Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  “Immediately upon receiving it, sir.”

  “Ha! It doesn’t seem to have taken long for the order to be infringed, then.” His manner was severe, his eyes stern. Sir Terence was conscious of a quickening of his pulses. Nevertheless his answer was calmly regretful:

  “I am afraid not.”

  The great man nodded. “Disgraceful! I heard of it from Fletcher this morning. Captain What’s-his-name had just reported himself under arrest, I understand, and Fletcher had received a note from you giving the grounds for this. The deplorable part of these things is that they always happen in the most troublesome manner conceivable. In Berkeley’s case the victim was a nephew of the Patriarch’s. Samoval, now, was a person of even greater consequence, a close friend of several members of the Council. His death will be deeply resented, and may set up fresh difficulties. It is monstrous vexatious.” And abruptly he asked “What did they quarrel about?”

  O’Moy trembled, and his glance avoided the other’s gimlet eye. “The only quarrel that I am aware of between them,” he said, “was concerned with this very enactment of your lordship’s. Samoval proclaimed it infamous, and Tremayne resented the term. Hot words passed between them, but the altercation was allowed to go no further at the time by myself and others who were present.”

  His lordship had raised his brows. “By gad, sir,” he ejaculated, “there almost appears to be some justification for the captain. He was one of your military secretaries, was he not?”

  “He was.”

  “Ha! Pity! Pity!” His lordship was thoughtful for a moment. Then he dismissed the matter. “But then orders are orders, and soldiers must learn to obey implicitly. British soldiers of all degrees seem to find the lesson difficult. We must inculcate it more sternly, that is all.”

  O’Moy’s honest soul was in torturing revolt against the falsehoods he had implied — and to this man of all men, to this man whom he reverenced above all others, who stood to him for the very fount of military honour and lofty principle! He was in such a mood that one more question on the subject from Wellington and the whole ghastly truth must have come pouring from his lips. But no other question came. Instead his lordship turned on the threshold and held out his hand.

  “Not a step farther, O’Moy. I’ve left you a mass of work, and you are short of a secretary. So don’t waste any of your time on courtesies. I shall hope still to find the ladies in the garden so that I may take my leave without inconveniencing them.”

  And he was gone, stepping briskly with clicking spurs, leaving O’Moy hunched now in his chair, his body the very expression of the dejection that filled his soul.

  In the garden his lordship came upon Miss Armytage alone, still seated by the table under the trellis, from which the cloth had by now been removed. She rose at his approach and in spite of gesture to her to remain seated.

  “I was seeking Lady O’Moy,” said he, “to take my leave of her. I may not have the pleasure of coming to Monsanto again.”

  “She is on the terrace, I think,” said Miss Armytage. “I will find her for your lordship.”

  “Let us find her together,” he said amiably, and so turned and went with her towards the archway. “You said your name is Armytage, I think?” he commented.

  “Sir Terence said so.”

  His eyes twinkled. “You possess an exceptional virtue,” said he. “To be truthful is common; to be accurate rare. Well, then, Sir Terence said so. Once I had a great friend of the name of Armytage. I have lost sight of him these many years. We were at school together in Brussels.”

  “At Monsieur Goubert’s,” she surprised him by saying. “That would be John Armytage, my uncle.”

  “God bless my soul, ma’am!” he ejaculated. “But I gathered you were Irish, and Jack Armytage came from Yorkshire.”

  “My mother is Irish, and we live in Ireland now. I was born there. But father, none the less, was John Armytage’s brother.”

  He looked at her with increased interest, marking the straight, supple lines of her, and the handsome, high-bred face. His lordship, remember, never lacked an appreciative eye for a fine woman. “So you’re Jack Armytage’s niece. Give me news of him, my dear.”

  She did so. Jack Armytage was well and prospering, had made a rich marriage and retired from the Blues many years ago to live at Northampton. He listened with interest, and thus out of his boyhood friendship for her uncle, which of late years he had had no opportunity to express, sprang there and then a kindness for the niece. Her own personal charms may have contributed to it, for the great soldier was intensely responsive to the appeal of beauty.

