THE PLEASANT ERRAND

Into the plain beyond Burgos, through the sunless glare of before-dawn; upon a soft-padding ass that cast no shadow and made no sound; well upon the stern of that ass, and with two bare heels to kick him; alone in the immensity of Castile, and as happy as a king may be, rode a young man on a May morning, singing to himself a wailing, winding chant in the minor which, as it had no end, may well have had no beginning. He only paused in it to look before him between his donkey’s ears; and then “Arre, burra, hijo de perra!” he would drive his heels into the animal’s rump. In a few minutes the song went spearing aloft again .... “En batalla-a-a temero-o-sa-a....!”

I say that he was young; he was very young, and looked very delicate, with his transparent, alabaster skin, lustrous grey eyes and pale, thin lips. He had a sagging straw hat upon his round and shapely head, a shirt and a dirty shirt open to the waist. His faja was a broad band of scarlet cloth wound half a dozen times about his middle, and supported a murderous long knife. For the rest, cotton drawers, bare legs, and feet as brown as walnuts. All of him that was not whitey-brown cotton or red cloth was the colour of the country; but his cropped head was black, and his eyes were very light grey, keen, restless and bold. He was sharp-featured, careless and impudent; but when he smiled you might think him bewitching. His name he would give you as Esteban Vincaz which it was not; his affair was pressing, pleasant and pious. Of that he had no doubt at all. He was intending the murder of a young woman.

His eyes, as he sang, roamed the sun-struck land, and saw everything as it should be. Life was a grim business for man and beast and herb of the field, no better for one than for the others. The winter corn in patches struggled sparsely through the clods; darnels, tares, deadnettle and couch, the vetches of last year and the thistles of next, contended with it, not in vain. The olives were not yet in flower, but the plums and sloes were powdered with white; all was in order.

When a clump of smoky-blue iris caught his downward looks, he slipped off his ass and snatched a handful for his hat. “The Sword-flower,” he called it, and accepting the omen with a chuckle, jumped into his seat again and kicked the beast with his naked heels into the shamble that does duty for a pace. As he decorated his hat-string he resumed his song:

“En batalla temerosa
Andaba el Cid castellano
Con Bucar, ése rey moro,
Que contra el Cid ha llegado
A lé ganar a Valencia...”

He hung upon the pounding assonances, and his heart thumped in accord, as if his present adventure had been that crowning one of the hero’s.

Accept him for what he was, the graceless son of his parents horse-thief, sheep-thief, contrabandist, bully, trader of women he had the look of a seraph when he sang, the complacency of an angel of the Weighing of Souls. And why not? He had no doubts; he could justify every hour of his life. If money failed him, wits did not; he had the manners of a gentleman and a gentleman he actually was, hidalgo by birth and the morals of a hyaena, that is to say, none at all. I doubt if he had anything worth having except the grand air; the rest had been discarded as of no account.

Schooling had been his, he had let it slip; if his gentlehood had been negotiable he had carded it away. Nowadays he knew only elementary things hunger, thirst, fatigue, desire, hatred, fear. What he craved, that he took, if he could. He feared the dark, and God in the Sacrament. He pitied nothing, regretted nothing; for to pity a thing you must respect it, and to respect you must fear; and as for regret, when it came to feeling the loss of a thing it came naturally also to hating the cause of its loss; and so the greater lust swallowed up the less.

He had felt regret when Manuela ran away; it had hurt him, and he hated her for it. That was why he intended at all cost to find her again, and to kill her; because she had been his amiga, and had left him. Three weeks ago, it had been, at the fair of Pobledo. The fair had been spoiled for him, he had earned nothing, and lost much; esteem, to wit, his own esteem, mortally wounded by the loss of Manuela, whose beauty had been a mark, and its possession an asset; and time valuable time lost in finding out where she had gone.

Friends of his had helped him; he had hailed every arriero on the road, from Pamplona to La Coruña; and when he had what he wanted he had only delayed for one day, to get his knife ground. He knew exactly where she was, at what hour he should find her, and with whom. His tongue itched and brought water into his mouth when he pictured the meeting. He pictured it now, as he jogged and sang and looked contentedly at the endless plain.

