Old Court Life in Spain; vol. 1

“How,” cried Maguel, “my honoured guest, are you smitten with sudden blindness? Behold your friend. Do you not see him? He is seated there,” pointing to Julian, at some distance down the board, attired in the turban and long embroidered caftan of a Moor.

Pelistes paused, slowly raised his eyes, then sternly fixed them on Julian. “In the name of God, stranger, answer me,” he said, “how dare you presume to personate the Conde Espatorios?”

Stung to the quick, Julian rose, flinging a furious glance on the calm, cold eyes riveted upon him. “Pelistes,” he cried, “what means this mockery? You know me well. I am Julian.”

“I know you for a base apostate,” thundered Pelistes, the great wrath within him finding sudden vent, “an apostate and a traitor. Julian, my friend, was a Christian knight, devoted, true, and valiant, but you, you have no name. Infidel, renegade, and traitor, the earth you tread abhors you. The men you lead curse you, for you have betrayed Spain and your king. Therefore, I repeat, O man unknown, if you declare you are Don Julian, you lie. He, alas! is dead, and you are some fiend from hell who wears his semblance. No longer can I brook the sight.”

So, rising from the table, Pelistes departed, turning his back on Julian, overwhelmed with confusion, amid the scornful smiles of the Moslem knights, who used while they despised him.

As yet, however, all had gone well with him. If a traitor, his treason was successful. He held high command among the Arabs under Tháryk and Mousa, and amassed great wealth by his country’s spoil, but he loathed himself more and more. He knew that all men despised him. Too old and too serious for the sensual life of the Moors, and as a warrior little caring to be delicately fed and housed, he sought solace in the company of his masculine but faithful wife, Florinda, and his little son.

Florinda, alas! how changed! Her sweet, soft eyes were wild. The delicate bloom upon her cheek had deepened into a fixed red; her mouth made for kisses, lined and hard, her whole face strangely haggard. No words can paint the anguish she suffered at returning into Spain with her mother. Julian would have folded her in his arms, but she turned from him:

“Touch me not, my father,” she cried, shuddering. “Your hand pollutes me. Why have you brought me here?”

“But, my daughter,” answered the unhappy parent, averting his face, not to catch the reproachful anguish of her eyes, “surely it is not for you to accuse me? All I have done was to avenge you.”

“Ah!” she answered with a wild laugh. “That is false. I called for you in my trouble to take me from the court, and the reproachful eyes of Egilona. But never, never, did I bid you visit the wrong I had suffered upon the land. What had Spain to do with me? No, not Florinda, but your own ambition prompted you. To wear the crown of Roderich was your aim. I was but the instrument of your ambition. Let me go,” she shrieked, struggling to rush out. “Do you see” – and she pointed upwards to the chain of heights shutting in the city – “the hills of the Sierra take strange shapes – I dare not look on the green valleys! See the flying Goths curse me. They come! They come! showing their gaping wounds. Look, look, the plains run with blood. The figure of the king rides by! I know him! He is fair. It is Roderich, but sick to death. See, his horse falters. He falls. On, on they come, the Gothic host, but with the faces of corpses. Surely they did not ride thus to battle? Do you hear the voices in the air? Death, death to Florinda! And I will die, as they bid me!”

With a wild cry that rang round the perfumed groves of the Alcazar, before Julian could stop her, she had rushed to the entrance of a tower which jutted from the walls into the garden, and, bounding up the stairs, barred the upper door.

Her father, speechless with horror, stood rooted to the spot; a moment more, and her slight form leaned over the battlements. “Now, now, I come,” she shouted. “No ghost can haunt me there,” and from the topmost parapet she flung herself!

Hapless Florinda! Thus she passed; but still in that garden, it is said, the spiked palm-leaves rustle in the breeze, like souls in pain; the canes and the reeds bow their heads over the fountains, the frogs croak sadly in the cisterns, and a Moorish cascade, rushing down a flight of marble steps, sings in voiceless melodies her name.

CHAPTER VIII

Frandina and her Son Put to Death by Alabor

AT this time a Mussulman Emir, named Alabor, ruled in Cordoba under the Sultan Suleiman of Damascus. Alabor, who was a hard and zealous follower of Mahomet, looked with suspicion on the Christian apostates, who professed his faith simply to save their lives, but who in their hearts regarded the Moslem invaders with the natural hatred of a conquered race.

