Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  “In your place I should let myself be tempted,” says he. “It’s an elegant wine, and ten minutes more or less is no great matter.”

  The lieutenant discovered a middle way which permitted him to take a prompt decision creditable to his military instincts, but revealing a disgraceful though quite characteristic selfishness.

  “Very well,” he said. “Leave Sergeant Flanagan and ten men to wait for me, O’Rourke, and do you set out at once with the rest of the troop. And take the cattle with you. I shall overtake you before you have gone very far.”

  O’Rourke’s crestfallen air stirred the sympathetic Souza’s pity.

  “But, Captain,” he besought, “will you not allow the lieutenant—”

  Mr. Butler cut him short. “Duty,” said he sententiously, “is duty. Be off, O’Rourke.”

  And O’Rourke, clicking his heels viciously, saluted and departed.

  Came presently the bottles in a basket — not one, as Souza had said, but three; and when the first was done Butler reflected that since O’Rourke and the cattle were already well upon the road there need no longer be any hurry about his own departure. A herd of bullocks does not travel very quickly, and even with a few hours’ start in a forty-mile journey is easily over-taken by a troop of horse travelling without encumbrance.

  You understand, then, how easily our lieutenant yielded himself to the luxurious circumstances, and disposed himself to savour the second bottle of that nectar distilled from the very sunshine of the Douro — the phrase is his own. The steward produced a box of very choice cigars, and although the lieutenant was not an habitual smoker, he permitted himself on this exceptional occasion to be further tempted. Stretched in a deep chair beside the roaring fire of pine logs, he sipped and smoked and drowsed away the greater par of that wintry afternoon. Soon the third bottle had gone the way of the second, and Mr. Bearsley’s steward being a man of extremely temperate habit, it follows that most of the wine had found its way down the lieutenant’s thirsty gullet.

  It was perhaps a more potent vintage than he had at first suspected, and as the torpor produced by the dinner and the earlier, fuller wine was wearing off, it was succeeded by an exhilaration that played havoc with the few wits that Mr. Butler could call his own.

  The steward was deeply learned in wines and wine growing and in very little besides; consequently the talk was almost confined to that subject in its many branches, and he could be interesting enough, like all enthusiasts. To a fresh burst of praise from Butler of the ruby vintage to which he had been introduced, the steward presently responded with a sigh:

  “Indeed, as you say, Captain, a great wine. But we had a greater.”

  “Impossible, by God,” swore Butler, with a hiccup.

  “You may say so; but it is the truth. We had a greater; a wonderful, clear vintage it was, of the year 1798 — a famous year on the Douro, the quite most famous year that we have ever known. Mr. Bearsley sell some pipes to the monks at Tavora, who have bottle it and keep it. I beg him at the time not to sell, knowing the value it must come to have one day. But he sell all the same. Ah, meu Deus!” The steward clasped his hands and raised rather prominent eyes to the ceiling, protesting to his Maker against his master’s folly. “He say we have plenty, and now” — he spread fat hands in a gesture of despair— “and now we have none. Some sons of dogs of French who came with Marshal Soult happen this way on a forage they discover the wine and they guzzle it like pigs.” He swore, and his benignity was eclipsed by wrathful memory. He heaved himself up in a passion.

  “Think of that so priceless vintage drink like hogwash, as Mr. Bearsley say, by those god-dammed French swine, not a drop — not a spoonful remain. But the monks at Tavora still have much of what they buy, I am told. They treasure it for they know good wine. All priests know good wine. Ah yes! Goddam!” He fell into deep reflection.

  Lieutenant Butler stirred, and became sympathetic.

  “‘San infern’l shame,” said he indignantly. “I’ll no forgerrit when I... meet the French.” Then he too fell into reflection.

  He was a good Catholic, and, moreover, a Catholic who did not take things for granted. The sloth and self-indulgence of the clergy in Portugal, being his first glimpse of conventuals in Latin countries, had deeply shocked him. The vows of a monastic poverty that was kept carefully beyond the walls of the monastery offended his sense of propriety. That men who had vowed themselves to pauperism, who wore coarse garments and went barefoot, should batten upon rich food and store up wines that gold could not purchase, struck him as a hideous incongruity.

