He was told, very briefly, and rubbed his hands over it. “Ay, that is the way it goes. Ho-ho, they have our measure now, if they had it not before! But I submit, master that we have to consider a little. Having lost their prisoner what will they do?”
“Send hotfoot to the Frontier, and the ports,” said Sir Nicholas.
“True, master, and we take the Frontier road as far as Burgos.” He shook his head. “Still very barful. But we will not be amort. We have the start of them, and they will not look for us at Vasconosa. Tarry here awhile, sir. No need to show yourself.” He had stopped at a street turning. “I go to fetch the horses.”
He was back soon with two fine jennets, each with a light pack strapped to the saddle.
“Boots, man!” said Sir Nicholas. “Have you my sword safe?”
“Never doubt me, sir!” said Joshua complacently, unbuckling a pack. “Your boots are at hand. I have thought of everything. I am not one to be bestraught by disaster.” He unearthed a pair of top-boots, caught up the shoon Sir Nicholas had kicked off, and stowed them away.
The long boots were pulled on, the spurs swiftly fastened. Sir Nicholas vaulted lightly into the saddle. “On then, my Joshua!” He laughed, and Joshua saw that his eyes were alight. “A race for life this time!” he said, wheeled about, and drove in his heels.
The two sentries came panting back to the barracks, and to Cruza, feverishly awaiting them. “Gone, señor!” they gasped.
“Fools! Dolts! He was in that coach!”
“He was gone, señor.”
Cruza fell back. “Holy Virgin, witchcraft!” He hurried in to where his superior waited. Don Cristobal, unbound now, shaken, but composed, received him with a questioning lift of the brows.
“Señor, he was not in the coach when the guards came up with it. It is witchcraft, foul devil’s work!”
Don Cristobal smiled contemptuously. “If you would say we have been finely tricked you speak nothing but the truth,” he said acidly. “Would he sit still in the coach to await capture? Turn out the guard!”
Cruza shot an order to a goggle-eyed sergeant, waiting close by. “Señor, can it be that it is El Beauvallet indeed?”
Don Cristobal slightly rubbed his bruised wrists. “He did me the honour of telling me so with his own lips,” he said. He moved to the table, and dipped a quill in the inkhorn. “One man to take this writing to Don Luis de Fermosa, to request him order out the alguazils to search the town. The prisoner cannot have gone far.”
Cruza wrinkled his brow at that. “Señor, will he not make for the Frontier?”
Don Cristobal dusted his paper with sand, and read it over before he answered. As he folded and sealed it he said calmly:—“He must procure a horse for that, Cruza, and we know that he has no money.” He gave the paper into his lieutenant’s hands, and turned to his valet. “A hat and a cloak, Juan.”
The valet hurried away. Cruza ventured another question. “Señor, where do you go?”
“To the Alcazar,” replied the Governor. “To learn his Majesty’s pleasure in this matter.”
Access to Philip was at first denied him. The King was private in his closet, and would see no one. A word in the King’s valet’s ear produced the required effect. That privileged person went off in a hurry, and presently Don Cristobal was summoned to the presence.
The news had been told Philip, but he displayed his habitual equanimity to Don Cristobal, deeply bowing before him. He let his apathetic gaze run over the Governor, but said nothing.
“Sire”—Don Cristobal made the shortest work he could of it—“I have to inform your Majesty, to my shame, that my prisoner has escaped.”
Philip folded his cool hands. “This is a very strange thing that you tell me, Don Cristobal.”
The Governor flushed. “I do not know what to say, sire. I am myself overwhelmed.”
“Compose yourself. When did the prisoner escape?”
“Not an hour ago, sire. He overpowered the guard who brought his supper to him, stabbed the sentry without; by some means unknown to me slipped through the hands of two parties of guards who thought they had him trapped between them, and by means equally unknown to me reached my own chamber. I, entering and knowing nothing of the affair, was taken by surprise, sire.” His hand went involuntarily to the bruise on his chin. “The prisoner struck me down, sire, before I was aware, and when I came to myself I was gagged and bound upon the floor. The prisoner put on him my hat and cloak, my insignia of the Golden Fleece, my sword, and thus disguised, sire, went down to the coach that waited to take me to the house of a friend. My lieutenant, suspecting some mischief, sent after the coach hotfoot, but when the guards came up with it the prisoner had vanished.”
Silence fell. The lids dropped over Philip’s eyes, hiding whatever chagrin or anger he might be feeling. After a pause he raised them again. It was characteristic of him that he chose to dwell upon one of the smaller points of the matter. “This would seem to show that he is El Beauvallet, by his own confession,” he said weightily.
“Sire, the prisoner spoke his name out boldly to me. He said, sire, when he took my sword from me, that I might keep his in exchange, and boast that I was the only man who ever took aught from El Beauvallet against his will.”
There was another pause. “He must be captured,” said the King at length, and struck a silver handbell at his side.
“Remembering, sire, that he has no money wherewith to buy him a
