Book: Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V.
"Warriors and sages!" he said, "as Muza's counsel is your king's desire,
say but the word, and, ere the hour-glass shed its last sand, the blast
of our trumpet shall be ringing through the Vivarrambla."
"O king! fight not against the will of fate--God is great!" replied the
chief of the alfaquis.
"Alas!" said Abdelmelic, "if the voice of Muza and your own falls thus
coldly upon us, how can ye stir the breadless and heartless multitude?"
"Is such your general thought and your general will?" said Boabdil.
An universal murmur answered, "Yes!"
"Go then, Abdelmelic;" resumed the ill-starred king; "go with yon
Spaniards to the Christian camp, and bring us back the best terms you can
obtain. The crown has passed from the head of El Zogoybi; Fate sets her
seal upon my brow. Unfortunate was the commencement of my reign--
unfortunate its end. Break up the divan."
The words of Boabdil moved and penetrated an audience, never till then
so alive to his gentle qualities, his learned wisdom, and his natural
valour. Many flung themselves at his feet, with tears and sighs; and the
crowd gathered round to touch the hem of his robe.
Muza gazed at them in deep disdain, with folded arms and heaving breast.
"Women, not men!" he exclaimed, "ye weep, as if ye had not blood still
left to shed! Ye are reconciled to the loss of liberty, because ye are
told ye shall lose nothing else. Fools and dupes! I see, from the spot
where my spirit stands above ye, the dark and dismal future to which ye
are crawling on your knees: bondage and rapine--the violence of lawless
lust--the persecution of hostile faith--your gold wrung from ye by
torture--your national name rooted from the soil. Bear this, and
remember me! Farewell, Boabdil! you I pity not; for your gardens have
yet a poison, and your armories a sword. Farewell, nobles and santons of
Granada! I quit my country while it is yet free."
Scarcely had he ceased, ere he had disappeared from the hall. It was as
the parting genius of Granada!
CHAPTER IV.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SOLITARY HORSEMAN.
It was a burning and sultry noon, when, through a small valley, skirted
by rugged and precipitous hills, at the distance of several leagues from
Granada, a horseman, in complete armour, wound his solitary way; His
mail was black and unadorned; on his vizor waved no plume. But there was
something in his carriage and mien, and the singular beauty of his coal-
black steed, which appeared to indicate a higher rank than the absence of
page and squire, and the plainness of his accoutrements, would have
denoted to a careless eye. He rode very slowly; and his steed, with the
licence of a spoiled favourite, often halted lazily in his sultry path,
as a tuft of herbage, or the bough of some overhanging tree, offered its
temptation. At length, as he thus paused, a noise was heard in a copse
that clothed the descent of a steep mountain; and the horse started
suddenly back, forcing the traveller from his reverie. He looked
mechanically upward, and beheld the figure of a man bounding through the
trees, with rapid and irregular steps. It was a form that suited well
the silence and solitude of the spot; and might have passed for one of
those stern recluses--half hermit, half soldier--who, in the earlier
crusades, fixed their wild homes amidst the sands and caves of Palestine.
The stranger supported his steps by a long staff. His hair and beard
hung long and matted over his broad shoulders. A rusted mail, once
splendid with arabesque enrichments, protected his breast; but the loose
gown--a sort of tartan, which descended below the cuirass--was rent and
tattered, and his feet bare; in his girdle was a short curved cimiter, a
knife or dagger, and a parchment roll, clasped and bound with iron.
As the horseman gazed at this abrupt intruder on the solitude, his frame
quivered with emotion; and, raising himself to his full height, he called
aloud, "Fiend or santon--whatsoever thou art--what seekest thou in these
lonely places, far from the king thy counsels deluded, and the city
betrayed by thy false prophecies and unhallowed charms?"
"Ha!" cried Almamen, for it was indeed the Israelite; "by thy black
charger, and the tone of thy haughty voice, I know the hero of Granada.