  “And the monks drink this nectar?” he said aloud, and laughed sneeringly. “I know the breed — the fair found belly wi’ fat capon lined. Tha’s your poverty stricken Capuchin.”

  Souza looked at him in sudden alarm, bethinking himself that all Englishmen were heretics, and knowing nothing of subtle distinctions between English and Irish. In silence Butler finished the third and last bottle, and his thoughts fixed themselves with increasing insistence upon a wine reputed better than this of which there was great store in the cellars of the convent of Tavora.

  Abruptly he asked: “Where’s Tavora?” He was thinking perhaps of the comfort that such wine would bring to a company of war-worn soldiers in the valley of the Agueda.

  “Some ten leagues from here,” answered Souza, and pointed to a map that hung upon the wall.

  The lieutenant rose, and rolled a thought unsteadily across the room. He was a tall, loose-limbed fellow, blue-eyed, fair-complexioned, with a thatch of fiery red hair excellently suited to his temperament. He halted before the map, and with legs wide apart, to afford him the steadying support of a broad basis, he traced with his finger the course of the Douro, fumbled about the district of Regoa, and finally hit upon the place he sought.

  “Why,” he said, “seems to me ‘sif we should ha’ come that way. I’s shorrer road to Pesqueira than by the river.”

  “As the bird fly,” said Souza. “But the roads be bad — just mule tracks, while by the river the road is tolerable good.”

  “Yet,” said the lieutenant, “I think I shall go back tha’ way.”

  The fumes of the wine were mounting steadily to addle his indifferent brains. Every moment he was seeing things in proportions more and more false. His resentment against priests who, sworn to self-abnegation, hoarded good wine, whilst soldiers sent to keep harm from priests’ fat carcasses were left to suffer cold and even hunger, was increasing with every moment. He would sample that wine at Tavora; and he would bear some of it away that his brother officers at Pinhel might sample it. He would buy it. Oh yes! There should be no plundering, no irregularity, no disregard of general orders. He would buy the wine and pay for it — but himself he would fix the price, and see that the monks of Tavora made no profit out of their defenders.

  Thus he thought as he considered the map. Presently, when having taken leave of Fernando Souza — that prince of hosts — Mr. Butler was riding down through the town with Sergeant Flanagan and ten troopers at his heels, his purpose deepened and became more fierce. I think the change of temperature must have been to blame. It was a chill, bleak evening. Overhead, across a background of faded blue, scudded ragged banks of clouds, the lingering flotsam of the shattered rainstorm of yesterday: and a cavalry cloak afforded but indifferent protection against the wind that blew hard and sharp from the Atlantic.

  Coming from the genial warmth of Mr. Souza’s parlour into this, the evaporation of the wine within him was quickened, its fumes mounted now overwhelmingly to his brain, and from comfortably intoxicated that he had been hitherto, the lieutenant now became furiously drunk; and the transition was a very rapid one. It was now that he looked upon the business he had in hand in the light of a crusade; a sort of religious fanaticism began to actuate him.

  The souls of these wretched monks must be saved; the temptation to self-indulgence, which spelt perdition for them, must be removed from their midst. It was a Christian duty. He no longer tho
ught of buying the wine and paying for it. His one aim now was to obtain possession of it not merely a part of it, but all of it — and carry it off, thereby accomplishing two equally praiseworthy ends: to rescue a conventful of monks from damnation, and to regale the much-enduring, half-starved campaigners of the Agueda.

  Thus reasoned Mr. Butler with admirable, if drunken, logic. And reasoning thus he led the way over the bridge, and kept straight on when he had crossed it, much to the dismay of Sergeant Flanagan, who, perceiving the lieutenant’s condition, conceived that he was missing his way. This the sergeant ventured to point out, reminding his officer that they had come by the road along the river.

  “So we did,” said Butler shortly. “Bu’ we go back by way of Tavora.”

