Arbues knelt there in a flood of brightness from the lighted altar. Suddenly there was a muffled shout—a cry. He raised his head;—too late,—escape was impossible.
A dagger shone, gleaming red with life-blood, in the light, from the back of the victim's neck, in the flesh of which its point was firmly embedded.
Who gave that final thrust none knew but the giver. Only Don Miguel, who stood by in the fierce crush and melée, heard the words hissed out as the deadly weapon was darted forth:
"So dies the fiend, Arbues de Epila!"
And he, too, cast a hasty glance beside him, as Montoro de Diego had done when those words were uttered behind his ear in the Auto da Fé crowd some weeks ago.
But Montoro de Diego had found no one at his elbow but an innocent, wide-eyed child; and Don Miguel only found a crowd of terrified, cringing priests, who with pallid faces and trembling limbs bore off the dying superior to his own apartments, where he lingered two days, blindly giving thanks to God that he had been accepted as a martyr in His cause!
"The enemy of our liberty, our honour, our security is dead," muttered Don Alonso in fierce triumph to Montoro de Diego, as he sought temporary shelter from the dangers of pursuit in his friend's palace. But Don Diego shook his head with prophetic sadness as he answered:
"May the Holy Virgin grant that you have not called down worse evils upon our unhappy city!"
All too soon his fears were realized. The Church was offended, and the sovereigns, at the assassination of the great Inquisitor, and terrible was the vengeance wreaked far and wide upon all who had been, or were supposed to have been, implicated in the impious deed. Hundreds upon hundreds of people died, by torture, in the dungeons, at the stake, by persecutions innumerable, and starvation; and the whole province of Aragon was still further cruelly humiliated in the persons of its nobles, who were condemned in crowds to do penance in the Autos da Fé.
Don Alonso and Don Miguel were hanged instead of burned, not in mercy, but in sign of greater infamy, and that they might feel themselves ground to the very dust by the intense degradation of their punishment. And Don Diego did not escape the general ruin of his friends.
The heat of the search for victims had somewhat abated, when the covetous desires of one of the members of the Inquisition turned upon the possessions of the wealthy nobleman.
A path to the coveted riches was soon found. Montoro de Diego's words were suddenly remembered that he uttered on the night of Don Philip's death—"If Don Philip die others will die with him." On these words he was condemned, first to lingering months in a loathsome dungeon, then to death; and his young wife was driven forth from the gates of Saragossa in widowed penury and despair. The second Montoro de Diego was born a beggar and fatherless, but he had the brave, upright spirit of his father in him for his portion; and with his fortunes our tale is, for the future, concerned.
CHAPTER VI.
SANCHO'S BROKEN VICTUALS.
Poverty and pride do not go well in company, and so a Spanish lad of some fourteen or fifteen years of age had begun to learn. But the lesson was hard, and one badly learnt, when one evening some broken victuals were flung to him as they might have been to a famished dog, and accompanied by the exclamation:
"There, starveling, be not squeamish, but feed those lean cheeks of thine, and give me thanks for thy supper."
"I'll give thee that for thy base-born impudence," was the passionate retort, as the youth seized the package of broken meats and was about to use it as a missile to hurl at the donor's head.
But as the muscular young arm was raised it was suddenly grasped from behind, and a sweet, soft voice said hurriedly:
"My son, bethink you. For those of noble blood to be street-brawlers brings as great disgrace as beggary. You have never yet so far shamed me, or forgotten the due restraints of your rank."
As the slight, pale woman spoke the lad's clutched fingers loosened their hold of the parcel; it dropped back into the dusty gutter; and with burning cheeks he suffered himself to be led away from the neighbourhood of the half-angry, half-contemptuous man whose well-intentioned gift had been so spurned. When the mother and son had disappeared the man turned, with a short laugh, from watching them, and addressed himself to a neighbour.
"Easy to see who they are. Holy Mother Church has had something to say to their belongings in the past, I wager. But noble though they may be still, and rich though they may have been once, they are clearly starving now, and had better accept good food when they can get it."
And in this declaration the worthy Sancho was certainly most right, although the bread of charity, even when most delicately bestowed, tasted bitter in those hungry mouths; for the man was further right in his belief that mother and son were of high birth, and the mother had also been reared in luxury.
However, the little incident over, with the alms-giver's comment upon it, the worthy burgess of the small town of El Cuevo, upon the very borders of Aragon, turned his thoughts to matters of greater interest and importance.
"What thinkest thou, friend Pedro, of the new expedition preparing to set out for yon troublesome new-found island of Hispaniola—has it thy approval?"
The friend Pedro thus addressed was busily engaged in inspecting various samples of foreign spices. He now raised a solemn pair of eyes from his aromatic treasures as he replied:
"Troublesome it may be to those who govern it; but so long as my son doth continue to send me home a sufficiency of these marketable commodities, it is not he nor I that shall grumble at its finding."
