Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

He would have poured out the gold pieces into the old man’s hand until his purse was empty, but a sense of prudence restrained him. Already one or two people had stopped and were gazing at him curiously. In a moment a crowd would be about him, and after that — question would lead to question.

  He dropped one piece of gold into the beggar’s hand, and, stooping as he did so, he said in a low voice:

  “I will see you again, after nightfall.”

  The cripple on the steps looked up curiously, and for the first time Robin saw his face. It was hollow and discoloured and ravaged, the bleared eyes sunk in black caverns, the neck seamed and piteously thin. A white beard patched his jaws. Every furrow in it was incrusted with dirt. It was a face so shrunken, so squalid, that Robin had never seen the like of it. But it was his father’s.

  For a few seconds he was giddy. The church, the steps, the people, the beggar crouching at his feet whirled about him. He had to close his eyes and clench his hands in a terror lest he should fall. When he opened them again the old man was still peering at him curiously. The son might know the father, for after all he searched for him, but how should those dim eyes know the son, whom he had last seen as a child, in this slim young gallant speaking to him Spanish with the accent of Italy?

  “I must see you tonight,” said Robin. “Where do you live?”

  “In a hut at the end of the Calle des Forcas.”

  “I shall find it. Expect me at eight.”

  The old man’s head was lowered, and hidden again beneath the hood. But Robin heard his voice.

  “I am alone and old. I am miserably poor, as Your Excellency sees, but I am afraid.”

  “I shall not come to hurt you,” said Robin very gently.

  “I do not fear you, sir. But the place is unsafe. I must have a name before I open.”

  “Very well.” Robin stooped a little lower. It would never do in this crowd of people to speak his own true name. He dreaded the effect it might have upon his father, the questions which would follow. “I shall speak my name to you through the door — but very quietly, as I do now.” And the name followed faint as a breath:

  “Carlo Manucci.”

  George Aubrey, since George Aubrey it was, remained with his face hidden under his hood, so that Robin wondered whether he had caught the name.

  “You hear me?” he asked.

  The old man nodded.

  “I heard you.”

  “And you will open your door tonight?”

  “I will open, young sir.”

  Robin went straight on up the steps, and as he mingled with the others he heard the thin quavering voice take up again its pitiful cry:

  “Alms for the love of God! Alms, kind people, for the poor.”

  He entered the church, passed as quickly as he could without the appearance of hurry along the aisles to a door on the south side, crossed the square, and by streets different from those by which he had come returned to Figliazzi’s house. There he sent for Giacomo Ferranti and bade him buy a mule and a saddle for it, and an outfit of good clothes, such as would fit the shrunken form of George Aubrey.

  With these and their own two horses and a day’s food he was to wait from half-past eight at the corner where the road to Segovia meets the street of Manzanares. Madrid was not a walled town, and Robin’s plan was to ride southwards to Alcazar as quickly as his father’s weakness allowed, make thence with greater comfort for Alicante and take ship to Italy. It would be slow travelling at the first, but as his father regained something of his old strength the small party would move with a greater freedom.

  While Robin made his plans the beggar still crouched on the steps of the Church of Our Lady of Almudena and stretched out a skeleton’s arm with a prayer for charity; and just before noon a priest in a black robe stopped in front of him.

  “Alms for the love of God,” the beggar wailed. “I have news for you, Father. Alms for the love of the Virgin.”

  The priest looked down at him contemptuously.

  “It is high time. Little good we have ever got for all our gentleness and pity.”

  “I have seen him, Father.”

  “Whom have you seen?”

  “Carlo Manucci.”

  The priest started, and a light glittered in his eyes suddenly, a light of fierce joy.

  “Point him out to me, my son!”

  The beggar shook his head.

  “It was two hours ago when he stopped and gave me a gold piece. See it, Father, see it!”

  “Two hours ago and you raised no cry. You let him go!” cried the priest angrily.

