Fortune

It was with the deepest concern, for we had both come to love our companion, that Sir Richard Pendragon and I dismounted and lifted up the prostrate form in our arms. In the heavy darkness of the night, which was rendered more extreme by the shadows from the overhanging trees, we were at first at a loss to know what was the cause of this calamity.

Our fear that the Count of Nullepart was dead was dispelled immediately. He could be heard to breathe. Passing our hands over him, however, we discovered that his doublet was soaked with blood. Yet for some time we were not able to discover the seat of what was evidently a grievous injury. Indeed it was not until we had revived our senseless comrade by bathing his temples in some stagnant water that we found in a rut in the middle of the road that we were able to learn its position and extent. It was by this providential means that our unlucky friend was himself enabled to inform us.

“It is nothing,” he said. “It is not more than a scratch. I pray you, leave me, my friends, to my own devices, for upon my soul you have not a moment to spare. By now a mounted company is surely upon our heels.”

“Mounseer,” said the Englishman, with a delicacy of address of which I should not have deemed him to be capable, “I care not if all Spain is out and mounted on the strain Bucephalus. Do you suppose that one who hath the blood of kings under his doublet will leave you to the wolves. Where is your hurt, good Mounseer? We will look to it, if it please you.”

In spite of the courage of our friend, who protested that his hurt was nothing and that time was much, we kept to our determination to find his injury. He then allowed that he had had several inches of steel in his ribs. “But it is nought, my friends; the merest trifle I assure you,” he said as he staggered towards his horse.

All the same it was clear to us that if the Count of Nullepart was to continue his journey, means must be found to staunch the bleeding of his wound. Unhappily, we were without the implements of surgery; and the wound was so deep that our kerchiefs knotted together and coiled about it could not cope with the flow of blood.

In this pass the Englishman did a strange thing. It furnished a further proof of that genius for contrivance which above all things distinguished this strange individual. Without more ado he proceeded to disrobe himself. Stripping off his shirt, and all naked to the waist as he was, he tore that garment into ribands and wove the pieces tightly round the Count of Nullepart’s body. And so powerful was this ready-witted surgery that the wounded man vowed laughingly that the Englishman had checked not only his bleeding but the source of life itself.

Hardly had this skilful operation been performed, and before Sir Richard Pendragon could reinvest his skin with that doublet which was wont to enclose the blood of kings, when our ears were assailed with the sounds of armed men approaching rapidly in the darkness.

“Here comes John Castilian’s wasp nest about our ears,” said the Englishman grimly.

It was not a season for speech, however. Lifting the Count of Nullepart into his saddle, we tarried not an instant, but led our horses off the track. Rising sheer on either side of the road loomed the face of a steep mountain. It seemed well-nigh impossible to traverse it; and we had gone but a short distance along this difficult ascent when we stayed our progress to listen to our enemies, who passed noisily by us in the road below. To judge by the jingling of swords and bridles and the beating of hoofs against the stones, they formed a considerable mounted company. And I think had they not been riding carelessly they must have seen us, so short a distance were we from them.

When they had passed we continued to ascend the mountain. Yet this adventure was fraught with great peril. There was no road to go upon; trees and rough boulders were strewn everywhere; and the higher we rose the more imminent it became that we should step over some steep precipice that lay concealed in the darkness. Sir Richard Pendragon made use of his scabbard in the same way that a blind man uses his staff. He tried every yard of the ground before his feet passed over it, for, as he said, “he desired not to fall into the Devil’s Kitchen, lest he met man’s Evil Adversary who was bound to perplex a good Catholic.”

The Englishman being spared this calamity, owing to the exercise of much skill, we came at last to a large wood. Very grateful we felt for its promise of protection, yet its precincts looked so black that Sir Richard Pendragon said it would not surprise him at all if a wicked ogre dwelt in it, or a fell magician, or even a wizard or a salamander. In spite of these forebodings which he declared to be the natural fruit of a brain that had been nourished upon the Roman authors in its youth, we felt ourselves to be quite safe from detection among the thick trees and with the dark night also to cover us. We led our weary horses within the wood and tied them up. Then, seeking out a dry and sheltered place, we spread our own weariness upon the green earth and folded our cloaks about us.