  They reached the terrace. Lady O’Moy was nowhere in sight. But Lord Wellington was too much engrossed in his discovery to be troubled.

  “My dear,” he said, “if I can serve you at any time, both for Jack’s sake and your own, I hope that you will let me know of it.”

  She looked at him a moment, and he saw her colour come and go, arguing a sudden agitation.

  “You tempt me, sir,” she said, with a wistful smile.

  “Then yield to the temptation, child,” he urged her kindly, those keen, penetrating eyes of his perceiving trouble here.

  “It isn’t for myself,” she responded. “Yet there is something I would ask you if I dare — something I had intended to ask you in any case if I could find the opportunity. To be frank, that is why I was waiting there in the garden just now. It was to waylay you. I hoped for a word with you.”

  “Well, well,” he encouraged her. “It should be the easier now, since in a sense we find that we are old friends.”

  He was so kind, so gentle, despite that stern, strong face of his, that she melted at once to his persuasion.

  “It is about Lieutenant Richard Butler,” she began.

  “Ah,” said he lightly, “I feared as much when you said it was not for yourself you had a favour to ask.”

  But, looking at him, she instantly perceived how he had misunderstood her.

  “Mr. Butler,” she said, “is the officer who was guilty of the affair at Tavora.”

  He knit his brow in thought. “Butler-Tavora?” he muttered questioningly. Suddenly his memory found what it was seeking. “Oh yes, the violated nunnery.” His thin lips tightened; the sternness of his ace increased. “Yes?” he inquired, but the tone was now forbidding.

  Nevertheless she was not deterred. “Mr. Butler is Lady O’Moy’s brother,” she said.

  He stared a moment, taken aback. “Good God! Ye don’t say so, child! Her brother! O’Moy’s brother-in-law! And O’Moy never said a word to me about it.

  “What should he say? Sir Terence himself pledged his word to the Council of Regency that Mr. Butler would be shot when taken.”

  “Did he, egad!” He was still further surprised out of his sternness. “Something of a Roman this O’Moy in his conception of duty! Hum! The Council no doubt demanded this?”

  “So I understand, my lord. Lady O’Moy, realising her brother’s grave danger, is very deeply troubled.”

  “Naturally,” he agreed. “But what can I do, Miss Armytage? What were the actual facts, do you happen to know?”

  She recited them, putting the case bravely for the scapegrace Mr. Butler, dwelling particularly upon the error under which he was labouring, that he had imagined himself to be knocking at the gates of a monastery of Dominican friars, that he had broken into the convent because denied admittance, and because he suspected some treacherous reason for that denial.

  He heard her out, watching her with those keen eyes of his the while.

  “Hum! You make out so good a case for him that one might almost believe you instructed by the gentleman himself. Yet I gather that nothing has since been heard of him?”

  “Nothing, sir, since he vanished from Tavora, nearly, two months ago. And I have only repeated to your lordship the tale that was told by the sergeant and the troopers who reported the matter to Sir Robert Craufurd on their return.”

  He was very thoughtful. Leaning
on the balustrade, he looked out across the sunlit valley, turning his boldly chiselled profile to his companion. At last he spoke slowly, reflectively: “But if this were really so — a mere blunder — I see no sufficient grounds to threaten him with capital punishment. His subsequent desertion, if he has deserted — I mean if nothing has happened to him — is really the graver matter of the two.”

  “I gathered, sir, that he was to be sacrificed to the Council of Regency — a sort of scapegoat.”

  He swung round sharply, and the sudden blaze of his eyes almost terrified her. Instantly he was cold again and inscrutable. “Ah! You are oddly well informed throughout. But of course you would be,” he added, with an appraising look into that intelligent face in which he now caught a faint likeness of Jack Armytage. “Well, well, my dear, I am very glad you have told me of this. If Mr. Butler is ever taken and in danger — there will be a court-martial, of course — send me word of it, and I will see what I can do, both for your sake and for the sake of strict justice.”

