CHAPTER V.
IN THE FERMENT OF GREAT EVENTS THE DREGS RISE.
The Israelites did not limit their struggles to the dark conspiracy to
which allusion has been made. In some of the Moorish towns that revolted
from Ferdinand, they renounced the neutrality they had hitherto
maintained between Christian and Moslem. Whether it was that they were
inflamed by the fearful and wholesale barbarities enforced by Ferdinand
and the Inquisition against their tribe, or whether they were stirred up
by one of their own order, in whom was recognised the head of their most
sacred family; or whether, as is most probable, both causes combined--
certain it is, that they manifested a feeling that was thoroughly unknown
to the ordinary habits and policy of that peaceable people. They bore
great treasure to the public stock--they demanded arms, and, under their
own leaders, were admitted, though with much jealousy and precaution,
into the troops of the arrogant and disdainful Moslems.
In this conjunction of hostile planets, Ferdinand had recourse to his
favourite policy of wile and stratagem. Turning against the Jews the
very treaty Almamen had once sought to obtain in their favour, he caused
it to be circulated, privately, that the Jews, anxious to purchase their
peace with him, had promised to betray the Moorish towns, and Granada
itself into his hands. The paper, which Ferdinand himself had signed in
his 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 of
this envoy. He was seized, and the document found on his person. The
form of the words drawn up by Almamen (who had carefully omitted mention
of 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 delivered
to the Christian king, the Jews should enjoy certain immunities and
rights.
The discovery of this document filled the Moors of the city to which the
spy had been sent with a fury that no words can describe. Always
distrusting their allies, they now imagined they perceived the sole
reason of their sudden enthusiasm, of their demand for arms. The mob
rose: the principal Jews were seized and massacred without trial; some by
the wrath of the multitude, some by the slower tortures of the
magistrate. Messengers were sent to the different revolted towns, and,
above all, to Granada itself, to put the Moslems on their guard against
these unhappy enemies of either party. At once covetous and ferocious,
the Moors rivalled the Inquisition in their cruelty, and Ferdinand in
their extortion.
It was the dark fate of Almamen, as of most premature and heated
liberators of the enslaved, to double the terrors and the evils he had
sought to cure. The warning arrived at Granada at a time in which the
vizier, Jusef, had received the commands of his royal master, still at
the siege of Salobrena, to use every exertion to fill the wasting
treasuries. Fearful of new exactions against the Moors, the vizier
hailed, as a message from Heaven, so just a pretext for a new and
sweeping impost on the Jews. The spendthrift violence of the mob was
restrained, because it was headed by the authorities, who were wisely
anxious that the state should have no rival in the plunder it required;
and the work of confiscation and robbery was carried on with a majestic
and calm regularity, which redounded no less to the credit of Jusef than
it contributed to the coffers of the king.
It was late, one evening, when Ximen was making his usual round through
the chambers of Almamen's house. As he glanced around at the various
articles of wealth and luxury, he ever and anon burst into a low, fitful
chuckle, rubbed his lean hands, and mumbled out, "If my master should
die! if my master should die!"
While thus engaged, he heard a confused and distant shout; and, listening
attentively, he distinguished a cry, grown of late sufficiently familiar,
of, "Live, Jusef the just--perish, the traitor Jews!"
"Ah!" said Ximen, as the whole character of his face changed; "some new
robbery upon our race! And this is thy work, son of Issachar! Madman
that thou wert, to be wiser than thy sires, and seek to dupe the
idolaters in the council chamber and the camp--their field, their vantage
ground; as the bazaar and the market-place are ours. None suspect that
the potent santon is the traitor Jew; but I know it! I could give thee
to the bow-string--and, if thou Overt dead, all thy goods 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 his
fancy conjured up and completing his survey, retired to his own chamber,
which opened, by a small door, upon one of the back courts. He had
scarcely 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 his Jewish-
brethren. For Ximen--as years, isolation, and avarice gnawed away
whatever of virtue once put forth some meagre fruit from a heart
naturally bare and rocky--still reserved one human feeling towards his
countrymen. It was the bond which unites all the persecuted: and Ximen
loved them, because he could not envy their happiness. The power--the
knowledge--the lofty, though wild designs of his master, stung and
humbled him--he secretly hated, because he could not compassionate or
contemn him. But the bowed frame, and slavish voice, and timid nerves of
his crushed brotherhood presented to the old man the likeness of things
that could not exult over him. Debased and aged, and solitary as he was,
he felt a kind of wintry warmth in the thought that even he had the power
to protect!
