Old Court Life in Spain; vol. 1. Elliot Frances Minto Dickinson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ “You need, I trust, no assurance of this; but, spite of precautions, I fear greatly that a battle or a siege is imminent. The Moslems are gathered in such numbers, savage tribes of Arabs and Berbers, under the Moorish general, Mousa ben Nozier of Damascus, and his son Abd-el-asis, that it will need all our resources to baffle. Mousa swears that he will drive the Cross from the confines of Africa, and raise the Crescent on every Christian fortress we hold in Tingitana.”

      “This is a confirmation of evil news,” replies Don Roderich, whose beaming countenance had darkened as Julian gave these details. “I am well advised of the concentration of the Arabs in the north of Africa. I but awaited your coming to confirm it. But had you not been present with the archbishop it would have been argued in the nation that as his relative you disapproved my sentence. Now we are hand in hand. Command all the resources of the mainland to drive the invaders back. Light sloops can be run from Algeciras to Ceuta with soldiers and arms.”

      “My lord, I have enough; should a siege be threatened every mouth has to be fed. But it is to me, the leader, that the Christians look. It is I who am needed on the coast of Barbary. I have personally, too, great credit with the Moors; they are noble enemies.”

      “I doubt it not,” is Roderich’s answer. “Wherever my trusty Espatorios draws the sword, victory follows.”

      “My lord, it was but to excuse my hasty parting, not to ask for more supplies, that I spoke. To know that my daughter is well disposed of in a safe asylum is a balm to me greater than any boon you could bestow. My wife, Frandina, fights by my side. I have no fear for her, and our son is consigned to the care of the Archbishop Opas. Now, thanks to you, my lord, I am free-handed to face the Moors. I have but to settle more matters connected with Florinda, and to depart. The queen is at Toledo; I must accompany her thither.”

      “By no means,” cries Don Roderich, “unless such is your wish. She shall go with me, accompanied by suitable attendants. I myself will present her to Egilona as our child.”

      Meanwhile, the assemblage had gradually diminished. Each chief was in haste to depart, for the country was full of enemies, more especially in the south and east, where the vessels of the Moors continually landed Berbers and Arabs to plunder and carry off the inhabitants as slaves. That serious invasion was near at hand all understood, except perhaps Roderich and the idle young Goths who formed his court. As yet, it is true, Don Julian held the enemy at bay in Africa, but, his presence or his support withdrawn, the Moors would pour like a torrent on the land, and, save for a few of the old leaders who had survived the disastrous reign of Witica, and the enervating atmosphere spreading everywhere from the court into all ranks, who was there to oppose them?

      CHAPTER III

      Don Roderich’s Perfidy

      THE court life shifts from the green Sierras of Cordoba to the old city of Toledo. Again we are in the corn-bearing plains, the outlines of the domes, pinnacles, and turrets of the Alcazar before us gay and jocund with the security of two hundred years of Gothic rule. What footsteps have echoed through those courts! What regal presences haunt them! Iberian, Roman, and Gothic; Recaredo, Wamba, Witica, and comely Roderich; to be followed by Moors, and Castilian kings; El Caballero, El Emplazado, El Valente, El Impotente; a red haired bastard of Trastamare succeeding his brother Don Pedro el Cruel, a swaggering Alfonso, Velasque’s, Philip, the staid dowager-queen Berenguela, fair Isabel the Catholic, the widow of Philip the Fourth, the mother of Charles el Soco, Johana el Loca, not to forget the Cid, first Christian alcaide and governor; a palace in old times marking the utmost limits of the known world, beyond which the East looked into the hyperborean darkness of the West; the geographical centre of all Spain – supremely regal, its foundations laid in legend, and its ramparts raised in the glamour of Oriental song; a refuge from Moorish invasion for the defenceless Goth, and the superb residence of later kings. In a hollow beneath rise the towers of the cathedral, and the outline of many ancient synagogues, for the Jews were always powerful in Toledo – El Transito and El Blanco are the principal ones, and hospitals for the chosen race. If Toledo was the Gothic capital, it was also long before known under the name of “Toledoth,” where the Jews came in great numbers after the sack of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. “The Jews fled to Tarshish,” says the Bible, and Tarshish is the scriptural name for Southern Spain.

      Other churches and oratories there were, for the Goths were a pious people, also the house of Wamba over the Tagus, and the mystic tower of Hercules, rising on a rock, the entrance guarded by an inscription setting forth “that whenever a king passes the threshold, the empire of Spain shall fall”; a warning much respected by the Gothic kings – Wamba, Ervig, Eric, and Witica, who each in turn ordered fresh locks and chains to be added to make it fast. Baths there were also, and on the hills summer houses and huertas moistened by fountains and streams, the dark Tagus making, as it were, a defence and barrier about the walls.

      One plaisance there was, particularly noted, on a terrace overhanging the river, where the spires and domes of many-painted pavilions uprose, with tile-paved patios, and arcades and miradores open to the sky, which Roderich had formed for Egilona, from the pattern of a Moorish retreat she loved at Algiers. Here soft fluffy plane-trees whispered to the breeze, violets blossomed in low damp trenches, and the blue-green fronds of the palms cut against the sky. A garden, indeed, most cunningly adapted to intoxicate the senses, where every tree and branch was vocal with nightingale and thrush, the soft rhythm of zambras and flutes thrilling through the boughs from invisible orchestras; a place in itself so lovely and so lonely that life passed by in an atmosphere of delight, akin to the houri-haunted paradise prepared for the brave Moslems who fall in battle. Hither came Egilona, as into the solitude of an Eastern harem, shut out from the foot of man. Even Roderich rarely entered to disturb her hours of innocent delight, surrounded by a band of fair damsels, who, like Florinda, had been committed to her care.

      It was a delicious evening after a day of fiery heat. So oppressive had been the sun, that even the orange leaves flagged on their stems and the song-birds were mute. In the broad plains without, the rarefied air trembled; nothing but the sharp note of the cicala broke the silence of mid-day.

      Now the air was cool in these leafy gardens, over-hanging the river, from which delicate rippling gusts rose up to fan the atmosphere. The dazzling pavilions with open galleries lay in shadow, and only a transient ray from the setting sun lit up some detail of lace-worked panel or gilded pinnacle into a transient flame.

      On a broad terrace, from which the roofs of the city are dimmed into vague outlines, a merry party of the queen’s maidens emerge from one of the galleries, amid peals of that shrill and joyous laughter heard only among the young, and running swiftly along scare the peacocks, who drop their tails and fly into the covered avenues beyond. Some of the maidens ensconce themselves in verdant kiosks, others wander into the bamboo-thickets to lie on flowery banks, or wade in the shallow streams which flow around. One delicately limbed girl, oppressed by the heat, divests herself of the light draperies she wears, and like a playful Nereid plunges into a pool, scattering water on her laughing companions.

      One of these maidens, Zora, by name, who came from Barbary with Egilona, is of a darker colouring than the rest. Zora can sing to the cither and relate stories like a true Arab as she is. Now a circle of her companions gather about her, and beg her to tell them a tale.

      “But you have heard all my stories so often,” pleads poor Zora, whose little feet are tingling with the desire of movement after the confinement of the long hot day.

      “Never mind, you must invent a new one, Zora.” A cloud passes over her merry face. “Invent a story! Well, I will try,” and after a few minutes she seats herself on a porcelain bench under a clump of cedars, and begins.

Zora’s Story

      “There were once three sisters, I don’t know where, but they were princesses. They had an ugly old father with one eye, who shut them up in a tower high in a wall. СКАЧАТЬ