Rather, Muza Ben Abil Gazan, why art thou absent from the last hold of
the Moorish empire?"
"Dost thou pretend to read the future, and art thou blind to the present?
Granada has capitulated to the Spaniard. Alone I have left a land of
slaves, and shall seek, in our ancestral Africa, some spot where the
footstep of the misbeliever hath not trodden."
"The fate of one bigotry is, then, sealed," said Almamen, gloomily; "but
that which succeeds it is yet more dark."
"Dog!" cried Muza, couching his lance, "what art thou that thus
blasphemest?"
"A Jew!" replied Almamen, in a voice of thunder, and drawing his cimiter:
"a despised and despising Jew! Ask you more? I am the son of a race of
kings. I was the worst enemy of the Moors till I found the Nazarene more
hateful than the Moslem; and then even Muza himself was not their more
renowned champion. Come on, if thou wilt--man to man: I defy thee"
"No, no," muttered Muza, sinking his lance; "thy mail is rusted with the
blood of the Spaniard, and this arm cannot smite the slayer of the
Christian. Part we in peace."
"Hold, prince!" said Almamen, in an altered voice: "is thy country the
sole thing dear to thee? Has the smile of woman never stolen beneath
thine armour? Has thy heart never beat for softer meetings than the
encounter of a foe?"
"Am I human, and a Moor?" returned Muza. "For once you divine aright;
and, could thy spells bestow on these eyes but one more sight of the last
treasure left to me on earth, I should be as credulous of thy sorcery as
Boabdil."
"Thou lovest her still, then--this Leila?"
"Dark necromancer, hast thou read my secret? and knowest thou the name of
my beloved one? Ah! let me believe thee indeed wise, and reveal to me
the spot of earth which holds the delight of my soul! Yes," continued
the Moor, with increased emotion, and throwing up his vizor, as if for
air--"yes; Allah forgive me! but, when all was lost at Granada, I had
still one consolation in leaving my fated birthplace: I had licence to
search for Leila; I had the hope to secure to my wanderings in distant
lands one to whose glance the eyes of the houris would be dim. But I
waste words. Tell me where is Leila, and conduct me to her feet!"
"Moslem, I will lead thee to her," answered Almamen, gazing on the prince
with an expression of strange and fearful exultation in his dark eyes: "I
will lead thee to her-follow me. It is only yesternight that I learned
the walls that confined her; and from that hour to this have I journeyed
over mountain and desert, without rest or food."
"Yet what is she to thee?" asked Muza, suspiciously.
"Thou shalt learn full soon. Let us on."
So saying, Almamen sprang forward with a vigour which the excitement of
his mind supplied to the exhaustion of his body. Muza wonderingly pushed
on his charger, and endeavoured to draw his mysterious guide into
conversation: but Almamen scarcely heeded him. And when he broke from
his gloomy silence, it was but in incoherent and brief exclamations,
often in a tongue foreign to the ear of his companion. The hardy Moor,
though steeled against the superstitions of his race, less by the
philosophy of the learned than the contempt of the brave, felt an awe
gather over him as he glanced, from the giant rocks and lonely valleys,
to the unearthly aspect and glittering eyes of the reputed sorcerer; and
more than once he muttered such verses of the Koran as were esteemed by
his countrymen the counterspell to the machinations of the evil genii.
It might be an hour that they had thus journeyed together, when Almamen
paused abruptly. "I am wearied," said he, faintly; "and, though time
presses, I fear that my strength will fail me."
"Mount, then, behind me," returned the Moor, after some natural
hesitation: "Jew though thou art, I will brave the contamination for the
sake of Leila."
"Moor!" cried the Hebrew, fiercely, "the contamination would be mine.
Things of yesterday, as thy Prophet and thy creed are, thou canst not
sound the unfathomable loathing which each heart faithful to the Ancient
of Days feels for such as thou and thine."
