CHAPTER VII. THE CONFLAGRATION.--THE MAJESTY OF AN INDIVIDUAL PASSION IN THE MIDST OFHOSTILE THOUSANDS.
It was the eve of a great and general assault upon Granada, deliberatelyplanned by the chiefs of the Christian army. The Spanish camp (the mostgorgeous Christendom had ever known) gradually grew calm and hushed. Theshades deepened--the stars burned forth more serene and clear. Bright,in that azure air, streamed the silken tents of the court, blazoned withheraldic devices, and crowned by gaudy banners, which, filled by a briskand murmuring wind from the mountains, flaunted gaily on their gildedstaves. In the centre of the camp rose the pavilion of the queen--apalace in itself. Lances made its columns; brocade and painted arrasits walls; and the space covered by its numerous compartments would havecontained the halls and outworks of an ordinary castle. The pomp ofthat camp realised the wildest dreams of Gothic, coupled with Orientalsplendour; something worthy of a Tasso to have imagined, or a Beckfordto create. Nor was the exceeding costliness of the more courtly tentslessened in effect by those of the soldiery in the outskirts, many ofwhich were built from boughs, still retaining their leaves--savage andpicturesque huts;--as if, realising old legends, wild men of the woodshad taken up the cross, and followed the Christian warriors against theswarthy followers of Termagaunt and Mahound. There, then, extended thatmighty camp in profound repose, as the midnight threw deeper and longershadows over the sward from the tented avenues and canvas streets.It was at that hour that Isabel, in the most private recess of herpavilion, was employed in prayer for the safety of the king, and theissue of the Sacred War. Kneeling before the altar of that warlikeoratory, her spirit became rapt and absorbed from earth in the intensityof her devotions; and in the whole camp (save the sentries), the eyesof that pious queen were, perhaps, the only ones unclosed. All wasprofoundly still; her guards, her attendants, were gone to rest; andthe tread of the sentinel, without that immense pavilion, was not heardthrough the silken walls.
It was then that Isabel suddenly felt a strong grasp upon her shoulder,as she still knelt by the altar. A faint shriek burst from her lips; sheturned, and the broad curved knife of an eastern warrior gleamed closebefore her eyes.
"Hush! utter a cry, breathe more loudly than thy wont, and, queen thoughthou art, in the centre of swarming thousands, thou diest!"
Such were the words that reached the ear of the royal Castilian,whispered by a man of stern and commanding, though haggard aspect.
"What is thy purpose? wouldst thou murder me?" said the queen,trembling, perhaps for the first time, before a mortal presence.
"Thy life is safe, if thou strivest not to delude or to deceive me. Ourtime is short--answer me. I am Almamen, the Hebrew. Where is the hostagerendered to thy hands? I claim my child. She is with thee--I know it. Inwhat corner of thy camp?"
"Rude stranger!" said Isabel, recovering somewhat from her alarm,--"thydaughter is removed, I trust for ever, from thine impious reach. She isnot within the camp."
"Lie not, Queen of Castile," said Almamen, raising his knife; "for daysand weeks I have tracked thy steps, followed thy march, haunted eventhy slumbers, though men of mail stood as guards around them; and Iknow that my daughter has been with thee. Think not I brave this dangerwithout resolves the most fierce and dread. Answer me, where is mychild?"
"Many days since," said Isabel, awed, despite herself, by her strangeposition,--"thy daughter left the camp for the house of God. It was herown desire. The Saviour hath received her into His fold."
Had a thousand lances pierced his heart, the vigour and energy of lifecould scarce more suddenly have deserted Almamen. The rigid musclesof his countenance relaxed at once, from resolve and menace, intounutterable horror, anguish, and despair. He recoiled several steps; hisknees trembled violently; he seemed stunned by a death-blow. Isabel, theboldest and haughtiest of her sex, seized that moment of reprieve;she sprang forward, darted through the draperies into the apartmentsoccupied by her train, and, in a moment, the pavilion resounded with hercries for aid. The sentinels were aroused; retainers sprang from theirpillows; they heard the cause of the alarm; they made to the spot; when,ere they reached its partition of silk, a vivid and startling blazeburst forth upon them. The tent was on fire. The materials fed the flamelike magic. Some of the guards had yet the courage to dash forward;but the smoke and the glare drove them back, blinded and dizzy. Isabelherself had scarcely time for escape, so rapid was the conflagration.Alarmed for her husband, she rushed to his tent--to find him alreadyawakened by the noise, and issuing from its entrance, his drawn swordin his hand. The wind, which had a few minutes before but curled thetriumphant banners, now circulated the destroying flame. It spreadfrom tent to tent, almost as a flash of lightning that shoots alongneighbouring clouds. The camp was in one continued blaze, ere a mancould dream of checking the conflagration.
Not waiting to hear the confused tale of his royal consort, Ferdinand,exclaiming, "The Moors have done this--they will be on us!" ordered thedrums to beat and the trumpets to sound, and hastened in person,wrapped merely in his long mantle, to alarm his chiefs. While thatwell-disciplined and veteran army, fearing every moment the rally of thefoe, endeavoured rapidly to form themselves into some kind of order, theflame continued to spread till the whole heavens were illumined. By itslight, cuirass and helmet glowed, as in the furnace, and the armed menseemed rather like life-like and lurid meteors than human forms. Thecity of Granada was brought near to them by the intensity of the glow;and, as a detachment of cavalry spurred from the camp to meet theanticipated surprise of the Paynims, they saw, upon the walls and roofsof Granada, the Moslems clustering and their spears gleaming. But,equally amazed with the Christians, and equally suspicious of craftand design, the Moors did not issue from their gates. Meanwhile theconflagration, as rapid to die as to begin, grew fitful and feeble; andthe night seemed to fall with a melancholy darkness over the ruin ofthat silken city.
Ferdinand summoned his council. He had now perceived it was no ambush ofthe Moors. The account of Isabel, which, at last, he comprehended; thestrange and almost miraculous manner in which Almamen had baffled hisguards, and penetrated to the royal tent; might have aroused his Gothicsuperstition, while it relieved his more earthly apprehensions, if hehad not remembered the singular, but far from supernatural dexteritywith which Eastern warriors and even robbers continued then, as now, toelude the most vigilant precautions and baffle the most wakeful guards;and it was evident that the fire which burned the camp of an army hadbeen kindled merely to gratify the revenge, or favour the escape of anindividual. Shaking, therefore, from his kingly spirit the thrill ofsuperstitious awe that the greatness of the disaster, when associatedwith the name of a sorcerer, at first occasioned, he resolved to makeadvantage out of misfortune itself. The excitement, the wrath of thetroops, produced the temper most fit for action.
"And Heaven," said the King of Spain to his knights and chiefs, asthey assembled round him, "has, in this conflagration, announced to thewarriors of the Cross, that henceforth their camp shall be the palacesof Granada! Woe to the Moslem with to-morrow's sun!"
Arms clanged, and swords leaped from their sheaths, as the Christianknights echoed the anathema--"WOE TO THE MOSLEM!"
BOOK V.