CHAPTER IXOF OUR ROAD TO THE SOUTH
Whenmy companion awoke the sun was a little lower and we were able to pursue our journey. He discovered himself to be of a cheerful disposition, with a nimble fancy, and, for one of his nation, something of wit. He had also a lively imagination which on occasion grew quite delectable. Yet, being called to hold a subordinate place in his company, he allowed his humour to assume so rough an edge towards my country as was hardly to be borne by a true Iberian. He passed much of his time in reviling the land of Spain, swearing at everything in it, and drawing an unworthy comparison between this peninsula of ours and his distant England, for which I had his word that as a place of abode it was somewhat more desirable than paradise. Yet every now and again, just as I would be falling to consider how I could possibly suffer him further, he would break out into some odd history of his surprising deeds in many lands. And then to hear him speak of these adventures in his arch fashion, you would have thought such a valiant person had never walked the earth since Ruy Diaz.
That he was a man of a signal talent was published in his mien; that he was one of the first swordsmen of the age I had had the proof; yet I had but to attendhis talk for half an hour in patience and approval, and with a regular nodding of the head, than he would be so carried beyond all latitude by the glamour of his own ideas, that he would ask me to believe that since he had been to Africa the Arabs and other dark men of that nation no longer addressed their prayers to the moon, but to one whom, he said, with a modest side-look, must remain without a name.
“A thousand pardons, good Sir Richard!” said I incredulously, “but I pray you to consider of your suggestion. Are you not given to the practice of exaggeration?”
He plucked at his beard when he discovered that the warmth of his fancy filled me with so much distrust.
“Well, you see, Miguel,” said he, “if it comes to that, perhaps I am something of an exaggeration altogether. But at least I do not exaggerate half so much as nature hath exaggerated me. I am a yard and a half across and two yards and a quarter high.”
“I am ready to believe, good Sir Richard, that a capacious mind goes with such an assemblance as yours.”
“Aye, but there is not the worst of that matter. Such a parcel of the virtues wants a bucket of sack of a morning to keep it in health. And sack is such a notorious inflamer of the fancy that I sometimes break into poetry and all kinds of bombastical ideas. So, my son, I would not have you heed above half what I say.”
It was in this easy fashion that we came to Antirun. The stars had long been shining in the wilderness, yet we arrived without ill hap and supped at the best inn in the place. But as there only chanced to be one it was also the worst; and doubtless I might have pointed atruer indication of its character had I described it as the latter. I shall never forget the abuse that Sir Richard Pendragon showered upon the landlord, and although the food was plenty and smoking hot and the wine was tolerable, he swore his constitution was ruined.
“This is a most damnable peninsula, no doubt about that,” said he as he proceeded to carve a great smoking turkey.
“Have you been long in our delectable land?” I asked, seeking to divert his mind from the innkeeper, who was as pale as a ghost.
“Three years and forty days,” said he, “according to the calendar. But I think I ought to tell you, Spaniardo, that is just three years and forty days too many.”
“I trust that is far from being the case.”
“Yes, good Spaniardo, when I left the blessed island of England, where they eat asparagus on the first of March, I was a smiling and prosperous man; but now owing to this climate, my smile is hidden in my beard, while my prosperity has had too many Spanish flies upon it to be any longer a very prosperous affair.”
“Doubtless, sir, you have not travelled into our fairest places?”
“I have travelled this peninsula of yours from Sagres to Perpinan, from Granada to the Asturias. And other than myself there only lives one person better able to offer an opinion of its sand, its flies, its pigs, its inns, its whims and whams, and its infamously dirty furniture.”
“And who, sir, is he?”
“The Devil.”
“Wherefore one of his infamous character?”
“The Devil made it.”
“By my sooth that is what I can never believe.”
“It is what the Scriptures inform us, Spaniard.”
“Not so, by my faith.”
“There can be no doubt upon that subject, my son. Father Francis, who was apprenticed to book and scholarship in the prettiest monastery in Middlesex, and who reads Hebrew quite as well as I do myself, has assured me on several occasions that ‘though the Scriptures aver that the Lord created the goodliness of earth and heaven in six days, Spain is not mentioned.’ The which makes me to contend that as your land is not mentioned in Holy Writ, and as it differs so greatly from the goodliness of earth and heaven, as English rectitude differs from Spanish chastity, it must having so many tarantulas, fops, flies, and Spaniards in it—and these latter, mark you, never use a word of honest London English in their lives—it must, I say, being so afflicted with such pestilence, be the invention of the Devil. And even for the Devil it was invented very poorly.”
It was during our sojourn at this inn that we fell upon a wise course. The sun at noon had been so much our enemy in travelling that we determined to pursue our journey to Toledo in the night. Thus riding under the coolness of the stars, we made good progress; and so happy were we in the ease and swiftness of this mode, that each afternoon we took a siesta apart from the heat of the day, and kept the road in the darkness.
We had hardly an adventure that was worthy ofthe name. Indeed the chief ones were those that Sir Richard saw in his imagination. For if he so much as observed a peasant sitting his ass and smiling peacefully, he would hold his sword arm ready, lest he should prove a robber in disguise.
“For I would have you to understand, good Miguel,” said he, “you are the one inhabitant of this precious continent to whom I am not afeared to show my back.”
“Then if you please,” said I, “I would be well content if you make no exception in my favour; for I am convinced that the least of my countrymen are worthy of your trust.”