"Now, by the Kaaba!" said Muza, and his brow became dark, "another such
word and the hoofs of my steed shall trample the breath of blasphemy from
thy body."
"I would defy thee to the death," answered Almamen, disdainfully; "but I
reserve the bravest of the Moors to witness a deed worthy of the
descendant of Jephtha. But hist! I hear hoofs."
Muza listened; and his sharp ear caught a distinct ring upon the hard and
rocky soil. He turned round and saw Almamen gliding away through the
thick underwood, until the branches concealed his form. Presently, a
curve in the path brought in view a Spanish cavalier, mounted on an
Andalusian jennet: the horseman was gaily singing one of the popular
ballads of the time; and, as it related to the feats of the Spaniards
against the Moors, Muza's haughty blood was already stirred, and his
moustache quivered on his lip. "I will change the air," muttered the
Moslem, grasping his lance, when, as the thought crossed him, he beheld
the Spaniard suddenly reel in his saddle and lay prostrate on the ground.
In the same instant Almamen had darted from his hiding-place, seized the
steed of the cavalier, mounted, and, ere Muza recovered from his
surprise, was by the side of the Moor.
"By what harm," said Muza, curbing his barb, "didst thou fell the
Spaniard--seemingly without a blow?"
"As David felled Goliath--by the pebble and the sling," answered Almamen,
carelessly. "Now, then, spur forward, if thou art eager to see thy
Leila."
The horsemen dashed over the body of the stunned and insensible Spaniard.
Tree and mountain glided by; gradually the valley vanished, and a thick
forest loomed upon their path. Still they made on, though the interlaced
boughs and the ruggedness of the footing somewhat obstructed their way;
until, as the sun began slowly to decline, they entered a broad and
circular space, round which trees of the eldest growth spread their
motionless and shadowy boughs. In the midmost sward was a rude and
antique stone, resembling the altar of some barbarous and departed creed.
Here Almamen abruptly halted, and muttered inaudibly to himself.
"What moves thee, dark stranger?" said the Moor; "and why dost thou
mutter and gaze on space?"
Almamen answered not, but dismounted, hung his bridle to a branch of a
scathed and riven elm, and advanced alone into the middle of the space.
"Dread and prophetic power that art within me!" said the Hebrew, aloud,--
"this, then, is the spot that, by dream and vision, thou hast foretold me
wherein to consummate and record the vow that shall sever from the spirit
the last weakness of the flesh. Night after night hast thou brought
before mine eyes, in darkness and in slumber, the solemn solitude that I
now survey. Be it so! I am prepared!"
Thus speaking, he retired for a few moments into the wood: collected in
his arms the dry leaves and withered branches which cumbered the desolate
clay, and placed the fuel upon the altar. Then, turning to the East, and
raising his hands he exclaimed, "Lo! upon this altar, once worshipped,
perchance, by the heathen savage, the last bold spirit of thy fallen and
scattered race dedicates, O Ineffable One! that precious offering Thou
didst demand from a sire of old. Accept the sacrifice!"
As the Hebrew ended his adjuration he drew a phial from his bosom, and
sprinkled a few drops upon the arid fuel. A pale blue flame suddenly
leaped up; and, as it lighted the haggard but earnest countenance of the
Israelite, Muza felt his Moorish blood congeal in his veins, and
shuddered, though he scarce knew why. Almamen, with his dagger, severed
from his head one of his long locks, and cast it upon the flame. He
watched it until it was consumed; and then, with a stifled cry, fell upon
the earth in a dead swoon. The Moor hastened to raise him; he chafed his
hands and temples; he unbuckled the vest upon his bosom; he forgot that
his comrade was a sorcerer and a Jew, so much had the agony of that
excitement moved his sympathy.
