Chapter VI: Sancho's Broken Victuals

Poverty and pride do not go well in company, and so a Spanish lad of some fourteen or fifteen years of age had begun to learn. But the lesson was hard, and one badly learnt, when one evening some broken victuals were flung to him as they might have been to a famished dog, and accompanied by the exclamation:

"There, starveling, be not squeamish, but feed those lean cheeks of thine, and give me thanks for thy supper."

"I'll give thee that for thy base-born impudence," was the passionate retort, as the youth seized the package of broken meats and was about to use it as a missile to hurl at the donor's head.

But as the muscular young arm was raised it was suddenly grasped from behind, and a sweet, soft voice said hurriedly:

"My son, bethink you. For those of noble blood to be street-brawlers brings as great disgrace as beggary. You have never yet so far shamed me, or forgotten the due restraints of your rank."

As the slight, pale woman spoke the lad's clutched fingers loosened their hold of the parcel; it dropped back into the dusty gutter; and with burning cheeks he suffered himself to be led away from the neighbourhood of the half-angry, half-contemptuous man whose well-intentioned gift had been so spurned. When the mother and son had disappeared the man turned, with a short laugh, from watching them, and addressed himself to a neighbour.

"Easy to see who they are. Holy Mother Church has had something to say to their belongings in the past, I wager. But noble though they may be still, and rich though they may have been once, they are clearly starving now, and had better accept good food when they can get it."

And in this declaration the worthy Sancho was certainly most right, although the bread of charity, even when most delicately bestowed, tasted bitter in those hungry mouths; for the man was further right in his belief that mother and son were of high birth, and the mother had also been reared in luxury.

However, the little incident over, with the alms-giver's comment upon it, the worthy burgess of the small town of El Cuevo, upon the very borders of Aragon, turned his thoughts to matters of greater interest and importance.

"What thinkest thou, friend Pedro, of the new expedition preparing to set out for yon troublesome new-found island of Hispaniola--has it thy approval?"

The friend Pedro thus addressed was busily engaged in inspecting various samples of foreign spices. He now raised a solemn pair of eyes from his aromatic treasures as he replied:

"Troublesome it may be to those who govern it; but so long as my son doth continue to send me home a sufficiency of these marketable commodities, it is not he nor I that shall grumble at its finding."

The burly Sancho laughed.

"Ay, ay, neighbour, I know thee of old. A well-lined pocket thou ever holdest good recompense for a few thwacks. Would that the grand old Admiral Columbus could find comfort for ingratitude and sorrows with such ease!"

"But so he might do if he would but try," was the shrewd answer. "You see our brave Genoese hath ever been more needful for empty-handed honour and glory, than for gathering together good store of worldly spoil, to fall back upon when men should begrudge him the shadow-prizes he desired. Now it seemeth that he may chance to have neither."

"Well, well, I know not," continued Sancho. "The queen hath ever a good will to the great man. And although he is not to be commissioned to go himself to the punishment of that Jack-in-office Bobadilla, men say that the Commendador of Lares, Don Nicolas de Ovando, who is now preparing to set out thither, hath all the virtues under the sun. Wise and prudent and abstemious, and of a winning manner."

"Umph!" grunted the spice-dealer. "Don Ovando had needs be a second St. Paul if he is to win justice and mercy for the poor natives out yonder, at the hands of the off-scouring of our streets; and that is what our gentle-hearted queen hath most at heart."

Master Sancho nodded his head gravely.

"Ah, friend Pedro, I say not but you are right. And that minds me: if my head were not so thick, I might have bethought me to advise yon lad, with the great eyes and the short temper, to seek fortune, like many another of his peers, in those far-off lands across the ocean. I daresay he would have accepted that advice with a better grace than he did my scraps."