  They had no guide. The one who had conducted them to Regoa had returned with O’Rourke, and although Souza had urged upon the lieutenant at parting that he should take one of the men from the quinta, Butler, with wit enough to see that this was not desirable under the circumstances, had preferred to find his way alone.

  His confused mind strove now to revisualise the map which he had consulted in Souza’s parlour. He discovered, naturally enough, that the task was altogether beyond his powers. Meanwhile night was descending. They were, however, upon the mule track, which went up and round the shoulder of a hill, and by this they came at dark upon a hamlet.

  Sergeant Flanagan was a shrewd fellow and perhaps the most sober man in the troop — for the wine had run very freely in Souza’s kitchen, too, and the men, whilst awaiting their commander’s pleasure, had taken the fullest advantage of an opportunity that was all too rare upon that campaign. Now Sergeant Flanagan began to grow anxious. He knew the Peninsula from the days of Sir John Moore, and he knew as much of the ways of the peasantry of Portugal as any man. He knew of the brutal ferocity of which that peasantry was capable. He had seen evidence more than once of the unspeakable fate of French stragglers from the retreating army of Marshal Soult. He knew of crucifixions, mutilations and hideous abominations practised upon them in these remote hill districts by the merciless men into whose hands they happened to fall, and he knew that it was not upon French soldiers alone — that these abominations had been practised. Some of those fierce peasants had been unable to discriminate between invader and deliverer; to them a foreigner was a foreigner and no more. Others, who were capable of discriminating, were in the position of having come to look upon French and English with almost equal execration.

  It is true that whilst the Emperor’s troops made war on the maxim that an army must support itself upon the country it traverses, thereby achieving a greater mobility, since it was thus permitted to travel comparatively light, the British law was that all things requisitioned must be paid for. Wellington maintained this law in spite of all difficulties at all times with an unrelaxing rigidity, and punished with the utmost vigour those who offended against it. Nevertheless breaches were continual; men broke out here and there, often, be it said, under stress of circumstances for which the Portuguese were themselves responsible; plunder and outrage took place and provoked indiscriminating rancour with consequences at times as terrible to stragglers from the British army of deliverance as to those from the French army of oppressors. Then, too, there was the Portuguese Militia Act recently enforced by Wellington — acting through the Portuguese Government — deeply resented by the peasantry upon whom it bore, and rendering them disposed to avenge it upon such stray British soldiers as might fall into their hands.

  Knowing all this, Sergeant Flanagan did not at all relish this night excursion into the hill fastnesses, where at any moment, as it seemed to him, they might miss their way. After all, they were but twelve men all told, and he accounted it a stupid thing to attempt to take a short cut across the hills for the purpose of overtaking an encumbered troop that must of necessity be moving at a very much slower pace. This was the way not to overtake but to outdistance. Yet since it was not for him to remonstrate with the lieutenant, he kept his peace and hoped anxiously for the best.

  At the mean wine-shop of that hamlet Mr. Butler inquired his way by the simple expedient of shouting “Tavora?” with a strong interrogative inflection. The vintner made it plain by gestures — accompanied by a rattling musketry of incomprehensible speech that their way lay straight ahead. And straight ahead they went, following that mule track for some five or six miles until it began to slope gently towards the plain again. Below them they presently beheld a cluster of twinkling lights to advertise a township. They dropped swiftly down, and in the outskirts overtook a belated bullock-cart, whose ungreased axle was arousing the hillside echoes with its plangent wail.

  Of the vigorous young woman who marched barefoot beside it, shouldering her goad as if it were a pikestaff, Mr. Butler inquired — by his usual method — if this were Tavora, to receive an answer which, though voluble, was unmistakably affirmative.

  “Covento Dominicano?” was his next inquiry, made after they had gone some little way.

  The woman pointed with her goad to a massive, dark building, flanked by a little church, which stood just across the square they were entering.

  A moment later the sergeant, by Mr. Butler’s orders, was knocking upon the iron-studded main door. They waited awhile in vain. None came to answer the knock; no light showed anywhere upon the dark face of the convent. The sergeant knocked again, more vigorously than before. Presently came timid, shuffling steps; a shutter opened in the door, and the grille thus disclosed was pierced by a shaft of feeble yellow light. A quavering, aged voice demanded to know who knocked.

