The Azure Rose Part 26

The hotel proprietor stroked a beard so bristling as to threaten his caressing fingers.

"It is a wild country," he remarked.

"That's what they all say," returned Cartaret. "When does the next train leave for it?"

"There is no train. Alegria is a little town in the high Cantabrian Mountains, far from any train."

"Then come along downtown and help me buy a horse," said Cartaret. "I saw a lot of likely-looking ones this morning."

"But, monsieur," expostulated the hotel proprietor, "n.o.body between here and Alegria speaks French. n.o.body in Alegria speaks French--and you do not speak _Eskura_."

"What's that?"

"It is how we Basques name our own tongue."

"Well, I don't care. Get me a guide."

"I fear I cannot, monsieur. The country people do not want Alava to become the prey of tourists, and they will be slow to allow a stranger."

"Have you got a road-map?"

Yes, the proprietor had a road-map--of sorts. It looked faulty, and Cartaret found later that it was more faulty than it looked; but he resolved to make it do, and that afternoon found him in the saddle of a lean and hardy mare, ten miles on his way. He had brought with him a pair of English riding-breeches and leggings--purchased in Paris for no other reason than that he had the money and used to love to ride--his reduced equipment was in saddle-bags, and the road-map in his handiest pocket.

He put up at a little inn that night and rode hard, east by south, all the next day. He rode through fertile valleys where the fields were already yellow with wheat and barley. He came upon patches of Indian corn that made him think of the country about his own Ohio home, and upon flax-fields and fields of hemp. His way lay steadily upward, and in the hills he met with iron-banks and some lead and copper mines.

Queerly costumed peasants herded sheep and goats along the roadside; but n.o.body that Cartaret addressed could understand a word of his speech. The road-map was bad, indeed: twice he lost his way by consulting it and once, he thought, by failing to consult it. A road that the map informed him would lead straight to Alegria ended in a marble-quarry.

Cartaret accosted the only workman in sight.

"Alegria?" he asked.

The man pointed back the way that Cartaret had come.

He followed the direction thus indicated and took a turning that he had missed before. He pa.s.sed through a countryside of small plains.

Then he began to climb again and left these for stretches of bare heath and hills covered with furze. From one hilltop he looked ahead to a vast pile of mountains crowned by two white peaks that shone in the sun like the lances of a celestial guard. The farms were less and less in size and farther and farther apart--tiny farms cultivated with antique implements. Apple-orchards appeared and disappeared, and then, quite suddenly, the hills became mountains, their bases covered by great forests of straight chestnut-trees, gigantic oaks and stately bushes whose limbs met in a dark canopy above the rider's head. At his approach, rabbits scurried, white tails erect, across the road; from one rare clearing a flock of partridges whirred skyward, and once, in the distance, he saw a grazing herd of wild deer.

Late in the afternoon, he came to a wide plateau, surrounded on three sides with mountain-peaks. There was a lake in the center, with a few cottages scattered along its sh.o.r.es, and at one end of the lake a high-gabled, wide-eaved inn, in front of which a short man, dark and wiry and unlike the people of that country, lounged in the sun. He proved to be the innkeeper, a native of Navarre, and, to Cartaret's delight, spoke French.

"Yes," he nodded, "I learned it years ago from a French servant that they used to have at the castle in the old lord's time."

"I've come from Vitoria," Cartaret explained. "Can you tell me how far it is to Alegria?"

"If you have come from Vitoria," was the suspicious answer, "you must have taken the wrong road and come around Alegria. Alegria is a score of miles behind you."

Cartaret swore softly at that road-map. He was tired and stiff, however, and so he dismounted and let the landlord attend to his mare and bring him, at the inn-porch, some black bread and cheese and a small pitcher of _zaragua_, the native cider.

"These are a strange people here," he said as the landlord took a chair opposite.

The landlord shook his swarthy head.

"I do not speak ill of them," said he. His tone implied that such a course would be unwise. "They call themselves," he went on after a ruminative pause, "the direct descendants of those Celtiberi whom the old Romans could never conquer, and I can well believe it of them.

However, I know nothing: the lord at the castle knows."

"They don't like the Spaniards?" asked Cartaret.

"They hate us," said the innkeeper.

"Why?"

"I do not know. Perhaps because Spain rules them--so much as any power could. But I know nothing: the lord at the castle knows."

"What's his name?"

The question fell thoughtlessly from the lips of the American, but he had no sooner uttered it than he surmised its answer:

"The Don Ricardo Ethenard-Eskurola d'Alegria."

Cartaret produced a gold-piece and spun it on the rude table before him.

"An important man, isn't he?"

The innkeeper was eyeing the money, but his reply was cautious:

"How--'important'?"

"Rich?"

"The old lord lost much when there was the great rising for Don Carlos. But an Ethenard-Eskurola does not need riches."

"Then he's lucky. How does that happen?"

"Because his family is the most ancient and powerful in all the Vascongadas. There is no family older in Spain, nor any prouder." It was plainly one subject of which this alien was permitted to know something. "They have been lords of this land since before the time that men made chronicles. The papers in the castle go back to the Fifteenth Century--to the time when _Eskura_ was first turned into an alphabet. They were at Roncesvalles; they made pilgrimages to Jerusalem and fought in the crusades. One of them was Lord-Lieutenant of Jerusalem when G.o.dfrey de Bouillon was its King. There was an Ethenard-Eskurola at La Isla de los Faisanes when the French Louis XI arranged there with our Henry the marriage of the Duc de Guienne.

Always they have been lords and over-lords--always."

"I see," said Cartaret. "And the present lord lives near here at the castle?"

"As all his fathers lived before him. At their place and in their manner. What they did, he does; what they believed, he believes.

Monsieur, even the ancient Basque traditions of hospitality are there a law infringeable. Were you his bitterest blood-enemy and knocked at the castle-gate for a night's shelter, he himself, Ricardo d'Alegria, would greet you and wait upon you, and keep you safe until morning."

"And then shoot my head off?" suggested Cartaret.

The innkeeper smiled: "I know nothing; but the lord at the castle knows."

"I suppose he hasn't a drop of any blood but Basque blood in him?"

"Monsieur, there is but one way in which a foreigner may marry even the humblest Basque, and that is by some act that saves the Basque's entire line. Thus even the humblest. As for the grandee at the castle, if I so much as asked him that question, so proud is he of his nationality and family that likely he would kill me."

"He must be a pleasant neighbor," said the American. "He lives alone?"