Of all those Gothic knights who bore arms under Tháryk, he most misdoubted Julian. Certain movements of insurrection which took place among the Christians in Pelayo’s possessions in the yet unconquered district of the Asturias were not without suspicion of powerful encouragement from the south.

Julian, on the death of Florinda, had resolved to send Frandina and his little son back to Africa. Did this mean that he was preparing to play false with his allies? “A traitor once, a traitor ever,” thought the crafty Alabor. That he might decide his doubts in true Moslem fashion, he called in one of those miserable impostors called fakirs, who wander over the face of the land in the East, and profess to read the future by the stars.

After listening to all the Emir had to say, the Fakir began his incantation. First sand was sprinkled, then squares and circles and diagrams were drawn upon the floor; then, while standing in the midst, he affected to read the lines of fate from a parchment covered with cabalistic characters. “O Emir,” he said, “your words of wisdom are justified. Beware of the apostates.”

“Enough,” replied the Emir. “They shall die.”

At that time Julian was still at Cordoba in great grief for the recent death of Florinda. “Tell my lord,” he said, in reply to the earnest invitation of Alabor, “I pray him to hold me excused from coming to visit him. Such of my followers as can aid him in any warlike project I freely send; but for myself I am unable.”

This was enough for Alabor; here was ample confirmation of the Fakir’s prediction. So, not to be behindhand with the voice of fate, he at once condemned to death that wily churchman and renegade, Archbishop Opas, Frandina’s brother, who had turned the battle of the Guadalete against Roderich, and with him the two sons of Witica, as possible pretenders to the crown.

Still Julian escaped him by a rapid flight into Aragon. But his wife Frandina and his only son could be reached.

The castle of Ceuta, which formed part of the Gothic (Iberian) African possessions, then called Tingitana, stood on an extreme point, a cape of rocky altitude, with bastions and mullioned walls; in the midst rose a central tower or citadel, in which the governor had his abode. Few casements there were, and those looking over the tossing billows of that unquiet Strait which flows between the two continents, so that each coming vessel could be noted long before it touched the quay; a place wholly of defence, and which had therefore been chosen to shelter Julian’s wife and son.

Frandina, a woman of masculine courage and keen understanding, had at all times fanned the flame of her husband’s ambition. No longer young, she still bore traces of that radiant beauty which had held her lord faithful in the dissolute courts of Witica and Roderich.

On her brow should have rested the pointed diadem worn by the Gothic queens; not on a Moorish stranger who could never learn the customs of the land. Ever hoping to attain the object of her desires she wilfully worked on the evil passions of her lord, before the calamity which befell Florinda came as a cause and a reason for treason.

No figure of that romantic period stands out in stronger relief than that of Frandina, who moves and speaks before us in her habit as she lived in spite of the long track of centuries.

Without news from Spain, knowing nothing of what has happened at Cordoba to her brother Opas or to her lord, she eats out her heart in ceaseless watching for some white-sailed felucca or swift-rowed trireme to bring her tidings. All day she has trod the battlements looking north-ward, and strained her eyes in vain. Now she sits in her chamber. An iron lamp casts a weird light on the tapestries which line the walls, the wind moans without about the turrets, and the dashing waves roll deep below.

Is it the hollow moan of the far-off tempest, or the screech of an owl which makes her start from her seat and eagerly listen?

There is no fall of feet upon the winding stairs, but a well-known voice comes to her so plainly that she rushes to the door. Ere she can reach it, her brother Opas stands before her, habited as she last saw him in the flowing vestments of an archbishop; not in aspect as he appeared in life, but as a wan and shadowy spectre unfolding itself to her sight in the darkness around. Before she can speak he waves her off. He is ghastly pale, and drops of blood seem to fall from his head. With one hand he points to the opposite wall where burns like orbs of fire the word, Beware!

“Touch me not, sister,” a hollow voice utters; “I am come from the grave to warn you. Guard well your son. The enemies of our house are near.” Thus speaking all disappears. His coming and going are alike mysterious. Brave as she is, a horror she never knew before comes over Frandina.

Next morning, in the fair sunlight, a swiftly rowing galley brings the news of Opas’s death and Julian’s flight. Not a moment is to be lost! There in the offing she descries the Moorish fleet, bearing the Emir from Cordoba. The wind blows fair for Africa – before noon he will be off the shore. Fifty Moors, who form part of the garrison, are put to death with incredible cruelty for fear of treachery; the city gates are closed.