“My young companion,” said he, “I gather from your conversation that you claim no acquaintance with any land beyond your own cursed sandy peninsula.”
“Indeed that is the case, sir, and with your leave I will never seek to dwell in one that is fairer.”
“Alack! it is precisely here where your mind has gone amiss. I am convinced that were you only to set foot in England, you would take such a disgust of your native peninsularity as I have taken of it.”
The love of my country incited me to a recollection of what my father had told me concerning this strange island of which Sir Richard Pendragon made such a boast.
“Does the sun shine overmuch in England?” I asked.
“Its natural resources are of such immensity,” said the Englishman, “that we do not care to have the sun shine upon us more than nine weeks in the year. We like it to have freedom to visit barren lands like Spain. At Madrid you vainglorious Spaniards showedme your tall spires and palaces glittering finely in this element; but that is no more than the reflection of heaven after all. The sun you will notice is a part of the firmament, not of Spain. Now, in London, if a fog arises on us, that element is native to our island kingdom; and though a modest thing in itself there is none to dispute with us for its possession. There you have the true sterling mettle of the English character.”
“Well, Sir Richard,” said I, being determined to challenge his swollen ideas of his nation to the best of my power; “according to the ancient chronicles, the beauty of our Spanish ladies hath been sung by poets from the earliest times. Yet I could never hear that those of England were so celebrated.”
“Thou never wilt, vainglorious one. Have I not told you that we English are the chastest people on the face of the globe? But this is one of those matters of delicacy in which you people of a foreign nationality have not been bred to delight. In England the adorable fair are so jealous in reputation that they would blush to have their names abroad at the instance of a poet or any other rogue in a hose and jerkin. And as for beauty, my youthful Don, the virtue of an English maid breeds in her damask cheek the chaste tint of lilies, and therein is the fair reflection of her soul.”
From this our discourse, reader, you will gather that although right was upon my side, by some odd flaw of my constitution I was unable to enforce it. This nimble-minded foreigner had always an answer to serve his occasion, which upon its face was so fair-seeming that it stood his need. But in many of his arguments he permitted himself such a notorious subtlety that Icould not but wonder how one who had taken virtue for his guide could walk upon paths so perilous.
It was seven o’clock of the morning of the fifth day of our journey that we came to Toledo. I shall ask those who have not seen it to believe that it is a wonderful fair city, and an honour to the land that made it so; while those who have will stand my surety, for I do not see how the eye of man can hold two views upon the subject. And I mention the noble grandeur of this city without any reference to my heart and sentiment, for, as you are presently to hear, I spent some of the darkest hours of my life behind its walls.
We halted at a large inn that lay between the mighty ancient palace of the Moors and the church of San Juan de los Reyes, and had an admirable breakfast. And we were in need of it, since we had been riding hard all night. Now, we had no sooner come to this inn, which was more considerable than any in which we had lain, than I was sensible of a change in the demeanour of my companion. In our journey through the wilderness he had conversed with me familiarly, had treated me as equal as in accordance with my birth; but no sooner were we come into this fair city and this good inn than he fell into hectoring speech, as though I were a menial, and whispered to me privily to call him my lord.
“But, Sir Richard Pendragon,” I protested, “your degree does not warrant me in it.”
“By my hand!” said he, “you must not talk of degree to me, you varlet. Do you not know that in England any person who has a king’s blood under his doublet is called a lord by courtesy.”
To this I demurred not a little, but Sir Richard Pendragon would brook no denial.
“A king’s blood,” said he, “takes a courtesy title wherever it goes. If I lie in Dresden I am called your excellency; at Rome, monseigneur; the same at Paris; in Persia, in Russia, in Turkey, throughout the length and breadth of Europe and Asia I am allowed my merit.”
In the end I was fain to submit to these considerations, although I confess it irked me sorely to apply such a title to one who, according to his style, was no more than a knight. But I had to content myself with Sir Richard Pendragon’s own reflection that a king’s blood is subject to no precedent, and by its own virtue confers its own nobility. And certainly had he been a prince of the blood-royal of his country, his conduct at this inn could not have been more remarkable. I had to eat at another table; he even went so far as to swear at me roundly in a foreign jargon; yet the thing that hurt me was, that he was careful to let those who heard him know that his servant was a scion of an old and honourable Spanish family.
“I think, good Don,” he said in my private ear, “your condition would warrant me in looking upon you as what the French call an equerry. It would not come amiss if you served behind my chair at meals, laying a white cloth across your arm and setting the various dishes before me with a solemn demeanour. And I would have you say ‘yes, my lord,’ and ‘no, your lordship,’ in a rather louder voice, in order that there should be no mistake about it. It will not sound amissin the ears of innkeepers in a large way of trade, and that sort of people.”
After our meal, which in these circumstances had not given me so much satisfaction as I had hoped, we made for the castle of the duke, five good leagues off. Our way was set across the noble bridge of Alcantara, whose arches span the Tagus. With a proud heart I commended this fair thing to the notice of my companion; and though he stroked his beard and confessed it was not amiss for Spain, he declared it could not compare with what was modestly called the Fleet Ditch that was in London.
As we crossed this bridge we could see clearly, a long distance away, the white castle of the duke, sitting grand and solitary upon one of those brown and rugged hills that make a girdle round the city. And the sight of this brave pile, standing proud upon its promontory, clad in the young beams of the sun, set all my heart in joy; for the contour of the great house that was before me was in tune with my aspirations and lent a proper semblance to my dreams.