CHAPTER III. THE FUGITIVE AND THE MEETING
In their different directions the rival kings were equally successful.Salobrena, but lately conquered by the Christians, was thrown into acommotion by the first glimpse of Boabdil's banners; the populace rose,beat back their Christian guards, and opened the gates to the lastof their race of kings. The garrison alone, to which the Spaniardsretreated, resisted Boabdil's arms; and, defended by, impregnable walls,promised an obstinate and bloody siege.
Meanwhile, Ferdinand had no sooner entered Cordova than his extensivescheme of confiscation and holy persecution commenced. Not only did morethan five hundred Jews perish in the dark and secret gripe of the GrandInquisitor, but several hundred of the wealthiest Christian families, inwhose blood was detected the hereditary Jewish taint, were thrown intoprison; and such as were most fortunate purchased life by the sacrificeof half their treasures. At this time, however, there suddenly brokeforth a formidable insurrection amongst these miserable subjects--theMessenians of the Iberian Sparta. The Jews were so far aroused fromtheir long debasement by omnipotent despair, that a single spark,falling on the ashes of their ancient spirit, rekindled the flame of thedescendants of the fierce warriors of Palestine. They were encouragedand assisted by the suspected Christians, who had been involved inthe same persecution; and the whole were headed by a man who appearedsuddenly amongst them, and whose fiery eloquence and martial spiritproduced, at such a season, the most fervent enthusiasm. Unhappily, thewhole details of this singular outbreak are withheld from us; only bywary hints and guarded allusions do the Spanish chroniclers apprise usof its existence and its perils. It is clear that all narrative of anevent that might afford the most dangerous precedent, and was alarmingto the pride and avarice of the Spanish king, as well as the pious zealof the Church, was strictly forbidden; and the conspiracy was hushedin the dread silence of the Inquisition, into whose hands the principalconspirators ultimately fell. We learn, only, that a determined andsanguinary struggle was followed by the triumph of Ferdinand, and thecomplete extinction of the treason.
It was one evening, that a solitary fugitive, hard chased by an armedtroop of the brothers of St. Hermandad, was seen emerging from a wildand rocky defile, which opened abruptly on the gardens of a small,and, by the absence of fortification and sentries, seemingly deserted,castle. Behind him; in the exceeding stillness which characterises theair of a Spanish twilight, he heard, at a considerable distance theblast of the horn and the tramp of hoofs. His pursuers, divided intoseveral detachments, were scouring the country after him, as thefishermen draw their nets, from bank to bank, conscious that theprey they drive before the meshes cannot escape them at the last.The fugitive halted in doubt, and gazed round him: he was well-nighexhausted; his eyes were bloodshot; the large drops rolled fast down hisbrow; his whole frame quivered and palpitated, like that of a stag whenhe stands at bay. Beyond the castle spread a broad plain, far as the eyecould reach, without shrub or hollow to conceal his form: flightacross a space so favourable to his pursuers was evidently in vain. Noalternative was left unless he turned back on the very path taken by thehorsemen, or trusted to such scanty and perilous shelter as the copsesin the castle garden might afford him. He decided on the latter refuge,cleared the low and lonely wall that girded the demesne, and plungedinto a thicket of overhanging oaks and chestnuts.
At that hour, and in that garden, by the side of a little fountain, wereseated two females: the one of mature and somewhat advanced years; theother, in the flower of virgin youth. But the flower was prematurelyfaded; and neither the bloom, nor sparkle, nor undulating play offeature, that should have suited her age, was visible in the marblepaleness and contemplative sadness of her beautiful countenance.
"Alas! my young friend," said the elder of these ladies, "it is in thesehours of solitude and calm that we are most deeply impressed with thenothingness of life. Thou, my sweet convert, art now the object, nolonger of my compassion, but my envy; and earnestly do I feel convincedof the blessed repose thy spirit will enjoy in the lap of the MotherChurch. Happy are they who die young! but thrice happy they who die inthe spirit rather than the flesh: dead to sin, but not to virtue; toterror, not to hope; to man, but not to God!"
