There were empty wine racks on one wall, a couple of very dusty, empty barrels. The only light – starlight or moonlight – was filtering into the room via cracks in the slats of wooden shutters high in one of the end walls.
The next time I decide to be a war correspondent I will definitely have a stiff drink and talk myself out of it!
Involuntarily, he grunted a self-deprecatory groan of laughter.
He coughed painfully, aware now that his ribs were as sore as they had been the day after he crashed into the olive grove.
Somewhere nearby the River Tormes burbled and splashed over rocks.
Perhaps, that is the rushing noise I thought was inside my head just now?
He had known being separated from the women was a bad idea; but like an idiot, he had meekly gone along with it. Why would he do otherwise? The locals had seemed friendly even if they had not swallowed the pilgrim story.
Although, given that he appeared to be locked up – he guessed that much, even without trying to grope around to establish it for a fact – and presumably, the same fate had befallen the women whom Paul Nash had notionally left in his care, the ‘pilgrim story’ needed an awful lot of work done on it if it was to hold water…
His present situation was proof positive that, as he had always suspected, he really was not cut out to be a knight errant.
A dog barked and kept on barking in the near distance.
No doors banged; no hobnailed boots crunched on the cobbles of the nearby streets.
The dog barked.
And barked…
And then fell silent.
All the while the Manhattan Globe man was slowly collecting his scattered wits.
There had been another man with Brother Mariano. A younger bruiser in shabby workman’s clothes. Albert Stanton had noted that the newcomer was positively well-fleshed, and silent. The chap had never said a word, just listened to what the older man said to him, nodding, shrugging, always eyeing Stanton.
That had been a little unnerving.
Is that somebody banging on a door?
He guessed the racket was coming from the other end of the village, certainly not nearby.
Women’s voices raised in anger?
Melody, Henrietta?
He stumbled to his feet and began to search for the door.
It was unmoving. Next, he reached up and explored the shutters, these seemed nailed in place. He kicked and felt around the floor for something, anything to use as a crow bar or lever; all he succeeded in doing was stirring up decades of dust.
He coughed, swore out aloud in frustration.
“Blast it!”
In that moment everything came back to him in a rush.
He had belatedly, positively posthumously, smelled a rat and demanded of Mariano and his other gaoler: ‘What the Devil is going on?’
‘The Inquisition will pay well for your souls, Englishman,” the man in monk’s habit had grinned as his companion had moved to seize Stanton’s arms.
The Manhattan Globe man had boxed – he had been a respectable light-middleweight – in his college days, and later during his time in the colonial militia, and had managed to land at least two stinging jabs into the surprised face of Mariano’s companion. The man had staggered backward.
Unfortunately, just as Albert Stanton had been congratulating himself on his remembered pugilistic prowess, everything had gone dark.
Presumably, because Mariano had thwacked him on the head from behind!
And judging by the soreness of his rib cage the other fellow had subsequently exacted his own revenge, kicking him while he was on the ground.
How long ago had all that been?
If Melody had not made me throw away my watch I would know!
He guessed he must have been unconscious several hours.
The hammering at a distant door had started up again.
Faraway, there were muffled angry voices.
In a moment Albert Stanton was kicking at the door to his cell, taking advantage of his captor’s laxness in leaving him still shod in his battered boots.
He had kicked half-a-dozen times when to his astonishment the door flew open.
“Steady on, old man!”
Albert Stanton swayed, dumbfounded.
The very English, positively laconic voice was not that of Brother Mariano’s.
It belonged, unmistakably, to the four-square, unflappable man who called himself Captain Paul Nash, who had accosted the Manhattan Globe man on that train journey south from Paris, inveigling him into the thus far, ill-starred adventure to rescue the two women who, even now, were almost certainly raising a riot elsewhere in the village. He recollected that Nash was supposedly a spy of some kind, absent in England when the unpleasantness broke out in Spain over three weeks ago.
Stanton’s host in Navalperal de Tormes, the Alcalde, Don Jose de Cortés had referred to Nash as ‘my good friend el Escorpion’.
The Scorpion.
According to Melody and Henrietta, before Paul Nash had escorted them half-way across the Mountains of Madrid to Navalperal, hefting a sixty to seventy-pound pack all the way without apparently shedding a single bead of perspiration, the man had ‘dealt with’ a patrol of soldiers who were intent on either watching over, or seeking to loot the Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción where they had been granted sanctuary.
“Can you walk?” Nash asked.
“Yes, I think so.”
“What about running?”
“Not so sure about that,” Stanton admitted.
“Never mind. Try to stick close.”
The Manhattan Globe man was about to ask his rescuer where they were going, decided the interrogative was redundant. They could both hear the banging and the shouting.
Paul Nash chuckled.
“It only goes to show,” he guffawed, as if he did not have a worry in the world, “a few minutes ago, I was worrying about how on earth I was going to find the ladies!”
Stepping into a potholed courtyard Albert Stanton saw that the other man was dressed much as he was, other than for what looked like a leather jerkin-cum-sheepskin donkey jacket of some kind. He was travelling light, no back pack, no weapon other than the pistol – the matt grey Enfield Small Arms Factory .45-caliber semi-automatic – that he had been carrying in a shoulder holster back at Navalperal the last time the two men had been in the same room.
Tonight, the gun had what looked like a silencer on it.
That explained why the dog had suddenly stopped barking…
“Anybody we bump into is a bad guy,” Nash said conversationally. “Only bad actors stick their heads out into the street in the middle of the night in this part of the country.”
“I think we were kidnapped for ransom to the Inquisition,” the Manhattan Globe man gasped as he gamely tried to keep up with the other man’s loping, ground devouring stride.
“Yes, well,” the other man scoffed. “What did you think the locals were going to do with a bunch of strangers?”
“We were pretending to be pilgrims.”
To Albert Stanton’s surprise Paul Nash did not instantly scorn this notion.
“Oh, right,” he breathed, pausing before emerging onto the main – well, the only cobbled – street through the village leading towards from where the banging still, sporadically emanated. “That was a smart move,” he remarked, obviously impressed. “Whose idea was that? Your’s?”
Stanton blanched.
“No, Melody’s…”
“Figures. She’s something, isn’t she?”
“Yes, definitely…”
“How many are we up against?” Paul Nash inquired, getting back to business. His tone inferred he was only asking to make polite conversation and that the odds really did not matter to him. “I coshed the chap who came to see what was upsetting his dog,” he added, trying to be helpful.