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Updated: June 8, 2025
It was the quiet of tense nerves and imagination at white-heat. I had to struggle with a spell which gripped me equally with the wildest savage. I forced myself to look round at the strained faces, the wall of the cascade, the line of torches. It was the sight of Henriques that broke the charm. Here was one who had no part in the emotion.
But the House of Aviz, like the legitimate line of Affonso Henriques, dwindled into debility. It flickered out in Dom Sebastian, who dragged his country into a mad invasion of Morocco and vanished from human ken on the disastrous battlefield of Alcazar-Khebir.
Which done, let him returne this writing vnto the said Anthonie Anes Pinteado for his warrant. I Diego Henriques haue written this in Almarin the two and twentie day of September, in the yeere of our Lord 1551. And this beneuolence the king gaue vnto Anthonie Anes Pinteado, the fiue and twentie day of Iuly this present yeere. Rey. The Secretaries declaration written vnder the kings grant.
I looked placidly at the spot where Henriques had slain the Keeper and I had stolen the rubies. There was no interest or imagination lingering in my dull brain. My nerves had suddenly become things of stolid, untempered iron. Each landmark I passed was noted down as one step nearer to my object. At Umvelos' I had not the leisure to do more than glance at the shell which I had built.
He made a pretence of swathing me up in fresh rawhide ropes, but his knots were loose and the thing was a farce. He gagged me with what looked like a piece of wood, but was in reality a chunk of dry banana. And all the while, till Henriques was out of hearing, he cursed me with a noble gift of tongues.
With their headquarters at Soure, a little to the south of Coimbra, they had been foremost in helping Affonso Henriques in his attacks on the Moors, and when Santerem was taken in 1147 they were given the ecclesiastical superiority of the town.
My first care was to kneel there among the bracken and give thanks to my Maker, who in very truth had shown me 'His goodness in the land of the living. After a little I went back to the edge of the cliff. There where the road came out of the bush was the body of Henriques, lying sprawled on the sand, with two dismounted riders looking hard at it.
The drums beat for the advance, and once more I was hoisted on my horse, while Arcoll's Kaffir tied my bridle to his own. A Kaffir cannot wink, but he has a way of slanting his eyes which does as well, and as we moved on he would turn his head to me with this strange grimace. Henriques wanted me to help him to get the rubies that I presumed was the offer he had meant to make.
I did not need to see the face to know who it was. There had been only two men in my vision, and one of them was immortal. I stopped and turned the body over. There was no joy in my heart, none of the lust of satisfied vengeance or slaked hate. I had forgotten about the killing of my dog and all the rest of Henriques' doings.
Affonso Henriques, unmoved, pointed through the window to a stalwart oak that stood before the inn. "Take them out there, and hang them unshriven," he commanded. The Cardinal swayed, and almost fell forward. He clutched the table, speechless with terror for those lads who were as the very apple of his eye, he who so fearlessly had bared his own breast to the steel.
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