The burly Sancho laughed.
"Ay, ay, neighbour, I know thee of old. A well-lined pocket thou ever holdest good recompense for a few thwacks. Would that the grand old Admiral Columbus could find comfort for ingratitude and sorrows with such ease!"
"But so he might do if he would but try," was the shrewd answer. "You see our brave Genoese hath ever been more needful for empty-handed honour and glory, than for gathering together good store of worldly spoil, to fall back upon when men should begrudge him the shadow-prizes he desired. Now it seemeth that he may chance to have neither."
"Well, well, I know not," continued Sancho. "The queen hath ever a good will to the great man. And although he is not to be commissioned to go himself to the punishment of that Jack-in-office Bobadilla, men say that the Commendador of Lares, Don Nicolas de Ovando, who is now preparing to set out thither, hath all the virtues under the sun. Wise and prudent and abstemious, and of a winning manner."
"Umph!" grunted the spice-dealer. "Don Ovando had needs be a second St. Paul if he is to win justice and mercy for the poor natives out yonder, at the hands of the off-scouring of our streets; and that is what our gentle-hearted queen hath most at heart."
Master Sancho nodded his head gravely.
"Ah, friend Pedro, I say not but you are right. And that minds me: if my head were not so thick, I might have bethought me to advise yon lad, with the great eyes and the short temper, to seek fortune, like many another of his peers, in those far-off lands across the ocean. I daresay he would have accepted that advice with a better grace than he did my scraps."
His neighbour looked up this time more fully than he had yet done, and let his hands rest for a few moments idle on the samples with which he had been so occupied, as he exclaimed with genuine astonishment:
"Why, friend Sancho, verily it seems to me that you have taken some queer true interest in yon ragged piece of impudence. I have noted you more than once, ay, than twice, watch him of an evening as he went by till out of sight. And now, when he would have flung your kindness back at you, still talking of him, forsooth. Nay then, had he so treated me he would have been roundly cuffed, I tell thee; and so an end."
Broad-shouldered, easy-going Sancho laughed and gave a shrug.
"I am not fond of being ready with my fists, friend Pedro; my hands are large, and might hap to be over heavy; besides, I have a broken thumb. But you judge rightly; I have taken a fancy to that set-up, handsome-faced young beggar. And I have watched him, not only of an evening past these doors, but at other hours in the town; and although he rejects help for himself, many a time have I seen him give it to those weaker or more helpless than himself."
Meantime, while he was being thus discussed, that same "set-up, handsome-faced young beggar" was remonstrating with his mother against her oft-reiterated lectures to him on humility, and on a studied avoidance of everything that should draw observation upon them.
"I will not slink into corners like a thief, nor hide myself in holes like a rat," he exclaimed at last, with haughty indignation. "Hast thou not told me thyself, my mother, that I am an Aragonese?"
But Rachel Diego replied with a lip that trembled while it curled:
"In truth art thou, my son, a child of a barren land. The heir of territories so stricken from the Maker's hand with poverty, that perchance we waste life's breath in lamenting that treasures so miserable should be wrested from us."
But the mother's new line of argument, to soothe her son's dangerous agitation, was fruitless as the other. His eyes flashed still more brilliantly with his burning indignation, as he retorted again:
"You say right, my mother. The land of Aragon is so poor and barren, that perchance her sons and daughters might all long since have forsaken their churlish, niggard-handed mother, and finally renounced her, but that she gives them liberty. Even in our oath of allegiance we tender no slaves' submission to oppression."
The widowed mother turned her sad eyes upon her proud-spirited boy.
"My son, no oath of allegiance has as yet been called for from thy lips."
The flush deepened on the young Spaniard's face. He pressed his teeth into the crimson lower lip for some seconds to strangle back a groan that sought escape from his own over-burdened heart. He had heard of the tragedies of those months before his birth.
"No," he muttered at length bitterly. "No. It is true. I am esteemed too contemptible to have even vows wrung from me that are counted worthless. But the oath that my father spoke is registered in my heart; the oath due from us, whose proud heritage it is to call ourselves the nobles of Aragon. And such is the oath that I, in my turn, tender to my sovereign, Ferdinand of Aragon and Castile."
The lad paused a moment, and then, with folded arms, and in low, firm tones, repeated the proud words of the Aragonese oath of allegiance.
"We, who are each of us as good, and who are altogether more powerful than you, promise obedience to your government if you maintain our rights and liberties, but if not, not."
As he spoke Rachel Diego dropped her face into her hands, and as he ended she murmured in stifled tones:
"Your father pronounced that haughty vow, and what availed the boast?"
What indeed! The young Montoro gazed for a moment at his wan mother, at the bare room, and then, with all his haughtiness lost in a flood of sudden despair, he darted from the miserable apartment to wrestle with his agitation in the wild darkness of a stormy night.
