The Car of Destiny 16 – Williamson · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The Car of Destiny 16A Secret of the King’s
18
Literature · Romance
The Car of Destiny 16
A Secret of the King’s
WilliamsonEnglish
Pilar said that the oxen were idiotic dears to break their hearts for nothing, not even a percentage on the twenty pesetas. But four-footed beasts are tragically conscientious, and these farmyard martyrs accomplished their task without a groan, while the Gloria crept up close behind on her own power.
I thanked the patron saint of cow creation when the straining brutes got to the top. The summit of the pass was crowned by a lion on a granite pedestal; a lion with a cold air of pride in his mission of marking the limit between Old Castile and New. For me also he marked something for which I owed him gratitude; my deeper advance into the heart of my own land.
Close to our resting-place at the top of the pass there was a rude hut, and one or two wagons which had strained up from the other side were halting their smoking teams. Here, seated in the car again, as we waited to see the oxen unyoked and the boy paid, a girl came out from the little house with a large volume, in which she asked us to sign our names. The Cherub scrawled something; and as Dick was scribbling, Carmona strolled across, to see whether or no I entrusted my name to the book. I had meant not to do so, but now I would have changed my mind had not Colonel O’Donnel stopped me. “I wrote your name, Cristóbal,” said he, in his ambrosial voice; and the situation was saved. Carmona made some commonplace remark to account for his approach, and walked away with a self-conscious back, as Pilar’s glance and Monica’s crossed the distance between the two automobiles and met mischievously.
The grey car took the lead again, and at a turn of the road it seemed that the whole world lay at our feet; yet it was not even all of Old Castile, so vast a country is my Spain.
Far as the eye could travel spread the fair land, green with the tender green of spring, yellow with patches of golden sand, darkly tufted with woods; struck with flying shafts of light, ringed in with ethereal blue.
Nothing could steal from me this illuminated missal of memories, and were I to be banished to-morrow, I should have Spain to keep in my heart, I said, as we rushed down the steep, winding way that serpentined along the southern slope of the Guadarrama. A breakneck road it was, but nobly engineered, twisting back upon itself in many coils, letting us fly with the speed of a bird to lower levels; and it seemed that scarcely had we sunk over the brink of the mountain than we were at the turn on the right which would lead to the Escurial.
Straight before us, rising out of the bare mountain side and seeming a part of it, towered and stretched a building vaster than any I had seen even in the limitless spaces of dreamland. Were it not for its cold regularity, I should have thought myself approaching another desert of giants who made toys of monoliths and obelisks; but these appalling domes and towers could be the work of man alone. There was no toying here; all was forbidding and gloomy; for this was the Escurial—immense, sinister, as if fashioned from the grim product of those iron mines which gave its name.
I could imagine the fanatical satisfaction Philip’s dry mind had found in planning this monument to represent the gridiron on which Saint Lawrence was martyred. He who was to stand in history as the great Inquisitor, must build his monastery and palace in honour of a martyr! But Philip was the last man to have a sense of humour; and it was like him to appease an injured saint by giving him a church a thousand times bigger than the one destroyed on Saint Lawrence’s own day, in the battle of San Quentin.
“Wouldn’t the Escurial be hideous if it were anywhere else but just here?” asked Pilar.
She was right; for on the Sierra it seemed an expression of the Sierra; and in spite of Philip rather than because of him, it was splendid in the melancholy strength which made it a brother of mountains.
We lunched on extremely Spanish food at a fonda opposite the Escurial; and when the time came for sightseeing—a time for us, but not for the public—the Duke began by marshalling us all, except the weary Duchess and the lazy Cherub, through the great door guarded by Saint Lawrence. Once within, we saw the treasures, as a bird in flight sees the beauties of a town over which he swoops; but we did see them, and once I had three words and one look from Monica, before it occurred to Lady Vale-Avon to link an arm in her daughter’s, in a sudden overflow of maternal affection.
