Fortune

It was not until we were clear of the soil of France that the Englishman was able to shake off his resentment against King Louis, “the pock-marked Flemish grocer,” as he dubbed him. Then it was that in some mysterious manner his sanguine temper came again to his aid. I cannot remember one who came near this Englishman in that power of self-belief which renders a man in his own esteem not less than the peer of nature.

In the lustre of his new designs he began to forget his cross in fortune. Precisely what these were we had yet to discover; yet, as we returned into my fair native country, it was clear that the mind of Sir Richard Pendragon was moved by some new ambition. On several occasions he brought his horse to a stand in order that he might proudly survey the distant hills. And having done this he would cause them to re-echo with his great baying laughter.

“O Dickon, Dickon!” he roared, “thou who art of the seed of that Uthyr that was Arthur’s sire, and that was german-cousin to Giant Cormoran that gorged upon Christian children in his Cornish fastness, what an inveterately nimble humour thou hast, thou ruby-coloured one, with thy lean look and thy high integrity!”

Then, having thus spoken, he would beat his thigh with his fist in such wise as to provoke his curious beast Melanto to strive furiously to throw him.

To the Count of Nullepart and myself the behaviour of this mad Englishman grew ever more mysterious. Every night he declared to us “that nothing forced the head veins like a cross in fortune.” And then very gravely he would ask “whether the poltroonery of that French poulter’s hare had in anywise daunted our faith in the quality of king’s blood, because let it not be forgotten that it was borne by a good mother’s son who walked modestly before the nations.”

For my own part, being of the northern provinces, which have the most penetration of any district of Spain, I must confess that my faith in Sir Richard Pendragon had been greatly impaired by the outcome of our journey to Paris. Still, it was far from my intention to suggest this to one who esteemed that personage so highly.

Therefore I still professed my allegiance, yet, I am afraid, in a lukewarm manner. The Count of Nullepart, however, assured our leader, with every appearance of gravity, that his faith in his strategy was unshaken. Indeed, he pledged himself to embrace whatever further courses he might devise.

Now, good reader, as you are to learn, the Count of Nullepart’s resolve was to be tried sorely. And I, who had expressed no such confidence in our singular commander, was also to be put grievously to the test.

It was not at once that Sir Richard Pendragon’s new design was unfolded to us. In fact, it might be said that it was not disclosed until it had been actually and marvellously wrought.

At first, in spite of the change in the Englishman’s demeanour, I am bound to confess that I was very disconsolate when we returned into Spain. It is true that Sir Richard was again as proud, sanguine, and warlike as if he were riding at the head of ten thousand of King Louis’s men-at-arms, yet not for an instant could I forget that he went without attendance. I was extremely mindful of our failure, the more particularly as the Countess Sylvia was in such sore need of the succour we could not bring. Also I was fearful of the reception we were like to meet with at the doomed castle of Montesina.

When I mentioned these fears to the Count of Nullepart he expressed the conviction that all would be well. Indeed he declared that his faith was unshaken in our incomparable leader. In this I felt that he mocked me. Therefore I was fain to mention to Sir Richard Pendragon the bitter pass in which we stood; whereupon he, in the strangest fashion conceivable, stopped his horse in the middle of a hilly district, and roared until it seemed that the whole earth was trembling with the bolts of Jupiter.

“Why, you poor soul,” he cried, “would you suppose that we, who went to France to procure an army, return to the young queen’s majesty with nothing in our hands?”

“Good Sir Richard Pendragon,” said I, “in sober verity that is indeed the case.”

“What a distemper is this, my son,” said the Englishman, “that you should harbour such a thought? Do you not know, springald youth, that no person of my nation ever returns from a foreign country with nothing in his hands?”

“Good Sir Richard Pendragon,” I rejoined, “I am afraid I fail in this instance to appreciate in what particular our hands are occupied.”

“Doubtless your own are empty, vain springald youth, because, like all of your nation, your mind is barren.”

There was little satisfaction to be gained from such discourse as this. If ever three servants were returning empty-handed to their mistress, surely we were those three. And when I thought of the Castilian, who no doubt was already besieging her castle with his great host, and I remembered her unbending spirit, which had yet no more than three hundred lieges to sustain it, my very dreams were poisoned as I lay asleep, and I could have wept that we had borne such unfruitful service.

