CHAPTER XXVI
AT THE FORD"They will allow two nuns to pass anywhere," said Sor Teresa with herchilling smile as she led the way to her own cell in the corridoroverhead. She provided Juanita with that dress which is a passportthrough any quarter of a town, across any frontier; to any battlefield.So Juanita took the veil at last--in order to return to Marcos.
Sor Teresa's words proved true enough at the city gates where thesentinels recognised her and allowed her carriage to pass across thedrawbridge by a careless nod of acquiescence to the driver.
It was a clear dark night without a moon. The prevailing wind whichhurries down from the Pyrenees to the warmer plains of Spain stirred thebudding leaves of the trees that border the road below the town walls.
"I suppose," said Sor Teresa suddenly, "that Evasio Mon was at TorreGarda to-day."
"Yes."
"And you left him there when you came away."
"Yes."
"We shall meet him on the road," said Sor Teresa with a note of anxietyin her voice. Presently she stood up in the carriage which was an openone on high wheels and spoke to the driver in a low voice into his ear.He was a stout and respectable man with a good ecclesiastical clientelein the pious capital of Navarre. He had a confidential manner.
The distant firing had ceased now and a great stillness reigned over thebare land. There are no trees here to harbour birds or to rustle in thewind. The man, nursing his horses for the long journey, drove at an easypace. Juanita, usually voluble enough, seemed to have nothing to say toSor Teresa. The driver could possibly overhear the conversation of hispassengers. For this, or for another reason, Sor Teresa was silent.
As they approached the hills, they found themselves in a more brokencountry. They climbed and descended with a rather irritating regularity.The spurs of the Pyrenees keep their form right down to the plains andthe road to Torre Garda passes over them. Juanita leant sideways out ofthe carnage and stared upwards into the pine trees.
"Do you see anything?" asked Sor Teresa.
"No--I can see nothing."
"There is a chapel up there, on the slope."
"Our Lady of the Shadows," answered Juanita and lapsed into silenceagain. She knew now why the name had struck her with such foreboding,when she had learnt it from the lips of the laughing young captain ofinfantry.
It told of calamity--the greatest that can happen to a woman--to bemarried without love.
The driver turned in his seat and tried to overhear. He seemed uneasy andlooked about him with quick turns of the head. At last, when his horseswere mounting a hill, he turned round.
"Did these sainted ladies hear anything?" he asked.
"No," answered Sor Teresa. "Why do you ask?"
"There has been a man on horseback on the road behind us," he answeredwith assumed carelessness, "all the way from Pampeluna. He has now takena short cut and is in front on the road above us; I can hear him; that isall."
And he gave a little cry to his horses; the signal for them to trot. Theywere approaching the mouth of the Valley of the Wolf, and could hear thesound of its wild waters in the darkness below them. The valley opens outlike a fan with either slope rising at an easy angle to the pine woods.The road is a cornice cut on the western bank upon which side it runs forten miles until the bridge below the village of Torre Garda leads itacross the river to the sunny slope where the village crouches below theancient castle from which the name is taken.
The horses were going at a walking pace now, and the driver to show,perhaps, his nonchalance and fearlessness was humming a song beneath hisbreath, when suddenly the hillside burst into flame and a deafening roarof musketry stunned both horses and driver. Juanita happened to belooking up at the hillside and she saw the fire run along like a snake offlame in the grass. In a moment the carriage had swung round and thehorses were going at a gallop down the hill again. The driver stood up.He had a rein in either hand and he hauled the horses round eachsuccessive corner with consummate skill. All the while he used languagewhich would have huddled Cousin Peligros shrieking in the bottom of thecarriage.
Juanita and Sor Teresa stood up and looked back. By the light of thefiring they saw a man lying low on his horse's neck galloping headlongthrough the zone of death after them.
"Did you hear the bullets?" said Juanita breathlessly. "They were likethe wind through the telegraph-wires. Oh, I should like to be a man; Ishould like to be a soldier!"
And she gave a low laugh of thrilling excitement.
The driver was now pulling up his horses. He too laughed aloud.