Presently he came within sight, and, since he made no effort to avoid it, presently again into the street of a mud-built village. Few people were astir. A man slept in an angle of a wall, flies about his head; a dog in an entry scratched himself with ecstasy; a woman at a doorway was combing her child’s hair, and looked up to watch him coming.

Entering in his easy way, he looked to the east to judge of the light. Sunrise was nearly an hour away; he could afford to obey the summons of the cracked bell, filling the place with its wrangling, with the creaking of its wheel. He hobbled his beast in the little plaza, and followed some straying women into church.

Immediately confronting him at the door was a hideous idol. A huge and brown, wooden Christ, with black horse-hair tresses, staring white eyeballs, staring red wounds, towered before him, hanging from a cross. Esteban knelt to it on one knee, and, remembering his hat, doffed it sideways over his ear. He said his two Paternósters, and then performed one odd ceremony more. Several people saw him do it, but no one was surprised. He took the long knife from his faja, running his finger lightly along the edge, laid it flat before the Cross, and looking up at the tormented God, said him another Pater. That done, he went into the church, and knelt upon the floor in company with kerchiefed women, children, a dog or two, and some beggars of incredible age and infirmities beyond description, and rose to one knee, fell to both, covered his eyes, watched the celebrant, or the youngest of the women, just as the server’s little bell bade him. Simple ceremonies, done by rote and common to Latin Europe; certainly not learned of the Moors.

Mass over, our young avenger prepared to resume his journey by breaking his fast. A hunch of bread and a few raisins sufficed him, and he ate these sitting on the steps of the church, watching the women as they loitered on their way home. Esteban had a keen eye for women; pence only, I mean the lack of them, prevented him from being a collector. But the eye is free; he viewed them all from the standpoint of the cabinet. One he approved. She carried herself well, had fine ankles, and wore a flower in her hair like an Andalusian. Now, it was one of his many grudges against fate that he had never been in Andalusia and seen the women there. For certain, they were handsome; a Sevillana, for instance! Would they wear flowers in their hair over the ear unless they dared be looked at? Manuela was of Valencia, more than half gitana: a wonderfully supple girl. When she danced the jota it was like nothing so much as a snake in an agony. Her hair was tawny yellow, and very long. She wore no flower in it, but bound a red handkerchief in and out of the plaits. She was vain of her hair heart of God, how he hated her!

Then the priest came out of church, fat, dewlapped, greasy, very short of breath, but benevolent. “Good-day, good-day to you,” he said. “You are a stranger. From the North?”

“My reverence, from Burgos.”

“Ha, from Burgos this morning! A fine city, a great city.”

“Yes, sir, it’s true. It is where they buried our lord the Campeador.”

“So they say. You are lettered! And early afoot.”

“Yes, sir. I am called to be early. I still go South.”

“Seeking work, no doubt. You are honest, I hope?”

“Yes, sir, a very honest Christian. But I seek no work. I find it.”

“You are lucky,” said the priest, and took snuff. “And where is your work? In Valladolid, perhaps?”

Esteban blinked hard at that last question. “No, sir,” he said. “Not there.” Do what he might he could not repress the bitter gleam in his eyes.

The old priest paused, his fingers once more in the snuff-box. “There again you have a great city. Ah, and there was a time when Valladolid was one of the greatest in Castile. The capital of a kingdom! Chosen seat of a king! Pattern of the true Faith!” His eyelids narrowed quickly. “You do not know it?”

“No, sir,” said Esteban gently. “I have never been there.”

The priest shrugged. “Vaya! it is no affair of mine,” he said. Then he waved his hand, wagging it about like a fan. “Go your ways,” he added, “with God.”

“Always at the feet of your reverence,” said Esteban, and watched him depart. He stared after him, and looked sick.

Altogether he delayed for an hour and a quarter in this village: a material time. The sun was up as he left it a burning globe, just above the limits of the plain.