Carmona had made a point of the “influence” which could open for us doors that, for others, would remain shut; and he did smuggle us into the Library of Manuscripts, the Queen’s Oratory, and the Capilla Mayor to see the royal tombs. But after we had stopped longer than he wished in the church, and the Choir, where Philip learned that Lepanto had saved Europe from the Turks, and listened to the sad music of Mary Stuart’s requiem, the Duke promised something still better, in the palace. “What you shall see there,” he said, “is a secret. It was a secret of King Philip’s—so great a secret that even the writers of guide-books know nothing of it; while, if a tourist should have heard a rumour and asked a question, the attendants would say, ‘There’s no such thing in existence.’ Only the Royal Family know, a few privileged people about the Court, and the guardians of the Escurial. As for me, I was told by someone here—someone whom I myself placed in the palace.”
My curiosity was excited; and even Dick, who resented this expedition, looked interested as we arrived at the palace—the great gridiron’s handle. At the entrance Carmona separated himself from the rest of the party, saying that he must have a few words in private with the attendant who would show the rooms of Philip the Second. He walked ahead, engaged the brown-liveried guide in low-voiced conversation, and seemed to ask a question with some eagerness.
Observing the pantomime from a distance, I fancied that, for some reason, Carmona was to be denied the privilege of which he had boasted; but, apparently, he did not intend to accept defeat without a struggle. He and the guide moved on, then stopped again to argue—this time with their backs to us; but, from the action of Carmona’s elbows, I judged that he put his hand into his pocket. Five or six minutes later he returned, to announce that after some difficulty he had succeeded in getting his own way. We might go, unattended, into the private apartments of Philip the Second; and while we were there, other visitors would be kept out. “If there are any, they’ll be taken another round,” said Carmona, “and won’t be ready to come into the King’s rooms until we’re ready to come out.”
The guide led us down the narrow staircase to the outer door of Philip’s suite, then slipped away, shutting the door behind him. Lady Vale-Avon and Monica (the mother still clasping her daughter’s arm), Pilar, Dick, Carmona, and I were now alone between the gloomy walls behind which the bigot and despot had lived his miserable life and died his miserable death.
There was a chill in the sombre place which froze the spirit; yet I, for one, did not feel sad. I was conscious only of an excited expectancy, as if I were waiting for something to happen.
We let our imagination set the meagre form of Philip in his chair, or by the desk at which he used to write; examined the grim relics of his monk-like existence; and finally moved to the death-chamber, set like a stage-box at the theatre, beside the high altar of the chapel.
So small was the room that it was filled by our little party of six; yet I felt there another presence which none of us could see—a grey ghost agonising for his sins, through a bleak eternity.
Monica felt it too, for she shivered, and exclaimed, “Let us go. This room seems haunted with evil. I can’t breathe in it.”
“But now for the secret,” said Carmona. “Would you guess at any hidden opening in these walls?”
We stared critically about, and I began to test the wainscot, but the Duke stopped me. “You’d never find the place,” he said; “and I promised the person who told me not to give away the secret; but that doesn’t prevent me from showing you what’s behind the door.”
He moved close to the wall, stood for an instant, then stepped back, as we heard a slight clicking sound, like the snap of a spring on an old box-lid. At the same time a part of the wainscoting rolled away, leaving a narrow aperture.
It was dark on the other side, but Carmona took a gold match-box from his pocket and struck a bunch of little wax fosforos.
“Philip had this cell made for a place of penance and self-torture,” he said, “and it’s just as it used to be during his lifetime, before he was too ill to go in any more. His twisted wire scourge is there, with his blood on it, his horsehair shirt, and a girdle bristling with small, sharp spikes. Will you have a look, Lady Vale-Avon? I can’t go with you, for the cell isn’t big enough for two, but I’ll hold the matches at the door.”
Lady Vale-Avon is of the type of woman who enjoys seeing such things as these; and though she would not have tortured herself had she lived in feudal days, I am sure she would have dined calmly over an underground dungeon where an enemy—an inconvenient wretch like me, for instance—suffered the pangs of starvation.
She squeezed into the cell, descending a couple of steps, remained for two or three minutes, and came out, pronouncing it extremely interesting.