All through these long yet sweet hours of utter darkness my two comrades continued to sleep—the Count of Nullepart lightly and fitfully, Sir Richard Pendragon with the perseverance of the fabled ones of Ephesus. And as thus I was stretched upon what I was fain to consider my first battlefield, with this fragrant redress never farther from my eyes, I was minded to resummon the image of the night’s wild business; and with that natural instinct for the foibles of my fellowmen—a habit of philosophy which I can only ascribe to my mother—I proceeded to ruminate on the nature of those who lay by my side.

I think I may say these reflections were not unpleasant. My companions were strange, diverse, and foreign men; and one of them was certainly barbarous in the comparison with the gentlemen of our peninsula, who in matters of high civility are allowed to be the first in the world. Yet I found that I had already come to entertain towards them a sentiment of liberal fellowship, nay, even of love. The dangers we had already shared together, and perhaps the thought of those which were to come, which made my heart beat high as I lay upon the bare ground, caused me to forget their nation and their idiosyncrasy, and to cherish a feeling towards them which the gentle reader will hardly think consistent in one who boasted the sangre azul of Spain.

At the first sign of dawn Sir Richard Pendragon awoke, rose from his couch, and shook himself like a dog. He then announced that we must get upon our road at once, since our proximity to the King of Castile’s chief city was highly perilous. It was with a tender concern that we awakened the poor Count of Nullepart, who was still dozing fitfully. His face looked ashen pale in the grey morning light, but he gave us his assurance that he was fit to take the saddle.

Whether this was the case or not, and his looks denied him, the Count of Nullepart was a brave man, and he disdained our aid in mounting his horse. But never was a path so difficult and painful as the one we took that day. We dared not descend the mountain to the public road, lest we fell in with our foes, but were compelled to move by stealth across an almost insurmountable country, like a company of robbers skulking from lawful men.

In the soreness of our travail, which was such that on many occasions we had to dismount and lead our horses along places they could not take alone, we needed much resolution to support the pains of our journey. I know not what were the sufferings of our stricken companion, yet not a word of complaint escaped from his lips. As for Sir Richard Pendragon, his demeanour had become that of a brave man and a redoubtable leader.

The face of peril had changed him from an insolent trifler who was prone to insult a noble country to one who had a natural love of leadership, and who took cognisance of all the haps to which we were like to be exposed. His prescience was indeed very great. Doubtless it was the fruit of a long acquaintance with the arduous business of war. And although he appeared to have been bred in the love of danger, and admitted now and again that “he had a passion to cut a throat,” he had also the highest respect for his own person, and further he had a faithful servant’s regard for the errand he had embraced.

The sun was high at noon ere our wanderings brought us to a hamlet in which we were able to find food and rest. It was situated in a remote part, where our enemies were not likely to trouble us. Here it was that the Count of Nullepart had his wound dressed and artfully bandaged, and Sir Richard Pendragon procured a shirt greatly too small for him. In this place we lay in shelter for two hours from the great heat of the day.

When towards evening we resumed our road in some refreshment of mind and body, we knew it better and embraced it with more certainty. Fortune attending on us, we came securely, a little after night had fallen, to a wayside inn. Here a rude but welcome hospitality was offered to us, and thus we lay in succour till the dawn.

During the next day the Count of Nullepart grew wonderfully better. Indeed, so favourable was his state that he celebrated it upon the flageolet as we halted in the shade at noon. Thus far, at the instance of a wonderful vigilance, in which Sir Richard Pendragon was accomplished beyond any person I have ever met, and by the further kind continuance of fortune, we were spared so much as even a trace of our enemies; and although our road was difficult and our progress slow, we began to make a sensible incursion upon the country of the King of Castile.

On the next night of our adventures we lay in a great wood. We kindled a fire of faggots and cooked a turkey which Sir Richard had conveyed from a farmyard. It made excellent eating, for hunger is of all sauces the most delectable; yet I must confess to you, reader, I had at first set my mind against it, being determined not to partake of that which had not been come by in a lawful manner. But my scruples were not proof against a dreadfully sharpened appetite, which was also fortified by the Englishman’s plausibility.

“Why, you poor soul,” said he, “we get nothing in this world save by enforcement. The farmer enforces the good turkey; one who is virtuous enforces the good farmer; and then comes hunger to enforce the one who is virtuous. And I ask you, my young son of the Spains, who is it, bethink, that enforces this veritable passion of hunger. Why, to be sure, it is the heavenly bodies who enforce the passion of hunger. And who is it that enforces the heavenly bodies? Why, you poor soul, to be sure it is Him who enforces the whole of the world.”