He thus maintained an intercourse with his fellow Israelites; and often,
in their dangers, had afforded them a refuge in the numerous vaults and
passages, the ruins of which may still be descried beneath the mouldering
foundations of that mysterious mansion. And, as the house was generally
supposed the property of an absent emir, and had been especially
recommended to the care of the cadis by Boabdil, who alone of the Moors
knew it as one of the dwelling-places of the santon, whose ostensible
residence was in apartments allotted to him within the palace,--it was,
perhaps, the sole place within Granada which afforded an unsuspected and
secure refuge to the hunted Israelites.
When Ximen recognised the wonted signal of his brethren, he crawled to
the door; and, after the precaution of a Hebrew watchword, replied to in
the same tongue, he gave admittance to the tall and stooping frame of the
rich Elias.
"Worthy and excellent master!" said Ximen, after again securing the
entrance; "what can bring the honoured and wealthy Elias to the chamber
of the poor hireling?"
"My friend," answered the Jew; "call me not wealthy, nor honoured. For
years I have dwelt within the city; safe and respected, even by the
Moslemin; verily and because I have purchased with jewel and treasure the
protection of the king and the great men. But now, alas! in the sudden
wrath of the heathen--ever imagining vain things--I have been summoned
into the presence of their chief rabbi, and only escaped the torture by a
sum that ten years of labour and the sweat of my brow cannot replace.
Ximen! the bitterest thought of all is, that the frenzy of one of our own
tribe has brought this desolation upon Israel."
"My lord speaks riddles," said Ximen, with well-feigned astonishment in
his glassy eyes.
"Why dost thou wind and turn, good Ximen?" said the Jew, shaking his
head; "thou knowest well what my words drive at. Thy master is the
pretended Almamen; and that recreant Israelite (if Israelite, indeed,
still be one who hath forsaken the customs and the forms of his
forefathers) 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 the
recollection of his sad loss, the latter continued: "At the first, when
the son of Issachar reappeared, and became a counsellor in the king's
court, I indeed, who had led him, then a child, to the synagogue--for old
Issachar was to me dear as a brother--recognised him by his eyes and
voice: but I exulted in his craft and concealment; I believed he would
work mighty things for his poor brethren, and would obtain, for his
father's friend, the supplying of the king's wives and concubines with
raiment and cloth of price. But years have passed: he hath not lightened
our burthens; and, by the madness that hath of late come over him,
heading the heathen armies, and drawing our brethren into danger and
death, he hath deserved the curse of the synagogue, and the wrath of our
whole race. I find, from our brethren who escaped the Inquisition by the
surrender of their substance, that his unskilful and frantic schemes were
the main pretext for the sufferings of the righteous under the Nazarene;
and, again, the same schemes bring on us the same oppression from the
Moor. Accursed be he, and may his name perish!"
Ximen sighed, but remained silent, conjecturing to what end the Jew would
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 the
Orient," said Ximen.
"Thou seest, then, my friend, that thy master hath doomed me to a heavy
loss. 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 my
forfeiture, and I will forego mine anger."
"Thou dost not know him," said Ximen, alarmed at the thought of a
repayment, which might grievously diminish his own heritage--of Almamen'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 into the
snare; for these lips revealed to him that knowledge."
"Then is the righteous Elias a lost man, within ten days from that in
which Almamen returns to Granada. I know my master: and blood is to him
as water."
"Let the wicked be consumed!" cried Elias, furiously stamping his foot,
while fire flashed from his dark eyes, for the instinct of self-
preservation made him fierce. "Not from me, however," he added, more
calmly, "will come his danger. Know that there be more than a hundred
Jews in this city, who have sworn his death; Jews who, flying hither from
Cordova, have seen their parents murdered and their substance seized, and
who behold, in the son of Issachar, the cause of the murder and the
spoil. They have detected the impostor, and a hundred knives 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 to thy lord;
but from what I have learned of thee from our brethren, I have poured my
heart into thy bosom without fear. Wilt thou betray Israel, or assist us
to smite the traitor?"
Ximen mused for a moment, and his meditation conjured up the treasures of
his master. He stretched forth his right hand to Elias; and when the
Israelites parted, they were friends.