“Now, Lady Monica, it’s your turn,” said Carmona; but Monica drew back, “I hate seeing torture-things,” said she, “and blood, even wicked old blood like Philip’s, which I used to think, when I read about him in history, I’d love to shed. No, I won’t go in, thank you.”
Pilar also refused, for if she went she would certainly have a nightmare and dream she was walled up; thus there remained only the three men to inspect the hidden horrors.
Carmona held his match-box to me, saying that when we had seen the place he would look in to refresh his recollections. But Dick calmly helped himself to several fosforos and took first turn, probably suspecting something in the way of an oubliette, especially prepared for me.
He reappeared presently, however, his suspicions allayed. “Beastly hole,” he remarked; “almost bad enough for Philip, though he did grill some of my best ancestors.”
I took a couple of matches, lighting them on the Duke’s box; then, bending my head low, and pushing in one shoulder at a time, I squirmed through the aperture. In so doing, however, I contrived to trip over Carmona’s foot, which must have been thrust forward, staggered against the opposite wall of the narrow cell, and lost both my lighted vestas. Carmona exclaimed, I stumbled, and almost simultaneously the door slid into place with a sharp click.
There was not space to fall at length. I merely lost my balance, and saved my head from a bump by shielding it with a raised arm, I steadied myself in a second or two; but I was in black darkness. Outside I could hear a confused murmur of voices, and would have given something to know what Dick was saying at the moment.
I was thinking that I should not like to be a prisoner in this hole (only large enough for the swing of Philip’s scourge) for many hours on end, when there came an imperative tapping. “Holloa!” I answered, expecting to hear Dick speak in return; but it was Carmona’s voice which replied. Evidently he was speaking with his mouth close to the secret door.
“I’m very sorry for this accident,” said he distinctly. “When you stumbled, you knocked my arm, and made me touch the spring. Unfortunately the door closed with such a crash, that the spring seems out of order, and I can’t move it. But if you’ll be patient a few minutes, I’ll look for an attendant who understands the thing, to bail you out of gaol.”
If I had been Lieutenant Cristóbal O’Donnel I would have heard no more in the rhyming junction of those words “gaol” and “bail” than met the ear, but being the man I was—the man he suspected me to be—I did hear more; and I believed that he wished me to catch a double meaning.
“Does he mean to hand me over to the police now, on suspicion?” I wondered in my black cell—“before Monica’s eyes?” But aloud I said, “Thanks; don’t be too long, or I shall be tempted to smash the door.”
“You’ll find that impossible,” answered Carmona. “Don’t worry if I seem to be gone an age. There’s only one man on duty to-day who knows the secret of this room; I asked for him when we came, but his comrade said he was away on leave till four o’clock. It must be that now, and I’ll have him here as soon as possible. He will be the more pleased to set you free, as he’s an old friend of yours. You remember little Rafael Calmenare?”
I was silent, seeing, as if by the glare of lightning, the whole design of the trap, and seeming to see also the triumph which must be in Carmona’s eyes. But the pause had not lengthened to a second, when I heard Pilar’s voice, speaking also close to the door.
“Of course you remember, Cristóbal. Rafael Calmenare of the Duke’s ganaderia. But it’s a long time since he went away.”
“After he was gored by Nero and lost his health, through the influence of a friend at Court I got him a place here,” I heard Carmona say. Then raising his voice for my ears, he went on, “Poor Rafael will be pleased to see you again. You must have played with him when a boy. I’m off to find him now.”
Silence followed these last words. I could picture the consternation of Dick and Pilar. Neither could do anything to help me, nor could I help myself. I could but wait in this suffocating black hole for the moment when a stranger should give me light, and exclaim, “This is not Don Cristóbal!”
Almost I admired Carmona for his quick wit. After a few moments of rage, at sight of the suspected man of Burgos Cathedral on his track in the red motor-car, the thought of the Escurial and his old servant must have sprung into his mind.
Had Calmenare been available at first, Carmona would have been spared the trouble of shutting me up in Philip the Bigot’s torture-chamber; but hard pressed for an excuse to keep us at the Escurial till his man came back, he had put me where I could be kept while needed. And now that he was gone in search of Rafael, we three loyal comrades could not discuss the situation, because of Lady Vale-Avon’s presence.
