Beauvallet (28 page)

He was overtaken, felt a grip on his shoulder, and spun round, dagger out. A hand caught his wrist in mid-air, held it clamped hard. ‘Death on thy soul, Joshua! learn to know your master!’ hissed Sir Nicholas.

Joshua almost fell to his knees. ‘Master! Safe! safe!’ he whispered ecstatically.

‘Of course I am safe, fat-wit. Put up that knife. A horse is all my need.’

‘Said I not so!’ Joshua was moved to kiss his hand. ‘Said I, what will be my master's cry? Why, what but Horses, Joshua! They are hard by, sir, saddled and ready.’

‘God ’ild you, then. Lead me to them. The hunt is up in good sooth, and we must win clear away tonight.’ He gave a little chuckle. ‘A rare night's work! Where's my lady?’

‘Gone these four days, master, and that squirting ahead of her.’ Joshua led him down a side-alley, walking fast. ‘I had speech with the noble lady, and bade her be of good cheer, and keep faith. Then I saw her leave Madrid with the old lady, and learned they were to waste no time upon the journey. I warrant I have been about the town a little! How came you out of that hold, master?’

He was told, very briefly, and rubbed his hands over it. ‘Ay, that is the way it goes. Ho-ho, they have our measure now, if they had it not before! But I submit, master, that we have to consider a little. Having lost their prisoner what will they do?’

‘Send hot-foot to the Frontier, and the ports,’ said Sir Nicholas.

‘True, master, and we take the Frontier road as far as Burgos.’ He shook his head. ‘Still very barful. But we will not be amort. We have the start of them, and they will not look for us at Vasconosa. Tarry here awhile, sir. No need to show yourself.’ He had stopped at a street turning. ‘I go to fetch the horses.’

He was back soon with two fine jennets, each with a light pack strapped to the saddle.

‘Boots, man!’ said Sir Nicholas. ‘Have you my sword safe?’

‘Never doubt me, sir!’ said Joshua complacently, unbuckling a pack. ‘Your boots are at hand. I have thought of everything. I am not one to be bestraught by disaster.’ He unearthed a pair of top-boots, caught up the shoon Sir Nicholas had kicked off, and stowed them away.

The long boots were pulled on, the spurs swiftly fastened. Sir Nicholas vaulted lightly into the saddle. ‘On then, my Joshua!’ He laughed, and Joshua saw that his eyes were alight. ‘A race for life this time!’ he said, wheeled about, and drove in his heels.

The two sentries came panting back to the barracks, and to Cruza, feverishly awaiting them. ‘Gone, señor!’ they gasped.

‘Fools! Dolts! He was in that coach!’

‘He was gone, señor.’

Cruza fell back. ‘Holy Virgin, witchcraft!’ He hurried in to where his superior waited. Don Cristobal, unbound now, shaken, but composed, received him with a questioning lift of the brows.

‘Señor, he was not in the coach when the guards came up with it. It is witchcraft, foul devil's work!’

Don Cristobal smiled contemptuously. ‘If you would say we have been finely tricked you speak nothing but the truth,’ he said acidly. ‘Would he sit still in the coach to await capture? Turn out the guard!’

Cruza shot an order to a goggle-eyed sergeant, waiting close by. ‘Señor, can it be that it is El Beauvallet indeed?’

Don Cristobal slightly rubbed his bruised wrists. ‘He did me the honour of telling me so with his own lips,’ he said. He moved to the table, and dipped a quill in the ink-horn. ‘One man to take this writing to Don Luis de Fermosa, to request him to order out the alguazils to search the town. The prisoner cannot have gone far.’

Cruza wrinkled his brow at that. ‘Señor, will he not make for the Frontier?’

Don Cristobal dusted his paper with sand, and read it over before he answered. As he folded and sealed it he said calmly: ‘He must procure a horse for that, Cruza, and we know that he has no money.’ He gave the paper into his lieutenant's hands, and turned to his valet. ‘A hat and a cloak, Juan.’

The valet hurried away. Cruza ventured another question. ‘Señor, where do you go?’

‘To the Alcazar,’ replied the Governor. ‘To learn his Majesty's pleasure in this matter.’

