Old Court Life in Spain; vol. 1

Challenged by the Christian sentinels, he spoke the words Julian had taught him, and passed through to the tent of the archbishop.

Opas, as one of those militant churchmen so common in that age, having doffed his suit of mail, was resting after the fight. When his own brother had fallen, without remorse he turned to Roderich. Now Roderich in his turn was betrayed and he bethought himself of his kinsfolk.

A stern, high-featured man, with a ready smile, like winter sunshine upon snow, merciless and hypocritical, he had steered his way through two stormy reigns, and was now believed by Roderich to be as devoted to his cause as he had seemed to be to the unhappy Witica. When he saw the ring his brother-in-law had sent him, he made no reply. For awhile he contemplated the page curiously, slowly passing his jewelled fingers over his clean-shaven chin, lost in thought; then he broke silence:

“Doubtless,” said the hypocrite, “the message is from God. Your master Julian is but the mouthpiece of the Most High. Since the divine voice has spoken, and given us time to consider its judgment, it behoves me, his servant in all things, to accomplish his will. Hasten back to your lord, good page, and tell him to have faith in his wife’s brother. As yet my own troops have not unsheathed the sword, but are fresh and ready. At the hour of noon to-morrow, when both armies are engaged, let him look out; I will pass over to the Moslem.”

With this treacherous message the page departed, making no noise, and as he guided his black horse along the lines of the river as he had come, the sound of an arrow whistled by his ear, a random shot which did not harm him.

CHAPTER VI

Battle of Guadalete – Overthrow of Don Roderich

ALL night a light burned in the tent of Don Roderich. If he slept, his slumbers were troubled. Now the pale form of Florinda rises before him with sad eyes, then the hideous vision of the necromantic Tower of Hercules haunts him. He starts up, and, opening the purple hangings of his tent, gazes out at the starry splendour of the Southern night.

Before him lay the grassy flats about Xerez, dimly lit by the dark glow of the signal fires marking the verge of the opposite camps. A pale crescent moon hanging over the Moslem tents brought out the lines of low hills far back on the horizon. Not a sound was heard but the tramp of the sentinels, or the neigh of a war-horse, ill-stabled on the turf. The distant click of a horse’s hoofs roused him to attention, and he distinctly saw the shadowy outline of a single horseman hurrying along the river’s verge, the bearer of the message big with his doom.

From his belt he drew an arrow and sped it swiftly from a golden bow, watching its silent course, but the dark figure still rode on.

Heavy was his heart within him as he watched the dawn of day (say the old chroniclers), not for himself, but for the thousands who lay stretched in slumber around, and the thought of the lonely Egilona called from him a sigh. Of all things, to a brave heart treachery is the sorest woe, and treachery he knew was at work with Julian close at hand. He would have challenged him to single battle, as knight to knight, but for the memory of his crime. This made him shrink before the father whose just vengeance had brought the invaders into the land.

With the glorious burst of morning all these dismal thoughts vanished. Again he became the brilliant chief who had wrested from Witica the crown of Spain. Again his heart swelled with the ardour of battle, as he prepared to lead his army with the pomp proper to a Gothic king.

A comelier monarch never drew breath than Roderich as – attired in a robe of beaten gold, sandals embroidered in pearls and diamonds on his feet, a sceptre in his hand, and a gold crown on his head resplendent with priceless gems – he mounted the lofty chariot of ivory, drawn by milk-white horses champing bits of gold, the wheels and pole covered with plates of gold, and a crimson canopy overhead. As he advanced in front of the army shouts of delight rent the air.

“Forward, brave Goths,” he cried, waving his glittering sceptre, as he halted in the front of the royal standard. “God is above to bless the Christian cause! Your king leads you! Forward to the fight, and death be his portion who shows any fear!”

Ere his voice had ceased, the sun, which had risen brilliantly, sank behind a bank of vapour, and a rising sirocco raised such clouds of dust that the very air was darkened.

Various was the fortune of the day. To the battalions of light Arab horsemen, throwing showers of arrows, stones, and javelins, the old Gothic valour opposed lines of steady troops. Where the Moslem fell, the Christian rushed in, seized both horse and armour. Desperately they fought and well, until the plain was strewn with prostrate Moors.