That his heart should be torn with bitterness and grief was little wonder, for all too well he knew how it came to pass that his mother was fatherless and a widow, and how he himself had been robbed of his parent and his patrimony. Something of the dismal tale of Don Philip's tortured death, and of the base villain who had grasped at his daughter's fortune, had been told the boy from time to time by his mother. Something, also, of the avarice and barbarity that had wrested a few despairing words to the destruction of his own father, the noble Don Montoro de Diego.
But much fuller details of those dismal days of 1485 had been given to the disinherited son of a blameless father by the old priest Bartolo, who had secretly aided the outcast young widow and her infant when they were first driven from their home, and who had continued to give them all the assistance in his power until his death, some months ago; in that very month of December, in fact, of 1500, when the hearts of so many in Spain, and elsewhere, throbbed with indignation at the news that a vessel had arrived in the port of Cadiz with the great discoverer on board, in chains like a common malefactor.
While the young Montoro was mourning over the dying priest, however, he little heeded the gossip going on around him about one who, during the remaining five years of a well-worn life, was to have a far greater influence on the orphan lad's career than ever the good old priest would have had the power to exercise.
But the days of December passed on. The old priest was buried. Columbus was delivered from his chains by hasty order of the king and queen, and was further invited in flattering terms of kindness to join the royal Court at Granada; a thousand ducats to defray expenses, and a handsome retinue as escort on the journey, being sent in testimony that the friendliness of the invitation was sincere. And so the saddened heart of the glorious old Admiral was once more warmed with half-fallacious hope. Not so with poor Rachel Diego and her son.
Life had been hard enough while Father Bartolo lived, but after his death the struggle for existence became well-nigh desperate; and by the time the months had come round to this following December of 1501, more people, in the obscure little town of El Cuevo, than the worthy burgess Sancho, had come to the conclusion that the unknown young widow and her handsome son were dying of starvation.
But death was evidently preferable, in the minds of the helpless couple, to degradation. Work they could not obtain, and charity they would not accept.
"And small blame to them after all," muttered Master Sancho to himself, a few days after his vain effort to bestow a supper on the objects of his interest. "I don't believe that I, either, should relish the taste of other men's leavings. Thanks be to the virgin that I have never had to eat them. But yet—to starve? Umph! I know not whether I should like the flavour of starvation any better."
And he folded his arms across his portly person with a slightly mocking laugh of self-consciousness.
This short soliloquy had been occasioned by the sight of young Montoro Diego passing the end of the street. His reappearance now, in the street itself, with a large loaf of bread in his arms, brought the soliloquy to a sudden stop; and Sancho left his post of observation in his own doorway, and hurried as fast as his weighty figure would allow to the pedestrian, finding no very great difficulty in barring the lad's further progress along the narrow roadway with his broad form. Montoro threw back his head impatiently.
"What now?" he demanded, with flushed cheeks. "Have you some more dog's meat that you wish to be rid of?"
The burgess laughed.
"Verily, my son, there is a bold spirit hidden under those rags of thine. But a truce to laughter; for verily I feel angered with you now, and I have a right?"
"Because I would none of your mean gifts?" asked Montoro hotly.
"Nay, indeed; that was your affair. But I am angry, and have a right to be, that you should accept aid from others which you will not have from me."
"Accept aid!" repeated the lad wonderingly. "Of what are you speaking? What aid have we received since the only friend died of whom we would accept it?"
But even as he spoke he caught the eyes of his companion fixed upon the loaf by way of significant answer, and he added shortly:
"This I have earned. It is no gift."
Then slipping under his questioner's arm he thought to have escaped; but Master Sancho caught him by the shoulder and held him fast.
"Look here, my son, by your air and looks I judge you to have been born to a rank far above my own and so if it be your pleasure I will speak to you with uncovered head by way of deference. But speak to you I will, for I have taken a fancy to you; and if you are not as set against work as against alms I may help you."
There was a spasmodic twitch of the shoulder at those last words; and the boy's face was so turned away that his captor could not read it. But after a moment's silence the worthy-hearted man continued, with a different accent of somewhat impatient anger:
"Hark ye, lad, ye may be as indifferent about thyself as it may please thee; but I cry shame on thee to refuse aught that may provide needful nourishment for that sweet and gentle mother of thine. To nourish thy false pride—ay, I will even call it by a juster name, thy base pride—thy mother is offering herself a sacrifice."
There was a gulping sound in the boy's throat, and then with a choking gasp he muttered:
"She could not, she would not, live on charity."
"No," instantly agreed the burgess of El Cuevo; "that I begin to believe. But she could and would live on the honest earnings of your hands. And be you noble or no, you'll find ne'er a priest in Spain to dare tell you that it is more honourable to let a mother starve than to work for her."