I was fain to admit this was excellent philosophy, and the Count of Nullepart also admired it; and my belly being exceeding empty, and my resolve being weakened by this notorious subtlety, which you will believe had great weight with a natural philosopher such as myself, I was fain to eat of the turkey. And I cannot remember ever having eaten of anything more choice.

It has been my hap since those distant days in my youth to sit with men of all sorts, in many countries, in many varieties of circumstance; but never with two more engaging in their diversity than these with whom my lot was cast upon this enterprise. The Count of Nullepart was so gay and graceful in address, so fortunate in his appearance, so debonair—to use a foreign idiom I have picked up in my travels; while Sir Richard Pendragon was all that his comrade was not, with a humour so sinister that it was hard to know how to receive it, one withal of barbarous ideas and a loose morality according to the tenets of a caballero of Spain. And yet beyond all things, and in whatever his merit might consist, this Englishman had a peculiar genius. He was a natural leader. For in every sort of action he discovered himself to be as wise as he was formidable; as full of knowledge as he was of sagacity; as little in ruth as he was bold in emprise.

Again I must confess to you, reader, that being the son of a Spanish gentleman, it was my nature to despise one such as he; yet I must declare to you, as I cherish an honourable name, that whenever this sinister foreigner threw me a compliment, which he did now and again, I was for all the world like a dog that has received a bone.

I have never been able to account for this behaviour. There can be no doubt about my father’s pedigree, and any Asturian will inform you that the family of my mother is beyond cavil. Yet in all our subsequent passages with this formidable islander, who in some ways was little better than one of the wicked, as there was too good a reason to know, in whatever path he walked the Count of Nullepart and myself were happy to attend him.

After our meal, as we lay under the trees in the wood, I conversed with the worthy Count of Nullepart upon this subject. Sir Richard Pendragon had already fallen asleep. It was his boast that he could command this solace at any moment of the day or night.

“It is the power of the mind, my dear Don Miguel,” said the Count of Nullepart. “This ingenious and subtle adventurer has a power of mind that a god might envy.”

“But, worshipful Count of Nullepart,” I protested, “his manners are ungentle; he insults a noble country; he traduces an ancient name; he takes life without remorse and with a most practised hand. He reveres not the truth, and he is over-familiar with the All-Wise Creator. Wherefore, Sir Count, if his mind is as you say, doth he not walk abroad with decency?”

“My dear Don Miguel,” said the Count of Nullepart, “it is because of his natural force. Does the wind walk abroad with decency? It can be soft and courteous, yet more often it is rude and violent. But whatever its humour, all of us, Spanish hidalgo or French rapscallion, must obey its whims. It is the same with this Englishman. He knows no law save his natural puissance; and you and I, my dear, have not the power to do other than respect it.”

Upon this the Count of Nullepart drew his cloak about him and went to sleep. I was not satisfied in the least as to the ground on which I went, but being too fatigued to confer further with my thoughts I was fain also to do the same.

In the course of a long week’s journey we had quitted the dominion of the King of Castile, and the perils of the road were diminished sensibly. Thenceforward we took again to the public ways, and were glad indeed of the additional comfort and security.

I was now permitted to observe more clearly the beauties of nature, for all the fair provinces through which we passed were strange to me. And this I did the more particularly, I think, since at the many reflections I was moved to make upon the sweet qualities of the hills and valley and the streams and meadows by which we passed, Sir Richard Pendragon took upon himself to deride continually that which he called “my peninsularity”; and though admitting “that the scene was not amiss, considering that it was set in a dry climate, it compared very poorly with the honest woodland pastures in the vicinity of Wapping, which was near to London City.”

When we drew near to that most noble chain of mountains which in these parts is called the Pyrenees, and whose serious magnificence, which transcended all that my mind had ever conceived of our most wonderful country, was spread before my gaze, I turned to my foreign companion with a sense of triumph that I could not restrain.

“I will allow your country to be a fair place, worshipful Sir Richard Pendragon,” I said, “but if it has aught to compare with these tall mountains, it must be heaven itself, which is the home of the good God.”

“Why, you poor mad soul!” said he contemptuously, “you speak of these as mountains—mountains, you soft goose? Why, they would speak of them as dunghills if they were near to London.”

This insolent disdain of my country—for how else could a true son of Iberia regard such words?—gave me such an anger against the Englishman that I declined to speak with him for some time. No sooner did he discover the cause of my silence than his language grew still more licentious. “Pyrenees forsooth!” he exclaimed. “Mountains, ecod! Does the poor mad soul think I was born at Dublin?”