Don Roderich, throwing off the cumbrous robes of state, and mounting his satin-coated steed, Orelia, a horned helmet on his head, sternly grasping his buckler, was foremost wherever danger menaced. With the reins loose upon Orelia’s neck (who utters a wild snort rushing forward at full speed to meet the charge) the Moors fled before him, as though he were a second Santiago descended from the skies.

Tháryk, the one-eyed, maddened at seeing his battalions retreating, flung himself before them, and, rising in his stirrups, strove to stem the tide.

“Oh, Mussulmen,” he shouted, “whither would you fly? The sea is behind you, the enemy in front. You have no hope but in valour. Follow me; aim at the leaders. Pick off the Christian knights. He who brings in the head of the Goth shall swim in gold.” And putting spurs to his charger, he laid about him to right and left, trampling down the foot-soldiers, followed by Tenedos, a Spanish renegade, and a whole company of savage Berbers, who fell upon Ataulfo and the men he led.

A hand-to-hand conflict ensued. Ataulfo was wounded while he struggled with Tenedos, whom he had felled to the earth with his battle-axe, but his good horse being disabled and useless, obliged him to dismount. He tried to seize the reins of that of Tenedos, but the sagacious animal, as if recognising the hand which had smitten his master, reared and plunged, and would not let him mount. On foot he repulsed a whole circle of assailants. Blow after blow he dealt upon the enemy, keeping back the fierce crew of turbaned Berbers that sought to strike him down.

“All honour to Christian chivalry,” cried Tháryk, who, seeing the quick gleam of swords and scimitars around the Gothic prince, spurred to the spot. But a selfish thought came to crush the generous impulse which had moved him for a moment.

“If Ataulfo falls, it will be death to the army of Roderich,” whereupon he dealt him such a cruel blow with his scimitar as felled him to the earth. A pool of blood formed round him. Then the Moor, for an instant separated from him by a squadron of horse, led by Pelistes, hastened to deal him the death-blow.

No Goth possessed the moral influence of Pelistes. He was the high priest of chivalry. With him rode his only son. In vain he warned him not to expose himself. In vain! The die was cast – he fell! His maiden battle was doomed to be his last! Alas! poor father! Borne on the shields of his vassals, they carried the boy towards the royal tent, where Roderich was leading his Gothic guards forward to terminate the battle by a victorious onslaught.

At this moment, when the sun, long obscured by clouds, reached the meridian, and shone forth in sudden lustre, a deafening shout was heard, and Archbishop Opas, in a complete suit of armour, struck out from the centre of the Christian army at a gallop to join the Moors.

From that moment the fortune of battle changes. In vain does Pelistes, forgetting his grief, lead on such as would follow him. For the first time his voice falls on deaf ears. In vain Teodomir endeavours to rally his veterans. In vain Roderich on his war-horse, grasps sword and buckler, to reform his flying troops. Surrounded and assailed by his own treacherous subjects, his sword flies like lightning round his homed casque, each stroke felling an enemy. Around him the fight thickens. “A kingdom for his head,” cries the voice of Julian, pressing closer and closer with his perjured band.

A mortal panic falls on the Christians. Not only do they not fight, but they throw away their arms and fly!

For three whole days the Bedouins and Berbers, the fleetest riders among the Africans, pursue the flying Goths over the plains. But few of that vast host live to tell the tale. Alone, with a compact body of men, Teodomir manages to escape into the East, and Pelistes, carrying the body of his son, shuts himself up behind the walls of Cordoba.

And Roderich?

The Christian chronicler who furnishes these details records that the king fell by the sword of Julian, but this is too much of a monkish morality to be true. It is said that Orelia, stained with blood and disabled, was found entangled in a marsh on the borders of the Guadalete, the sandals and mantle of her master beside her.

But where history is silent romancers take up the tale, in those same ballads, parodied by Cervantes, in the inimitable scene of the puppets, in the second part of Don Quixote, when Master Peter, representing Roderich’s tragic death, grows alarmed at the Don’s frantic wrath, and his drawn sword, and cries, “Hold! hold! These are no real Berbers and Moors, but harmless dolls of pasteboard, picturing unhappy King Roderich, who said, ‘Yesterday I was lord of Spain, and to-day I have not a foot of land which I can call my own. Not half an hour ago I had knights and empire at my command, horses in abundance, and chests and bags of gold, but now you see me a ruined and undone man!’ ”