For the first time Montoro Diego let his eyes fairly rest on his mentor's face. There was something so genuinely true in the ring of the voice that the boy's anger and indignation dwindled away he scarce knew how, and gave place to a growing trust. With an effort he crushed down his emotion as he replied in low tones:
"I have no coward scruples against work, believe me. But I am noble, as you say. The son of one who died wrongfully for the death of Arbues de Epila. It was at the peril of their lives that any helped my mother, even with work, at the time that my father was thus barbarously mur—"
Burgess Sancho sharply clapped his hand over the boy's mouth, muttering with half-angry solicitude:
"Knowest thou not, my son, that a still tongue is wisdom? Keep thy information of the past for those who ask for it, and to those who do so give it not. You, a starving boy in the streets of El Cuevo, I can help. You may have dropped from the clouds for aught I know. Dost thou not comprehend me?"
Montoro's dark eyes gleamed with a flitting smile. The Aragonese of those days were not wanting in intelligence. But at the same time his native pride, and even his nobility of character, forbade him to accept aught at the expense of his identity, and so he quickly let his new friend understand.
"I have no inheritance but my father's name and my father's unsullied memory," he declared firmly; "and I will bear that openly. I have earned this loaf to-day, and more, by grinding colours for the great painter staying yonder; but first I told him who I was."
"More foolish you," remarked Master Sancho, with a shrug. "But what said he to thy news?"
"Even as thou—that I had more truth than wit. But he gave me work all the same, for he said that he need have no fear. The king could replace heretic nobles with other nobles, but he could not replace a painter, and so he would be wise enough to keep the one he had."
"Ay, then," agreed Master Sancho, "the Señor is right; and if I were you I would turn painter also, for the royal ordinance of last September did not name that amongst the many things you may not be."
"No," returned Montoro with a bitter laugh; "that last ordinance of persecution only excludes me from such employments as would be possible, not from those needing gifts vouchsafed only to the few. But I must say adios, for my mother will already have feared some mischance has come to me."
"To our next meeting, then," said the worthy burgess. "And meantime I will cudgel my brains till I find some means to help you, for all you are so self-willed and impracticable, my son."
The friendly look and the confident nod that accompanied these gruffly good-humoured words were full of such pleasant encouragement that Montoro Diego flew home with a heart suddenly grown as light as though he had already regained the power to use the title of 'Don' before his name, and had already won back the heritage of his ancestors.
We say "already," for of course Montoro, like all brave-spirited, properly-constituted individuals, was perfectly convinced, even in the lowest stage of rags and hunger, that the day would most positively come when he should re-enter his fathers home as the publicly-acknowledged Don Montoro de Diego. Meantime there was good bread for his supper that night, and for his mother, together with a handful of roasted chestnuts and a bottle of thin wine, grateful in that warm climate from its very sourness.
"And to-morrow," he said cheerfully, "the great painter says, my mother, that I may work in his studio again. And, if only you would go with me, he would not again sigh that there were none beautiful and tender-faced enough in the land to sit to him for the Holy Mother."
Rachel Diego said hastily, "Hush, my son," and shook her head at him; but at the same time she smiled, and a delicate flush tinted the pale cheeks, for her boy's loving praises were so sweet in her ears that they turned the humble supper into a feast.
The mother and son were very happy together that night; but had those two who so greatly loved each other known that even then schemes were being revolved in a shrewd and busy brain that would result, within a few short months, in placing a wide and storm-tossed ocean between them, one at least of the couple would have found the bread given to her turned to ashes in her mouth, and would have changed her smiles to weeping.
Happily for them, however, no prevision marred the rare joyousness of those few hours, nor disturbed the sleep that followed, gladdened with bright dreams.
CHAPTER VII.
CONSULTING A SWEET TOOTH.
"Friend Pedro!"
"Ay, what now?"
And the spice-dealer looked up from a small pile of curiosities, lying on a tray on his knees, with a more than half-betrayed idea that nothing his neighbour had to say could be so important, as calculating how much he might hope to make by the sale of those uncommon wares.
But this belief was somewhat lessened when his eyes rested on his friend's countenance. "Hey, then!" he ejaculated; "our painter yonder saith that thou art never a true Spaniard, for thy face is too round, but were he to see thee now he would surely tell a different tale."
"It is but lengthened by the height of my considering-cap," was the answer, with a laugh that speedily restored his visage to its usual good-humoured breadth.
Master Pedro appeared greatly relieved by the change. To say truth, in that land of solemn faces and staid deportments, a cheerful neighbour was as refreshing as a sunlit breeze in the early days of spring; and the spice-dealer, although the solemnest of the solemn himself, duly appreciated the fact, not to mention that he had a true though hidden affection for this especial neighbour, and would have grieved greatly if sorrow had befallen him. But long faces only due to considering-caps—well, that was another thing, and really not worth wasting the minutes of a working-day upon. He bent his head once more over his tray of West Indian treasures, as he asked with diminished interest:
"And pray then what has led thee to the wearing of a cap so weighty? Have the good fathers of St. Jacomb refused the purchase of thy Venice lustres, or will not they give thee a fair price for them?"
