The Constant Prince

And when it was indeed certain that the captive prince was dying, this favour was granted, and his fellow-prisoners were admitted for one last farewell, their bitter grief hushed, their anger stilled, by the wonderful peace on his wasted face and the light in his shining eyes.

“My Lord is indeed with me, and has given me the victory,” he said. “In this way, at least, will freedom come to us all.”

And then, with much effort, as each knelt beside him, he spoke a word of the peculiar trials of each, knowing how one shrank from insulting words, another dreaded bodily hardship, a third pined especially for home: commending them all to Father José’s care; and when he saw that the worst trial for all was grief at his loss, he said, simply, that the life seemed to have been taken from him with the loss of his dear brothers; but he had found a Better Friend still, and so would they. And so, with aching hearts, they left him; and, after a night of restless pain and fever, a great quiet fell on him, till, towards evening, as the end drew near, he lay —

“In calmest quiet, waiting his release.

‘Lord, now Thou lettest me depart in peace,’

Were the last words which he was heard to say.

Upon his left side turning, as the day

Slow sinking now with more than usual pride,

Streamed through the prison bars a glory deep and wide.

“When the last flush had faded from the west,

When the last streak of golden light was gone,

They looked, but he had entered on his rest;

He, too, his haven of repose had won; -

Leaving this truth to be gainsaid by none,

That what the scroll upon his shield did say,

That well his life had proved —le bien me plait.”

So died, on the 5th of June, 1443, Fernando of Avis, the Constant Prince – “So good a man,” said the young king of Fez, “that it is a pity he was not a true Moslem.”

And a tall tower was erected over his grave as a monument to his patience and to the triumph of the Moors over his countrymen.

Years went by, and at last the few poor survivors of that little band, Father José among them, were ransomed and released; but the body of Fernando still rested in an infidel grave.

His brother João was killed in battle. Pedro fell in a civil war, after a life which, spite of some errors, had, on the whole, been noble, conscientious, and loyal; and the only survivor of the five loving brothers was Enrique, the great navigator, the first of the discoverers of the modern world. The young Alonzo, Duarte’s son, grew up into a brave and prosperous sovereign, and, in another war with Fez and Morocco, took captive two sons of the king of Fez. Long before this the memory of the captive Fernando was reverenced as that of a saint and a martyr by the men whose lukewarmness and indifference had caused his death; and now the only ransom demanded for the Moorish princes was the body that, for thirty years, had been in the hands of his enemies.

And so, in 1473, Enrique sailed once more for Ceuta, and there received from the hands of the Moors the body of the beloved brother of his youth, which, with solemn funeral services, was shortly laid in the Abbey of Batalha, where Enrique has rested beside him for many a long year, while Christian services of prayer and praise have risen from the city of Ceuta, over which the Crescent has never been lifted again.