Roderich, say the ballads, did not perish in the battle of the Guadalete, but seeing that the day was lost, he fled. But not far, for the sleek-skinned Orelia, bleeding with wounds to death, soon fell. Then the king wandered on foot, faint and sick, his sword hacked into a saw, his jewelled mail drilled through. On the top of the highest rock (that is not much, for we are in the eternal plains) he sits down and weeps. Wherever he turns the sight of death meets his gaze. His valiant Goths have fallen or have fled. No refuge is left in the walled cities, or by the sea-shore. Toledo, his capital, is far away, and who knows if his banner still floats from the Alcazar towers? Below is the battlefield stained with Christian blood. There his royal banner trails in the dust. The bodies of his dying troops cover the plain. The shrill cry of the Arab comes sharply to his ear. He can discern the form of Julian, sword in hand, dealing destruction to such as still linger, and Tháryk, on his Arab courser white-turbaned, more terrible than the phantoms of the black kings who haunt the desert!

Just, however, as Roderich, in despair, is about to kill himself (so the ballad says) a shepherd appears, who gives him food, and conducts him to a neighbouring hermit. The hermit, on learning who he is, regards him somewhat dubiously, exhorts him to pray, and purify himself from sin. As to hospitality he can offer him only an open grave, into which Roderich descends without a murmur, in company with a big black snake. If his repentance be sincere, the hermit tells him, the snake will leave him harmless; if not, it will bite him until he dies.

In the grave the king lies silent for three days. Then the hermit appears, and asks: “How fares it, most noble king? How do you relish your dark bed and dismal bedfellow?”

“The snake,” answers Roderich, “is black, and rears its crest, but it does not bite me. Pray for me, good father, that I may be unharmed.”

But that very afternoon, sore and doleful moans smite the hermit’s ear. It is Roderich from the grave crying, “Father, father, the snake gnaws me. Now, now I feel his pointed teeth. O God, will it soon end?”

At which the hermit, gazing down, exhorts him to bear the pain, “to save his sinful soul,” in the true style of monkish consolation.

And thus poor Roderich dies a miserable death, verifying what Sancho Panza says to the duchess, “that all the silks and riches of the Goths did not prevent his being cut off,” and the traitor and renegade, Julian, helps the Moors to possess Xerez, and the plain from Seville to the rock of Gibraltar, called Gebel Tháryk (hill of Tháryk,) which they kept for many centuries, until driven out by Alonso, the wise King of Leon and Castile.

CHAPTER VII

Cordoba – Pelistes – Don Julian – Florinda

AGAIN we are at Cordoba! Under the protection of its river-girt walls the flying Goths draw breath. From Cordoba the king has started his great army, spreading like waves over the Andalusian plains. To Cordoba, Pelistes and a few terrified fugitives return, bringing tidings of the catastrophe.

The men of Cordoba crowd round them with terror in their looks. Pelistes shakes his aged head, tears gather in his eyes.

“Roderich is fallen,” they cry. “Your silence reveals it. Be to us a king, O Pelistes, and defend us from the Moors.”

He listens in silence. He neither refuses the offer, nor gives consent. His heart is dead within him. Then he lifts his eyes to the green mountains of the Sierra Morena, which give so pleasant an aspect to the great Plaza where he stands, and the long-suppressed tears well over and run down his furrowed cheeks, at the thought that these fair lands and the white city, so jocund in the sun, with avenues of spreading palms, and plane-trees, and jasmine-planted gardens, shall fall.

“Citizens,” he says, turning to the hundreds whose eager eyes are fixed on him as shipwrecked mariners note the advance of a raft in a stormy sea, “I swear to stand by you to the end. I will undertake the defence of your city.”

A solemn oath is registered there on the Plaza (still planted with palms and called now del gran Capitan, in memory of another great leader, Gonsalo de Cordoba), a solemn oath, and as a sign of accepting all held up their right hands.

But, shameful to relate, so soon as the scouts bring word of the advance of the victorious Moors, every wealthy burgher within Cordoba packs up his goods and flees to the deepest recesses of the Sierra. The monks abandon their convents, the women follow, and only the poor and destitute are left to the mercy of the invaders.