Alabor, whose fury knows no bounds, for he has calculated on arriving before the news has reached Frandina, orders the castle to be assaulted on every side. The walls are carried. Frandina, shut up in the citadel with a forlorn hope, has no thought but for the safety of her son. How conceal him? A mother’s wit is keen. Among the living he is not safe, but surely they will not seek him with the dead. Passing down long flights of narrow steps she carries him below into a dark, damp chapel. Scarcely a ray of light penetrates the gloom.

“Are you afraid of the darkness, my boy?” she asks, kissing his warm cheek.

“No, mother. I shall fancy that it is night, and try to sleep.”

On one side of a narrow marble aisle, held up by clustered pillars, is the freshly built tomb of Florinda, whose body has been carried here from Cordoba.

“Do you fear your dead sister, my boy?” again Frandina asks.

“No, mother; the dead can do no harm. Why should I fear Florinda?”

Unbarring the entrance which leads into the vault, Frandina stands on the threshold, her arms around her son.

“Listen,” she says, and her kisses rain upon his cheek as she strains him to her bosom in an agony of fear. “The Moors from Spain have sailed over to murder you. Stay here with your dead sister, dear child; her spirit will guard you. Lie quiet for your life!”

The boy kissed his mother, and fearlessly descended the steps, to where the marble coffin holding Florinda’s body lay on a still uncovered stand. The faded wreaths cast on it gave out a stale perfume.

All that day and the next and the following night the brave boy lay still.

Meanwhile, the troops of the Emir penetrated into the citadel, and Alabor himself forced his way into the chamber of the countess.

“My lord,” she said, rising from the ponderous chair in which she was seated, a sarcastic courtesy in her tone and in the low obeisance with which she greeted him, “you are pleased to profit somewhat ungallantly by the absence of my lord. Do you deem this a fitting way to enter the stronghold of him to whom you owe the conquest of Spain?”

The Emir, surprised by the dignified calm of her demeanour, would have withdrawn, but the Fakir who had followed him, pulled the sleeve of his garment, and whispered in his ear: “Ask for her son.”

Low as the words were spoken, she heard them and turned pale. “My son, great Alabor, is with the dead. Let him rest in peace.”

“Wife of Don Julian,” cried the Emir, “you trifle with me. Where is he? Tell me, or torture shall make you.”

“Emir,” she spoke again, and her calm face showed no trace of fear, “if I have not spoken the truth, may everlasting fire be my portion. He is with the dead.”

Alabor was confounded by the composure of her answer. So great was her courage and the dignity with which she faced him, that he was just about to retire, when the Fakir again broke in:

“Let me deal with her, my lord,” he said. “The heart of the Emir is too tender. I will find the boy. Soldiers, search the vaults of the castle.”

No trace upon the countenance of Frandina betrayed alarm. She herself led the way to the different subterranean chambers within the citadel. When the searchers and the grim old Fakir, hideous and naked, save for a ragged cloth about his loins, but esteemed all the more holy from his filth, descended the winding stairs leading to the chapel, Frandina did not falter. In her presence every corner was ransacked by the aid of torches. Nothing was found. But as all were leaving, and she stood already under the arch of the door, to see them all file safely by, some gleam of relief, some unconscious look of joy passed over her face. It was noted by the horrible Fakir.

“She rejoices,” was his thought. “We are leaving the boy behind. Let further search be made,” he commands, turning back the soldiers, whose feet were already on the stairs.

“The boy is with the dead,” Frandina had said. Now the words came back to him with a special meaning, for the walls were lined with tombs which stood out conspicuous in the vivid glare of the torches, striking on the marble panels. On one was the escutcheon of an ancient knight, surmounted by a coronet; there a sculptured figure in armour lay at rest; further on a deeply indented effigy in coloured stone, upon which an inscription set forth the valour of the mouldering bones within. The tomb of Florinda, white and glistening by the side of the others, displayed her effigy in polished marble, a delicately chiselled form – this at once attracted the attention of the Fakir.

“Who lies there?” he asked, turning his twinkling eyes, overshadowed by hairy eyebrows, on the shrinking figure of Frandina, who, trembling from head to foot, sought to hide her face in the deep shadow of a pillared vault, beside the gate of entrance; “this tomb seems the newest.”