  “Nay, Father,” the beggar whined. “If I had cried out he would have gone on the instant. He is young, rich, a fine young gallant. I did better, Father,” and the terror in his voice and his cowering pose were slavish and horrible — so dread a story it told of persecution and cruelty.

  “Better? Let me hear,” and the man in the black cassock stirred him disdainfully with the toe of his buckled shoe.

  “He is coming to my hovel tonight. At eight o’clock. Father! Pity the poor cripple at the altar’s foot!” This to a compassionate passer-by, who dropped a copper coin into his hand and passed on. “Be not too quick, Father! The place is open. If he sees you watching and a party of officers he won’t come. You’ll lose him. He seeks me out of pity, Father. My wounds and my poverty moved him. He is kind of heart, Father,” and the old man tittered and giggled to insinuate himself into his master’s good graces. “Be not in too great a hurry, Father. My sad story will hold him, I promise you.”

  The Father thrust out his lower lip.

  “You are not deceiving me?”

  “I dare not.”

  The Father smiled.

  “No. For there’s still a stake in the Quemadero, my son, which waits for a husband. He told you so easily his name?”

  “Not easily, Father —— For the love of Our Lady of Almudena, Señor, pity! — I thought that it might be he before he spoke his name.”

  “Why?”

  “He spoke Spanish with the accent of Italy.”

  The other nodded his head.

  “Yes. That was in the description.”

  “I pressed him for his name, Father. I dared not open without it,” and again he giggled. “He whispered it . . . Carlo Manucci. I give him into your hands, Father . . . Carlo Manucci. Tonight you shall have him, Father. Carlo Manucci.” And again the thin arm went out and the piping voice quavered out:

  “For the love of God, gentlemen. God will repay. God loves the charitable.”

  The priest turned down the steps again and mounted the hill to what is now the Square of San Domingo. But then it was the home of the Holy Inquisition.

  CHAPTER XXVIII. George Aubrey

  THE CALLE DES FORCAS lay in the squalid and noisome quarter of the town to the southeast of the Church of Our Lady of Almudena. The houses were decayed, the gardens unkempt warrens with broken hedges where a few sickly vegetables provided food for vermin; and even in the daytime the air had a damp, unwholesome taint which smelt of fever and disease. At night mists from the river Manzanares at the back of the quarter crept and writhed into the alleys and dripped with the patter of rain from the branches of the stunted trees.

  Robin had lived in a fever of impatience throughout the day, and he reached the mouth of the lane half an hour before his time. He wore high closely fitting boots on his legs and a dark cloak over his dress, and he carried a second cloak over his arm to protect and disguise his father upon their flight. Three tumbledown houses with shuttered windows and not a ray of light glimmering through any chink faced another three like to them at the narrow entrance. Even on a clear night like this night of April, when dirt is hidden and the ugliness of ruin smoothed, they had a daunting and sinister aspect. Robin stood still and listened. From far away, cries, the grating of wheels and the blended murmurs of a city reached his ears. But here a silence so complete enfolded him that a breath of wind rustling through the leaves was as startling as a pistol shot. />
  “At all events I have not been followed,” he reflected, and he stepped cautiously into the mouth of the alley.

  But however lightly he walked the ground was so littered with broken pots and fragments of iron that now and then he stumbled, now and then some old piece of earthenware cracked beneath his boots. Beyond the houses the lane widened a little. A few trees, broken remnants of wall and ragged hedges lined it on either side and added to the darkness. Robin blundered along it and came at last to a hut at the end which closed it in. He felt along the boards until he found the door and rapped gently upon it.

  There was a sound within of someone moving clumsily, then a voice spoke low and anxiously — the old man’s voice without the whine.

  “Who is it?”

  Robin put his mouth against the panel.

  “Carlo Manucci.”

  “Wait!”

  A heavy key was turned in a lock, a bar lifted from its socket. Robin could hear the straining breath, the rattle of the wood as the palsied hands lifted it. George Aubrey!