To the sound of drums and cymbals the Moors march in. In front rides the Christian renegade, Maguel, his turbaned head decorated with the crescent of command, his war-horse carrying strings of Christian heads, dropping blood upon the stones. Next is Julian, a dark scowl upon his face, as of a man carrying a load of care. How well he knows each tree and huerta and tower along the march – the little creek in the Guadalquivir, where the boats are moored; a lone castle of defence, looking towards the hills (now called “of Almodar”), he often has defended against the wild forays of the Arabs; the Sierra broken into cliffs and precipices, with groves and gardens, and silvery streams, studded by quintas and hamlets. There, in a green retreat among the wooded hills, he and Frandina had lived when Florinda was a child. Here, in the Alcazar, he had met Don Roderich; and the remembrance fills him with such sudden rage, he digs his spurs into the smooth flanks of his Arab charger, an uncalled-for violence, resenting which, the fiery animal rears, and half unseats him.

Yes, it was at Cordoba that he consigned Florinda to his care, the fair-faced profligate. There he parted from her, guileless as a babe, and now, through the length and breadth of Spain, she is known by the name of La Cava. He himself is but a vile renegade. Already the poison of jealousy is working at his heart. The Moors distrust him, though they owe all to him. Where would “the one-eyed” have been but for him? And Mousa, and Maguel, and the rest? And such an uncontrollable burst of wrath passes over him that he curses aloud. At least he was the first in the court of Roderich, and now, who knows when Andalusia is conquered and the Moors need him no more, what form their suspicion may assume?

Then came to his mind uneasy thoughts of Frandina and of his son. For himself he cares not. A dagger thrust can settle all his fate – but the boy! his only son! Is he safe under his mother’s care? May he not be made a hostage by Tháryk?

Already the scent of treason is in the air!

Here a wild clamour breaks in upon his thoughts. The white walls of Cordoba are in front, and a mighty shout of “Allah! there is no God but Allah, and Mahomet is his Prophet,” rises from a thousand throats of swarthy Africans, careering wildly over the grass, Numidians, with fringed bands and armlets on elbow and ankle, sun-dried sheikhs and wandering Kalenders and Fakirs in the front of the great army, mounted on camels and mules.

For three long months Pelistes, well-named the “Father of the Goths,” defended the battered Convent of St. George, within which he barricaded himself. Hope of succour supports his courage. Teodomir may come, or young Pelayo, from Asturia or Leon.

But day follows day, and night passes on to night, under the lustre of the southern stars, and no help comes. Eager eyes hail every cloud of dust that sweeps the plain, and interpret dark shadows of the clouds, which summer tempests cast, into troops of Christian knights approaching. Alas! no human form is visible, save now and then an Arab horseman, riding with light rein, charged with some mission from Mousa in the south.

Famine, too, comes to try them with its ghastly face. One by one they kill the horses, which had carried them so gallantly from the Guadalete (to a trooper an act as repulsive as the murdering of his child), and strive with divers ills which hunger brings.

Pelistes, unable to bear the sight of the sufferings of his friends, assembles what remains of the miserable garrison, and thus speaks his mind:

“Comrades,” he cries, in a voice which he endeavours to make cheerful, “it is needless to conceal danger from brave men; our case is desperate. One by one we shall die and leave no sign. There is but one chance, and I shall brave it. To-morrow, before break of day, I will ride forth disguised as one of these base renegades of whom there are so many in Cordoba, and, God willing, spur on to Toledo. If my errand prosper, I shall be back in twenty days. If not, at least I shall return to die with you. Keep a sharp lookout! Five beacon fires blazing on the lowest line of hills mean success. If not, the blackness of despair engulfs me.”

And so it was. As the faint streaks of light tipped the craggy tops of the Sierra with points of gold, warning the shepherds to rise and tend their sheep, and the birds flew low, waiting for further light to wing their course into the upper regions of the air, Pelistes rode forth, a turban on his head, along the silent streets of Cordoba, to which the shadows of long lines of wall give such an Eastern aspect. He passed the gate, but lazily guarded at that early hour, unchallenged, in company with droves of cattle and mules laden with sacks. Then, pricking the sides of his willing horse, he galloped at full speed along the tracks which mount upwards, and, ere the sun rose, had gained the lower spurs of the Sierra.

At the gateway of a quinta he draws rein, willing to rest his panting steed. But alas! while he tarries the sound of horses’ hoofs, riding at topmost speed over the rocky path he has just traversed, smites his ear. In an instant he is again in the saddle, and straining upwards to conceal himself in a rugged hollow beside the dried-up course of a mountain torrent.