“It is my daughter’s tomb,” replied Frandina; but with all her fortitude, she was conscious of a trembling in her voice, and her dry lips could scarcely articulate the words, “She is but lately dead.”

The Fakir eyed her with a devilish glance. Then, turning to the Moorish soldier, whose eyes rolled under the high turban with a wicked satisfaction at the discomfiting of the Christian, —

“Search within,” he orders, his gaze bent on her. Alas! it was soon done. The entrance of the recently entered monument was partly open; within lay what death had spared of Florinda, the bier covered with a fine cloth of Eastern tissue, the hands covered with precious stones.

At first, the Nubian guard, staggered at the strange sight, fall back, but soon recalled by the stern voice of the Fakir, they lifted the pall. The boy lay underneath! He was asleep, his soft cheek turned upwards, cradled on his arm.

Like a figure carved in stone stood Frandina, but when she saw her son her mother’s heart gave way. With a shriek, so piercing that it woke the echoes in the prisons underneath, she dashed forward and cast herself upon the child.

“Mercy, O Emir! if you have ever known a mother’s care! Mercy! mercy! This is my only child – the joy of my life – my little son! Take me for him!” and raising herself on her knees with frantic passion, the boy clinging round her neck, she tries to grasp his hands.

Wrenching himself from her as if she were some noxious animal, Alabor thunders to the guards: “Take this woman’s son from her, and bear her hence to the deepest dungeon.”

The boy stood alone before the Emir, big tears rolling down his face, not from fear, but for the sake of his mother, whose frantic screams were heard long after they had dragged her away.

If Alabor had but a spark of human pity, he would have melted to the pretty boy, who faced him so bravely, but he had sworn the destruction of Don Julian’s race, and his heart hardened within him as he gazed on the innocent eyes. With a keen searching glance he measured the slight figure of the child, and smiled to see how frail he was and small.

“Yusa,” he said to the Fakir, “be you the keeper of Julian’s son. Guard him as you love me.” And so he and his guards departed, leaving them alone.

“I pray you,” said the boy, undaunted by the looks of his grim companion, who stood holding a torch and watching him under his overhanging eyebrows, “to give me air. I have lain three days in this close tomb, and I am faint.”

Without a word they mount the winding stair, until they reach the platform of the keep. Through the high turrets was a wondrous view across the Straits, lined by broad currents of varying blues and greens, to where, dim in the distance, lay the lowlands of Spain. Round and round flew the seagulls, below the waves beat, thundering on the rocks which guard the harbour, cresting back in foam. As the child stood near the battlements, the sea wind raising his curly hair, he gave a cry of joy and clapped his hands.

“Do you know what land that is opposite?” asks the Fakir, pointing to the dim coast line, an evil leer upon his lips.

“It is my country,” is the answer, “we come from Spain; my mother told me.”

“Then bless it, my boy; stretch forth your arms.”

As the boy loosened his hold of the parapet, the cunning Fakir seized him by the waist, and, with a sudden motion, flung him over the battlements. Every bone in his delicate body was broken ere it reached the rock where he lay, a little lifeless heap.

“How fares it with Julian’s son?” asks the voice of Alabor, as he appears on the platform of the keep.

“Well,” is the brief answer.

“Is he safe?” he asks again, looking round.

“He is safe,” answered Yusa; “behold!”

And the Emir looked over and saw the battered form, like a slight speck below, around it the seagulls and vultures already circling.

The following morning, at the break of day, in the great court of the castle, from which all the issues to the different towers open, Frandina is led out for execution.

That she knows her son is dead, is written in her eyes. No word passes her lips. Like a queen she moves, command in every gesture. With her the Christians of the garrison are brought forth to suffer. As the dismal procession passes round the court, the voice of the insatiable Alabor is heard:

“Behold, O men of Spain, the wife of your commander. See the ruin to which her treason would have brought you. Let every man take a stone and fling it at her till she dies. He that refuses shall have his head struck off. In the hand of God is vengeance. Not on our heads be her blood.”

How or where Julian himself died is not certain. Some chronicles say he perished in the mountains of Navarre, where he had taken refuge; others that he met his death in the castle of Marmello, near Huesca, in Aragon. A violent death of some sort came to the great Kingmaker of Spain.

On his name a perpetual curse rests, and to this day, in Spain “Julian” is synonymous with traitor.

