CHAPTER V. IN THE FERMENT OF GREAT EVENTS THE DREGS RISE.
The Israelites did not limit their struggles to the dark conspiracy towhich allusion has been made. In some of the Moorish towns thatrevolted from Ferdinand, they renounced the neutrality they had hithertomaintained between Christian and Moslem. Whether it was that they wereinflamed by the fearful and wholesale barbarities enforced by Ferdinandand the Inquisition against their tribe, or whether they were stirred upby one of their own order, in whom was recognised the head of theirmost sacred family; or whether, as is most probable, both causescombined--certain it is, that they manifested a feeling that wasthoroughly unknown to the ordinary habits and policy of that peaceablepeople. They bore great treasure to the public stock--they demandedarms, and, under their own leaders, were admitted, though with muchjealousy and precaution, into the troops of the arrogant and disdainfulMoslems.
In this conjunction of hostile planets, Ferdinand had recourse to hisfavourite policy of wile and stratagem. Turning against the Jews thevery treaty Almamen had once sought to obtain in their favour, he causedit to be circulated, privately, that the Jews, anxious to purchase theirpeace with him, had promised to betray the Moorish towns, and Granadaitself into his hands. The paper, which Ferdinand himself had signed inhis interview with Almamen, and of which, on the capture of the Hebrew,he had taken care to repossess himself, he gave to a spy whom he sent,disguised as a Jew, into one of the revolted cities.
Private intelligence reached the Moorish ringleader of the arrival ofthis envoy. He was seized, and the document found on his person. Theform of the words drawn up by Almamen (who had carefully omitted mentionof his own name--whether that which he assumed, or that which, by birth,he should have borne) merely conveyed the compact, that if by a Jew,within two weeks from the date therein specified, Granada was deliveredto the Christian king, the Jews should enjoy certain immunities andrights.
The discovery of this document filled the Moors of the city to whichthe spy had been sent with a fury that no words can describe. Alwaysdistrusting their allies, they now imagined they perceived the solereason of their sudden enthusiasm, of their demand for arms. The mobrose: the principal Jews were seized and massacred without trial;some by the wrath of the multitude, some by the slower tortures of themagistrate. Messengers were sent to the different revolted towns, and,above all, to Granada itself, to put the Moslems on their guard againstthese unhappy enemies of either party. At once covetous and ferocious,the Moors rivalled the Inquisition in their cruelty, and Ferdinand intheir extortion.
It was the dark fate of Almamen, as of most premature and heatedliberators of the enslaved, to double the terrors and the evils he hadsought to cure. The warning arrived at Granada at a time in which thevizier, Jusef, had received the commands of his royal master, stillat the siege of Salobrena, to use every exertion to fill the wastingtreasuries. Fearful of new exactions against the Moors, the vizierhailed, as a message from Heaven, so just a pretext for a new andsweeping impost on the Jews. The spendthrift violence of the mob wasrestrained, because it was headed by the authorities, who were wiselyanxious that the state should have no rival in the plunder it required;and the work of confiscation and robbery was carried on with a majesticand calm regularity, which redounded no less to the credit of Jusef thanit contributed to the coffers of the king.
It was late, one evening, when Ximen was making his usual round throughthe chambers of Almamen's house. As he glanced around at the variousarticles of wealth and luxury, he ever and anon burst into a low, fitfulchuckle, rubbed his lean hands, and mumbled out, "If my master shoulddie! if my master should die!"
While thus engaged, he heard a confused and distant shout; and,listening attentively, he distinguished a cry, grown of latesufficiently familiar, of, "Live, Jusef the just--perish, the traitorJews!"
"Ah!" said Ximen, as the whole character of his face changed; "some newrobbery upon our race! And this is thy work, son of Issachar! Madmanthat thou wert, to be wiser than thy sires, and seek to dupe theidolaters in the council chamber and the camp--their field, theirvantage ground; as the bazaar and the market-place are ours. Nonesuspect that the potent santon is the traitor Jew; but I know it! Icould give thee to the bow-string--and, if thou Overt dead, all thygoods and gold, even to the mule at the manger, would be old Ximen's."
He paused at that thought, shut his eyes, and smiled at the prospect hisfancy conjured up and completing his survey, retired to his own chamber,which opened, by a small door, upon one of the back courts. He hadscarcely reached the room, when he heard a low tap at the outer door;and, when it was thrice repeated, he knew that it was one of hisJewish-brethren. For Ximen--as years, isolation, and avarice gnawedaway whatever of virtue once put forth some meagre fruit from a heartnaturally bare and rocky--still reserved one human feeling towards hiscountrymen. It was the bond which unites all the persecuted: and Ximenloved them, because he could not envy their happiness. The power--theknowledge--the lofty, though wild designs of his master, stung andhumbled him--he secretly hated, because he could not compassionate orcontemn him. But the bowed frame, and slavish voice, and timid nerves ofhis crushed brotherhood presented to the old man the likeness of thingsthat could not exult over him. Debased and aged, and solitary as hewas, he felt a kind of wintry warmth in the thought that even he had thepower to protect!
