Julian Stockwin - The Iberian Flame - Thomas Kydd 20

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.

Chapter 23

It was several minutes before the door was answered by a frightened housekeeper, who hastily pulled them inside.

‘ El señor , is he at home?’ Dolores asked respectfully.

‘I am here!’ said a gentle voice at an inner door. It belonged to a strong-faced man with a meticulous moustache and in a garb that made him appear as if he’d stepped out of the pages of history. ‘Doña Vargas, you have come to make your apology for doubting me?’

His quick glance took in Renzi.

‘ El Erudito , I have abandoned my trust in and allegiance to the King, and desire to be set on a course that is more worthy for the land of my birth.’

‘I understand, the news of Bayonne grating upon the soul as it does, demanding an answer. Who is this gentleman?’

‘A noble lord from England who does pilgrimage to Our Lady of Toledo and has unhappily been taken up in our troubles. Sir, we saw bloody things on our way. What is their meaning?’

A passing burst of shouting outside made him wince. ‘The people are angry – do you doubt it?’

She held up her hand and frowned, listening intently. The noise grew, passionate cries piercing the clamour, the underlying roar stronger. It began moving off and she said, ‘Something has changed. I go to see.’

In a very few minutes she was back, her face white. ‘I cannot believe it, but the one I spoke with swears it is true.’

‘Señorita, what is it?’ Mariano Vicente de Lis asked.

‘King Fernando has been deposed. Spain has no king.’

‘No king? This is—’

‘Bonaparte declares that King Carlos was feloniously deposed by his own son and thus Fernando cannot be the lawful ruler.’

‘Therefore King Carlos reigns!’

‘Not so! He abdicated of his own free will and without objection. What has been done cannot be undone, Bonaparte says.’

Mariano sat down abruptly, his face tight. ‘That a Frenchman tells a Spaniard who shall sit on the throne of Spain is monstrous,’ he breathed.

‘There is worse. As a boon to the Spanish nation, he is willing to provide a more virtuous sovereign, one with power to pacify the unrest we are suffering.’

‘Who is this?’

She gave a twisted smile. ‘Why, his own elder brother, Prince Joseph, the King of Naples, who comes with eighty thousand bayonets at his personal command.’

With a bitter stab, Renzi understood. It had finally come about – the kingdom of Spain had slipped into the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte as, no doubt, he had planned from the beginning. The Spanish had been out-manoeuvred and now he had the pick of Spain’s treasures, its colonies, even its soldiery to deploy as he pleased.

Only one thing could stop him. ‘Sir. What of the revolution, the people’s rising?’ Renzi asked. ‘Will your leader step forth and—’

‘I know nothing of these, sir.’

‘A confection of mine to keep him warm,’ muttered Dolores. Then, more passionately, ‘There will be one and I must know of him!’

Outside, the sullen roar was shot through with hoarse, angry bawling as the crowd swelled. Mariano went to the window and drew aside the curtains, revealing a stream of people surging past, one or two with muskets, others with makeshift weapons – poles with scythes crudely fixed to them, sharpened stakes, bludgeons.

‘I pity any Frenchman on the streets today,’ he said, then turned and went back to his chair, his head in his hands.

‘What must we do now?’ Dolores growled. ‘Sit about like old men and women while others throw the French out, like the curs they are?’

Mariano looked up wearily. ‘Señorita, calm yourself. You see out there the commonality, the beating heart of Spain – but they are like sheep to the slaughter. They have no leaders, no plan, no weapons. How then can this be a revolution?’

‘A leader will arise and—’

‘Who is this to be? He who supports a restoring of the old ways of the conquistadors or one who execrates the regime and desires the people to reign? One who will march with the French, or another who sees the devil incarnate in Napoleon Bonaparte? Who will listen to whom? What does your spirit tell you is right?’

Renzi knew he was hearing the still small voice of reason and his heart went out to the humble scholar.

‘Ha!’ spat Dolores, and rounded on Renzi. ‘Then here is an Englishman. How say you, Excelentísimo? Will you help us as you promised?’

To be their leader? Renzi smiled without humour. ‘Señorita, you may have forgotten that I am the enemy of your people.’

‘With soldiers, guns!’

Mariano put his hand on her arm. ‘No, señorita. Do not ask it of him. This is Spain’s trial. We must save ourselves by our own sacrifice.’

‘To cave in to the French?’ she snapped.

Mildly he answered, ‘If necessary, yes. Would you rather the flower of our youth lie heaped in death on the battlefield or live to create a new Spain?’

‘To fight for honour!’

Renzi thought of the cruelly ambitious and ruthless Murat, by now camped outside the capital. Were his troops already on a forced march into the city, and in strength, with nothing to hold them back? The excited crowds he’d seen would have no chance at all.

He went over to the window and looked out. The crowd had swelled, now including ragged children with their mothers, the whites of their eyes showing wildly in the gathering dusk.

Mariano came to stand beside him, his sensitive features drawn and stricken.

‘I go to them!’ Dolores cried. Before they could stop her, she’d thrown open the front door and, pausing only to blaze forth a passionate declaration of support, which was met by an answering roar, was lost in the seething mob.

Mariano tore himself away from the window and, like a broken man, went to his chair and stared into an unknowable future.

The crowd surged away on some mindless impulse, and in the relative quiet a different sound lay on the air: sinister, ominous. Renzi recognised it.

Musketry. Not the ceaseless random firing of pot-shots but the disciplined volleys of troops from positions on the periphery as they advanced into the city. Murat had begun his retaliation.

How many troops did he have? Forty, fifty thousand? It didn’t matter. With a dozen columns converging on the centre of Madrid they could clear the streets as they marched in with no fear of opposition. Now he heard the sharp crack of horse artillery with them – grape shot that would tear a crowd to bloody shreds and send others fleeing in terror.