"Still, however fate may thwart me,
Unconvinced, unchanged I live;
From those dreams I cannot part me,
That such dear delusions give;
Hoping yet in countless years,
One bright day unstained with tears."
RODRIGUEZ LOBO.
The outrages of the French invaders in Spain and Portugal were doubtless of the worst description; but those reprisals which the patriots were not slow in making were equal in atrocity. The stories he had heard of these shook Quentin's confidence in his own safety, and in his powers mental and physical; they caused him to regard with something of suspicion, repugnance, and mistrust the dwellers in the land, and to wish himself well out of it, or at least safe once more under the colours of the Old Borderers.
He remembered the intense bitterness, the momentary but clamorous anxiety caused by his late episode, and how keenly the foretasted agony of death entered his soul, when the three muleteers threatened him with their weapons, and when there seemed every prospect of his falling by their hand in that mountain solitude, and being left there dead to the wolves; his fate and story alike unknown to all who might feel the slightest interest therein. He remembered all this, we say, and he had no desire to endure such an agony again.
He felt his isolation, his helplessness in many respects, and longed anxiously for the end of his task, and for the society of his comrades and friends, of Askerne, Middleton, and others by whom he was esteemed and trusted.
This very anxiety made him quicken his pace, and thus about an hour after parting from the muleteers at the puebla, he saw a light twinkling on the roadway at the base of the dark green mountain; then, after passing under some half-ruined trellis where the vines were carefully trained and made a leafy tunnel, he reached the dwelling of Gil Llano (pronounced Yano) the vine-dresser, a wayside cottage, with a few smaller adjuncts where the galinas roosted and the porkers snorted.
He knocked at the door, which was slowly opened after some delay, and after he had been reconnoitred by a pair of keen black eyes through an eyelet hole; then the proprietor, a swarthy and stout little Portuguese, black bearded and snub-nosed, appeared with a bare knife clenched between his teeth and a cocked musket in his hands, to demand who was there.
"Quien es?" he asked, angrily.
"Gente de paez," replied Quentin, in a conciliating tone.
"Pho! indeed—your dress doesn't say you are a man of peace."
"I am a British soldier travelling on duty," said Quentin.
"How can I assist you, senor?"
"The muleteer, Ramon Campillo, of Miranda del Ebro, who is now on his way to Castello Branco, informed me that you are a loyal Portuguese——"
"None more loyal!" responded the other, slapping the butt of his musket.
"I was to show you this medal, and, if not intruding, remain with you for the night."
"Ramon is my good friend," said the Portuguese, carefully looking at the brass medal, which bore the image of St. Elizabeth, "and this was my gift to him. You are welcome, senor, to such poor accommodation as the French have left me to offer."
The Portuguese conducted Quentin into his cottage, the interior of which, by its squalor and poverty, showed that poor Gil Llano's circumstances had not been improved by the influences of the war.
A candle, in a clay-holder, flickered on the bare table, an iron brasero, full of charcoal and dry leaves, smouldered on the hearth; above the mantelpiece were a little stucco Madonna and some gaudy little Lisbon prints of holy personages, such as St. Anthony of Portugal, with his beloved pig; St. Elizabeth the queen, who died at Estremoz in 1336; St. Ignatius Loyola, and others in scarlet and blue drapery, with golden halos, all pasted on the whitewashed wall.
The cottage appeared to consist of three or four small apartments, all roofed with large red tiles, through the holes in which Quentin could see the stars shining, and suggesting an idea of umbrellas in case of rain. The rafters were thickly hung with bunches of dried raisins, by the sale of which to the passing muleteers and contrabandistas, Gil and his family subsisted. But even this humble place bore traces of the retreating French. One of the little windows had been dashed to pieces by a musket-butt, and most of the woodwork had gone for fuel when Junot's voltigeurs bivouacked among the vine trellis, half of which they tore down and destroyed.
Poor Gil Llano, whose whole attire consisted of a zamarra, a pair of red cotton breeches, a yellow sash, and the net which confined his hair, made Quentin Kennedy heartily welcome, and spoke with enthusiasm and gratitude of the British, who had swept Portugal of the French; and he exulted about the recent battle of Vimiera, which he had witnessed from the Torres Vedras, where, he frankly admitted, he had hovered among the cork-trees, and, with his musket, had "potted" successfully some of Ribeaupierre's dragoons as they fell back in disorder before the furious advance of General Anstruther's column.
Quentin soon felt himself at home, and shared with Llano's family the supper of ham and eggs, cooked in a crock between the brasero and one of the stones of Antas, which are supposed, when once heated, to continue so for two days. He might have excused the flavour of garlic, but found an Abrantes melon sliced with sugar, and a flask of Oporto wine, very acceptable.