Thereupon I withdrew my horse fifty paces to the rear, for I was determined that I would not remain in the company of one who wounded my country. Then it was that his demeanour changed. He made quite a handsome apology to Spain, withal accompanied by such a whimsical pleasantness that I was fain to forgive him, although exacting the condition that whatever was the higher merit of his native England, which I could not for a moment accept, he would make abatement of it in my presence.

Upon this Sir Richard Pendragon bent forward and whispered in the ear of the extraordinary quadruped he was bestriding, for he had the habit of talking continually to this most strange beast. “’Tis a hard condition, is it not, good Melanto, for you and me that have such opinions of our own? But this youthful Don is a mad fellow, is he not, Melanto? Yet with the permission of Heaven you and I will always respect the whims of madness.”

Among other things, as became my elevation of mind, I had wondered many times why this singular quadruped—horse I will not call it—should bear such a remarkable name. It appeared to be the height of idiosyncrasy to bestow upon a four-footed beast a name which could only have been familiar to scholars. And so, to appease my curiosity and to change the unlucky tenor of our discourse, I said, “Wherefore, kind and gracious Sir Richard Pendragon, do you call your four-footed quadruped by the name of Melanto? Is not the name passing odd for a shaggy animal with a long tail?”

“Well, my young companion, if you must know the reason,” said the Englishman, “he owes the name of Melanto to his preoccupation with the things of the mind.”

“Is that the name of one of the learned?” I asked dubiously, because I had to confess that to myself it was wholly dark.

“Melanto,” said Sir Richard Pendragon, “was the name of a learned Mongolian who founded a religious order. First a sea captain, he became an astrologer in his later years, in order that he might confer with the stars in their courses and the works of nature.”

“I was ignorant of these facts,” I owned humbly, for Sir Richard seemed to imply that an enlightened mind should be familiar with these things, “but doubtless they are well acquainted with them at Salamanca.”

“Doubtless they are, good Don,” said Sir Richard Pendragon gravely.

At this moment the Count of Nullepart was so shaken with laughter that I feared he might fall from his horse. Upon what pretext he indulged it I do not know; but as he was much addicted to mirth which seemed without any true cause to call it forth, I was fain to ascribe it to his French nationality, which, as all the world knows, has too little regard for the light of reason.

Perhaps we had been some twenty days on our journey by the time we came into France. As we approached that curious country, which in nowise resembles that of Spain, I inquired of my companions wherein this land differed especially from that of its surpassing neighbour.

“It is the inhabitants, good Don, that make the difference,” Sir Richard Pendragon informed me. “They grimace like monkeys and are addicted to the practice of eating frogs.”

“But, good Sir Richard Pendragon,” said I, “the worshipful Count of Nullepart is of this nation, and upon my life I have never observed him grimace like a monkey, and I will answer for it that his table manners are so delicate that he would eschew the practice of eating frogs.”

“My dear Don Miguel,” said the Count of Nullepart, smiling, “upon what pretext do you associate one so inconsiderable as myself with that meritorious nation, the French?”

“Surely, Sir Count, your name is your guarantee,” I rejoined. “At least I have always understood it to be so.”

“In that particular you are doubtless correct, my dear Don Miguel,” said the Count of Nullepart, “at least that is when I travel in Spain. But now we are over the French border I rejoice in a better.”

I inquired his further title with some surprise.

“Upon the curious soil of France,” said the Count of Nullepart, “I go by the name of Señor Fulano or Mr. What-you-will.”

“I protest, Sir Count, I do not understand this matter at all.”

“I pray you seek not to do so, my dear,” said the Count of Nullepart. “It is only that I choose to have it so as becomes a free born citizen of the world.”

I could get no further enlightenment from the Count of Nullepart, and no sooner had we crossed into France than my mystification was increased. At the inn at the first town we came to, of which I forget the name, the Count of Nullepart declared solemnly that we must speak for him on all occasions, for by a singular mischance he had entirely mislaid the use of the French tongue. And, further, he assured us that this grave calamity had had the unprecedented consequence of stimulating in the highest degree the growth of his chin hairs. Indeed, this growth was so remarkable that even upon our first day in France he had acquired quite a large beard.

Instead, then, of the gay, sprightly, and handsome Count of Nullepart, an admired member of the French nobility, with whom we had come upon our journey from Toledo, we had for a companion upon French soil one Señor Fulano, a staid, sober, and bearded citizen, who claimed cousinship with the burgomaster of the town of El Dorado, a place of which I had never heard the name.