His neighbour looked up this time more fully than he had yet done, and let his hands rest for a few moments idle on the samples with which he had been so occupied, as he exclaimed with genuine astonishment:

"Why, friend Sancho, verily it seems to me that you have taken some queer true interest in yon ragged piece of impudence. I have noted you more than once, ay, than twice, watch him of an evening as he went by till out of sight. And now, when he would have flung your kindness back at you, still talking of him, forsooth. Nay then, had he so treated me he would have been roundly cuffed, I tell thee; and so an end."

Broad-shouldered, easy-going Sancho laughed and gave a shrug.

"I am not fond of being ready with my fists, friend Pedro; my hands are large, and might hap to be over heavy; besides, I have a broken thumb. But you judge rightly; I have taken a fancy to that set-up, handsome-faced young beggar. And I have watched him, not only of an evening past these doors, but at other hours in the town; and although he rejects help for himself, many a time have I seen him give it to those weaker or more helpless than himself."

Meantime, while he was being thus discussed, that same "set-up, handsome-faced young beggar" was remonstrating with his mother against her oft-reiterated lectures to him on humility, and on a studied avoidance of everything that should draw observation upon them.

"I will not slink into corners like a thief, nor hide myself in holes like a rat," he exclaimed at last, with haughty indignation. "Hast thou not told me thyself, my mother, that I am an Aragonese?"

But Rachel Diego replied with a lip that trembled while it curled:

"In truth art thou, my son, a child of a barren land. The heir of territories so stricken from the Maker's hand with poverty, that perchance we waste life's breath in lamenting that treasures so miserable should be wrested from us."

But the mother's new line of argument, to soothe her son's dangerous agitation, was fruitless as the other. His eyes flashed still more brilliantly with his burning indignation, as he retorted again:

"You say right, my mother. The land of Aragon is so poor and barren, that perchance her sons and daughters might all long since have forsaken their churlish, niggard-handed mother, and finally renounced her, but that she gives them liberty. Even in our oath of allegiance we tender no slaves' submission to oppression."

The widowed mother turned her sad eyes upon her proud-spirited boy.

"My son, no oath of allegiance has as yet been called for from thy lips."

The flush deepened on the young Spaniard's face. He pressed his teeth into the crimson lower lip for some seconds to strangle back a groan that sought escape from his own over-burdened heart. He had heard of the tragedies of those months before his birth.

"No," he muttered at length bitterly. "No. It is true. I am esteemed too contemptible to have even vows wrung from me that are counted worthless. But the oath that my father spoke is registered in my heart; the oath due from us, whose proud heritage it is to call ourselves the nobles of Aragon. And such is the oath that I, in my turn, tender to my sovereign, Ferdinand of Aragon and Castile."

The lad paused a moment, and then, with folded arms, and in low, firm tones, repeated the proud words of the Aragonese oath of allegiance.

"We, who are each of us as good, and who are altogether more powerful than you, promise obedience to your government if you maintain our rights and liberties, but if not, not."

As he spoke Rachel Diego dropped her face into her hands, and as he ended she murmured in stifled tones:

"Your father pronounced that haughty vow, and what availed the boast?"

What indeed! The young Montoro gazed for a moment at his wan mother, at the bare room, and then, with all his haughtiness lost in a flood of sudden despair, he darted from the miserable apartment to wrestle with his agitation in the wild darkness of a stormy night.

That his heart should be torn with bitterness and grief was little wonder, for all too well he knew how it came to pass that his mother was fatherless and a widow, and how he himself had been robbed of his parent and his patrimony. Something of the dismal tale of Don Philip's tortured death, and of the base villain who had grasped at his daughter's fortune, had been told the boy from time to time by his mother. Something, also, of the avarice and barbarity that had wrested a few despairing words to the destruction of his own father, the noble Don Montoro de Diego.