It was not till several minutes had elapsed that Almamen, with a deep-
drawn sigh, recovered from his swoon. "Ah, beloved one! bride of my
heart!" he murmured, "was it for this that thou didst commend to me the
only pledge of our youthful love? Forgive me! I restore her to the
earth, untainted by the Gentile." He closed his eyes again, and a strong
convulsion shook his frame. It passed; and he rose as a man from a
fearful dream, composed, and almost as it were refreshed, by the terrors
he had undergone. The last glimmer of the ghastly light was dying away
upon that ancient altar, and a low wind crept sighing through the trees.
"Mount, prince," said Almamen, calmly, but averting his eyes from the
altar; "we shall have no more delays."
"Wilt thou not explain thy incantation?" asked Muza; "or is it, as my
reason tells me, but the mummery of a juggler?"
"Alas! alas!" answered Almamen, in a sad and altered tone, "thou wilt
soon know all."
CHAPTER V.
THE SACRIFICE.
The sun was now sinking slowly through those masses of purple cloud which
belong to Iberian skies; when, emerging from the forest, the travellers
saw before them a small and lovely plain, cultivated like a garden. Rows
of orange and citron trees were backed by the dark green foliage of
vines; and these again found a barrier in girdling copses of chestnut,
oak, and the deeper verdure of pines: while, far to the horizon, rose the
distant and dim outline of the mountain range, scarcely distinguishable
from the mellow colourings of the heaven. Through this charming spot
went a slender and sparkling torrent, that collected its waters in a
circular basin, over which the rose and orange hung their contrasted
blossoms. On a gentle eminence above this plain, or garden, rose the
spires of a convent: and, though it was still clear daylight, the long
and pointed lattices were illumined within; and, as the horsemen cast
their eyes upon the pile, the sound of the holy chorus--made more sweet
and solemn from its own indistinctness, from the quiet of the hour, from
the sudden and sequestered loveliness of that spot, suiting so well the
ideal calm of the conventual life--rolled its music through the odorous
and lucent air.
But that scene and that sound, so calculated to soothe and harmonise the
thought, seemed to arouse Almamen into agony and passion. He smote his
breast with his clenched hand; and, shrieking, rather than exclaiming,
"God of my fathers! have I come too late?" buried his spurs to the rowels
in the sides of his panting steed. Along the sward, through the fragrant
shrubs, athwart the pebbly and shallow torrent, up the ascent to the
convent, sped the Israelite. Muza, wondering and half reluctant,
followed at a little distance. Clearer and nearer came the voices of the
choir; broader and redder glowed the tapers from the Gothic casements:
the porch of the convent chapel was reached; the Hebrew sprang from his
horse. A small group of the peasants dependent on the convent loitered
reverently round the threshold; pushing through them, as one frantic,
Almamen entered the chapel and disappeared.
A minute elapsed. Muza was at the door; but the Moor paused
irresolutely, ere he dismounted. "What is the ceremony?" he asked of the
peasants.
"A nun is about to take the vows," answered one of them.
A cry of alarm, of indignation, of terror, was heard within. Muza no
longer delayed: he gave his steed to the bystanders, pushed aside the
heavy curtain that screened the threshold and was within the chapel.
By the altar gathered a confused and disordered group--the sisterhood,
with their abbess. Round the consecrated rail flocked the spectators,
breathless and amazed. Conspicuous above the rest, on the elevation of
the holy place, stood Almamen with his drawn dagger in his right hand,
his left arm clasped around the form of a novice, whose dress, not yet
replaced by the serge, bespoke her the sister fated to the veil; and, on
the opposite side of that sister, one hand on her shoulder, the other
rearing on high the sacred crucifix, stood a stern, commanding form, in
the white robes of the Dominican order; it was Tomas de Torquemada.
"Avaunt, Almamen!" were the first words which reached Muza's ear as he
stood, unnoticed, in the middle of the aisle: "here thy sorcery and thine
arts cannot avail thee. Release the devoted one of God!"
