on her arm that looked as if it had never been washed since it left the loom, and sets them down on a bench, with a grin at Moll; but she, though not over-nice, turns away with a pout of disgust, and then we to get a breath of fresh air to a hole in the wall on the windward side, where we stand all dumb with disappointment and dread until we are called down to dinner. But before going down Don Sanchez warns us to stand on our best behaviour, as these Spaniards, for all their rude seeming, were of a particularly punctilious, ticklish disposition, and that we might come badly out of this business if we happened to displease them.
"I cannot see reason in that, Señor," says Dawson; "for the less we please 'em, the sooner they are likely to send us hence, and so the better for us."
"As you please," replies the Don, "but my warning is to your advantage."
Down we go, and there stands Don Lopez with a dozen choice friends, all the raggedest, dirty villains in the world; and they saluting us, we return their civility with a very fair pretence and take the seats offered us they standing until we are set. Then they sit down, and each man lugs out a knife from his waist-cloth. The cauldron, filled with a mess of kid stewed in a multitude of onions, is fetched from the fire, and, being set upon a smooth board, is slid down the table to our host, who, after picking out some titbits for us, serves himself, and so slides it back, each man in turn picking out a morsel on the end of his knife. Bearing in mind Don Sanchez's warning, we do our best to eat of this dish; but, Heaven knows! with little relish, and mighty glad when the cauldron is empty and that part of the performance ended. Then the bones being swept from the table, a huge skin of wine is set before Don Lopez, and he serves us each with about a quart in an odd-shaped vessel with a spout, which Don Sanchez and his countrymen use by holding it above their heads and letting the wine spurt into their mouths; but we, being unused to this fashion, preferred rather to suck it out of the spout, which seemed to them as odd a mode as theirs was to us. However, better wine, drink it how you may, there is none than the wine of these parts, and this reconciling us considerably to our condition, we listened with content to their singing of ditties, which they did very well for such rude fellows, to the music of a guitar and a tambourine. And so when our pots came to be replenished a second time, we were all mighty merry and agreeable save Jack Dawson, who never could take his liquor like any other man, but must fall into some extravagant humour, and he, I perceived, regarded some of the company with a very sour, jealous eye because, being warmed with drink, they fell to casting glances at Moll with a certain dregee of familiarity. Especially there was one fellow with a hook nose, who stirred his bile exceedingly, sitting with his elbows on the table and his jaws in his hands, and would scarcely shift his eyes from Moll. And since he could not make his displeasure understood in words, and so give vent to it and be done, Jack sat there in sullen silence watching for an opportunity to show his resentment in some other fashion. The other saw this well enough, but would not desist, and so these two sat fronting each other like two dogs ready to fly at each other's throats. At length, the hook-nosed rascal, growing bolder with his liquor, rises as if to reach for his wine pot, and stretching across the table, chucks Moll under the chin with his grimy fingers. At this Jack flinging out his great fist with all the force of contained passion, catches the other right in the middle of the face, with such effect that the fellow flies clean back over his bench, his head striking the pavement with a crash.
Then, in an instant, all his fellows spring to their feet, and a dozen long knives flash out from their sheaths.