  “Oh, be quick,” he whispered, and at the sound of that whisper took a hold upon himself. There would be a time for pity afterwards. The door was drawn open inwards a little way, enough for a feeble light to show and for Robin to slip through.

  It was a fetid kennel which he entered. One smoking candle stuck with its own tallow to a ledge lit it dimly, the flame wavering in the draughts of air. A filthy pallet of old straw in a tattered covering was stretched upon the boards; a wooden stool stood beside it, and by the side of the stool an earthenware platter with some broken food in it and a jug of water. There was no other furniture in the room. High up in one of the walls a small unglazed window let in the rain when it fell and a twilight no doubt by day. And this bent creature before him with the wrecked body was his father. He lived here and had lived here these many years, he who had built and owned Abbot’s Gap, with all its dainty loveliness.

  “Latch the door, good sir,” he croaked, and Robin turned, latched it and locked it and set the bar again in its sockets. When he looked back the old man was whimpering in terror.

  “Why do you lock the door? No one will come. You have seen no one coming? What harm do you mean me?”

  He had shrunk away, with his arms uplifted to receive a blow. Robin let the cloaks which he carried fall to the floor and stood forward.

  “None! How could I mean you harm, my Father?” and he spoke slowly and very gently and in English.

  The sound of the words affected the old man rather than their sense. He dropped his arms. He had the air of someone hearing again an old tune which had pleased him long ago.

  “That’s English,” he said with a wandering smile, and he beat time to it in the air with his finger.

  “Yes, my Father, your own tongue.”

  Old Aubrey’s brows came down in a frown.

  “You mustn’t call me Father,” he said with a suppressed dull rancour in his voice. “I am no priest. I call no man my son.”

  “Except me,” said Robin.

  Suddenly the beggar was afraid of what he had said, of the hatred in his voice.

  “No, not you. I dare not. Only the great ones speak of my son and torture him afterwards,” and he fell back upon his whine. “I am a poor beggar. Alms for the love of God — —”

  Robin broke in upon him sick at heart and unable to endure the obsequious cringing prayer.

  “Look at me. Who am I?”

  “Carlo Manucci,” and he tittered very cunningly. “Before you spoke your name I knew it.”

  “How so?”

  “You spoke Spanish with the accent of Italy.”

  Yes, yes — Robin did. He knew it, he had said so, he had written it. But how did his father know? And then he understood — or thought he understood.

  “Then of course you know me,” he said with a laugh. “You are playing with me, Father.”

  “You are Carlo Manucci.”

  “And I learnt Spanish with the accent of Italy riding with you, my Father, on the Purbeck Hills. Up from Abbot’s Gap to the beacon — you remember the beacon always ready with dry brushwood and its tar barrel. Up there, my Father, with Warbarrow Bay beneath us on the one side and Wareham on the plain beneath us on the other, you taught me Spanish with the accent of Italy.”

  Robin had dwelt upon the names and underlined them with the accent of his voice for his own sake — so distant and visionary did those places seem in the sordid misery of this hut. But on this old bemused and broken man they worked more slowly. The names had a vague music for him: Abbot’s Gap — Warbarrow Bay — Wareham on the plain — faint melodies heard in dreams, oh, so long ago. The tears burst from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks before ever he began to wonder how this youth had heard of them. But he did begin to wonder. He snatched up the candle, and, holding it with trembling fingers, he approached Robin.

  “You are Carlo Manucci,” he said stubbornly, angrily.

  “I am Robin Aubrey, your son.”

  “Robin!” The name broke from his lips in a cry. “No! No!” he screamed in a high thin voice. “It’s a trick, a trick to save yourself. But it’s played too late,” and he chuckled, he actually chuckled with a malice which Robin understood no better than he understood his words.

  Robin made no answer in speech. He unbuttoned his doublet and took from about his neck a fine gold chain on which a signet ring was threaded.

  “You gave me this, sir, the night before you went away on your last travels with the Precepts of Cato in your baggage. I have carried it thus ever since.”