But much fuller details of those dismal days of 1485 had been given to the disinherited son of a blameless father by the old priest Bartolo, who had secretly aided the outcast young widow and her infant when they were first driven from their home, and who had continued to give them all the assistance in his power until his death, some months ago; in that very month of December, in fact, of 1500, when the hearts of so many in Spain, and elsewhere, throbbed with indignation at the news that a vessel had arrived in the port of Cadiz with the great discoverer on board, in chains like a common malefactor.

While the young Montoro was mourning over the dying priest, however, he little heeded the gossip going on around him about one who, during the remaining five years of a well-worn life, was to have a far greater influence on the orphan lad's career than ever the good old priest would have had the power to exercise.

But the days of December passed on. The old priest was buried. Columbus was delivered from his chains by hasty order of the king and queen, and was further invited in flattering terms of kindness to join the royal Court at Granada; a thousand ducats to defray expenses, and a handsome retinue as escort on the journey, being sent in testimony that the friendliness of the invitation was sincere. And so the saddened heart of the glorious old Admiral was once more warmed with half-fallacious hope. Not so with poor Rachel Diego and her son.

Life had been hard enough while Father Bartolo lived, but after his death the struggle for existence became well-nigh desperate; and by the time the months had come round to this following December of 1501, more people, in the obscure little town of El Cuevo, than the worthy burgess Sancho, had come to the conclusion that the unknown young widow and her handsome son were dying of starvation.

But death was evidently preferable, in the minds of the helpless couple, to degradation. Work they could not obtain, and charity they would not accept.

"And small blame to them after all," muttered Master Sancho to himself, a few days after his vain effort to bestow a supper on the objects of his interest. "I don't believe that I, either, should relish the taste of other men's leavings. Thanks be to the virgin that I have never had to eat them. But yet--to starve? Umph! I know not whether I should like the flavour of starvation any better."

And he folded his arms across his portly person with a slightly mocking laugh of self-consciousness.

This short soliloquy had been occasioned by the sight of young Montoro Diego passing the end of the street. His reappearance now, in the street itself, with a large loaf of bread in his arms, brought the soliloquy to a sudden stop; and Sancho left his post of observation in his own doorway, and hurried as fast as his weighty figure would allow to the pedestrian, finding no very great difficulty in barring the lad's further progress along the narrow roadway with his broad form. Montoro threw back his head impatiently.

"What now?" he demanded, with flushed cheeks. "Have you some more dog's meat that you wish to be rid of?"

The burgess laughed.

"Verily, my son, there is a bold spirit hidden under those rags of thine. But a truce to laughter; for verily I feel angered with you now, and I have a right?"

"Because I would none of your mean gifts?" asked Montoro hotly.

"Nay, indeed; that was your affair. But I am angry, and have a right to be, that you should accept aid from others which you will not have from me."

"Accept aid!" repeated the lad wonderingly. "Of what are you speaking? What aid have we received since the only friend died of whom we would accept it?"

But even as he spoke he caught the eyes of his companion fixed upon the loaf by way of significant answer, and he added shortly:

"This I have earned. It is no gift."

Then slipping under his questioner's arm he thought to have escaped; but Master Sancho caught him by the shoulder and held him fast.

"Look here, my son, by your air and looks I judge you to have been born to a rank far above my own and so if it be your pleasure I will speak to you with uncovered head by way of deference. But speak to you I will, for I have taken a fancy to you; and if you are not as set against work as against alms I may help you."

There was a spasmodic twitch of the shoulder at those last words; and the boy's face was so turned away that his captor could not read it. But after a moment's silence the worthy-hearted man continued, with a different accent of somewhat impatient anger:

"Hark ye, lad, ye may be as indifferent about thyself as it may please thee; but I cry shame on thee to refuse aught that may provide needful nourishment for that sweet and gentle mother of thine. To nourish thy false pride--ay, I will even call it by a juster name, thy base pride--thy mother is offering herself a sacrifice."

There was a gulping sound in the boy's throat, and then with a choking gasp he muttered:

"She could not, she would not, live on charity."