  “Oh, not for my sake,” she protested, reddening slightly at the gentle imputation. “Mr. Butler is nothing to me — that is to say, he is just my cousin. It is for Una’s sake that I am asking this.”

  “Why, then, for Lady O’Moy’s sake, since you ask it,” he replied readily. “But,” he warned her, “say nothing of it until Mr. Butler is found.” It is possible he believed that Butler never would be found. “And remember, I promise only to give the matter my attention. If it is as you represent it, I think you may be sure that the worst that will befall Mr. Butler will be dismissal from the service. He deserves that. But I hope I should be the last man to permit a British officer to be used as a scapegoat or a burnt-offering to the mob or to any Council of Regency. By the way, who told you this about a scapegoat?”

  “Captain Tremayne.”

  “Captain Tremayne? Oh, the man who killed Samoval?”

  “He didn’t,” she cried.

  On that almost fierce denial his lordship looked at her, raising his eyebrows in astonishment.

  “But I am told that he did, and he is under arrest for it this moment — for that, and for breaking my order against duelling.”

  “You were not told the truth, my lord. Captain Tremayne says that he didn’t, and if he says so it is so.”

  “Oh, of course, Miss Armytage!” He was a man of unparalleled valour and boldness, yet so fierce was she in that moment that for the life of him he dared not have contradicted her.

  “Captain Tremayne is the most honourable man I know,” she continued, “and if he had killed Samoval he would never have denied it; he would have proclaimed it to all the world.”

  “There is no need for all this heat, my dear,” he reassured her. “The point is not one that can remain in doubt. The seconds of the duel will be forthcoming; and they will tell us who were the principals.”

  “There were no seconds,” she informed him.

  “No seconds!” he cried in horror. “D’ ye mean they just fought a rough and tumble fight?”

  “I mean they never fought at all. As for this tale of a duel, I ask your lordship: Had Captain Tremayne desired a secret meeting with Count Samoval, would he have chosen this of all places in which to hold it?”

  “This?”

  “This. The fight — whoever fought it — took place in the quadrangle there at midnight.”

  He was overcome with astonishment, and he showed it.

  “Upon my soul,” he said, “I do not appear to have been told any of the facts. Strange that O’Moy should never have mentioned that,” he muttered, and then inquired suddenly: “Where was Tremayne arrested?”

  “Here,” she informed him.

  “Here? He was here, then, at midnight? What was he doing here?”

  “I don’t know. But whatever he was doing, can your lordship believe that he would have come here to fight a secret duel?”

  “It certainly puts a monstrous strain upon belief,” said he. “But what can he have been doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” she repeated. She wanted to add a warning of O’Moy. She was tempted to tell his lordship of the odd words that O’Moy had used to her last night concerning Tremayne. But she hesitated, and her courage failed her. Lord Wellington was so great a man, bearing the destinies of nations on his shoulders, and already he had wasted upon her so much of the time that belonged to the world and history, that she feared to trespass further; and whilst she hesitated came Colquhoun Grant clanking across the quadrangle looking for his lordship. He had come up, he announced, standing straight and stiff before them, to see O’Moy, but hearing of Lord Wellington’s presence, had preferred to see his lordship in the first instance.

  “And indeed you arrive very opportunely, Grant,” his lordship confessed.

  He turned to take his leave of Jack Armytage’s niece.

  “I’ll not forget either Mr. Butler or Captain Tremayne,” he promised her, and his stern face softened into a gentle, friendly smile. “They are very fortunate in their champion.”

  CHAPTER XV. THE WALLET

  “A queer, mysterious business this death of Samoval,” said Colonel Grant.

  “So I was beginning to perceive,” Wellington agreed, his brow dark.

  They were alone together in the quadrangle under the trellis, through which the sun, already high, was dappling the table at which his lordship sat.

