‘Yes, but I’m dressing,’ answered Harry, rather impatiently.
‘No, come!’ insisted his host. ‘I will show you what I have downstairs! You will be pleased!’ ‘What a strange man!’ Juana said, in French. ‘I don’t like him. I wish you would send him away.’
‘He’s too damned civil by half. I suppose I shall have to go. I hope he really has got something worth having in his cellars.’
He followed the Spaniard out of the room, and waited at the head of the stone stairs leading down to the cellars while he lit a lamp.
‘Now!’ said the man.
The note of suppressed excitement in his voice made Harry look up sharply. He thought there was an odd expression in Gonsalez’ face, but it was not until he was half-way down the stairs, and his host turned to speak to him, holding the lamp up, that he realized that the most extraordinary change had come over the man. His smiling countenance looked positively fiendish, and his eyes glanced sideways at Harry in the most sinister fashion imaginable. He was a big, muscular fellow, and Harry was unarmed, his servants out of earshot.
‘Come, señor!’ urged Gonsalez. ‘You are about to see a wonderful sight! It will gladden your heart, and because you are English, I will let you feast your eyes on it.’ ‘Lead on!” said Harry lightly.
It was dank and chilly at the bottom of the stairs; Gonsalez fitted a key into the lock of one of the doors, turned it with a grating noise, and flung open the door, holding the lamp so that its beams lit up the cellar. ‘There, señor!’ he said, in a demoniacal voice. ‘There lie four of the devils who thought to subjugate Spain!’
Harry checked on the threshold, frozen with horror. On the floor, stiff in their own blood, lay the bodies of four French soldiers.
‘I am a Navarrese!” Gonsalez declaimed. ‘I was born free from foreign invasion, and this right hand shall plunge this stiletto into my heart, as it did into theirs, ere I and my countrymen are subjugated!’
Out of the tail of his eye, Harry saw the glitter of steel and knew that he was alone with a madman. He strolled forward into the vaulted apartment. ‘Well done indeed!’ he said coolly. ‘This is more wonderful than I ever dreamed of!’
‘I knew you would say so!’ cried Gonsalez gleefully. ‘Now we will drink death to all Frenchmen, eh?’
‘By all means!’ said Harry.
Gonsalez looked suspiciously at him. ‘You are pleased? You like it?’ ‘Immensely!’ Harry said fervently. ‘A noble deed! a miracle!’
‘Four of them!’ Gonsalez pointed out. ‘You see? I killed four with my own hand! It is a very good jest, is it not? Why don’t you laugh?’
‘Laugh? I don’t laugh at such feats as this!’ said Harry. ‘Come, let’s have a toast!’ He sat down on a cask, his foot almost touching one of the corpses: Gonsalez seemed satisfied. He set the lamp down, and began to draw off some wine into two mugs. While his back was turned, Harry took a look at the dead men. They were all of them dressed in dragoon uniforms, fine, big fellows, with their swords at their sides, and any one of them more than a match for their assassin. Each had been killed by knife-thrusts through the chest: a messy death, thought Harry, his nostrils quivering at the faint, creeping aroma of stale blood.
Gonsalez came up to him with the wine, stepping carelessly over the bodies of his victims. Harry took one of the mugs from him, and raised it. He was rather pleased to find that his hand was as steady as a rock, for a feeling of nausea was making his stomach turn over. ‘Here’s to your very good health!’ he said.
‘Death to the French!’ cried Gonsalez.
The wine was of excellent quality, which helped to quieten Harry’s stomach. He drank it all, and stood up. To his relief, Gonsalez made no objection to their leaving the cellar, but followed him out, locking the door behind him, and accompanying him up the stairs, to all appearances quite restored to his former good-humour.
‘How were you able to overpower four big fellows like that?’ Harry asked. ‘Oh, easily enough!’ replied Gonsalez, with a chuckle. ‘I pretended that I was an Afrancesado, and I proposed, after dinner, that we should drink to the extermination of the English!’ He paused, and Harry heard his teeth grind together. “The French rascals! They little guessed what I meant to do! I got them into the cellar, and gave them wine, and more wine, until they became so drunk that they fell. Then I killed them. Thus die all enemies to Spain!’
‘Shall you be going round to the General’s house after dinner?’ asked Juana, when Harry rejoined her. ‘Because, if so-’
‘I shall not,’ said Harry.
Juana saw that he was looking rather pale. ‘Are you ill?’, she exclaimed. ‘Tell me at once, is anything the matter?’
‘Matter? Lord, no! nothing in the world!’ said Harry.
7
The brigade left Offala next morning without Harry’s host having shown any signs of returning madness. Harry did not feel that four dead French dragoons were any concern of his, and as he rather liked Gonsalez, in his sane moments, he said nothing about the gruesome remains in his cellar.
The day’s march led the divisions into a beautiful, fruit growing district, past the great, hundred-arched Pampeluna viaduct. Cherries, and pears, and big red plums were to be had for a penny a pound; there were olive-groves on every side; and plenty of pork to be bought in all the villages. Everyone was pleased when the orders to halt for a day’s rest came. The divisions camped near the junction of the Tudela and the Saragossa roads, but nothing was seen or heard of Clausel’s advance. However, towards the end of the day, one of the Riflemen went to Harry’s quarters on a slim pretext, and asked: ‘Sir, is the order come?’ Harry was used to such visits, for he was known to be one of the army’s most accessible officers. ‘For what?’ he said. ‘An extra allowance of wine?’
‘No, sir, for an extra allowance of marching!” retorted the man, with a grin. ‘We’re to be off directly after these French chaps as expects to get to France without a kick up the backside from the Light division!’
‘So that,’ Harry said later to Cadoux, who had been invited to dine with the Smiths, ‘means that we are going to get orders. Hang me if I know where the men pick up their information, but they always know long before we do when a move is coming!’
‘Oh, what a bore!’ said Cadoux. ‘I was beginning to feel quite at home here.’ They had barely finished dinner when an orderly came in with a note from Vandeleur. ‘I told you so!’ said Harry. ‘Old Douro’s got wind of Clausel’s division. We’ve got to try and intercept him.’
Cadoux picked up his shako, and fastidiously smoothed its jaunty green tuft of feathers. ‘That will be very enjoyable,” he said. ‘You need not tell me the worst: I know it. We’re in for a night-march.’
‘Correct!’ said Harry.
The divisions reached Tafalla by dawn, a pretty town surrounded by olive groves; and, after a short rest, pressed on towards Olite, heading south all the way, towards the Aragon river. It began to rain again, and at Casada, where no cantonments were to be found for any but Staff-officers, everyone bivouacked amongst ploughed fields. ‘Ha!’ said Kincaid, eyeing the sodden trough which was to be his bed, ‘Breathes there a man with soul so dead, who would not to himself hose said, This is a confounded, comfortless dwelling!’ At Olite, the direction of the march was changed suddenly, the divisions bringing up their right shoulders towards Sanguessa.
‘Early up and never the nearer!’ grumbled Tom Crawley. ‘Damme, if the whole blurry division ain’t chasing its own tail!’
They found themselves marching through a district of tall pine woods. The straight trunks gleamed in the wet, and the leaves dripped ceaselessly on to the thick beds of last year’s needles. There was more night-marching, roundly cursed by the troops, who could not see a couple of yards ahead of them, and found the going painful.