He thus maintained an intercourse with his fellow Israelites; and often,in their dangers, had afforded them a refuge in the numerous vaultsand passages, the ruins of which may still be descried beneath themouldering foundations of that mysterious mansion. And, as the housewas generally supposed the property of an absent emir, and had beenespecially recommended to the care of the cadis by Boabdil, who aloneof the Moors knew it as one of the dwelling-places of the santon,whose ostensible residence was in apartments allotted to him within thepalace,--it was, perhaps, the sole place within Granada which affordedan unsuspected and secure refuge to the hunted Israelites.
When Ximen recognised the wonted signal of his brethren, he crawled tothe door; and, after the precaution of a Hebrew watchword, replied toin the same tongue, he gave admittance to the tall and stooping frame ofthe rich Elias.
"Worthy and excellent master!" said Ximen, after again securing theentrance; "what can bring the honoured and wealthy Elias to the chamberof the poor hireling?"
"My friend," answered the Jew; "call me not wealthy, nor honoured. Foryears I have dwelt within the city; safe and respected, even by theMoslemin; verily and because I have purchased with jewel and treasurethe protection of the king and the great men. But now, alas! in thesudden wrath of the heathen--ever imagining vain things--I have beensummoned into the presence of their chief rabbi, and only escaped thetorture by a sum that ten years of labour and the sweat of my browcannot replace. Ximen! the bitterest thought of all is, that the frenzyof one of our own tribe has brought this desolation upon Israel."
"My lord speaks riddles," said Ximen, with well-feigned astonishment inhis glassy eyes.
"Why dost thou wind and turn, good Ximen?" said the Jew, shaking hishead; "thou knowest well what my words drive at. Thy master is thepretended Almamen; and that recreant Israelite (if Israelite, indeed,still be one who hath forsaken the customs and the forms of hisforefathers) is he who hath stirred up the Jews of Cordova and Guadix,and whose folly hath brought upon us these dread things. Holy Abraham!this Jew hath cost me more than fifty Nazarenes and a hundred Moors."
Ximen remained silent; and, the tongue of Elias being loosed by therecollection of his sad loss, the latter continued: "At the first, whenthe son of Issachar reappeared, and became a counsellor in the king'scourt, I indeed, who had led him, then a child, to the synagogue--forold Issachar was to me dear as a brother--recognised him by his eyes andvoice: but I exulted in his craft and concealment; I believed he wouldwork mighty things for his poor brethren, and would obtain, for hisfather's friend, the supplying of the king's wives and concubines withraiment and cloth of price. But years have passed: he hath not lightenedour burt
hens; and, by the madness that hath of late come over him,heading the heathen armies, and drawing our brethren into danger anddeath, he hath deserved the curse of the synagogue, and the wrath of ourwhole race. I find, from our brethren who escaped the Inquisition bythe surrender of their substance, that his unskilful and frantic schemeswere the main pretext for the sufferings of the righteous under theNazarene; and, again, the same schemes bring on us the same oppressionfrom the Moor. Accursed be he, and may his name perish!"
Ximen sighed, but remained silent, conjecturing to what end the Jewwould bring his invectives. He was not long in suspense. After a pause,Elias recommenced, in an altered and more careless tone, "He is rich,this son of Issachar--wondrous rich."
"He has treasures scattered over half the cities of Africa and theOrient," said Ximen.
"Thou seest, then, my friend, that thy master hath doomed me to a heavyloss. I possess his secret; I could give him up to the king's wrath;I could bring him to the death. But I am just and meek: let him pay myforfeiture, and I will forego mine anger."
"Thou dost not know him," said Ximen, alarmed at the thought ofa repayment, which might grievously diminish his own heritage--ofAlmamen's effects in Granada.
"But if I threaten him with exposure?"
"Thou wouldst feed the fishes of the Darro," interrupted Ximen. "Nay,even now, if Almamen learn that thou knowest his birth and race,tremble! for thy days in the land will be numbered."
"Verily," exclaimed the Jew, in great alarm, "then have I fallen intothe snare; for these lips revealed to him that knowledge."
"Then is the righteous Elias a lost man, within ten days from that inwhich Almamen returns to Granada. I know my master: and blood is to himas water."
"Let the wicked be consumed!" cried Elias, furiously stamping hisfoot, while fire flashed from his dark eyes, for the instinct ofself-preservation made him fierce. "Not from me, however," he added,more calmly, "will come his danger. Know that there be more than ahundred Jews in this city, who have sworn his death; Jews who, flyinghither from Cordova, have seen their parents murdered and theirsubstance seized, and who behold, in the son of Issachar, the cause ofthe murder and the spoil. They have detected the impostor, and a hundredknives are whetting even now for his blood: let him look to it. Ximen,I have spoken to thee as the foolish speak; thou mayest betray me tothy lord; but from what I have learned of thee from our brethren, I havepoured my heart into thy bosom without fear. Wilt thou betray Israel, orassist us to smite the traitor?"
Ximen mused for a moment, and his meditation conjured up the treasuresof his master. He stretched forth his right hand to Elias; and when theIsraelites parted, they were friends.