"It is the troops," he cried. "They thought we were the Carlists. But,who is this, Senoras? It is that man again."
He leant back and hastily twisted one of the carriage-lamps round in itssocket so as to show a light behind him towards the newcomer.
As the rider pulled up he came within the rays of the lamp which was apowerful one; and at the sight of him Juanita gave a sharp cry whichneither she nor any that heard it forgot to the end of their lives.
"It is Marcos," she cried, clutching Sor Teresa's arm. "And he camethrough that--he came through that!"
"No one hurt?" asked Marcos' deep voice.
"No one hurt, Senor," answered the driver who had recognised him.
"And the horses?"
"The horses are safe. A malediction upon them; they nearly had us overthe cliff. Those are the troops. They took us for Carlists."
"No," said Marcos. "They are the Carlists. The troops have been drivenfarther up the valley where they are entrenched. They have sent toPampeluna for help. This is a Carlist trap to catch the reinforcements asthey approach. They thought your carriage was a gun."
The driver scratched his head and made known his views as to theancestory of the Carlists.
"There is no getting into the valley to-night," said Marcos to Sor Teresaand Juanita. "You must return to Pampeluna."
"And what will you do?" asked Juanita in a hard voice.
"I will go on to Torre Garda on foot," answered Marcos speaking in Frenchso that the driver should not hear and understand. "There is a way overthe mountains which is known to two or three only."
"Uncle Ramon is at Torre Garda?" asked Juanita in the same curt, quickway.
"Yes."
"Then I will go with you," she said with her hand already on the door.
"It is sixteen miles," said Marcos, "over the high mountains. The lastpart can only be done by daylight. I shall be in the mountains allnight."
Juanita had opened the door. She stood on the step looking up at him ashe sat on the tall black horse,
"If you will take me," she said in French, "I will come with you."
Sor Teresa was silent still. She had not spoken since Marcos had pulledup his sweating horse in the lamplight. What a simple world this would beif more of its women knew when to hold their tongues!
Marcos, fresh from a bed of sickness was not fit to undertake thisjourney. He must already be tired out; for she knew that it was Marcoswho had followed their carriage from Pampeluna. She guessed that findingno troops where he expected to find them he had ridden ahead to discoverthe cause of it and had passed unheard through the Carlist ambush andback again through the zone of fire. That Juanita could accomplish thejourney on foot to Torre Garda seemed doubtful. The country was unsafe;the snows had hardly melted. It was madness for a wounded man and a girlto attempt to reach Torre Garda through a pass held by the enemy. But SorTeresa said nothing.
Marcos sat motionless in the saddle. His face was above the radius of thereversed carriage-lamp, while Juanita standing on the dusty road in hernun's dress looking up at him, was close to the glaring light. It is tobe presumed that he was watching her descend from the carriage and thenturn to shut the door on Sor Teresa. By his silence, Marcos seemed toconsent to this arrangement.
He came forward into the light now. In his hand he held a paper which hewas unfolding. Juanita recognised the letter she had written to him inthe drawing-room at Torre Garda. He tore the bla
nk sheet off and foldingthe letter closely, replaced it in his pocket. Then he laid the blanksheet on the dusty splash-board of the carriage and wrote a few words inpencil.
"You must get back to Pampeluna," he said to the driver in that tone ofcommand which is the only survival of feudal days now left in Europe--andeven the modern Spaniards are losing it--"at any cost--you understand. Ifyou meet the reinforcements on the road give this note to the commandingofficer. Take no denial; give it into his own hand. If you meet no troopsgo straight to the house of the commandant at Pampeluna and give theletter to him. You will see that it is done," he said in a lower voice,turning to Sor Teresa.
The man protested that nothing short of death would prevent his carryingout the instructions.
"It will be worth your while," said Marcos. "It will be rememberedafterwards."
He paused deep in thought. There were a hundred things to be consideredat that moment; quickly and carefully. For he was going into the Valleyof the Wolf, cut off from all the world by two armies watching each otherwith a deadly hatred.