Burgess Sancho laughed again. "Nay, neighbour, trouble not thyself to guess, for thy guess is wide of the mark. The good fathers closed eagerly with my offer of the lustres, and the maravedis I demanded in exchange are already in my pouch. But hark ye, friend Pedro!—with the lustres came to me also two Venice glasses of the most changeful pearly hue, tall and thin, and of a good capacity. And I have a mind to keep them to myself, and, moreover, to try to-night how the flavour of a good wine from Madeira goes with them. Come thou in, when the sun hath gone down, and help me with my judgment."
"And also with my judgment on a matter of far more moment," muttered the worthy trader to himself, with a shrewd twinkle in his eye at having thus cleverly angled for his neighbour's company.
For the spice-dealer was one difficult to entice farther than his own doorway; and nothing short of those promises of choice wine from the Portuguese island of Madeira, to be drunk out of yet choicer goblets, would have tempted him on the present occasion to break his rule. As it was, the last glimmer of daylight had disappeared more than an hour when a cloaked figure stepped from one door to the next, and gave a tap upon the nail-studded panels.
"Better late than never, friend; come thy ways in," said Master Sancho heartily, as he acted the part of his own door-porter, and ushered his neighbour into a room brightly lighted with fire and lamp; for even in that sunny land of Spain the cold, damp winds of December made the blaze of crackling logs pleasant after sundown. What would not have been so pleasant to English ideas, was the overpoweringly pervading odour of burning lavender, a bundle of which was slowly smouldering on the hearth, by way of giving the atmosphere of the apartment that special tone and perfume considered desirable by its occupants.
On a small table in front of the cheerful hearth stood the beautiful Venice glasses, tall and slender, shimmering with opal tints in the ruddy glow, which also shone through a flask of golden-tinted Madeira, and danced hither and thither over various dishes daintily set forth with sweet-meats. For, ascetic-looking as Master Pedro was in appearance, he had as sweet a tooth as any Roman, and Master Sancho was too anxious to gain his aid or counsel to neglect anything that might tend to put him in good humour.
But although Pedro's eyes gleamed with a certain satisfaction at sight of the festive preparations, he was shrewd enough to read between the lines; and as he stretched his feet comfortably towards the fire, and put back his delicate glass after a contented sip, he asked with grim humour:
"And now, friend Sancho, that you have baited your net and caught your fly, tell me, what wouldest thou seek from out it?"
The merchant's face flushed at the unexpected question, and he began hastily: "Now, by the Holy Virgin, I protest that good fellowship—"
"And some perplexity besides," interrupted Pedro with a knowing smile, "made you anxious for my company. But tell me without hesitation what you would have of me, for I would stretch many a point to serve so good a neighbour."
"Thou sayest so!" exclaimed worthy Sancho, as he rose hastily to his feet, and with hand resting on the table bent over his companion, eagerly scanning his countenance. "Thou sayest so, and would hold to that thou hast said?"
"Ay verily," was the calm answer. "Almost, maybe, to the extent of putting my limbs in danger of the rack, if they might save thine from the like peril thereby."
However, in spite of his declaration, Master Pedro was somewhat taken aback when his companion dropped again into his chair, muttering thoughtfully:
"Nay then, not quite so bad as that, I hope; not quite so bad as that; although—" and he raised his voice slightly once more, and raised his eyes to his friend again as he added—"although I certainly did think it were prudent to seek your advice in the privacy of my own home, rather than to proclaim my desires to the ears of the whole town. It is now three weeks since you accused me of taking an interest in a certain large-eyed vagrant boy—"
"Ay indeed," with fading interest, "of watching the bundle of rags as a dog might watch a rat."
"Even so. And when you have watched anything in that way for the space of months, you end by either loving it, or holding it in abhorrence. I have ended by loving it. And unfortunately I love where the law hates. Father and grandfather of that bundle of rags have perished at the mandate of the Holy Tribunal."
Master Sancho ceased, and bestowed a long, silent stare upon the glowing logs, while his companion took a long, slow sip of the rich wine. At last the spice-dealer put down his glass, placed his hands slowly, outspread, on his knees, and said in slow, muffled tones:
"Friend Sancho, I have some rules for life which I have found good. One of them is, 'Never give advice.' But this once I will depart from that rule, and advise thee to rid thy heart of this unlucky love, and for the future ever to wear thine eyes within thy cloak when yon lean-cheeks is within sight."
"Umph!" calmly ejaculated the host, still staring into the fire. "I knew that would be thy first well-meant advice; and, to tell thee the truth, I reckon that it may be as well for me not to be gazing at the lad quite so much as I have done of late. It is with that belief that I have turned to you to help me to get quit of the poor starveling."