  He held out the chain to his father, who shrank from it and then snatched at it with the hand which was free and held it close to his dim eyes, turning it over between his fingers and his thumb — until at last he was sure.

  “Yes,” he said to himself rather than to his son, and for the first time he spoke in English. “My ring.” Then he lifted the candle again to Robin’s face.

  “Robin!” he whispered. “Robin!”

  He would have fallen but for Robin’s arm about his waist. The boy took the candle from his father’s hand and set his father on the stool and held him against his heart, comforting him as a mother might comfort a child.

  “Robin.” The old man’s fingers crept upwards, touched his cheeks, his hair, flattened themselves against his chest, seemed for a moment to draw a strength from the strong young shoulders. “Robin!”

  “Yes, Robin,” said the boy, laughing. “Sit there, Father, or we’ll have the house on fire.”

  He stood up, melted again some tallow upon the ledge and held the candle in it till it set. He turned about again to see his father’s face quivering with anguish and his eyes staring at him with a dreadful fear.

  “You must go, Robin,” he whispered with his fingers plucking at his lips, “at once! You must break through the gardens.”

  “We shall both go.”

  George Aubrey shook his head impatiently.

  “I who must crawl on my body to the cathedral!” And as he looked at his son, limber and supple and beautiful, a cry of agony broke from him. “Go, boy Robin, before they make you what they have made me.”

  Robin picked up the cloak which he had brought for his father.

  “I shall carry you, sir. What Æneas could do, that can I,” he said with a laugh. “And we have not so far to go.”

  “Too far, Robin! Wait! I’ll see that the way is clear.” He limped with a sideways wrench of his body as though at each movement he had to lift himself along. But Robin set his hand gently upon his father’s shoulder and stayed him.

  It was plain to him that his father was distraught by his unexpected coming.

  “Both of us,” he said. “Oh, I have been clever! I have made such fine plans for our escape. I have taken such care that none should suspect us.” And suddenly George Aubrey was wringing his hands.

  “Oh, Robin, why did you come?”

  “I came for you! Walsingham had a letter years ago. Until I was grown up t
here was no one he could send on such an errand.”

  “Grown up!” the old man lamented with a protesting cackle. “You’re a boy, Robin. But they shan’t cripple and torment you and disfigure you as they did me. You shall go.”

  “Both of us,” Robin repeated; and, seeing his father’s face set in a kind of sullen obstinacy, he sat himself down on the stool. “Or neither.”

  He had not undergone his service in the employment of Santa Cruz to be baulked of its reward. He had not come at last to his father to leave him in his degradation and misery. The elder man had lived for such long years with fear to fill his waking thoughts and fear for the substance of his dreams, that he saw danger and torture even in the quiet of the night. What! With Giacomo and the two horses and the mule for his father waiting in the darkness by the riverbank not half a mile away? What! With himself unknown, his father clothed, the road clear and money in his purse, give in, run away, and let George Aubrey crawl back tomorrow to the cathedral steps and crawl back again at nightfall to this hovel?

  “Or neither,” he repeated.

  A curious change came over George Aubrey. He straightened himself a little. There came a light in his eyes, a smile upon his lips. Robin saw a small spark suddenly kindled of that bright spirit which had once made his father his joyous companion.

  “Both, then,” said George Aubrey eagerly. “But my way, Robin. You’re my boy, aren’t you? You must do what I say. That’s the law, isn’t it? That your days may be long in the land. Yes. You must kill me and go. But be quick, Robin,” and he turned his head to listen.

  Then he dropped upon his knees at Robin’s side and prayed for him with folded hands:

  “Take your sword from its sheath.”

  And he fumbled with his twisted fingers at the hilt of the sword. “See how easily it slips upward from its scabbard. I shall die as easily, Robin. Through the heart here,” and he bared his breast. “Feel! It hardly beats even now. A touch and it will stop.”

  Robin put his arm about his father’s shoulders and, lifting him, placed him on the stool and stood before him.

  “Nay, you shall never kneel to me.”