"Dear senora," replied the young maiden, mournfully, "were I alone onearth, Heaven is my witness with what deep and thankful resignation Ishould take the holy vows, and forswear the past; but the heart remainshuman, however divine the hope that it may cherish. And sometimesI start, and think of home, of childhood, of my strange but belovedfather, deserted and childless in his old age."
"Thine, Leila," returned the elder Senora, "are but the sorrows ournature is doomed to. What matter, whether absence or death sever theaffections? Thou lamentest a father; I, a son, dead in the pride of hisyouth and beauty--a husband, languishing in the fetters of the Moor.Take comfort for thy sorrows, in the reflection that sorrow is theheritage of all."
Ere Leila could reply, the orange-boughs that sheltered the spot wherethey sat were put aside, and between the women and the fountain stoodthe dark form of Almamen the Israelite. Leila rose, shrieked, and flungherself, unconscious, on his breast.
"O Lord of Israel!" cried Almamen, in atone of deep anguish. "I, then,at last regain my child? Do I press her to my heart? and is it onlyfor that brief moment, when I stand upon the brink of death? Leila, mychild, look up! smile upon thy father; let him feel, on his maddeningand burning brow, the sweet breath of the last of his race, and bearwith him, at least, one holy and gentle thought to the dark grave."
"My father! is it indeed my father?" said Leila, recovering herself, anddrawing back, that she might assure herself of that familiar face; "itis thou! it is--it is! Oh! what blessed chance brings us together?"
"That chance is the destiny that hurries me to my tomb," answeredAlmamen, solemnly. "Hark! hear you not the sound of their rushingsteeds--their impatient voices? They are on me now!"
"Who? Of whom speakest thou?"
"My pursuers--the horsemen of the Spaniard."
"Oh, senora, save him!" cried Leila, turning to Donna Inez, whom bothfather and child had hitherto forgotten, and who now stood gazing uponAlmamen with wondering and anxious eyes. "Whither can he fly? The vaultsof the castle may conceal him. This way-hasten!"
"Stay," said Inez, trembling, and approaching close to Almamen: "doI see aright? and, amidst the dark change of years and trial, do Irecognise that stately form, which once contrasted to the sad eye of amother the drooping and faded form of her only son? Art thou not he whosaved my boy from the pestilence, who accompanied him to the shoresof Naples, and consigned him to these arms? Look on me! dost thou notrecall the mother of thy friend?"
"I recall thy features dimly and as in a dream," answered the Hebrew;"and while thou speakest, there rush upon me the memories of an earliertime, in lands where Leila first looked upon the day, and her mothersang to me at sunset by the stream of the Euphrates, and on the sites ofdeparted empires. Thy son--I remember now: I had friendship then with aChristian--for I was still young."
"Waste not the time--father--senora!" cried Leila, impatiently clingingstill to her father's breast.
"You are right; nor shall your sire, in whom I thus wonderfullyrecognise my son's friend, perish if I can save him."
Inez then conducted her strange guest to a small door in the rear of thecastle; and after leading him through some of the principal apartments,left him in one of the tiring-rooms adjoining her own chamber, and theentrance to which the arras concealed. She rightly judged this a saferretreat than the vaults of the castle might afford, since her greatname and known intimacy with Isabel would preclude all suspicion of herabetting in the escape of the fugitive, and keep those places the mostsecure in which, without such aid, he could not have secreted himself.
In a few minutes, several of the troop arrived at the castle, and onlearning the name of its owner contented themselves with searchingthe gardens, and the lower and more exposed apartments; and thenrecommending to the servants a vigilan
t look-out remounted, andproceeded to scour the plain, over which now slowly fell the starlightand shade of night. When Leila stole, at last, to the room in whichAlmamen was hid, she found him, stretched on his mantle, in a deepsleep. Exhausted by all he had undergone, and his rigid nerves, as itwere, relaxed by the sudden softness of that interview with his child,the slumber of that fiery wanderer was as calm as an infant's. And theirrelation almost seemed reversed; and the daughter to be as a motherwatching over her offspring, when Leila seated herself softly by him,fixing her eyes--to which the tears came ever, ever to be brushedaway-upon his worn but tranquil features, made yet more serene by thequiet light that glimmered through the casement. And so passed thehours of that night; and the father and the child--the meek convert, therevengeful fanatic--were under the same roof.