CHAPTER XXVIII

Plot and Counter-plot

By a superhuman effort, Alured repressed his bitter sorrow at this sudden overthrow of his hopes. But the keen-eyed emir could not fail to see that he was sorely grieved; and, eager to lighten the trouble of one who had shown him such kindness, he called in the envoy, and questioned him closely, in the hope of learning something that might make the case less desperate.

But the envoy had little to add to what the letter itself contained. He could only tell that the Moorish king had seemed much disturbed by the news of El Zagal’s capture—had shown great emotion at the suggestion that the prophecy which he had hitherto applied to El Katoom might refer to the White Knight instead—and had then had a long conference with some of his wisest counsellors, after which he had sent off El Katoom, with a strong guard, to the hill-fort of Tormas, on the southern slope of the Sierra Morena.

At the last words, Alured passed his hand over his eyes to hide the sudden gleam that lit them up; for this news had a meaning for him, of which neither the speaker nor even the shrewd emir had any idea.

That night, in his own chamber, the knight pondered this new and strange hope, and the plan that he had formed for his brother’s liberation.

In fact, the whole situation was now completely altered. What all his skill and courage could never have achieved, his foes had unconsciously done for him; and Hugo, no longer immured in the guarded walls of the Alhambra, was less than thirty miles from where he stood!

Nor was it hard for one so versed in all the wiles of Saracen war to guess why the king had taken a step so strangely at variance with his former jealous care of his valued slave. This sudden change had followed too close on the discovery of the marvellous likeness of that slave to the dreaded White Knight, not to suggest to the wary Englishman the existence of a plot for the using of this likeness to entrap himself, the Moors’ most redoubted foe!

Now came the question, how best to profit by this strange turn of fortune.

Most captains of that iron age would have gone straight to the idea of capturing the fort and Hugo himself by a sudden dash; but not so the wary Alured. He knew that Tormas was strong both by nature and art, well garrisoned, and commanded by a veteran second only to El Zagal himself in border warfare. Stratagem, not force, was needed here; and he at once set himself to devise a counter-plot.

In this attempt, the very next day brought him aid from an unlooked-for quarter. A second Moorish courier arrived with the king’s offer to exchange El Zagal for a brave Spanish knight named Don Alvar de Perez, who had been his prisoner for some time, being too poor to pay the high ransom demanded.

Here was a chance which Alured was not one to let slip. Don Alvar, of whose courage and sagacity he had often heard, and who had been long enough among the Moors to know them well, was the very helper he needed to countermine the king’s subtle device. He at once agreed to the proposal, and then, to throw his enemies off their guard, spread a report that he was unable to undertake any military operations at present, confirming it by keeping his men carefully within the fortress. This he could do with a clear conscience, the Moors being so cowed by their recent defeat, the fall of so many of their best warriors, and El Zagal’s capture, that they made not a single foray during the whole of that month.

This inaction was a sore trial to De Claremont’s fierce and restless followers; but he himself felt it more keenly than any of them.

The shock of this sudden discovery that the remorse which had blasted his life was groundless, and the brother he thought he had slain still alive, and within reach, had shaken his strong nerves fairly off their balance; and he was ceaselessly tortured with nervous and almost childish fears, which (however ashamed of them) he tried in vain to throw off. Hugo would die ere they met—the Moors would drag him back to slavery—he himself would be struck down by war or sickness just as his plans were ripe—his foes would surprise the fortress entrusted to his care, and carry him off to the same bondage as his ill-fated brother.

Day after day, the troubled man paced the ramparts with the fierce unrest of a caged beast of prey, straining his eyes southward in the vain hope of seeing another Moorish courier appear over the dark hilltop. Night after night, he started from feverish dreams of struggling in the grasp of the victorious Moors, or, worse still, finding himself arrayed in turban and caftan, and ranked among the sworn foes of the Cross. El Zagal naturally supposed the terrible White Knight to be pining for fresh battles, and wondered what secret cause doomed him to this galling inaction; and Alured’s rough soldiers, knowing nothing of the truth, began to mutter that he must be bewitched!

At last, just as he began to despair of any further answer, and to fear some new and darker plot of his foes, he saw one evening a single Moor riding swiftly over the hills from the direction of his brother’s prison at Tormas.

This man bore a letter to De Claremont from the commandant of Tormas, Ali Atar, who invited the “great Christian chief,” with many florid Eastern compliments, to visit him there as an honoured guest, and settle the proposed exchange of prisoners, Don Alvar having just been sent from Grenada to Tormas to be exchanged for the emir.

This, coupled with what he already knew or guessed, seemed to Alured a polite invitation to come and be killed or made prisoner. But he was not to be so easily caught; nor did he take long to devise a plan for foiling his wily foes with their own weapons.

“Effendi (master), here is a Christian knight from Santa Fé, who would speak with thee.”

“Is it the White Knight?” eagerly asked Ali Atar, who, though prostrated by severe illness, still directed from his sick-bed the movements of his wild followers.

“Not so, O my father; it is but one of his knights, with a letter that he is bidden to give into thine own hand. Thou knowest that when I bore thy message to the White Knight, I found him laid on his couch, and bowed down by sickness; and all his men were sorely out of heart.”

The grim old sheikh muttered a curse under his breath; but, furious as he was at finding his plans thus foiled, the commandant of Tormas was far too good a general to lose a chance of seeing into those of his enemies.

“Admit the Christian dog; perchance we may learn somewhat from him.”

In came a tall knight in black armour, with a dark plume in his helmet, the open visor of which showed the swarthy face and black hair of a Spaniard. He handed a sealed letter to Ali Atar, who, as he took it, little guessed that he had got his wish after all, and that this seeming Spaniard was the White Knight himself.

“Peace be with thee,” said Alured, purposely making his Arabic so bad that a lurking grin flitted over the grave faces of the attendants.

“With thee be peace,” replied the sheikh, as he opened the letter, and found the knight recommended to him as having full powers to negotiate the exchange of prisoners. Having read it, he addressed the envoy in Arabic; but the latter shook his head, and replied in Spanish.

But Ali Atar, a Moor of the old school, hated the “dogs of Spain” too utterly to have learned their tongue, and shook his head in turn.

“We shall need an interpreter,” said he, “in conferring with this infidel who knows not our speech. Call hither quickly the unbeliever El Katoom!”

At the sound of his brother’s Moorish name, Alured (though he had foreseen this order, and done his best to bring it about) felt his strong nerves tingle; and as the crimson curtain of the doorway fell back, the brave man’s heart bounded as if it would burst from its place; for there before him stood—thinner and darker than of old, in Moorish dress, but still plainly recognizable—his lost brother Hugo.