"She is mine! she is my daughter! I claim her from thee as a father, in
the name of the great Sire of Man!"
"Seize the sorcerer! seize him!" exclaimed the Inquisitor, as, with a
sudden movement, Almamen cleared his way through the scattered and
dismayed group, and stood with his daughter in his arms, on the first
step of the consecrated platform.
But not a foot stirred--not a hand was raised. The epithet bestowed on
the intruder had only breathed a supernatural terror into the audience;
and they would have sooner rushed upon a tiger in his lair, than on the
lifted dagger and savage aspect of that grim stranger.
"Oh, my father!" then said a low and faltering voice, that startled Muza
as a voice from the grave--"wrestle not against the decrees of Heaven.
Thy daughter is not compelled to her solemn choice. Humbly, but
devotedly, a convert to the Christian creed, her only wish on earth
is to take the consecrated and eternal vow."
"Ha!" groaned the Hebrew, suddenly relaxing his hold, as his daughter
fell on her knees before him, "then have I indeed been told, as I have
foreseen, the worst. The veil is rent--the spirit hath left the temple.
Thy beauty is desecrated; thy form is but unhallowed clay. Dog!" he
cried, more fiercely, glaring round upon the unmoved face of the
Inquisitor, "this is thy work: but thou shalt not triumph. Here, by
thine own shrine, I spit at and defy thee, as once before, amidst the
tortures of thy inhuman court. Thus--thus--thus--Almamen the Jew
delivers the last of his house from the curse of Galilee!"
"Hold, murderer!" cried a voice of thunder; and an armed man burst
through the crowd and stood upon the platform. It was too late: thrice
the blade of the Hebrew had passed through that innocent breast; thrice
was it reddened with that virgin blood. Leila fell in the arms of her
lover; her dim eyes rested upon his countenance, as it shone upon her,
beneath his lifted vizor-a faint and tender smile played upon her lips--
Leila was no more.
One hasty glance Almamen cast upon his victim, and then, with a wild
laugh that woke every echo in the dreary aisles, he leaped from the
place. Brandishing his bloody weapon above his head, he dashed through
the coward crowd; and, ere even the startled Dominican had found a voice,
the tramp of his headlong steed rang upon the air; an instant--and all
was silent.
But over the murdered girl leaned the Moor, as yet incredulous of her
death; her head still unshorn of its purple tresses, pillowed on his lap
--her icy hand clasped in his, and her blood weltering fast over his
armour. None disturbed him; for, habited as the knights of Christendom,
none suspected his faith; and all, even the Dominican, felt a thrill of
sympathy at his distress. How he came hither, with what object,--what
hope, their thoughts were too much locked in pity to conjecture. There,
voiceless and motionless, bent the Moor, until one of the monks
approached and felt the pulse, to ascertain if life was, indeed, utterly
gone.
The Moor at first waved him haughtily away; but, when he divined the
monk's purpose, suffered him in silence to take the beloved hand. He
fixed on him his dark and imploring eyes; and when the father dropped the
hand, and, gently shaking his head, turned away, a deep and agonising
groan was all that the audience heard from that heart in which the last
iron of fate had entered. Passionately he kissed the brow, the cheeks,
the lips of the hushed and angel face, and rose from the spot.
"What dost thou here? and what knowest thou of yon murderous enemy of God
and man?" asked the Dominican, approaching.
Muza made no reply, as he stalked slowly through the chapel. The
audience was touched to sudden tears. "Forbear!" said they, almost with
one accord, to the harsh Inquisitor; "he hath no voice to answer thee."
And thus, amidst the oppressive grief and sympathy of the Christian
throng, the unknown Paynim reached the door, mounted his steed, and as he
turned once more and cast a hurried glance upon the fatal pile, the
bystanders saw the large tears rolling down his swarthy cheeks.