  “English soldiers,” answered the lieutenant in Portuguese. “Open!”

  A faint exclamation suggestive of dismay was the answer, the shutter closed again with a snap, the shuffling steps retreated and unbroken silence followed.

  “Now wharra devil may this mean?” growled Mr. Butler. Drugged wits, like stupid ones, are readily suspicious. “Wharra they hatching in here that they are afraid of lerring Bri’ish soldiers see? Knock again, Flanagan. Louder, man!”

  The sergeant beat the door with the butt of his carbine. The blows gave out a hollow echo, but evoked no more answer than if they had fallen upon the door of a mausoleum. Mr. Butler completely lost his temper. “Seems to me that we’ve stumbled upon a hotbed o’ treason. Hotbed o’ treason!” he repeated, as if pleased with the phrase. “That’s wharrit is.” And he added peremptorily: “Break down the door.”

  “But, sir,” began the sergeant in protest, greatly daring.

  “Break down the door,” repeated Mr. Butler. “Lerrus be after seeing wha’ these monks are afraid of showing us. I’ve a notion they’re hiding more’n their wine.”

  Some of the troopers carried axes precisely against such an emergency as this. Dismounting, they fell upon the door with a will. But the oak was stout, fortified by bands of iron and great iron studs; and it resisted long. The thud of the axes and the crash of rending timbers could be heard from one end of Tavora to the other, yet from the convent it evoked no slightest response. But presently, as the door began to yield to the onslaught, there came another sound to arouse the town. From the belfry of the little church a bell suddenly gave tongue upon a frantic, hurried note that spoke unmistakably of alarm. Ding-ding-ding-ding it went, a tocsin summoning the assistance of all true sons of Mother Church.

  Mr. Butler, however, paid little heed to it. The door was down at last, and followed by his troopers he rode under the massive gateway into the spacious close. Dismounting there, and leaving the woefully anxious sergeant and a couple of men to guard the horses, the lieutenant led the way along the cloisters, faintly revealed by a new-risen moon, towards a gaping doorway whence a feeble light was gleaming. He stumbled over the step into a hall dimly lighted by a lantern swinging from the ceiling. He found a chair, mounted it, and cut the lantern down, then led the way again along an endless corridor, stone-flagged and flanked on either side by rows of cells. Many of the doors stood open, as if in silent token of the ten
ants’ hurried flight, showing what a panic had been spread by the sudden advent of this troop.

  Mr. Butler became more and more deeply intrigued, more and more deeply suspicious that here all was not well. Why should a community of loyal monks take flight in this fashion from British soldiers?

  “Bad luck to them!” he growled, as he stumbled on. “They may hide as they will, but it’s myself ‘ll run the shavelings to earth.”

  They were brought up short at the end of that long, chill gallery by closed double doors. Beyond these an organ was pealing, and overhead the clapper of the alarm bell was beating more furiously than ever. All realised that they stood upon the threshold of the chapel and that the conventuals had taken refuge there.

  Mr. Butler checked upon a sudden suspicion. “Maybe, after all, they’ve taken us for French,” said he.

  A trooper ventured to answer him. “Best let them see we’re not before we have the whole village about our ears.”

  “Damn that bell,” said the lieutenant, and added: “Put your shoulders to the door.”

  Its fastenings were but crazy ones, and it yielded almost instantly to their pressure — yielded so suddenly that Mr. Butler, who himself had been foremost in straining against it, shot forward half-a-dozen yards into the chapel and measured his length upon its cold flags.

  Simultaneously from the chancel came a great cry: “Libera nos, Domine!” followed by a shuddering murmur of prayer.

  The lieutenant picked himself up, recovered the lantern that had rolled from his grasp, and lurched forward round the angle that hid the chancel from his view. There, huddled before the main altar like a flock of scared and stupid sheep, he beheld the conventuals — some two score of them perhaps and in the dim light of the heavy altar lamp above them he could make out the black and white habit of the order of St. Dominic.