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 a
commotion by the first glimpse of Boabdil's banners; the populace rose,
beat back their Christian guards, and opened the gates to the last of
their race of kings. The garrison alone, to which the Spaniards
retreated, resisted Boabdil's arms; and, defended by, impregnable walls,
promised an obstinate and bloody siege.
Meanwhile, Ferdinand had no sooner entered Cordova than his extensive
scheme of confiscation and holy persecution commenced. Not only did more
than five hundred Jews perish in the dark and secret gripe of the Grand
Inquisitor, but several hundred of the wealthiest Christian families, in
whose blood was detected the hereditary Jewish taint, were thrown into
prison; and such as were most fortunate purchased life by the sacrifice
of half their treasures. At this time, however, there suddenly broke
forth a formidable insurrection amongst these miserable subjects--the
Messenians of the Iberian Sparta. The Jews were so far aroused from
their long debasement by omnipotent despair, that a single spark, falling
on the ashes of their ancient spirit, rekindled the flame of the
descendants of the fierce warriors of Palestine. They were encouraged
and assisted by the suspected Christians, who had been involved in the
same persecution; and the whole were headed by a man who appeared
suddenly amongst them, and whose fiery eloquence and martial spirit
produced, at such a season, the most fervent enthusiasm. Unhappily, the
whole details of this singular outbreak are withheld from us; only by
wary hints and guarded allusions do the Spanish chroniclers apprise us
of its existence and its perils. It is clear that all narrative of an
event that might afford the most dangerous precedent, and was alarming to
the pride and avarice of the Spanish king, as well as the pious zeal of
the Church, was strictly forbidden; and the conspiracy was hushed in the
dread silence of the Inquisition, into whose hands the principal
conspirators ultimately fell. We learn, only, that a determined and
sanguinary struggle was followed by the triumph of Ferdinand, and the
complete extinction of the treason.
It was one evening, that a solitary fugitive, hard chased by an armed
troop of the brothers of St. Hermandad, was seen emerging from a wild and
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 the air of a
Spanish twilight, he heard, at a considerable distance the blast of the
horn and the tramp of hoofs. His pursuers, divided into several
detachments, were scouring the country after him, as the fishermen draw
their nets, from bank to bank, conscious that the prey they drive before
the meshes cannot escape them at the last. The fugitive halted in doubt,
and gazed round him: he was well-nigh exhausted; his eyes were bloodshot;
the large drops rolled fast down his brow; his whole frame quivered and
palpitated, like that of a stag when he stands at bay. Beyond the castle
spread a broad plain, far as the eye could reach, without shrub or hollow
to conceal his form: flight across a space so favourable to his pursuers
was evidently in vain. No alternative was left unless he turned back on
the very path taken by the horsemen, or trusted to such scanty and
perilous shelter as the copses in the castle garden might afford him. He
decided on the latter refuge, cleared the low and lonely wall that girded
the demesne, and plunged into a thicket of overhanging oaks and
chestnuts.
At that hour, and in that garden, by the side of a little fountain, were
seated two females: the one of mature and somewhat advanced years; the
other, in the flower of virgin youth. But the flower was prematurely
faded; and neither the bloom, nor sparkle, nor undulating play of
feature, that should have suited her age, was visible in the marble
paleness and contemplative sadness of her beautiful countenance.
"Alas! my young friend," said the elder of these ladies, "it is in these
hours of solitude and calm that we are most deeply impressed with the
nothingness of life. Thou, my sweet convert, art now the object, no
longer of my compassion, but my envy; and earnestly do I feel convinced
of the blessed repose thy spirit will enjoy in the lap of the Mother
Church. Happy are they who die young! but thrice happy they who die in
the spirit rather than the flesh: dead to sin, but not to virtue; to
terror, not to hope; to man, but not to God!"
"Dear senora," replied the young maiden, mournfully, "were I alone on
earth, Heaven is my witness with what deep and thankful resignation I
should take the holy vows, and forswear the past; but the heart remains
human, however divine the hope that it may cherish. And sometimes I
start, and think of home, of childhood, of my strange but beloved father,
deserted and childless in his old age."
"Thine, Leila," returned the elder Senora, "are but the sorrows our
nature is doomed to. What matter, whether absence or death sever the
affections? Thou lamentest a father; I, a son, dead in the pride of his
youth and beauty--a husband, languishing in the fetters of the Moor.
Take comfort for thy sorrows, in the reflection that sorrow is the
heritage of all."
Ere Leila could reply, the orange-boughs that sheltered the spot where
they sat were put aside, and between the women and the fountain stood the
dark form of Almamen the Israelite. Leila rose, shrieked, and flung
herself, 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 only for
that brief moment, when I stand upon the brink of death? Leila, my
child, look up! smile upon thy father; let him feel, on his maddening and
burning brow, the sweet breath of the last of his race, and bear with
him, at least, one holy and gentle thought to the dark grave."
"My father! is it indeed my father?" said Leila, recovering herself, and
drawing back, that she might assure herself of that familiar face; "it is
thou! it is--it is! Oh! what blessed chance brings us together?"
"That chance is the destiny that hurries me to my tomb," answered
Almamen, solemnly. "Hark! hear you not the sound of their rushing
steeds--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 both
father and child had hitherto forgotten, and who now stood gazing upon
Almamen with wondering and anxious eyes. "Whither can he fly? The
vaults of the castle may conceal him. This way-hasten!"
"Stay," said Inez, trembling, and approaching close to Almamen: "do I see
aright? and, amidst the dark change of years and trial, do I recognise
that stately form, which once contrasted to the sad eye of a mother the
drooping and faded form of her only son? Art thou not he who saved my
boy from the pestilence, who accompanied him to the shores of Naples, and
consigned him to these arms? Look on me! dost thou not recall 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 earlier
time, in lands where Leila first looked upon the day, and her mother sang
to me at sunset by the stream of the Euphrates, and on the sites of
departed empires. Thy son--I remember now: I had friendship then with a
Christian--for I was still young."
"Waste not the time--father--senora!" cried Leila, impatiently clinging
still to her father's breast.
"You are right; nor shall your sire, in whom I thus wonderfully recognise
my son's friend, perish if I can save him."
Inez then conducted her strange guest to a small door in the rear of the
castle; and after leading him through some of the principal apartments,
left him in one of the tiring-rooms adjoining her own chamber, and the
entrance to which the arras concealed. She rightly judged this a safer
retreat than the vaults of the castle might afford, since her great name
and known intimacy with Isabel would preclude all suspicion of her
abetting in the escape of the fugitive, and keep those places the most
secure in which, without such aid, he could not have secreted himself.
In a few minutes, several of the troop arrived at the castle, and on
learning the name of its owner contented themselves with searching the
gardens, and the lower and more exposed apartments; and then recommending
to the servants a vigilant look-out remounted, and proceeded to scour the
plain, over which now slowly fell the starlight and shade of night. When
Leila stole, at last, to the room in which Almamen was hid, she found
him, stretched on his mantle, in a deep sleep. Exhausted by all he had
undergone, and his rigid nerves, as it were, 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 their relation almost seemed
reversed; and the daughter to be as a mother watching over her offspring,
when Leila seated herself softly by him, fixing her eyes--to which the
tears came ever, ever to be brushed away-upon his worn but tranquil
features, made yet more serene by the quiet light that glimmered through
the casement. And so passed the hours of that night; and the father and
the child--the meek convert, the revengeful fanatic--were under the same
roof.
