The Snare. Rafael Sabatini

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СКАЧАТЬ by a rattling musketry of incomprehensible speech that their way lay straight ahead. And straight ahead they went, following that mule track for some five or six miles until it began to slope gently towards the plain again. Below them they presently beheld a cluster of twinkling lights to advertise a township. They dropped swiftly down, and in the outskirts overtook a belated bullock-cart, whose ungreased axle was arousing the hillside echoes with its plangent wail.

      Of the vigorous young woman who marched barefoot beside it, shouldering her goad as if it were a pikestaff, Mr. Butler inquired—by his usual method—if this were Tavora, to receive an answer which, though voluble, was unmistakably affirmative.

      “Covento Dominicano?” was his next inquiry, made after they had gone some little way.

      The woman pointed with her goad to a massive, dark building, flanked by a little church, which stood just across the square they were entering.

      A moment later the sergeant, by Mr. Butler’s orders, was knocking upon the iron-studded main door. They waited awhile in vain. None came to answer the knock; no light showed anywhere upon the dark face of the convent. The sergeant knocked again, more vigorously than before. Presently came timid, shuffling steps; a shutter opened in the door, and the grille thus disclosed was pierced by a shaft of feeble yellow light. A quavering, aged voice demanded to know who knocked.

      “English soldiers,” answered the lieutenant in Portuguese. “Open!”

      A faint exclamation suggestive of dismay was the answer, the shutter closed again with a snap, the shuffling steps retreated and unbroken silence followed.

      “Now wharra devil may this mean?” growled Mr. Butler. Drugged wits, like stupid ones, are readily suspicious. “Wharra they hatching in here that they are afraid of lerring Bri’ish soldiers see? Knock again, Flanagan. Louder, man!”

      The sergeant beat the door with the butt of his carbine. The blows gave out a hollow echo, but evoked no more answer than if they had fallen upon the door of a mausoleum. Mr. Butler completely lost his temper. “Seems to me that we’ve stumbled upon a hotbed o’ treason. Hotbed o’ treason!” he repeated, as if pleased with the phrase. “That’s wharrit is.” And he added peremptorily: “Break down the door.”

      “But, sir,” began the sergeant in protest, greatly daring.

      “Break down the door,” repeated Mr. Butler. “Lerrus be after seeing wha’ these monks are afraid of showing us. I’ve a notion they’re hiding more’n their wine.”

      Some of the troopers carried axes precisely against such an emergency as this. Dismounting, they fell upon the door with a will. But the oak was stout, fortified by bands of iron and great iron studs; and it resisted long. The thud of the axes and the crash of rending timbers could be heard from one end of Tavora to the other, yet from the convent it evoked no slightest response. But presently, as the door began to yield to the onslaught, there came another sound to arouse the town. From the belfry of the little church a bell suddenly gave tongue upon a frantic, hurried note that spoke unmistakably of alarm. Ding-ding-ding-ding it went, a tocsin summoning the assistance of all true sons of Mother Church.

      Mr. Butler, however, paid little heed to it. The door was down at last, and followed by his troopers he rode under the massive gateway into the spacious close. Dismounting there, and leaving the woefully anxious sergeant and a couple of men to guard the horses, the lieutenant led the way along the cloisters, faintly revealed by a new-risen moon, towards a gaping doorway whence a feeble light was gleaming. He stumbled over the step into a hall dimly lighted by a lantern swinging from the ceiling. He found a chair, mounted it, and cut the lantern down, then led the way again along an endless corridor, stone-flagged and flanked on either side by rows of cells. Many of the doors stood open, as if in silent token of the tenants’ hurried flight, showing what a panic had been spread by the sudden advent of this troop.

      Mr. Butler became more and more deeply intrigued, more and more deeply suspicious that here all was not well. Why should a community of loyal monks take flight in this fashion from British soldiers?

      “Bad luck to them!” he growled, as he stumbled on. “They may hide as they will, but it’s myself ‘ll run the shavelings to earth.”

      They were brought up short at the end of that long, chill gallery by closed double doors. Beyond these an organ was pealing, and overhead the clapper of the alarm bell was beating more furiously than ever. All realised that they stood upon the threshold of the chapel and that the conventuals had taken refuge there.

      Mr. Butler checked upon a sudden suspicion. “Maybe, after all, they’ve taken us for French,” said he.

      A trooper ventured to answer him. “Best let them see we’re not before we have the whole village about our ears.”

      “Damn that bell,” said the lieutenant, and added: “Put your shoulders to the door.”

      Its fastenings were but crazy ones, and it yielded almost instantly to their pressure—yielded so suddenly that Mr. Butler, who himself had been foremost in straining against it, shot forward half-a-dozen yards into the chapel and measured his length upon its cold flags.

      Simultaneously from the chancel came a great cry: “Libera nos, Domine!” followed by a shuddering murmur of prayer.

      The lieutenant picked himself up, recovered the lantern that had rolled from his grasp, and lurched forward round the angle that hid the chancel from his view. There, huddled before the main altar like a flock of scared and stupid sheep, he beheld the conventuals—some two score of them perhaps and in the dim light of the heavy altar lamp above them he could make out the black and white habit of the order of St. Dominic.

      He came to a halt, raised his lantern aloft, and called to them peremptorily:

      “Ho, there!”

      The organ ceased abruptly, but the bell overhead went clattering on.

      Mr. Butler addressed them in the best French he could command: “What do you fear? Why do you flee? We are friends—English soldiers, seeking quarters for the night.”

      A vague alarm was stirring in him. It began to penetrate his obfuscated mind that perhaps he had been rash, that this forcible rape of a convent was a serious matter. Therefore he attempted this peaceful explanation.

      From that huddled group a figure rose, and advanced with a solemn, stately grace. There was a faint swish of robes, the faint rattle of rosary beads. Something about that figure caught the lieutenant’s attention sharply. He craned forward, half sobered by the sudden fear that clutched him, his eyes bulging in his face.

      “I had thought,” said a gentle, melancholy woman’s voice, “that the seals of a nunnery were sacred to British soldiers.”

      For a moment Mr. Butler seemed to be labouring for breath. Fully sobered now, understanding of his ghastly error reached him at the gallop.

      “My God!” he gasped, and incontinently turned to flee.

      But as he fled in horror of his sacrilege, he still kept his head turned, staring over his shoulder at the stately figure of the abbess, either in fascination or with some lingering doubt of what he had seen and heard. Running thus, he crashed headlong into a pillar, and, stunned by the blow, he reeled and sank unconscious to the ground.

      This the troopers had not seen, for they had not lingered. Understanding СКАЧАТЬ