It was as if I could not move my feet, as if they adhered to the floor.
I still held the knife; I dropped it.
“We’d best go,” said Crocker. “There’s no alarm.”
George was on his knees groping for the skin of wine. Being of narrow neck it had not all spilled. He slopped some in one of the cups and gave it to me to drink.
“We’d best go,” said Crocker. “I shouldn’t fancy if they found us now.”
I tried desperately to recover myself. It was not at all horror at killing Buarcos: it was the release of a great anger which now, acting on weak nerves and a sick body, left me as if I had myself been stabbed.
“There’s horses below,” said George. “Think you we could get ‘em?”
“No,” I said. “They’re too precious too precious not to be locked in.”
George took a swig of wine himself, passed it to Crocker. Crocker took it as if it was red-hot, drained the rest in a gulp.
“Let’s go,” he said.
We heard a frightened neighing.
The blood from the two men must by now be dripping through the boards. George took off Buarcos’s sword and buckled it round him.
“Par better,” I said. “Mules. We may be able at the edge of the town we might get them.”
“Come, lad,” said George. “I’ll help you down the stairs.
We turned to go. When we entered, not 300 seconds since two men had been finishing a good dinner, replete, healthy well wined, at ease. When we left, not 300 seconds later, they were dead, blood dripping faster than the wine, processes stayed for ever; two corpses spilled among the remnants of the meal. I was sorry I had not had time to talk to Buarcos. I wondered if he had realised it was for Victor.
We got to the top step, my feet halting. George with his arm round me; Crocker was already at the foot of the stairs I limped down. The kitchen door was still shut. The horses now were neighing and stamping their feet. It. was they who would raise the alarm.
The window was still open. It seemed darker outside now. Somehow I got over the sill. Some people were walking across the square: a whole family out late; the father in his black hat, cloak billowing in the wind, the mother in her shawl, five children fantailed behind. They took no notice of us.
We left the town.
CHAPTER NINE
It was Major George’s plan to strike south. He thought the Spanish would expect us to go north and so would pursue us that way. South lay the narrow Gibraltar Straits and the Sultanate of Morocco; Ahmed the Golden was on friendly terms with England. It was a long way; but little compared to any trek north.
We found no mules to steal in Lagos; but five miles south on the road to Faro, from an old house which had a halfdozen in the stables, we were able to take three without challenge. I do not know quite how we managed to walk that first five miles, since we were all exhausted by privation before ever we began; but fear of what is following and the lure of freedom ahead are the greatest spurs even to sickly men.
Although I was the sickliest of the three in part because my mind was ailing with grief and anger on that first march I kept up with them unaided. On the mules we made a few more miles before dawn and hid in a coppice of gorse and scrub that reminded me of Cornwall. We lay there all through that hot morning, and it was not until the first hour of the siesta that we moved again into a village called Lagoa.
There by good fortune we were able to raid a barn and steal leeks and lentils and a few grapes. A mongrel dog woke the village round us and we had to flee into the hips and look down at the peasants milling about as in a disturbed ant-hill.
It was poor food for men long deprived, and during the afternoon while we lay in the shade of a scrub oak I began to be tormented by visions of the food we had left untasted on Buarcos’s table. We had been too precipitate: five minutes more would have enabled us to fling the stuff into a bag and carry it away; it would have lasted us two days. The thought was a pain in the stomach, genuinely felt.
As soon as the sun set we were off again, but cut inland away from the coastal track. One could toss a coin as to whether it was the best choice and only hope we did not get hopelessly lost. This was rough barren country, with little cover but little sign of human life.
Towards dawn we descended a long hillside to a giant riverbed, dry and strewn with boulders and the trunks of rotted trees. Halfway across we found a tiny rivulet of water slipping downhill and gratefully watered the mules and refilled our own skins. We were able to get up into the bushes at the other side before day broke.
There we lay and discussed for a time the question as to whether, if we moved far enough away to escape capture, we might yet remain in Portugal, slip down to the coast in a week or two and persuade some fisherman, on the promise of a reward, to carry us back to England. As George pointed out, there was some advantage in staying in a country compulsorily annexed by Spain. Many Portuguese today were the orphans of those massacred fifteen or so years ago, when it was said so many corpses were thrown in the sea that the fishermen would not go out again until the archbishop had come in solemn procession to purify the waters. For my part I had no preference as to what we did and little expectation as to the outcome, for it was while we were so talking that I knew the pain I had was not hunger after all.
I said nothing then, but about midday had to cry off the search for food and let the others go on alone. They were lucky and came back with a tiny hen. This, cooked and eaten with the fingers, was the first fresh meat we had tasted since capture, but I could not savour it. They looked at me sym-pathetically and I tried to make light of the trouble. We started off again at dusk, and I travelled until the first streaks of dawn were in the sky. Then I had to give up and lie writhing in the dust.
That I should be attacked at this stage with the dysentery we alone had avoided seemed the harshest turn of fate. It made nonsense of any hope of escape. I knew from watching others that this was only the beginning of an attack. It would get worse until I was prostrate and perhaps unconscious. In five or six days I would die or get better. But five or six days was too long to survive under present conditions.
We moved on again for two hours before the heat was great and then took refuge in a coppice on the north side of a ridge. We had found no water yesterday and the mules badly needed it. The problem of water in this barren land was that such springs as might exist were likely to be the sites of hamlets or villages. We would not probably find another riverbed.
I tried to persuade George and Cracker to leave me and go on. This was the clear and logical thing to do. They would not, as I think I should not have. It is when human beings are above human logic that they perhaps show their affinity with God.
They made me a rough shelter from the fierce rays of the sun, put the last of their water beside me, and then split, Crocker to go towards the sea and Major George inland. Whether they found food or not they were to meet here again at dusk.
Sometimes an illness can just consciously be kept at bay while there are others about and while there are decisions to be taken. When the others are gone and the decisions made there is no barrier left. So within an hour I was in a high fever, my belly dissolved into pain and blood.
I thought I was back at Arwenack at the great hall, but it was no pleasant homecoming. A huge log fire was blazing and one could not get away from the heat. All about the room were Dominican monks in the long black robes of the Inquisition. They were staring at the fire and at the pile of logs waiting to be burned in the hearth. Suddenly the one next to me threw back the hood and cloak showing the white woollen garment underneath. It was Katherine Footmarker. She smiled at me, and her teeth had been filed down to points; her eyes held little blazing fires of their own.