The Iberian Flame

Chapter 22

The night wore on endlessly and Renzi was left to his bitter thoughts. Not until the soft light of dawn shone through the balcony did he feel inclined to face his predicament, but there was little he could do.

Congalton would suspect he’d fallen foul of the Spaniards in some way but at the same time know that nothing could be done for him. There were spies and agents, true, but necessarily he’d kept clear of them – and even if he could get word out it would take weeks for communications to set up anything. Essentially he was on his own and he’d lost the race.

Later in the morning shrill shouts eddied up from the road below. Renzi looked out and saw a figure in the centre of a small crowd gesticulating and pointing towards the palace. The crowd grew and the shouting intensified, until royal guards trotted up to disperse them.

It didn’t deter others. Before long the crowd had reached some size, angry yells and hoots bringing more soldiers, who hung back to allow a small detachment of cavalry to arrive at the gallop, the glitter of their sabres ominous in the sunlight.

The crowd broke and ran.

Renzi wondered what it had been about – the angry gestures towards the palace were unmistakable. Were they baying for the King’s blood?

He caught sight of several more gatherings, seeming to converge on the palace. Something was afoot and it was growing ugly.

With a sudden crash, the door was flung open by the ‘maid’, looking distraught and breathing heavily. ‘Come – we must leave!’ she commanded, handing him a cloak.

Taken aback Renzi could only splutter, ‘Senorita, what does this mean?’

‘We’ve been betrayed! There’s no time to argue, Excelentisimo,’ she added firmly.

‘The guards?’ he said weakly.

‘They’ve left, run away from here. Now come!’

She scuttled down a staircase and he followed, pulling the cloak about him.

At the bottom there was a door. It led out to the forecourt, with gardens, statues and shrubs. She ran across it to an ornamental wall with a small iron gate at the end.

Carefully she looked out then said tightly, ‘Listen to me. We’re brother and sister who walk together. Take my arm.’

They stepped out side by side, Renzi aware that Dona Dolores de Vargas was a beautiful woman, darkly handsome with an appealing vitality.

She told him what had happened. In a hasty and shocking move, King Fernando and the old monarch had set out for the frontier. Then, in an act that had stupefied and angered equally, they had crossed into France to Bayonne where they were to meet the Emperor for reasons unknown.

To abandon his people at this time was nothing less than a betrayal – unless this was a kidnapping by the ruthless Bonaparte, as had happened before to the ill-fated Duc d’Enghien, executed by firing squad. Either way the hope that had been raised so high with Fernando’s accession was now extinguished, the future desolate.

Dolores had taken it badly. In her eyes the King she had looked to was now a contemptible creature who had run away cravenly from his responsibilities and was not worthy of his subjects. She had deserted his cause and was about to pledge to another.

She had returned to Renzi because she thought he might be able to speak to his king to ask for help to bring order and peace and rid the kingdom of the French.

So where were they going? She knew of one Mariano Vicente de Lis, a much-respected scholar, who’d often written against the injustices and wrongs of the ruling caste. He would have the wisdom to advise her on how an English lord could contribute to the cause of freedom.

They hurried down a side-street, leafy but for some reason forbidding. In the distance there were scattered musket shots and the visceral rumble of an angry crowd. After his experiences in Constantinople, Renzi felt an icy foreboding.

At another crossroads they turned into a wider avenue, at its end an animated mob surrounding something in a turbulent show of temper. Dolores tugged Renzi to the other side to pass it but, with a sick realisation, he knew what was taking place.

On the ground three forms were pinioned by men who knelt on them, urged on by the mob. A fourth, with a bloodied face, was held upright as he struggled to get away. It was a French grenadier, who thrashed wildly as a rope was brought and looped round his neck. The crowd screamed in ecstasy as he was propelled to the nearest tree, the lower part of his uniform dark-stained as the young man had lost control of his bladder.

‘Come, Dolores, this is no sight for a woman,’ Renzi said thickly, but she held back, looking at him curiously.

‘He’s only a French pig,’ she said without emotion.

The screams climaxed as they moved by, but he knew that a point had been passed. The marching columns under Murat would never forgive this.