Access to Philip was at first denied him. The King was private in his closet, and would see no one. A word in the King's valet's ear produced the required effect. That privileged person went off in a hurry, and presently Don Cristobal was summoned to the presence.

The news had been told Philip, but he displayed his habitual equanimity to Don Cristobal, deeply bowing before him. He let his apathetic gaze run over the Governor, but said nothing.

‘Sire’ – Don Cristobal made the shortest work he could of it – ‘I have to inform your Majesty, to my shame, that my prisoner has escaped.’

Philip folded his cool hands. ‘This is a very strange thing that you tell me, Don Cristobal.’

The Governor flushed. ‘I do not know what to say, sire. I am myself overwhelmed.’

‘Compose yourself. When did the prisoner escape?’

‘Not an hour ago, sire. He overpowered the guard who brought his supper to him, stabbed the sentry without; by some means unknown to me slipped through the hands of two parties of guards who thought they had him trapped between them, and by means equally unknown to me reached my own chamber. I, entering and knowing nothing of the affair, was taken by surprise, sire.’ His hand went involuntarily to the bruise on his chin. ‘The prisoner struck me down, sire, before I was aware, and when I came to myself I was gagged and bound upon the floor. The prisoner put on him my hat and cloak, my insignia of the Golden Fleece, my sword, and thus disguised, sire, went down to the coach that waited to take me to the house of a friend. My lieutenant, suspecting some mischief, sent after the coach hotfoot, but when the guards came up with it the prisoner had vanished.’

Silence fell. The lids dropped over Philip's eyes, hiding whatever chagrin or anger he might be feeling. After a pause he
raised them again. It was characteristic of him that he chose to dwell upon one of the smaller points of the matter. ‘This would seem to show that he is El Beauvallet, by his own confession,’ he said weightily.

‘Sire, the prisoner spoke his name out boldly to me. He said, sire, when he took my sword from me, that I might keep his in exchange, and boast that I was the only man who ever took aught from El Beauvallet against his will.’

There was another pause. ‘He must be captured,’ said the King at length, and struck a silver handbell at his side.

‘Remembering, sire, that he has no money wherewith to buy him a horse, and must therefore be hiding in Madrid, I sent at once to Fermosa to request him to search the town.’

Philip inclined his head. ‘You did well, señor.’

A man came in, and stood attentively at the King's elbow. Philip was already writing a laborious memorandum. His pen moved unhurriedly. He remarked without raising his eyes from the paper: ‘Yet so desperate a man as this might not hesitate to steal a horse. A runner must be sent to the Frontier.’

From what he had seen of Beauvallet, Don Cristobal did not think that he would hesitate for a moment. ‘With submission, sire, I would suggest that a runner be sent to the ports, in especial Vigo and Santander.’

‘Runners will be sent at once,’ said Philip calmly, ‘to all the ports with orders to the Alcaldes to apprehend this man. But we shall do well to remember, Don Cristobal, that we have to do with one who has evil arts at command.’

Whatever doubts Don Cristobal might cherish as to Beauvallet's supposed wizardry he merely bowed his head respectfully.

Father Allen, until now a silent listener over against the window, came forward. ‘Your Majesty has forgotten that there is the servant to be reckoned with.’

The King's brain did not work fast, but it never forgot. ‘The servant fled, Father,’ he said positively.

Father Allen bowed. ‘So we were led to believe, sire.’

Philip had to digest this. A shade of annoyance crossed his face. ‘I cannot think that I have been well-served in this,’ he said, and motioned to the secretary to write at his dictation.

The various despatches were at last ready; messengers were to ride to the Frontier, and to any port of size. Through the length and breadth of Spain would run the news that a famous pirate was at large. Philip leaned back in his chair with a thin-lipped smile of satisfaction. ‘He will run into a net,’ he said with unwonted urbanity. ‘We shall presently draw the strings tight.’

This was all very well, but there were others who did not share the King's optimism. Perinat, when he heard next day of the escape, fairly danced with mortification, and predicted disaster to the awestruck circle.

‘To hold him and let him slip through the fingers!’ raved Perinat. ‘He should have been shackled and handcuffed, and never left! What do you know of him? Nothing! I knew, ah, I knew! but I was not heeded. Oh devil and fiend! oh warlock, you are away yet once again!’