The quiet voice of Sor Teresa broke the silence, softly taking its placein his thoughts. It seemed that the Sarrion brain had the power--thesecret of so much success in this world--of thrusting forth a sure andsteady hand to grasp the heart of a question and tear it from the tangleof side-issues among which the majority of men and women are condemned toflounder.
"Where is Evasio Mon?" she asked.
Marcos answered with a low, contented laugh.
"He is trapped in the valley," he said in French. "I have seen to that."
The firing had ceased as suddenly as it had commenced, and a silence onlybroken by the voice of the river, now hung over the valley.
"Are you ready?" Sor Teresa asked her driver.
"Yes, Excellency."
"Then go."
She may have nodded a farewell to Marcos and Juanita. But that they couldnot see in the blackness of the night. She certainly gave them no spokensalutation. The carriage moved away at a sharp trot, leaving Marcos andJuanita alone.
"We can ride some distance and must ford the river higher up," saidMarcos at once. He did not seem to want any explanation. The excitementof the moment seemed to have wiped out the events of the last few monthslike writing off a slate. Juanita was young again, ready to throw herselfheadlong into an adventure in the mountains with Marcos such as they hadhad together many times during the holidays. But this was better than thedangers of mere snow and ice. For Juanita had tasted that highest ofemotions, the excitement of battle. She had heard that which some menhaving once heard cannot live without, the siren song of a bullet.
"Are we going nearer to the Carlists?" she asked hurriedly. There wasfighting blood in her veins, and the tones of her voice told clearlyenough that it was astir at this moment.
"Yes," answered Marcos. "We must pass underneath them; for the ford isthere. We must be quite noiseless. We must not even whisper."
He edged his horse towards one of the rough stones laid on the outer edgeof the road to mark its limit at night.
"I can only give you one hand," he said. "Can you get up from thisstone?"
"Behind you?" asked Juanita; "as we used to ride when I was--little?"
For Marcos had, like most Spaniards, grown from boyhood to manhood in thesaddle, and Juanita had no fear of horses. She clambered to the broadback of the Moor and settled herself there, sitting pillion fashion andholding herself in position with both hands round Marcos.
"If he trots, I fall off," she said, with an eager laugh.
They soon quitted the road and began to descend the steep slope towardsthe river by a narrow path only made visible by the open space in thehigh brushwood. It was the way down to a ford leading to a cottage bycourtesy called a farm, though the cultivated land was scarcely an acrein extent, reclaimed from the river-bed.
The ground was soft and mossy and the roar of the river covered the treadof the careful horse. In a few minutes they reached the water's edge, andafter a moment's hesitation the Moor stepped boldly in. On the other bankMarcos whispered to Juanita to drop to the ground.
"The cottage is here," he said. "I shall leave the horse in their shed."
He descended from the saddle and they stood for a moment side by side.
"Let us wait a few moments, the moon is rising," said Marcos. "Perhapsthe Carlists have been here."
As he spoke the sky grew lighter. In a minute or two a waning moon lookedout over the sharp outline of hill and flooded the valley with a reddishlight.
"It is all right," he said; nothing is disturbed here. They are asleep inthe cottage; the noise of the river must have drowned the firing. Theyare friends of mine; they will give us some food for to-morrow morningand another dress for you. You cannot go in that."
"Oh!" laughed Juanita, "I have taken the veil. It is done now and cannotbe undone."
She raised her hands to the wings of her spreading cap as if to defend itagainst all comers. And Marcos, turning, suddenly threw his uninjured armround her, imprisoning her struggling arms. He held her thus a prisonerwhile with his injured hand he found the strings of the cap. In a momentthe starched linen fluttered out, fell into the river, and was carriedswirling away.
Juanita was still laughing, but Marcos did not answer to her gaiety. Sherecollected at that instant having once threatened to dress as a nun inorder to alarm Marcos, and Sarrion's grave remark that it would of acertainty frighten him.
They were silent for a moment. Then Juanita spoke with a sort of forcedlightness.
"You may have only one arm," she said, "but it is an astonishingly strongone!"
And she looked at him surreptitiously beneath her lashes as she stoodwith her hands on her hair.