In my failure to reconcile Sir Richard Pendragon’s speeches and conduct with the indisputable facts of the case, I was fain to consider him unhinged, not in a few particulars, but in all. I was moved to believe that his reverse at the hands of the French sovereign had overthrown entirely a mind that could have never been very secure.

When we came near to the borders of Castile and made inquiry of innkeepers and those who dwelt in market towns, our ears were assailed with wars and the rumours thereof. And soon it became clear to us, as we rode with all speed towards Montesina, that that which had been predicted had come to pass. The King of Castile, said the public voice, had moved out with a great host, was already lying before the walls of the recalcitrant Duke of Montesina, and had sworn on the bones of the Cid that he would not withdraw until they were razed to the earth, and he had taken the whole of the duke’s dominion for his own possession.

The Count of Nullepart, who, now that he was again upon Spanish territory, had doffed his beard and resumed his charming manners, seemed affected only to cheerfulness by these tidings. He was content, he said, to follow in the wake of his friends, and should be curious to learn the courses into which their strategy would lead him. Sir Richard Pendragon also upon hearing the news was affected to pleasantness. A smile of satisfaction spread over his countenance, and he expressed the hope that misfortune would not wait too soon upon madam and her defenders. I, however, had nothing of this disposition. Upon my life, I could not see anything in these tidings save darkness and disaster. In my view the failure of our embassy was the total failure of our hopes. Three hundred men-at-arms would be powerless to cope with a great army, even if they had this English giant to command them.

Indeed, at this season I was more than ever persuaded that the Englishman was unhinged. Yet when I expressed this opinion to the Count of Nullepart he merely laughed heartily. And if I ventured to address any kind of remonstrance to Sir Richard Pendragon he would deride me in such terms that I was obliged to hold my peace.

No sooner had we come into Castile, the enemy’s kingdom, than what I was forced to regard as Sir Richard’s distemper took a more palpable form. At a small rustic place, a three days’ journey from France, he insisted that we should assume the guise of peasants, and should consign our horses to the keeping of the proprietor of the local venta.

To my astonishment, he himself set the example we were to copy. Doffing his magnificent canary-coloured doublet and all the rest of the bedizenments he had acquired at Paris, even to the cockado in his bonnet, he habited himself entirely in the garb of a peasant, so that, making allowance for his bulk and his stature, I doubt whether “the sainted lady his mother” would have known him.

By what means he had contrived such a disguise, and whence he had obtained it we were unable to learn. In some places it was mightily close to the skin; in others it was burst open; and further he had sought out similar attire for the Count of Nullepart and myself.

Perhaps it were well to state that on my own part I had no intention to submit to this unseemliness, because I could only regard the whole matter as a distemper of the brain. Yet when, to my great surprise, I saw the worshipful Count of Nullepart tricked out in this vulgar garb, with his handsome face and shapely limbs emerging out of the rude clothes of a clown, I was obliged to yield my dignity, since, whatever the whimsicality of my companions, my youth rendered me no more than a cadet in the service I had embraced. All the same, nothing could have exceeded the disgust with which I doffed my fine clothes from Paris, which were so admirably proper to the figure of a gentleman, and exchanged them for the coarsest and most ill-fitting suit in which it has ever been my lot to invest my person.

I was equally reluctant to part with Babieca, my honest horse. I mentioned to my friends the distress such an act would cause me, whereon it appeared that Sir Richard Pendragon shared these feelings in the matter of his singular beast Melanto, and the Count of Nullepart partook of them also in respect of his palfrey that was called Monsieur. Therefore by the address of these two strange persons, who certainly in this particular did not appear to be so whimsical as they were in others, the keeper of the venta was persuaded to hold them in his stable against the time when we should send for them again.

Doubtless it were well to state that the landlord of the venta was hardly a free agent in regard to the horses. Sir Richard Pendragon threatened him with such atrocious penalties if the three animals were to go amiss within the next six months, even as to a single nail of their shoes or a minor hair of their tails, that the cheeks of the poor man were blanched with terror.