CHAPTER IX

The Moors at Seville – Mousa and Abdul-asis

MEANWHILE the great Emir Mousa is moved by fierce jealousy of the success of Tháryk of the one-eye. Not only had he overrun the mountains of the Moon and conquered Granada, but the city of Toledo, the capital of Northern Spain, was opened to him by the Jews.

This is too much to bear from an inferior. Swift messengers are despatched across the Straits to bid him wait until Mousa arrives. He laughs to scorn the message, and battles as before, his light squadrons penetrating farther and farther into the north of Spain.

Mousa had many sons, but history concerns itself with one only, by name Abdul-asis, pale-skinned, with large romantic eyes and a too tender heart. Abdul-asis sailed with his father across the Straits, and a great army of Moors and illustrious emirs accompanied them.

“By the head of the Prophet,” quoth Mousa, as he consulted the map of Spain, “that hireling of the one-eye has left us no land to conquer. He is a glutton, who eateth all.” But on a more minute examination, it was found that there was still room in the vast country of Spain for earning further laurels. Tháryk had as yet left Andalusia unconquered.

Andalusia! the very name is poetry – mystic, unfathomed, vague! Reaching far back into fabulous ages where history cannot follow! The home of jonglerie, magic, and song! Would that I could paint the turquoise of its skies, the endless purple of its boundless plains, the dusky shade of orange and myrtle woods dashed with the vivid green!

What art! what knowledge! And the sensuous charm of a heavenly climate, where winter is never known, and spring passes into summer without a struggle; a land loved by the veiled beauties of the East, looking down through shadows of the fretted miradores, marble galleries, and patios, on barbican towers and Roman walls!

And what a people, cloudless in temper as the heavens! To love flowers, to dance seguidillas, and oles, and to tell tales, that is your Andalusian – grouped in circles anywhere, under a hedge or a plane-tree, on a grassy knoll, in gilded halls, or beneath painted arches. A happy, thoughtless race at all times, taking life and conquest as it comes.

If Andalusia is left to Mousa, Tháryk has lost the fairest jewel of Spain.

Abdul-asis spoke to his father.

“My lord and father,” he said, “as yet I have done nothing to deserve a sword. Behold, when my service is over, and I return to Egypt and appear before the Sultan, what will he say when I answer that I have gained no battle, and taken no city or castle? Good my father, if you love me, grant me some command, and let me gain a name worthy of your son.”

To this Mousa answered: “Allah be praised! The heart of Abdul-asis beats in the right place. Your desire, my son, shall be granted. While I go north, to besiege Merida, you shall march southwards. Seville has defeated the Moors, and quartered Christian troops in the barbican. Be it your care to drive out these unbelieving dogs, and plant once more the Crescent on the Giralda tower. Reduce the city, and spoil the land. Then pass southward, and conquer the province of Murcia, where the Gothic Teodomir defends himself with a handful of troops.”

When Abdul-asis, who read the Persian poets and had himself tried his hand at verse, came in sight of beautiful Seville, lying like a white lily surrounded by the shadows of dark woods, he sighed:

“Alas! is it for me,” he said, “to bring destruction upon so fair a scene? Why am I come to dye with blood those flowery groves, and burden the tide of the Guadalquivir with corpses? Alas! why did not my father choose some place less lovely on which to bring ruin than this the palm-crowned queen of cities!”

Thus mourned Abdul-asis, but not so the fiery Africans whom he commanded. They gazed on the walls with wrath, and longed to flesh their scimitars in Christian blood.

It was with the utmost difficulty that the merciful Abdul-asis stopped the massacre when the city fell. It pained his gentle heart, for its many beauties, especially the palm-planted gardens of the Alcazar, vocal with purling streams and bubbling fountains, so dear to the Arab fancy.

“Here,” thought Abdul-asis, as he wandered among the myrtle-bordered paths, fragrant with jasmine and violet, “is the paradise promised to the faithful, but where are the houris, whose white embraces are to make it sweet?” Neither did the voluptuous movements of the dancing girls (for Seville in all ages has been famed for the baile), moving with uplifted arms and quivering limbs in the vito or the zapateado, intoxicate his senses; nor did the voices of the young niñas, chanting the malagueñas to cither and lute, draw him from the poetic melancholy which possessed his soul, as he turned his steps from alley to alley, not having yet found the ideal of which he was in search.