The Rising Storm

about him. With his red-brown face, brilliantly embroidered clothes and feathered head-dress he presented an object calculated to arouse the amazement and possible hostility of the superstitious peasantry in any village—as they might easily have taken him for a Satanic imp sprung from the underworld. But, although groups of villagers often followed him about, he had the superb self-confidence of a true aristocrat. Evidently he considered that an Aztec Prince who was in the service of one of the first ladies of Spain could afford to ignore such lesser beings, since he never paid the slightest attention to the unkempt children who sometimes shouted and pointed at him.

Running to the boy Isabella tore him from the peasant's grasp, at the same time calling loudly to her servants. Hernando and Manuel came hurrying from the stable yard, upon which she screamed orders at them in Spanish. Instantly they seized the peasant and forced him to his knees in front of her. Then, snatching from Manuel a whip that he had been carrying, she raised it high in the air and brought it cracking down on the kneeling man's shoulders.

'Hi!' cried Roger from his dress-circle seat at the window. 'One moment, Senorita, I pray I Before you belabour the fellow at least find out what is at the root of the matter.'

Turning, she scowled up at him, her black brows drawn together, her brown eyes blazing. 'Why should I? This scum laid hands on Quetzal! How dare he lay his filthy paws upon my little Indian!'

As she turned back to strike a second time, Roger shouted at her louder than before; begging her to desist until she had heard what the man had to say. It was only at his urgent plea that she lowered her arm, and by that time people were hurrying up from all directions. A number of scowling peasants had edged towards their kneeling fellow country­man but Pedro and the two hired guards arrived to reinforce Isabella, and it was clear that the locals were too cowed to venture on attacking her armed retainers. Then the landlord of the inn appeared and with a scraping bow to Isabella enquired what offence her victim had committed.

The lanky peasant and his women could speak no French but the landlord interpreted their patois, and it then emerged that Quetzal had had an argument with the man's nanny- goat. Whether Quetzal had teased the goat, or his unusual appearance had excited her to unpro­voked anger, could not be satisfactorily determined. The fact was that she had charged him and, instead of taking to his heels as most grown­ups would have done, the courageous little fellow had dealt with the situation in precisely the same way as he had seen a matador deliver the quite in Spanish bull-fights. Drawing his tomahawk he had stood his ground till the last moment, then side-stepped and neatly driven the pointed end of his weapon through the skull of the goat, killing it instantly.

Isabella and her Spanish servants were enraptured with Quetzal's feat, the Senora and Maria clapped loudly from the window, and Roger felt that whether the boy had first incited the goat or not he was de­serving high commendation for his bravery; but, even so, his English sense of justice still urged him to ensure that the peasant had a fair deal.

The miserable man pleaded that the dead nanny-goat had been his most treasured possession, as the milk and cheese she gave had formed the main items of food for his whole family; and, knowing the abject poverty of the lowest strata of the French peasantry, Roger believed that he was telling the truth. In consequence he urged Isabella to give the poor wretch a half a louis to buy himself another goat, but she would not until Roger offered to pay, and even then she was swift to devise a judgment that tempered charity with harshness.

Hernando, in his capacity of their courier, always carried a supply of ready cash, so handing him Manuel's whip she told him to give the peasant eight lashes with it and a crown for each. As she had expected, Hernando gave the man eight lashes and threw him only four crowns, but his cries of pain were instantly silenced at the sight of money. The sum was sufficient to buy him several goats, so the bystanders applauded the foreign lady's generosity and he and his family shuffled off grinning from ear to ear.

That evening while they supped Roger argued the ethics of the episode with Isabella, but he could not get her to see that her treatment of the peasant had been either unjust or brutal. She maintained that such creatures were for all practical purposes animals, and that if one failed to treat them as such they would in no time get out of hand and become a menace to all civilized society; that whatever Quetzal might have done the fellow had no right whatever to lay a finger on him, and had merited punishment just as much as if he had been a dog that had bitten the boy. She added by way of clinching the argument that had he been one; of her father's serfs in Spain she could have had his hand cut off for such an act, and that he was extremely lucky to have had anyone so eccentric as Roger present to get him compensation for his beating.

Knowing her to be normally the gentlest of women Roger found it strange to hear her setting forth such views; but he felt certain they were tenets that she had automatically absorbed in her upbringing, and no part of her personal nature. Cynically it crossed his mind that Louis XVI might not now be involved in such desperate trouble with his people if, earlier in his reign, he had had the firmness to give short shift to agitators and the dirty little scribblers who lived by producing scurrilous libels about his wife. But the thing that intrigued Roger most about the affair was the violence of the temper that Isabella had un­leashed. He had been right in supposing that her heavy eyebrows indicated that she could at times be carried away by intense anger, and that in addition to her father's intelligence she had inherited his well-known intolerance of all opposition to his will.

On the Saturday they temporarily left France to enter the Papal territory of Avignon, and soon afterwards arrived at the ancient walled city. It was here that early in the fourteenth century Pope Clement V had taken refuge on being driven from Rome. It had then become for the better part of a century the seat of Popes and Anti-Popes who were acknowledged by France, Spain and Naples in opposition to rival Pontiffs in Rome who were supported by northern Italy, central Europe, England and Portugal. The Great Schism of the Western Church had ended in the triumph of the Eternal City, but the domain of Avignon had been retained and was still ruled by a Papal legate.

As soon as they were settled in the Hotel Crillon Roger declared that even though his plaster-encased foot would not allow him to leave a carriage, they must not miss the opportunity of driving round a town with so many monuments of historic interests. The Senora Poeblar replied that she felt far from well, but had no objection to Isabella accompanying him provided they took Maria with them; so with Quetzal in the fourth seat of a fiacre they drove off in the strong afternoon sunshine to see the sights.

Even the hotel in which they were staying was of some interest, as it had once been the private mansion of King Henry III's famous Captain of the Guards, known for his indomitable courage as le brave Crillon; but infinitely more so was the Church of the Cordeliers, as it contained the tomb of the fair Laura, whose beauty had been made immortal in the poems of her lover Petrarch.

From the church they drove down to the mighty Rhone to see the remnant of that outstanding feat of mediaeval engineering, the Pont d'Avignon. The river here was so wide and swift that even the Romans had failed to bridge it, yet St. Benezet had succeeded in doing so in the twelfth century, and his bridge had withstood the torrent for 500 years. In 1680 the greater part of it had been washed away, but four arches still remained on the city side as a monument to his memory.

They then drove up the hill to the great fortress palace of the Popes, began by John XXII, which dominates the countryside for miles around; and it was here, while admiring the vast pile of stone, that Roger and Isabella first touched upon the thorny subject of their respective religions.

She opened the matter by remarking that she thought that Avignon, being in the centre of southern France, should form part of the French King's dominions instead of belonging to the Popes.

He replied: 'I entirely agree. But since the Roman Church needs revenues to support its dignitaries it would naturally be loath to give up territories such as this from which it derives them.'

She shook her head. 'Through the centuries the Cardinals and other great Prelates have acquired the habit of living in pomp and luxury, but I think it contrary to the true interests of their calling. Priests, whatever their rank, should be humble, clean-living men, and if they were so their simple wants could be amply provided for by donations of the faithful, without their possessing any territories at all.'

Roger looked at her in some surprise. 'Again I agree; but I must confess that I find it somewhat strange to hear such sentiments ex­pressed by a Catholic.'

'That perhaps is because, not being one yourself, you are ill-informed regarding modern thought in the highest lay circles of the most Catholic countries. Did you not know that it was my father who expelled the Jesuits from Spain?'

'Indeed I did not.'