The Firebrand Part 5

Of the various potencies and pre-eminences of Montblanch, civil and ecclesiastical, there was no end. A hundred villages owned its lordship.

The men were serfs, the women handmaids. Soul and body they were bound to their masters of the monastery of Montblanch. Without permission they dared neither to wed nor to bury, neither to increase nor to multiply, to lay the bride on the bride-bed nor the corpse upon the bier.

Nor, to thrill the listener's blood, were darker tales awanting, whispered with a quiver of the flesh, as men crouched closer about the glowing charcoal pan, and women glanced fearfully out between the green lattice strips at the twinkling lights of the Abbey, set high above them under the silent stars.

It was said, not openly indeed, but rather with an awestruck lowering of the voice and fearful glances to right and left, that when the inquisition was done away with in the Spain of the cities and provinces, the chiefs of the Holy Office had found a last place of refuge beneath the grey rocks of Montblanch, and that whoso offended against the monks of the mountain, or refused to them flock or herd, son or daughter, sooner or later entered the doors of the monastery never to be visible again in the light of day.

So at least ran the tale, and as the two young men made their way upward from San Vicencio, by the mountain path beside which the stream brattled and sulked alternate, Rollo Blair told these things to the Englishman as one who half believed them.

"It is not possible," answered the latter scornfully; "this is no century in which such things can be done. Has civilisation not reached as far as Aragon? Who talks of the rack and the inquisition at this time of day?"

The young Scot halted a st.u.r.dy peasant who came whistling down the path, a bundle of tough reed stems over his shoulder.

"Did you ever hear of the black room of the monastery of Montblanch?" he said, pinching the man's blue overall between finger and thumb.

The sunburnt Aragonese crossed himself and was silent.

"Speak, have you heard?"

The other nodded, and made with his digits that "fig of Spain" which averts the evil eye; but under his loose blouse half furtively as if ashamed of his precaution.

"I have heard!" he said, and was silent.

"Do you wish to enter it?" said Rollo.

"G.o.d forbid!" quoth the man with conviction.

"And why?" pursued the Scot, wishful to make his point.

"Because of those who go in thither, no one ever comes out."

The man, having thus spoken, hastened to betake himself out of sight, his feet, shod with sandals of esparto gra.s.s, pad-padding from side to side of the narrow mountain path.

"You see," said Rollo Blair, "mine uncle, reverend man, is no favourite in his own district."

It was now drawing towards evening, and the rich orange glow characteristic of northern Iberia deepened behind the hills, while the bushes of the wayside grew indistinct and took on mysterious shapes on either side.

"My object in coming to Spain is simple," said the Englishman, of whom his companion had asked a question. "Before my father retires and confides to me his spinning mills at Chorley, he stipulates that I shall make by my own exertions a clear profit of a thousand pounds. I, on my part, have agreed neither to marry nor to return till I can do so with a thousand pounds thus acquired in my hand. I thought I could make it as easily in the wine business as in any other of which I had no knowledge.

And so, here I am!" concluded the young man.

"Lord," cried Blair, "if my father had insisted on any such conditions with me, he would have made me a wandering Jew for life, and a perpetual bachelor to boot! A thousand pounds! Great Saint Andrew, I would as soon think of getting to heaven by my own merits!"

"Spoken like an excellent Calvinist!" cried the Englishman. "But how came you into this country, and can you in any way a.s.sist me in the buying of good vintages, out of which I may chance to make profit?

Besides the firm's credit, I have a private capital of one hundred pounds, of which at present eight or nine are in a friend's hands!"

"Good Lord!" cried the Scot, "then I by my folly have put you by so much farther from your happiness. But of course you have a sweetheart waiting for you on your return?"

"I have yet to see the woman I would give a bra.s.s farthing to marry, or for whose mess of connubial pottage I would sell my good bachelor's birthright."

"Fegs," said Rollo Blair, gazing with admiration upon his shorter companion, and, as was his wont when excited, relapsing into dialect, "the shoe has aye pinched the ither foot wi' me, my lad. No to speak o'

Peggy Ramsay, I think I hae been disappointed by as mony as a round dozen o' la.s.ses since I shook off the dust o' the Lang Toon o'

Kirkcaldy."

"Disappointed?" queried his companion, "how so, man? Did you not please the maids?"