His tired horse, wind-blown and trembling, falters at the edge and falls, rolling with Pelistes to the bottom. Greatly shaken and bleeding, Pelistes extricates himself with difficulty and strives to raise his horse, but when the generous beast, rising with a groan to his master’s call, stands up, it falls again on the hard stones, unable to keep its feet.

Meanwhile, on comes the horseman through the falling stones, and a face he knows too well looks over the brink of the ravine, and a voice calls out, “Well met, brave Pelistes, even in a hole. You have ridden bravely from Cordoba, and are well mounted. We followed you ill, but here we are in time.”

The voice is that of Maguel. For all reply, Pelistes, standing by his horse, draws his sword.

“Do you bandy words with me as a coward!” he thunders, brandishing his weapon. “Stand forth! If you are a man, tie your horse to a tree and come down on foot. We will see who is the better man, a Christian renegade or a Gothic knight.”

And fight they did, and desperately, as if each held a nation’s ransom at his sword’s point. Better matched warriors never clashed steel. Fragments of shields flew around; then casques were split, and blood flowed freely. Still they fought. At length Pelistes, who had been much injured by his fall, began to show signs of weakness, and Maguel perceiving this, pressed on him the more, until Pelistes, summoning all his remaining strength to strike a final blow, failed in his aim and fell prostrate on the earth.

“This is a brave foe,” quoted Maguel to his followers, who, renegade though he was, we must allow had generous qualities or he would have run Pelistes through. “Let us save his life, such a knight will honour our triumph.” So, unlacing his buckler, they throw water on his face, and raise him upright against a barrier of rock.

Though plunged in a deep swoon, Pelistes lived, and strapped to a stout palfrey reached Cordoba.

When the imprisoned captives, straining their eyes for any sign, see him surrounded by dusky Africans, to their eyes a bleeding corpse, their very souls seem dead within them. Pelistes gone, no help can come. To sell their lives dear, they sally forth, but are soon driven back into the convent, each noble Goth dying sword in hand. The convent is immediately occupied by the Moors, and from that time is known as “St. George of the Captives.”

Meanwhile, Pelistes found friends among his foes. Slowly his wounds healed, and until he was restored to health the Arabs carefully tended him. At length, when he was able to walk, Maguel (who frankly gloried in his apostasy) bade him to a banquet within the Alcazar. It was a sore trial to the feelings of the old warrior, but they were generous foes. As a prisoner, he could not refuse the hospitality of his hosts, but the woes of his country lay heavy at his heart. The grass was still green over the graves of his comrades, and to his fancy the weapons of the Moors were crimsoned with their blood.

Pelistes occupied the seat of honour on the right hand of Maguel, and with that exquisite courtesy, for which the Moors were famous, his host turned the talk on the valour displayed by the Christians, and extolled their gallant defence of Cordoba, specially remembering that devoted little band who had perished in the convent.

“Could I have saved their lives,” added Maguel, “it would have done me honour. Such enemies ennoble victory. Had those brave knights consented to surrender when I sent in a flag of truce I should have cherished them as brothers.”

Pelistes silently acknowledged the enlightened chivalry of these words, but his heart smote him so sorely that he could not speak for some moments. But for his final charge to them “not to surrender” they might be with him now! At length words came to him.

“Happy are the dead,” was his reply, in a voice that vibrated with emotion. “They rest in peace after the hard-fought struggle. My companions in arms have fallen with honour, while I live to see fair Spain the prey of strangers. My son is dead, cut down by my side in battle. My friends are gone, I have reason to weep for them. But one there is” – and he raised his voice and a dark fire came into his pale eye – “one for whom I shall never cease to mourn; of all my brothers in arms he was the dearest. Of all the Gothic knights he was the bravest. Alas! where is he? I know not. There is no record of his death in battle, or I would seek for him in the waters of the Guadalete, or on the plains of Xerez; or if, like so many others, he is doomed to slavery in a foreign land, I would join him in exile, and we would mourn our country’s loss together.”

So pathetic was the tone of Pelistes, so thrilling, that Maguel and the emirs who sat round asked anxiously, “Who is he?”

“His name,” answered Pelistes, with lowered voice, glancing round the table as he spoke, “was Don Julian, Conde Espatorios of Spain.”