At these last unexpected words the guest started, and cast a keen, swift glance of almost angry wonder upon his entertainer, as he said hastily:
"Nay, neighbour, what is that thou sayest? I advise thee to have nought to do with the lad, that is true; but canst thou think, even for thy safety, that I would aid thee to get rid of the poor fatherless one?"
A smile began to steal over the merchant's broad countenance, as he replied coolly:
"Ay, verily, and that is what I can and do expect. But not, as you seem to fear, to the lad's hurt. Here, in our Spain, it is not easy just now to set him on his feet. But if you will give him some commission to your son—nay, be calm and hear me out—if you will do that for the comfort of his mother, I will furnish him clothes and a fair purse, and trust me, I will also find means some way to smuggle him on board one of the ships, now fitting out in the southern port of Cadiz to carry the Commendador to Hispaniola. That is my scheme; many a good hour that I might have enjoyed in sleep have I bestowed upon it, and now you are going to aid me to carry it through."
"Never!" exclaimed Master Pedro, excitedly; "never, never! Not for all the maravedis that ever fell into the coffers of the Holy Office will I help thee to help one who inherits its suspicions. Dost hear me, neighbour Sancho?—I say, never!"
"Ay, ay, I hear thee," calmly replied the individual addressed. "I heard thee say that same 'never' in my dreams two days ago, and answered thee with 'ever.' Now I hear thee say it actually with thy lips, and still I answer it with 'ever.' But take another taste of the wine, friend Pedro; fill thy glass again, if but to see the mingling of the colours, and draw in thy chair closer to the warmth. No need to neglect the comforts of the body because thy mind is perturbed."
"Ah!" growled the other. "Thou hast well put into words the doctrine of thy life, I warrant me."
Master Sancho laughed.
"And if so, neither words nor doctrine, can any say, have served me shabbily. If it should so fall out in the future that even in this world I must suffer for my sins, or for other folks' caprices, nevertheless in the past my face hath had its share of rejoicing in the sunshine of its own smiles."
"It is in the sunshine of the smiles of others," retorted the spice-dealer, "that most men would fain be able to rejoice."
"Ay, even so, and that is where most men fall into error," was the calm reply. "Comfort from the smiles of others is like the fleeting comfort a sick beggar gets from the glow of another man's fire. A healthy man has the abiding glow in his own veins, and he carries it about with him where he goes. Thus is it when the spring of smiles is within thine own heart, man, and thou art led to accept gratefully blessings as they fall to thy hand."
The spice-merchant's eyes opened somewhat roundly as he heard this short philosophical-sounding speech, so very unlike his jovial neighbour's ordinary conversation, but before he could utter the sarcastic words of surprise hovering on his tongue, he was recalled to his recent anxieties by his friend continuing in a more earnest tone:
"And thus, as I like to grasp at the blessings as they come—the blessings of good fire, good friends, good food; good fun—so I can even open my hand wide enough to take hold of another sort of blessings, when they are thrust upon me so plainly that I can but see they are being offered. Do you mind the text upon which Father Ignatius preached to us on Christmas Day?"
Master Pedro considered a moment, and shook his head. To say truth, when that sermon began, his head was occupied with the doubt of whom he should trust to send with his next consignment of money, glass beads, and other things, to his son.
"It was appropriate to the occasion," he said at last with a clever evasion worthy of the Delphic oracle.
But his companion was too much in earnest now to smile. He replied quietly:
"The text was this: 'Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye did it not to me. Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.'"
So sternly solemn was his utterance of those two final words, that the other was thrilled with it, and moving uneasily on his seat, he muttered:
"One would think you were talking of the Holy Tribunal itself, to hear you."
"Only," ejaculated Sancho, "that I am talking of something infinitely more terrible. The one fire is for five minutes, the other—everlasting. I prefer the five minutes' one, if it must come to the choice. But, if you will help me, I think not we shall run much risk of either. Those who are in danger of their lives over here, and endanger those who aid them, are perfectly welcome, I have discovered, to imperil those same lives on their own account in the other hemisphere, for the glory of our country. And, on this I am resolved—yon black-eyed rascal shall have his chance with the rest."
CHAPTER VIII.
A POWERFUL FRIEND.
"Come with me, and ask no questions."
Such was the oracular order addressed by Master Pedro to his friend, Master Sancho, the morning after the conversation over that wonderful new wine of Madeira, and, with great alacrity, the merchant prepared to obey, exclaiming, with a joyous rub of his hands:
"Ah, neighbour, have your will in that matter of the questioning, for well I guess you would not think to fetch me from my business at this hour of a working-day but on account of our last night's confab."
However, for all so sure as he had felt on the matter, he began to be uncomfortably doubtful when his companion led him from his own door into the next, from which issued the mingled odours of every known spice under the sun, and none of them, to worthy Sancho's thinking, deserving to be compared with the sweet airs wafted over the fields of their own native lavender.