The half-clad mother and her meagre, dark-skinned brood, with their large black eyes, he could perceive regarded him as a heretic and soldier, doubtfully, even fearfully, and askance—an English heretic being always associated, in the minds of Peninsula people, with priestly denunciations and the autos de fé of the Holy Office in its palmy days. However, after a time, as he manifested no desire to eat any of the children, but bestowed upon them all he could afford—a handful of half-vintins, part of the poor quartermaster's parting gift—confidence became established, and little bare-legged Pedrillo crept close to his knee; Babieta peeped slily at him from behind her mother's skirts, and, when he hung Ramon's brass medal round the tawny neck of Gil, the nursling, the goodwoman Llano's heart opened to him at once.
Perceiving that Quentin was so young, she asked, while her dark eyes filled with a tender expression, if his mother sorrowed for him, and if she had many other sons, that she could spare him; adding that, after all she had seen of war, she would rather die than permit either of her boys to become soldiers, even to fight for Portugal.
"Ere long Portugal shall have stronger hands than we could furnish to fight for her," said Gil, confidently. "No miracle the blessed saints of heaven have ever worked has been half so wonderful as these marvellous and prophetic eggs that have been found by Don Julian Sanchez, by El Pastor, the Alcalde of Portalegre and others, in the nests among the mountains. True it is, senor," he continued, on perceiving Quentin's glance of inquiry and surprise, "that eggs have been found laid in the mountains by the birds of the air—eggs bearing inscriptions which foretell that as Portugal has been deserted at her utmost need by the House of Braganza, our brave old king, Don Sebastian, of pious and glorious memory, will come to protect and rule over us again."
"Don Sebastian," said Quentin, who had heard this farrago of words with some wonder; "how long is it ago since he was king?"
Gil reckoned on his brown fingers, and then said—
"About two hundred and thirty years."
"How—what?" exclaimed Quentin, thinking that he had not heard aright.
"Exactly, senor; he was taken—some say killed—in battle by the Moorish dogs at the battle of Alcazal-quiver, on the coast of Fez, in 1578; but his restoration to us is certain now."
"And eggs, do you say, have prophesied this?"
"By the soul of St. Anthony of Lisbon, yes! The miraculous legends written on their shells told us so. I saw one with my own eyes as it lay on the altar of the Estrella convent, where it had been brought by the Marquis d'Almeida, who found it on the mountain of Cintra."
"And you read the legend?"
"No, senor—I cannot read; moreover, it was written in old Latin."
"By whom, Senor Gil?"
"God and St. Anthony only know," replied Gil, crossing himself after dipping his fingers in a little clay font of agua-bendita that hung beside the mantelpiece.
Now Quentin remembered the words of the stranger whom he had met by the wayside cross, and whom he had last seen toiling up the mountain with the aid of his staff, as he alleged, in search of eagles' nests. He had some trouble to preserve his gravity, and probably nothing enabled him to do so but his wonder at the perfect simplicity and the good faith of this Portuguese peasant in the return of Lusitania's long-lost hero.
On inquiring further, he learned, for the first time, that there still existed in Portugal the sect called of old "Sebastianists," fondly cherishing a belief that their crusader king (who fell in battle against Muley Moloc) was detained in an enchanted island, where he was supernaturally preserved; and that they also cherished a belief that he would reappear with all his paladins to deliver Lusitania when at her utmost need!
Portugal's utmost need had come and gone; Roleia and Vimiera had been fought and won by Sir Arthur Wellesley; but still the Sebastianists believed in the ultimate return and intervention of their favourite hero, and eggs marked by the more cunning with some chemical agency, bearing legends foretelling the event, were opportunely found and exhibited: a puerile trick, which Marshal Junot, General de Ribeaupierre, and others soon contrived to turn against the inventors; for other eggs bearing mottoes of very different import were frequently found in the same places.
A belief similar to that of the Sebastianists long lingered among the Scots relative to their beloved James IV., who fell at Flodden; among the Germans, regarding Frederick Barbarossa, who filled all Asia with the terror of his name, and died on the banks of the Cydnus; among the Britons concerning their fabulous Arthur of the Round Table; and among the ancient Irish concerning some now unknown warrior named Dharra Dheeling. But it was left for the poor Portuguese to be among the last to console themselves under defeat and disaster with such delusive hopes; and thus in the year of Vimiera, "many people," says General Napier, "and those not of the most uneducated classes, were often observed upon the highest points of the hills, casting earnest looks towards the ocean, in the hopes of descrying the enchanted island in which their long-lost hero was detained."