A brilliant stroke of Carmona’s to have me betrayed by another than himself, so that Monica might not bear him a grudge! Who was this person masquerading as an officer of the Spanish army? would be the first question of the police. And the answer need not be long in coming. The Duke had reason to congratulate himself; I had been a fool to drop like a fly into his net, and now that I was in, I saw no way out.
“Oh, how I wish we could open the secret door!” I heard Monica exclaim.
“I can’t even see exactly where it is now,” Pilar said. “Cristóbal?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Poor little Rafael; a good fellow, wasn’t he?”
“Very good,” I replied. To what end was she working? I wondered. But I was not to be made wiser. Before she had time to finish the hint I heard Carmona speaking.
“I’ve sent for Calmenare, who has returned, and will be here in a few minutes,” he called to me. It was like him to hurry back, so that by no possible means could the three suspected ones reach any understanding.
The moments dragged on, and I could have lashed myself with Philip’s scourge in fury at the rashness which might involve the whole O’Donnel family in my disaster. Never had I been able to think less clearly; but perhaps it was the stifling atmosphere of the cell which made me feel that fingers in a mailed glove were clenched round my temples.
Outside, voices buzzed; but those who spoke must have stood at a distance, for I could catch no words. Then, at last, there was a new voice in the room. Calmenare had come.
“How do you do, Don Rafael?” Pilar exclaimed, as politely as if she had addressed an equal. “I’m glad to see you again. I’ve been waiting for you impatiently. Only think, my dear brother Cristóbal, whom you know so well, is in that dreadful place and can’t get out, because the Señor Duque shut him in—by mistake—and broke the spring.”
“I do not find that it is broken, señorita,” answered the new voice.
“I couldn’t make it work,” Carmona said hastily.
Click! went the spring under skilled fingers. The door sliding back gave me a rush of light and air which set me blinking for a second or two; and there I stood at the stranger’s mercy.
What I saw, when my suddenly contracted pupils expanded, was a little man in the palace livery; a pale little man with insignificant features, and large, steady eyes. There was absolutely no expression in his face as for one brief instant our glances met. Then—“God be with you, Don Cristóbal,” said he. “I am glad to have been even of this slight service. I hope, señorito, you have not suffered from lack of air?”
“Very little,” said I. I held out my hand. He took it respectfully.
“Is it long since you saw each other?” asked Carmona, sallow and red by turns.
“About two years only, Señor Duque,” replied his ex-servant, expressionless as before, and quietly respectful to all. “I could not forget the date, for the Señor Colonel and the señorita, as well as the señorito himself, were always very good to me.”
The Duke was silenced. The test invented by himself had failed. Calmenare accepted me as Cristóbal O’Donnel; he was obliged to accept me too—at least for the present.
“Shall we get out of this place?” he said to Lady Vale-Avon.
She swept her daughter with her; but Monica had a backward look for me, sparkling now with malice for Carmona, radiant with relief for Casa Triana.
We said good-bye to Calmenare in the Duke’s presence; and I would have pressed a gold piece into his hand for “opening my prison door,” but he would not have it. Afterwards, while we followed the grey car on the downhill road to Madrid, Pilar told the whole story with dramatic effect to the Cherub.
“My one hope was in Rafael,” she said. “I was good to him, you remember, when he was ill. And he and I had a great sympathy over Corcito, the dear grey bull. I prayed he’d never forgiven the Duke for that crime, and that he’d still be grateful to me. Well, I looked Rafael straight in the eyes when I said, ‘My brother Cristóbal is in that place, shut up by the Duke, who has broken the spring.’ With all my soul I willed him to understand, and he did. ‘If the señorita chooses to have a strange gentleman for her brother, he is her brother for me,’ is what he said to himself; no more! But what if he hadn’t?”
“That’s where I should have come in,” remarked Dick.
“What would you have done?” asked Pilar, breathless.
“I don’t know,” said Dick. “I only know I should have done it; and that if I had, maybe Carmona wouldn’t have been feeling as well as he feels now.”