"Come in then," testily exclaimed Master Pedro, from the interior of a room just within the house, and at the entrance of which his friend had been arrested by the snarlings of two particularly vicious-looking pups. "Come in; they'll not hurt thee. They know better than to touch a Spaniard. They are to teach manners to the natives out yonder."
"Ah!" ejaculated Sancho, with an involuntary shudder, and a look expressive both of disgust and anger. But he quickly concealed these emotions. For the present he had one great object in view, and for its furtherance he must keep his companion in good humour, although his own was tested to the uttermost, not only by the dogs and their purpose, but by Master Pedro's employment for the next twenty minutes or so.
The trader with Venice well enough understood the merits and beauties of crystal-clear lustres, coloured vases, and golden goblets, and he had a fair taste in the velvets from Genoa and the fine straws from Tuscany, but of what use or value all those Moorish tags and rags could be, which the curiosity-dealer was turning over, save to patch the holes in the cloaks of the beggars who lay around the doors of the neighbouring church of San Salvador, he could not imagine.
"Nay, friend Pedro," he exclaimed at last, with an effort to show no temper, and to still speak pleasantly; "nay, friend Pedro, if thou hast brought me here to get a bid from me for yon small rubbish-heap, I tell thee frankly I value it at nought, seeing it will not even serve to feed a fire with. Nevertheless, I will even take it, to pleasure thee and to save mine own time, and at what price you list."
"Wilt thou then that?" said the other, with a grim smile, as he slowly lifted himself up from stooping over the pile of lumber, of all hues and textures, rich and sombre-coloured, thick and fragile. "Another time, neighbour Sancho, I would warn thee to be more chary of passing thy word to a blind bargain, lest one more cunning than thyself should hold thee to the promise. To purchase the rare wares of this small rubbish-heap would take many more than all the maravedis paid thee yester morn for thy lustres, by the fathers of San Jacomb. This veil alone hath been purchased of me for a fair round sum."
Master Sancho stared at the filmy texture, disfigured here and there with rents, and shrugged his shoulders.
"Thy wife, Doña Carlina, would not wear it."
"She will not have the chance. That veil, now many years since, shrouded the form of a Sultana—the ill-used queen of Aba-Abdalla, the last king of the Moors in Granada, thanks to the Virgin, our good knights, and Queen Isabella. And now Señor Antonio del Rincon hath hired it, and various others of these draperies, for the finishing of his great picture of the Life of the Blessed Virgin."
"And when he hath done with it?" inquired the good merchant, with something of growing reverence.
"Then it hath been purchased by a party of the ricos hombres,[1] who have vowed it to St. Jago, in memory of that grand day ten years ago, when our valiant Spanish knights adventured themselves, in the disguise of Turks, within the walls of Granada, as champions of their enemy's helpless queen. But come, friend, time passes, and Señor Antonio will be waiting for his stuffs."
As it was not good Sancho, but Master Pedro himself who had been delaying the expedition, the friends were soon enough on the road now that he was ready; and a hope began to dawn again in the mind of Montoro's new patron, that made amends to him for the loss of minutes from his daily toils.
"Señor Antonio del Rincon stands high in favour at the Court, neighbour," he observed at last, meditatively, as they walked along, side by side, to their destination; and Master Pedro answered shortly:
"Ay, neighbour; even so. He doth."
The reply was given in a tone not exactly inviting to further converse, but that zealous Sancho nevertheless continued, still thoughtfully:
"Ay, ay. And doubtless being a favourite he hath influence to obtain a favour if so be he could be influenced to ask one."
A shrewd, quick glance from his companion's eyes rewarded this conjecture; but they and the bundle of "properties" had now arrived at the temporary abiding-place of del Rincon, known to after-times as the father of the Spanish School. And Master Pedro's face assumed its usual solemn business aspect.
"Mind ye," he muttered hastily, as he paused outside the door of the studio for a moment, to pull and pat his great package into an orderliness somewhat destroyed by its carriage from his house—"mind ye, neighbour, I have brought thee hither, and the rest of the business ye must manage for yourself; for never another step in so craze-pate an affair, and one so near akin to rack and faggot, will you get me to stir, though you should promise me the free gift of your next freight of Venice glass entire."
"Nay then, friend Pedro, I'll do more," was the laughing whisper; "if my hopes succeed, I'll even 'you' thee in gratitude, as thou dost me for repression."
A little further compression of the wrinkled lips, a little further wrinkling of the furrowed forehead, gave the only sign of that mocking speech having been heard; and an instant later jovial Master Sancho appeared as sedately ceremonious as his companion, for they had entered the studio, and stood in the great man's presence, from whom both hoped great things; the spice-dealer for himself, the trader with Italy for another.