Noveli cut into this impassioned outburst. ‘He cannot get away. Every port will be stopped, and none allowed to set sail on any vessel. The Frontier will be barred before he can reach it, and even if it were not you forget that he has no pass.’

Perinat pointed a prophetic finger. ‘You may stop the ports, you may bar the Frontier, but he will slip through your guards, and laugh at you as he does so! Ah, to have had him, and to let him go!’ His fierce gaze swept the group. ‘The ports! the Frontier! Why came he into Spain? Heard you not the true reason from Carvalho's lips? Where is Dona Dominica de Rada?’

‘Why, on the road to Vasconosa,’ said someone. ‘But –’

‘Then let the King send there for him!’ said Perinat. ‘And still he will be too late! The villain's away, I tell you!’

Another gentleman came to join the group, one whose eyes were restless and uneasy, and whose fingers twitched rather nervously. Don Rodriguez de Carvalho, on whom the news had fallen like a thunderbolt, was in a sorry case. Sharing to the full the popular dread of El Beauvallet, he did not know what to do. He feared for his son's life, he feared for his niece's safety, and he dared not divulge Beauvallet's probable destination for fear of implicating Dominica, and seeing her and her wealth swallowed up by the Holy Inquisition. He came now, fussy and fidgetting, to hear what was being said of the escape, and was in time to catch Perinat's last words.

Perinat pounced on him at once. ‘Ah, in a good hour, Carvalho! Tell me, will not this pirate be after your niece?’

Don Rodriguez looked startled. He stammered: ‘I do not think it – I cannot suppose it. She was resolute in denying him. Maybe we mistake – what should El Beauvallet hope to make in Spain?’

‘He is self-declared,’ interposed Aranda. ‘That evening when I first met him he dared to speak his own name! Do you remember, Losa? He said that if El Beauvallet stood where he stood then he would still laugh. What impudence! What daring! One gasps at it.’

Perinat, obsessed by the one idea, brushed this aside. ‘You waste time! The King should be told of this. It is for you, Carvalho, to warn him.’

Don Rodriguez hesitated and was lost. ‘If you think it wise, señors… But I cannot agree with you. I cannot suppose that my niece would suffer him. She is headstrong indeed, but she does not forget – in short, señors, if El Beauvallet seeks her indeed it is against her will.’

‘Against her will when she declared she knew him not?’ burst out Perinat. ‘The girl's besotted!’

Losa lifted a finger to silence Perinat. ‘I think that the King should be told that Dona Dominica de Rada is on her way to Vasconosa, and that El Beauvallet may well be on her heels,’ he said.

‘Well, señor, well… If you do not think it is to waste his Majesty's time,’ Don Rodriguez said unhappily.

He went to the King, and found Don Cristobal de Porres there, announcing failure to find El Beauvallet in Madrid. He blurted out his mission as best he could, and was at pains to tell the King that he himself was no believer in the wild tale.

Philip gave it his slow consideration. The first thing he said was: ‘If this is so it casts grave doubts on Dona Dominica's faith. This must be looked into. Why was I not told that Dona Dominica had left Madrid?’

Don Rodriguez made haste to say that he had come with the news the instant he had heard of El Beauvallet's escape.

Followed a lengthy conference. Slowly, methodically Philip pieced the whole thing together in his careful head, and when that was done turned to Porres, who was fretting to set matters in train. ‘We shall entrust this charge to you, señor,’ he said.

Don Cristobal bowed. ‘I thank your Majesty. I will have a party ride north at once. Give me leave to withdraw, sire!’

Philip waved him away; the Governor kissed his hand, went out sedately backwards, but once clear of the King's closet wasted no time.

A party of guards was despatched within half an hour, with orders to spare neither themselves nor their horses, but at all costs to reach Vasconosa ahead of El Beauvallet. Changes of horses they must have, and could get easily enough at the various post-stages; or if none were to be had there they were on the King's business, and might commandeer what mounts they pleased. Cruza, burning to capture the man who had slipped so easily through his fingers, was sent in charge of
the little party, and swore to bring the pirate back in bonds. There would be little rest allowed to Cruza's men on this wild ride north.

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