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Updated: June 8, 2025
The bricks came down with a rattle, and unfortunately in slipping I clutched at the trap. This was too much for my frail prop, and the door slammed down with a great noise. Here was a nice business for the eavesdropper! I scurried along the passage as stealthily as I could and clambered back into the store, while I heard the sound of Laputa and Henriques ferreting among the barrels.
I used to amuse myself with setting out my various bits of knowledge. There was first of all the Rev. John Laputa, his doings on the Kirkcaple shore, his talk with Henriques about Blaauwildebeestefontein, and his strange behaviour at Durban. Then there was what Colles had told me about the place being queer, how nobody would stay long either in the store or the schoolhouse.
To me Laputa was the lion, and Henriques the serpent; and though I had no good will to either, I was determined to spoil the serpent's game. He was after the rubies, as I had fancied; he had never been after anything else.
There were present there besides himself the Fray Henriques now a secretary to the Holy Inquisition, but disguised as a layman the woman Inez, the agent Bernaldez, and the old Jew, Israel of Granada. "I have brought him here, never mind how," Inez was saying, pointing to Henriques. "A risky and disagreeable business enough. And now what is the use of it?"
'But you don't propose to lead the march in a necklace of rubies, said Henriques, with a sudden eagerness in his voice. Again Laputa spoke gravely, and, as it were, abstractedly. I heard the voice of one whose mind was fixed on a far horizon. 'When I am acclaimed king, I restore the Snake to its Keeper, and swear never to clasp it on my neck till I have led my people to victory.
He said something to his companion, and entered the store. You may imagine that my curiosity ran to fever-heat. My first impulse was to march over for my waistcoat, and make a third with Japp at the interview. Happily I reflected in time that Henriques knew my face, for I had grown no beard, having a great dislike to needless hair.
Henriques looked ghastly in the clear morning light, and he had a linen rag bound round his head and jaw, as if he suffered from toothache. His face was more livid, his eyes more bloodshot, and at the sight of me his hand went to his belt, and his teeth snapped. But he held his peace, and it was Laputa who spoke. He looked straight through me, and addressed Machudi's men.
A very splendid Prince of the Church was Cardinal Corrado, the envoy dispatched by Pope Honorius II., full armed with apostolic weapons to reduce the rebellious Infante of Portugal into proper subjection. His approach was heralded by the voice of rumour. Affonso Henriques heard of it without perturbation.
Betimes next morning word was brought to Affonso Henriques in the Alcazar of Coimbra that a parchment was nailed to the door of the Cathedral, setting forth his excommunication, and that the Bishop either out of fear or out of sorrow had left the city, journeying northward towards Oporto.
Affonso Henriques passed swiftly from incredulity to anger; then almost as swiftly came to a resolve, which was as mad and harebrained as could have been expected from a lad in his eighteenth year who held the reins of power. Yet by its very directness and its superb ignoring of all obstacles, legal and canonical, it was invested with a certain wild sanity.
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