Then, shedding to either side a surge of men, as the bow of a swift ship casts a twin wave to right and left, a man with only scraps of rags clinging to him rushed up the aisle of the nave. His hair was red-wet and matted about his brow. There was a gash on one shoulder. His right arm hung useless by his side. He was barefooted, but still in his left hand he held a long knife, of which the steel was dimmed with blood.
"El Sarria! El Sarria!" cried the voices behind him. "There are a hundred duros on his head! Take him! Take him!"
And in a moment more the whole church was filled with the clangour of armed men. Bright uniforms filled the doorways. Sword bayonets glinted from behind pillars, as eager pursuers rushed this way and that after their prey, overturning the chairs and frightening the kneeling women.
Straight along the aisle, turning neither to right nor left, rushed the hunted man. On the steps which lead up to the gilded railing he threw down his knife, which with a clang rebounded on the marble floor of the church.
A priest came forward as if to bar the little wicket door. But with a bound El Sarria was within, and in another he had cast himself down on the uppermost steps of the high altar itself and laid his hands upon the cloth which bore Su Majestad, the high mystery of the Incarnation of God.
At this uprose the Abbot, and stepping from his throne with a calm dignity he reached the little golden gate through which the hunted man had come one moment before the pursuers. These were the regular Government troops, commanded by a Cristino officer, who with a naked sword in his hand pointed them on.
Blind with anger and the loss of many comrades, they would have rushed after the fugitive and slain him even on the holy place where he lay.
But the Abbot of the Order of the Virgin of Montblanch stood in the breach. They must first pass over his body. He held aloft a cross of gold with a gesture of stern defiance. The crozier-bearer had moved automatically to his place behind him.
"Thus far, and no farther!" cried the Abbot; "bring not the strife of man into the presence of the Prince of Peace. This man hath laid his hands upon the horns of the altar, and by Our Lady and the Host of God, he shall be safe!"
CHAPTER IX
THE SHADOW OF THE DESTROYER
The Abbot of Montblanch, Don Baltasar Varela, was supposed to be occupied in prayer and meditation. But in common with many of his abbatical brethren, he employed his leisure with quite other matters. Many have been the jests levelled at the higher clergy of the Church of Rome, rich, cloistered, and celibate, in their relations to the other sex.
But all such jests, good against even certain holy popes of Rome and their nephews, fell harmless against the triple brass of the reputation of Don Baltasar, present head of the great Monastery of Montblanch.
Things might be whispered against the practice of divers of the brethren of the Order. But out of the sphere of his immediate jurisdiction, Don Baltasar concerned himself not with other men's matters.
"To his own God he standeth or falleth," quoth Don Baltasar, and washed his hands of the responsibility.
But there were one or two offences which Don Baltasar did not treat in this manner, and of these anon.
Meantime the Abbot talked with his confessor, and in the security of his chamber was another man to the genial host, the liberal and well-read churchman, the courteous man of the world who had listened so approvingly to the wild talk of Rollo the Scot, and so condescendingly clinked glasses with Brother Hilario, the rich young recruit who had come from his native province to support the cause of el Rey Absoluto, Don Carlos V. of Spain.
The chamber itself was different. It contained one chair, plain and rude as that of any anchorite, in which the Abbot sat, a stool for the father confessor, a pallet bed, a rough shelf with half a dozen worn volumes above it, two great books with locked clasps of metal – these composed the entire furniture of the chamber of one of the most powerful princes of Holy Church in the world.
"It is no use, Anselmo," said the Abbot, gravely toying with the clasp of one of the open books, in which a few lines of writing were still wet, "after all, we are but playing with the matter here. The curé lies elsewhere. We may indeed keep our petty bounds intact, sheltering within a dozen of leagues not one known unfaithful to the true King, and the principles of the Catholic religion; but we do not hold even Aragon with any certainty. The cities whelm us in spite of ourselves. Zaragoza itself is riddled with sedition, rottenly Jacobin to the core!"
"An accursed den of thieves!" said the gloomy monk. "God will judge it in His time!"
"Doubtless – doubtless. I most fully agree!" said the Abbot, softly, "but meantime it is His will that we use such means as we have in our hands to work out the divine ends. It is well known to you that there is one man who is driving this estate of Spain to the verge of a devil's precipice."
With a look of dark shrewdness the priest dropped his head closer to his superior's ear.
"Mendizábal," he said, "Mendizábal, the Jew of Madrid, the lover of heretic England, the overgrown cat's-paw of the money-brokers, the gabbler of the monkeys' chatter called 'liberal principles,' the evil councillor of a foolish queen."
"Even so," sighed the Abbot. "To such God for a time grants power to scourge His very elect. Great is their power – for a time. They flourish like a green bay tree – for a time. But doth not the Wise Man say in the Scripture, 'Better is wisdom than many battalions, and a prudent man than a man of war'? You and I, father, must be the prudent men."
"But will not our brave Don Carlos soon rid us of these dead dogs of Madrid?" said the Confessor. "What of his great generals Cabrera and El Serrador? They have gained great victories. God has surely been with their arms!"
The Prior shrugged his shoulders with a slight but inconceivably contemptuous movement, which indicated that he was weary of the father's line of argument.
"Another than yourself, Anselmo, might mistake me for a scoffer when I say that in this matter we must be our own Don Carlos, our own generals – nay, our own Providence. To be plain, Carlos V. – that blessed and truly legitimate sovereign, is a donkey; Cabrera, a brave but cruel guerrillero who will get a shot through him one fine day, as all these gluttons for fighting do! – The rest of the generals are even as Don Carlos, and as for Providence – well, believe me, reverend father, in these later days, even Providence has left poor Spain to fend for herself?"
"God will defend His Church," said the Confessor solemnly.
"But how?" purred the Abbot. "Will Providence send down three legions of angels to sweep the Nationals from sea-board to sea-board, from Alicante even to Pontevedra?"
"I, for one, place neither bounds nor limits upon the Divine power!" said the dark monk, sententiously.
"Well, then, I do," answered the Prior; "those of common sense, and of requiring us who are on earth to use the means, the commoner and the more earthly the better."
The monk bowed, but did not again contradict his superior. The latter went on —
"Now I have received from a sure hand in Madrid, one of us and devoted to our interests, an intimation that so soon as the present Cortes is dissolved, Mendizábal means to abolish all the convents in Spain, to seize their treasures and revenues, turn their occupants adrift, and with the proceeds to pay enough foreign mercenaries to drive Don Carlos beyond the Pyrenees and end the war!"
During this speech, which the Prior delivered calmly, tapping the lid of his golden snuff-box and glancing occasionally at the Father Confessor out of his unfathomable grey eyes, that gloomy son of the Church had gradually risen to his full height. At each slow-dropping phrase the expression of horror deepened on his countenance, and as the Abbot ended, he lifted his right arm and pronounced a curse upon Mendizábal, such as only the lips of an ex-inquisitor could have compassed, which might have excited the envy of Torquemada the austere, and even caused a smile of satisfaction