"No," instantly agreed the burgess of El Cuevo; "that I begin to believe. But she could and would live on the honest earnings of your hands. And be you noble or no, you'll find ne'er a priest in Spain to dare tell you that it is more honourable to let a mother starve than to work for her."

For the first time Montoro Diego let his eyes fairly rest on his mentor's face. There was something so genuinely true in the ring of the voice that the boy's anger and indignation dwindled away he scarce knew how, and gave place to a growing trust. With an effort he crushed down his emotion as he replied in low tones:

"I have no coward scruples against work, believe me. But I am noble, as you say. The son of one who died wrongfully for the death of Arbues de Epila. It was at the peril of their lives that any helped my mother, even with work, at the time that my father was thus barbarously mur--"

Burgess Sancho sharply clapped his hand over the boy's mouth, muttering with half-angry solicitude:

"Knowest thou not, my son, that a still tongue is wisdom? Keep thy information of the past for those who ask for it, and to those who do so give it not. You, a starving boy in the streets of El Cuevo, I can help. You may have dropped from the clouds for aught I know. Dost thou not comprehend me?"

Montoro's dark eyes gleamed with a flitting smile. The Aragonese of those days were not wanting in intelligence. But at the same time his native pride, and even his nobility of character, forbade him to accept aught at the expense of his identity, and so he quickly let his new friend understand.

"I have no inheritance but my father's name and my father's unsullied memory," he declared firmly; "and I will bear that openly. I have earned this loaf to-day, and more, by grinding colours for the great painter staying yonder; but first I told him who I was."

"More foolish you," remarked Master Sancho, with a shrug. "But what said he to thy news?"

"Even as thou--that I had more truth than wit. But he gave me work all the same, for he said that he need have no fear. The king could replace heretic nobles with other nobles, but he could not replace a painter, and so he would be wise enough to keep the one he had."

"Ay, then," agreed Master Sancho, "the Señor is right; and if I were you I would turn painter also, for the royal ordinance of last September did not name that amongst the many things you may not be."

"No," returned Montoro with a bitter laugh; "that last ordinance of persecution only excludes me from such employments as would be possible, not from those needing gifts vouchsafed only to the few. But I must say adios, for my mother will already have feared some mischance has come to me."

"To our next meeting, then," said the worthy burgess. "And meantime I will cudgel my brains till I find some means to help you, for all you are so self-willed and impracticable, my son."

The friendly look and the confident nod that accompanied these gruffly good-humoured words were full of such pleasant encouragement that Montoro Diego flew home with a heart suddenly grown as light as though he had already regained the power to use the title of 'Don' before his name, and had already won back the heritage of his ancestors.

We say "already," for of course Montoro, like all brave-spirited, properly-constituted individuals, was perfectly convinced, even in the lowest stage of rags and hunger, that the day would most positively come when he should re-enter his fathers home as the publicly-acknowledged Don Montoro de Diego. Meantime there was good bread for his supper that night, and for his mother, together with a handful of roasted chestnuts and a bottle of thin wine, grateful in that warm climate from its very sourness.

"And to-morrow," he said cheerfully, "the great painter says, my mother, that I may work in his studio again. And, if only you would go with me, he would not again sigh that there were none beautiful and tender-faced enough in the land to sit to him for the Holy Mother."

Rachel Diego said hastily, "Hush, my son," and shook her head at him; but at the same time she smiled, and a delicate flush tinted the pale cheeks, for her boy's loving praises were so sweet in her ears that they turned the humble supper into a feast.

The mother and son were very happy together that night; but had those two who so greatly loved each other known that even then schemes were being revolved in a shrewd and busy brain that would result, within a few short months, in placing a wide and storm-tossed ocean between them, one at least of the couple would have found the bread given to her turned to ashes in her mouth, and would have changed her smiles to weeping.

Happily for them, however, no prevision marred the rare joyousness of those few hours, nor disturbed the sleep that followed, gladdened with bright dreams.