  “It would be easier to read if it were not for the duelling swords. Those and the nature of Samoval’s wound certainly point unanswerably to a duel. Otherwise there would be considerable evidence that Samoval was a spy caught in the act and dealt with out of hand as he deserved.”

  “How? Count Samoval a spy?”

  “In the French interest,” answered the colonel without emotion, “acting upon the instructions of the Souza faction, whose tool he had become.” And Colonel Grant proceeded to relate precisely what he knew of Samoval.

  Lord Wellington sat awhile in silence, cogitating. Then he rose, and his piercing eyes looked up at the colonel, who stood a good head taller than himself.

  “Is this the evidence of which you spoke?”

  “By no means,” was the answer. “The evidence I have secured is much more palpable. I have it here.” He produced a little wallet of red morocco bearing the initial “S” surmounted by a coronet. Opening it, he selected from it some papers, speaking the while. “I thought it as well before I left last night to make an examination of the body. This is what I found, and it contains, among other lesser documents, these to which I would draw your lordship’s attention. First this.” And he placed in Lord Wellington’s hand a holograph note from the Prince of Esslingen introducing the bearer, M. de la Fleche, his confidential agent, who would consult with the Count, and thanking the Count for the valuable information already received from him.

  His lordship sat down again to read the letter. “It is a full confirmation of what you have told me,” he said calmly.

  “Then this,” said Colonel Grant, and he placed upon the table a note in French of the approximate number and disposition of the British troops in Portugal at the time. “The handwriting is Samoval’s own, as those who know it will have no difficulty in discerning. And now this, sir.” He unfolded a small sketch map, bearing the title also in French: Probable position and extent of the fortifications north of Lisbon.

  “The notes at the foot,” he added, “are in cipher, and it is the ordinary cipher employed by the French, which in itself proves how deeply Samoval was involved. Here is a translation of it.” And he placed before his chief a sheet of paper on which Lord Wellington read:

  “This is based upon my own personal knowledge of the country, odd scraps of information received from time to time, and my personal verification of the roads closed to traffic in that region. It is intended merely as a guide to the actual locale of the fortifications, an exact plan of which I hope shortly to obtain.”

  His lordship considered it very attentively, but without betraying the least dis
composure.

  “For a man working upon such slight data as he himself confesses,” was the quiet comment, “he is damnably accurate. It is as well, I think, that this did not reach Marshal Massena.”

  “My own assumption is that he put off sending it, intending to replace it by the actual plan — which he here confesses to the expectation of obtaining shortly.”

  “I think he died at the right moment. Anything else?”

  “Indeed,” said Colonel Grant, “I have kept the best for the last.” And unfolding yet another document, he placed it in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief. It was Lord Liverpool’s note of the troops to be embarked for Lisbon in June and July — the note abstracted from the dispatch carried by Captain Garfield.

  His lordship’s lips tightened as he considered it. “His death was timely indeed, damned timely; and the man who killed him deserves to be mentioned in dispatches. Nothing else, I suppose?”

  “The rest is of little consequence, sir.”

  “Very well.” He rose. “You will leave these with me, and the wallet as well, if you please. I am on my way to confer with the members of the Council of Regency, and I am glad to go armed with so stout a weapon as this. Whatever may be the ultimate finding of the court-martial, the present assumption must be that Samoval met the death of a spy caught in the act, as you suggested. That is the only conclusion the Portuguese Government can draw when I lay these papers before it. They will effectively silence all protests.”

  “Shall I tell O’Moy?” inquired the colonel.

  “Oh, certainly,” answered his lordship, instantly to change his mind. “Stay!” He considered, his chin in his hand, his eyes dreamy. “Better not, perhaps. Better not tell anybody. Let us keep this to ourselves for the present. It has no direct bearing on the matter to be tried. By the way, when does the court-martial sit?”

  “I have just heard that Marshal Beresford has ordered it to sit on Thursday here at Monsanto.”

  His lordship considered. “Perhaps I shall be present. I may be at Torres Vedras until then. It is a very odd affair. What is your own impression of it, Grant? Have you formed any?”