A man between fifty and sixty was the Señor Antonio del Rincon, the gravity of genius somewhat tempered in his countenance by the suavity learned from contact with that sweet woman, as she was noble Queen, Isabella of Castile.
At the artist's elbow stood the handsome young Montoro, who raised his great earnest eyes with a swift smile of recognition as Master Sancho entered, and then bent them once more over the colours he was grinding with most diligent care, for his employer. Never once again did he cease work during the animated discussion that ensued between the painter and the owner of the curiosities, although his friendly well-wisher marked the eager flush that crimsoned his whole face when a few words were spoken over the veil, of the splendid daring of Don Juan Chacon, Ponce de Leon, and their two companions, when they stood victors over the four false-hearted Zegries within the walls of Granada.
"Humph! He is worth better things than such a task as that," ejaculated the burgess, unconsciously uttering his thought aloud.
The painter turned to him surprised.
"Hey, master merchant, what is it thou sayest? That the veil is too honourable to take a subordinate place on my canvas, thou thinkest? Well, maybe thou art right," beginning to relapse into abstracted contemplation of his work; but with eager deference Master Sancho stepped forward, putting into words the first thoughts that occurred to him. Pointing a trembling finger towards a somewhat coarse dish holding gifts presented to the infant in the manger, he said hastily:
"It was not of the veil I was thinking. But if Señor Antonio would be pleased to accept of a dish of crystal, curiously chased, and worked with gold and gems, for use instead of yon, I would gladly bestow it for the grand picture's sake, and for the Virgin's honour."
And thus cleverly did Master Sancho, and with true unselfishness, slip his dexterous finger into the pie; and in the course of conferences that day, and a few succeeding days, over the costly dish and similar articles, he pulled out a goodly plum for Montoro Diego. The last use the dying Antonio del Rincon was ever to make of his Court influence was in the service of his young colour-grinder; and soon after the opening of the new year 1502, good Sancho treated himself to a holiday, and set out on a journey across Spain to the port of Cadiz accompanied by Montoro, and bearing a written recommendation of his protégé from the benevolent Queen to the great Admiral himself.
"I thought the Virgin had decreed, my son, that I should have to smuggle thee out of Spain in a cask of the Madeira wine, or in a Venice flask," said the generous-hearted burgess laughing, and rubbing his hands, as they proceeded on their first day's journey in fearlessness, and such comfort as even in those days a well-lined purse commanded.
The lad answered him with sparkling eyes. His emotions were as yet too strong for many words. Sorrow at parting with his beloved mother for the first time was somewhat soothed by having left her in the kind care and friendship of Doña Carlina; but wonder at his suddenly changed fortunes, and dazzling hopes of the future, filled his heart almost to suffocation.
CHAPTER IX.
FROM THE NEW PRINTING PRESS.
"And I am surety for you, my son; so if you owe me any thanks for my pains, be honest."
Such was the parting injunction of Master Sancho, as he bade his protégé farewell in the harbour of Cadiz on the morning of the 8th of May, 1502. And with a hot flush in his cheeks, and sparkling eyes, the youth replied quickly:
"Honest! Am I not noble? How should a noble of Aragon ever sully his name with dishonour?"
"How indeed?" replied Master Sancho as he laid his hand on the lad's shoulder and continued gravely: "One may well wonder that any bearing the name of man should sully his manhood by aught that is base; but you will henceforth be surrounded by many a companion who knows nought of honour but the honour of grasping more than his neighbour, who cares for no shame but the shame of being thought capable of virtue. See that you become not one of them."
"You have said that the great Admiral is far from being one of such blots on Spain," said the lad more humbly. "And as I am to be on his own ship, so I will trust to show myself deserving of the honour. And"—he added after a moment with a sudden burst of gratitude—"deserving of all your noble generosity towards me, and your most helpful trust. The memory of that will be a strong guard to me from temptation."
"May St. Jago grant it!" ejaculated the good-hearted man with affectionate fervour.
And then patron and protégé had to exchange hasty farewells, for Ferdinand Columbus, a boy a year or two younger than Montoro, came to summon him on board. Kind-hearted Queen Isabella, in her good-will towards the old and trouble-worn navigator, had given up the services of her young page that on this occasion he might accompany his father, and comfort him with his mingled love and enthusiasm.
To Montoro also it was some secret relief to see that there was one even younger than himself about to brave the very many known, and many unknown, perils of those far-sought adventures and discoveries; for more than his timid, grieving mother in El Cuevo had sought to persuade him that, in leaving that humdrum, safe little town for untried paths, he was foolishly relinquishing all chances of growing up to man's estate. That the Admiral was about to take one of his own two sons seemed a tolerable proof that matters could not be so altogether desperate as that.
Meantime, while these thoughts were flashing through Diego's brain, the merchant's eyes had been attracted by a great iron-bound, iron-clasped book under the boy Ferdinand's arm, and he at once remembered his friend Pedro.