Slowly that coal-black charger wound down the hillock, crossed the quiet
and lovely garden, and vanished amidst the forest. And never was known,
to Moor or Christian, the future fate of the hero of Granada. Whether he
reached in safety the shores of his ancestral Africa, and carved out new
fortunes and a new name; or whether death, by disease or strife,
terminated obscurely his glorious and brief career, mystery--deep and
unpenetrated, even by the fancies of the thousand bards who have
consecrated his deeds--wraps in everlasting shadow the destinies of Muza
Ben Abil Gazan, from that hour, when the setting sun threw its parting
ray over his stately form and his ebon barb, disappearing amidst the
breathless shadows of the forest.
CHAPTER VI.
THE RETURN--THE RIOT--THE TREACHERY--AND THE DEATH.
It was the eve of the fatal day on which Granada was to be delivered to
the Spaniards, and in that subterranean vault beneath the house of
Almamen, before described, three elders of the Jewish persuasion were
met.
"Trusty and well-beloved Ximen," cried one, a wealthy and usurious
merchant, with a twinkling and humid eye, and a sleek and unctuous
aspect, which did not, however, suffice to disguise something fierce and
crafty in his low brow and pinched lips--"trusty and well-beloved Ximen,"
said this Jew--"truly thou hast served us well, in yielding to thy
persecuted brethren this secret shelter. Here, indeed, may the heathen
search for us in vain! Verily, my veins grow warm again; and thy servant
hungereth, and hath thirst."
"Eat, Isaac--eat; yonder are viands prepared for thee; eat, and spare
not. And thou, Elias--wilt thou not draw near the board? the wine is old
and precious, and will revive thee."
"Ashes and hyssop--hyssop and ashes, are food and drink for me," answered
Elias, with passionate bitterness; "they have rased my house--they have
burned my granaries--they have molten down my gold. I am a ruined man!"
"Nay," said Ximen, who gazed at him with a malevolent eye--for so utterly
had years and sorrows mixed with gall even the one kindlier sympathy he
possessed, that he could not resist an inward chuckle over the very
afflictions he relieved, and the very impotence he protected--"nay,
Elias, thou hast wealth yet left in the seaport towns sufficient to buy
up half Granada."
"The Nazarene will seize it all!" cried Elias; "I see it already in his
grasp!"
"Nay, thinkest thou so?--and wherefore?" asked Ximen, startled into
sincere, because selfish anxiety.
"Mark me! Under licence of the truce, I went, last night, to the
Christian camp: I had an interview with the Christian king; and when he
heard my name and faith, his very beard curled with ire. 'Hound of
Belial!' he roared forth, 'has not thy comrade carrion, the sorcerer
Almamen, sufficiently deceived and insulted the majesty of Spain? For
his sake, ye shall have no quarter. Tarry here another instant, and thy
corpse shall be swinging to the winds! Go, and count over thy misgotten
wealth; just census shall be taken of it; and if thou defraudest our holy
impost by one piece of copper, thou shalt sup with Dives!' Such was my
mission, and mine answer. I return home to see the ashes of mine house!
Woe is me!"
"And this we owe to Almamen, the pretended Jew!" cried Isaac, from his
solitary but not idle place at the board. "I would this knife were at
his false throat!" growled Elias, clutching his poniard with his long
bony fingers.
"No chance of that," muttered Ximen; "he will return no more to Granada.
The vulture and the worm have divided his carcass between them ere this;
and (he added inly with a hideous smile) his house and his gold have
fallen into the hands of old childless Ximen."
"This is a strange and fearful vault," said Isaac, quaffing a large
goblet of the hot wine of the Vega; "here might the Witch of Endor have
raised the dead. Yon door--whither doth it lead?"
"Through passages none that I know of, save my master, hath trodden,"
answered Ximen. "I have heard that they reach even to the Alhambra.
Come, worthy Elias! thy form trembles with the cold: take this wine."
"Hist!" said Elias, shaking from limb to limb; "our pursuers are upon us
--I hear a step!"