It was not until we had become privy to further whims of the Englishman’s brain that we got upon our road. For early in the morning as we were about to go forth, a cart used for the conveyance of water was seen to be standing at the inn door. Skins hung from its sides, and it was drawn by four sturdy mules. No water was contained in the cart, but in lieu of it were three long poles such as are affected upon a journey by the country people. Sir Richard gave one of these staves to each of us, took one himself, and starting the mules upon their road, led them out of the town in the direction of Toledo.

To all my inquiries as to what possible use there could be for an empty water-cart and four sturdy mules I received the most unsatisfactory answers. The Count of Nullepart still professed himself as wholly in the hands of his commander. And he assured me solemnly that his experience of Sir Richard Pendragon had taught him that whatever were the actions of that singular man they were the fruits of a rare intelligence and were greatly to be admired by those who had reverence for the things of the mind.

As you will conceive, good reader, to this flattery Sir Richard Pendragon—trudging through the dust and the mire with his long pole in true peasant fashion, and wearing a great slouch hat and brass rings in his ears, so that he looked more than ever like a robber, and continually exhorting his four mules with barbarous oaths—gave an assent that was most ready and gracious. He took occasion to pay the Count of Nullepart a compliment of his own upon the power of his philosophy and his old-fashioned respect for high intelligence, “the which he was sore to observe in these days did not always obtain with springald youth.” And the courteous gravity with which this English barbarian assured the Count of Nullepart that he loved him for his liberal opinions made me furious.

For could anything have been more unseemly than that we three persons of birth and high breeding—in such a description Sir Richard Pendragon is included by courtesy—should be pursuing the highways of Spain in the company of a water-cart drawn by four mules and wearing the rudest attire to be seen out of Galicia. Yet, as we moved through the unfrequented country places at the rate of one league an hour, there were some advantages at least to be taken from this fashion of progress. We needed not to keep a watch for robbers, since they were not likely to trouble three peasants who themselves had the appearance of bandits. Neither had we need to fear falling in with the army of Castile, because none could have discerned that three prominent servants of the King’s enemy were hidden in such wretched guise. Again, neither was there to be suspected in the homely and rustical figure of a water-carrier the accomplished robber of churches.

Although such immunity seemed a high price to pay, for its penalties still remained many and grievous, it presently began to appear that some kind of a design was lurking in it. For in the course of a week’s painful journeying, and as we moved slowly from place to place, I seemed to discern that our leader was not so much unhinged as I had feared.

Howbeit, to all my searching after that which lay in his mind, he would only answer me with a droll mockery which he seemed greatly to relish. Still, ever to allow a due to the devil, as we came nearer to Toledo he showed no lack of that soldierly vigilance that always distinguished him when he took the road. He was very precise and yet very cunning as to the inquiries he made in regard to the disposition of the forces of Castile.

We proceeded very warily as we approached the scene of King John’s campaign; and thereby contrived to glean some information of what was toward. All who have seen the famous castle of Montesina will not need to be told that it is perhaps in the most invincible situation of any fortress in Spain, for it stands upon a high and impregnable rock. Although it was well known to the Countess Sylvia’s ruthless foe that at this time she had no more than three hundred men-at-arms with which to defend it, and that the duke, her father, was afflicted with years, he yet deemed it wiser to gain his will by what in the language of war is called a siege, rather than to win the fortress by open assault at the point of the sword. The Castilian was a crafty prince and a covetous.

It was no small satisfaction to Sir Richard Pendragon to learn that King John, instead of enforcing the garrison, was content to invest the castle of Montesina; and in order to starve it into surrender had sat down before its walls. Yet it is no more than just to the King to mention that before taking this course he had already made one assault upon the rock, and had been repulsed with the loss of an hundred men.

This we learned as one night we unharnessed our mules at a posada, less than a day’s journey from Toledo. Scarce had Sir Richard Pendragon received this information than he beat his stave on the water-cart and vowed that high heaven was smiling upon our enterprise. Indeed he declared that the victory was already in our hands. It was vain for me to seek an interpretation of this dark saying; yet by now I was determined to accept all that was urged by this formidable character, whom I had come to regard either as one of the wildest hare-brains of the age or one of its foremost intelligences.