“I protest, Sir Count,” said I, “there is no such place as El Dorado in the length and breadth of our peninsula.”

This caused the Count of Nullepart and Sir Richard Pendragon a vast amount of mirth, and I heard the latter declare that even his preposterous horse Melanto was chuckling furiously.

“The truth is, good Master Fulano,” said the Englishman, “these youthful Spaniardoes have so little fantasy as a trussed fowl. Personally I ascribe their heaviness to the dryness of their climate and the rough quality of their wines.”

“That is the root of the matter, doubtless,” said the Count of Nullepart in a most execrable and rustic Spanish which you would think a gentleman would be careful not to use.

Be this as it may, from the moment we crossed into France, and during the whole time of our sojourn in that unprofitable country, the Count of Nullepart, or Señor Fulano as he would have us call him, had no French at all. Whenever he had occasion to speak he used Spanish of a most rustic and barbarous sort.

Much as I disliked the country of France, I disliked the people, their cookery, their manner of speaking, and their extremely foreign ways even more. As I had small skill in their language, and the Count of Nullepart had so mysteriously laid aside that which he could claim, we had greatly to depend upon Sir Richard Pendragon’s knowledge and adroitness for the least of our necessities. And to allow a due to the devil—as my countrymen express it—it must be said that the well-being of three travellers in a foreign country could not have been in worthier hands.

Sir Richard Pendragon’s use of the French tongue, which I doubt not to polite ears must have been as unseemly as his use of Castilian, was so vigorous and his eyes rolled so freely, the name of God and his Evil Adversary were so constantly upon his lips, and his hand was so seldom off the hilt of his sword, that the French innkeepers vied with each other in doing his behests, almost before he had been put to the inconvenience of making them known. I cannot remember—although on several occasions he has informed me of the number—how many temporal kings of whom Sir Richard Pendragon claimed kinship and acquaintancy, but at least he wore their manners in such wise as to know how to be obeyed. Full many an innkeeper have I seen turn pale at his utterance of the word “Sapristi!” And so surprised were some of them to find themselves alive by the time he quitted their houses that they forgot to ask him for the score, or perhaps it was that they feared to do so. At least I know that in several instances they must have gone unpaid had not the Señor Fulano thrown them a silver dollar.

I had no favourable impression of this country of France. I suppose it is a pleasant country; at least I have met those who allow it to be so; but to the eye of a true Iberian it seemed to lack colour, politeness, and originality. Besides, as soon as we came to the first place out of Spain, of which, as I have said, I forget the name, it came on to rain; and during the whole time we were in this unfortunate land, which could not have been less than thirty days, it continued to do so. I know not whether the inhabitants of the country subsist upon frogs, as was said of them by Sir Richard Pendragon, but if he spoke truly it was doubtless in obedience to the dispensation of the good God, for their favourite food was continually to be seen swimming in the pools that lay in the middle of their roads.

I suppose it was about the thirty-sixth day of our long and arduous journey that we came into Paris. It was nightfall when we reached the capital of madam’s nephew, the famous King Louis. It had been raining all that day, and the day before that, and it was still raining, and we were covered with mud as high as our cheek bones. Our cloaks were soaked through and through and were running over with water. Further we were hungry and fatigued and in a desperately evil humour; yet instead of entering the first inn we came to within the precincts of the city, Sir Richard Pendragon would have us repair to the auberge of the Compas d’Or, hard by to what is called the Sorbonne, which Sir Richard pronounced “Sawbones” and said was the same that in London was called the College of Surgeons.

This auberge of the Compas d’Or—I have no curiosity to learn what the name would mean in pure Castilian, but they would tell you perhaps at Salamanca—was, according to Sir Richard Pendragon, the best inn at Paris. Indeed, it was a trait I had observed in him that no matter how hungry or weary or out of humour he might be, whenever he came to a town or city where there was more than one inn from which to choose, and some places through which we passed kept quite a number, he would select the one which had the best food, the best wine, the best corner in which to sup, and the best chamber in which to sleep. It was due, he said, to the blood of kings that its board and bed should be princely.

Thus when we came in this pouring wet night to the auberge of the Compas d’Or, and we had seen to it that our honest horses were cared for worthily by the ostlers of this great inn, we entered a large and comfortable room. And no sooner had we made our appearance in it than Sir Richard Pendragon’s mode of address occasioned some surprise to the company we found there.