"Oh, aye, it wasna that," returned the squire of Fife, taking his companion's arm confidentially; "the la.s.ses, to do justice to their good taste, were maistly willing eneuch. There's something aboot a lang man like me that tak's them, the craiturs, and I hae a way o' my ain wi'

them, though I never gat mair schooling than my father could thrash into me wi' a dog whip. But the fact is that aye afore the thing gaed far eneuch, I cam to words wi' some brither or faither o' the la.s.s, and maybe put a knife into him, or as it were an ounce o' lead, I wadna wonder--to improve his logic."

"In other words you are quarrelsome?" said Mortimer shortly.

The Scot removed his hand from the Englishman's arm and drew himself to his full height.

"There" he said, "I beg to take issue with you, sir! Argumentative I may be, and it is my nature, but to the man who flings it in my teeth that I am of a quarrelsome disposition, I have but one answer. Sir, receive my card!"

And with great gravity he pulled from his pocket an ancient card-case of damaged silver, bulged and dinted out of all shape, opened it, and burst into a loud laugh.

"I declare I have not one left! I spent them all on those Aragonese dogs down there, who thought, I daresay, that they were soup tickets on the _frailuchos'_ kitchen up above. And anyway it is heaven's own truth, I _am_ a quarrelsome, ungrateful dog! But forgive me, Mr. Mortimer, it is my nature, and at any rate it does not last long. I am not yet of those 'that age and sullens have,' as my father used to say. A desperate wise man my father, and well read! I would have learned more from him if I had not preferred Sergeant McPherson and the stables, to the study and my father's Malacca cane about my shoulders each time I made a false quant.i.ty."

"But you have not answered my question," said the Englishman. "I am here to buy wines. I am above all anxious to take over to England some thousand hectolitres of the famous Priorato of Montblanch, and any other vintages that will suit the English market."

"But how on a hundred pounds can you expect to do so much?" asked the Scot, with an unlooked-for exhibition of native caution.

"Oh, I have enough credit for anything that I may buy on account of the firm. The hundred is my own private venture, and it struck me that with your command of the language and my knowledge of business, we might be able to ship some Spanish wines to the Thames on very favourable terms.

I should of course be glad to pay you the usual commission."

"Vintages and commissions and shipments are so much Greek to me," said Rollo Blair; "but if I can do anything to lessen the weight of obligement under which you have placed me, you can count on my services.

I am scarce such a fool as my tongue and temper make me out sometimes!

You are the only man alive I have tried to pick a quarrel with and failed."

"I think we shall do very well together yet," said Mortimer; "the usual commission is five per cent, on all transactions up to a hundred pounds--above that, seven and a half."

"d.a.m.n you and your commissions, sir," cried Blair, hotly. "Did I not tell you I would do my best, on the honour of a Scottish gentleman!"

"Very likely," returned the other, dryly; "but I have always found the benefit of a clear and early understanding between partners."

They had been gradually ascending the narrow path which wound through clumps of rosemary, broom, thyme, and bay-tree laurel to a sheltered little plain, much of it occupied by enclosed gardens and the vast white buildings of the monastery itself.

The moon, almost full but with a shaving off its right-hand side which kept it a full hour late, shone behind the two adventurers as they stood still a moment to take in the scene.

Pallid limestone pinnacles rose high into serene depths of indigo, in which the stars twinkled according to their size and pre-eminence, nearer and farther, gradually retiring into infinite s.p.a.ce. In the clefts high up were black tufts of trees, that seemed from below like so many gooseberry bushes. A kind of three days' stubble of beard covered the plain itself right up to the monastery wall, while here and there was heard the continuous tinkle of many goat bells as the leaders alternately strayed and cropped the herbage between the boulders.

Stretching from side to side was the white abbey, not so much imposing for architectural beauty, but because of its vast size, its t.i.tanic retaining walls and mult.i.tude of windows, now mere splashed oblongs of darkness irregularly scattered along the white walls. Only at one end the chapel was lit up, and from its windows of palest gold, and Madonna blue, and ruby red, came the sweet voices of children beginning to sing the evening hymn as it stands in the Breviary for the use of the faithful in the arch-diocese of Tarragona--

"Rosasque miscens liliis.

Aram vetustam contegit."