Old Court Life in Spain; vol. 2

ON the fifteenth day from his departure from Coimbra, Don Fadique beheld the domes and pinnacles of Seville – proud Seville as it is called – the Empress of the Plains.

The weather is dark and stormy. Even in the sunny South such changes occur, especially towards the equinox, to which the time approaches. As far as the eye can reach black clouds drive angrily before a northern blast, rushing as it were to bank themselves together towards the sea, and the wind rattles among the windows of the few pleasure-houses which stand outside the walls, swaying the fronds of the palms and the bamboos as if to tear them from the ground.

By the time Don Fadique, riding faster and faster, has reached the fork in the road beside the Hospital del Sangre, the heavens look like a second Deluge.

“Cover yourself well, my boy,” said he to the little page, as he drew his own dark manto over his armour. “The hurricane will be soon upon us. We shall be fortunate if we reach the Alcazar in time.”

As they passed what are now the boulevards, such trees as there were swayed and bowed to the fierce blast, and quickly succeeding thunder was heard among the hills. Not a sound reached them as they struck through the streets to where the beautiful cathedral stands, consecrated as a Christian church by Fernando el Santo, and as yet but little altered from the mosque it was before.

It was part of Don Pedro’s policy in all things to favour the Moors. Indeed, there were times in his strange moods when he swore he was a Mohammedan himself.

As the herald sounds his trumpet-call before the gate of the Alcazar, waiting for the portcullis to be raised, an aged pilgrim in tattered raiment rises up suddenly before Fadique.

“Turn back, my son. Turn while you may,” and he lays his hand on his horse’s bridle. “Take warning by the heavens! The elements are at war. So is man. For the sake of your dead mother I speak. Enter not the Alcazar. Warned by a vision, I girded up my loins, and have walked from the Sierra Morena here. As the blood of Eleanor de Guzman was shed on the stones of Seville, so shall be yours.”

“I heed you not, old man,” answered Don Fadique, shaking him off impatiently, provoked at his insistence in barring his progress. “Hie you back whither you came. My brother has bid me to Seville, and I am come,” and with that he spurred his horse forward; but the noble animal, as though scenting some evil influence in the air, pranced and plunged, and with the utmost difficulty was prevented from turning back.

Again the trumpet sounds a shrill blast. In vain! The Alcazar seems turned into a castle of the dead. No guards are upon the walls, no soldiers on the lookout in the Moorish towers which flank the portcullis. To the summons of the men-at-arms no response is given; the royal standard is not lowered as to an Infante Grand Master of Santiago, nor is there any answer to the reiterated knocking of the little page with the hilt of his sword upon the thickly barred panels of the door. Dismally does the blue-eyed boy look up at his master, a whole soul of love in his eyes, as if gazing at him for the last time, and loudly do his followers murmur to each other at the strange lack of welcome.

Nor can Don Fadique account for it. Growing impatient as the rain begins to fall, he looks about him on all sides. There is no preparation for the tournament of which the letter of Don Pedro spoke. No line of tents along the river bank with rich devices, or pinnacles of silken pavilions dressed with colours and flags breaking the long lines of the Huerta. The streets are silent and empty as the rain now pours down; the vast mosque stands isolated and solitary, veiled by rising mists. No eager crowd gathers round the Puerta del Sol or in the court of the Naranjos, as when festivals and ceremonies draw strangers to Seville. The howling of a dog alone breaks the silence.

At length, with no outward sign, the portcullis is slowly raised, and Don Fadique, spurring his horse, gallops in, but rapidly the great panels sink again, shutting out all his train. As the clink of the iron bolt is heard falling into the staples, a shrill cry of agony rises in the air. The hand of the little page who followed him on foot has been severed from the wrist as he hung onto Don Fadique’s bridle, and lies upon the stones before him.

Don Fadique is alone; no return is possible; his heart sinks within him at the sight, but he can neither help the poor page shut outside, nor liberate himself. It is too late.

Within the Patio de la Monteria the shadows of the Moorish arches rise black in the darkness of the storm, all save the portal of Don Pedro, which blazes out tier upon tier up to the gilded dome.

More and more astonished, Don Fadique dismounts and fastens his horse’s bridle to an iron hook in one of the pillars, and looks round, the glossy-skinned animal giving a whinny of delight as he passes his hand mechanically over its sleek neck. It is the last token of affection he is destined to receive!

Suddenly a burst of shrill laughter from the long row of miradores over the portal arouses him to a full sense of his danger. That he has been betrayed by his brother is certain.

As a drowning man is said in an instant to review all his former life, so Don Fadique recalled the many warnings of evil which had come to him, renewed even at the gate of the Alcazar.

Still his gallant heart did not fail, but when he saw above at the mirador a dark-haired lady leaning out with lustrous eyes, a chill shot through his veins. He felt that his end was near.

Then in the midst of the rattle of the storm, the roll of the thunder, and the quickly succeeding flashes of lightning, there arises a sudden uproar, the clash of weapons, and the heavy tread of mailed feet. Nor has Don Fadique long to wait to assure himself of the welcome Don Pedro has prepared for him.

From under the glowing shadows of the golden portal, a band of armed men rush forth, who drag him forward through tapestried doorways to dimly gorgeous ante-chambers with deeply sunk cedar ceilings overhead, into suites of halls lined with painted panels and azulejo tiles darkly resplendent in escutcheons of castle, lion, bar, tower, and that mysterious nodo which clasps Aragon with Spain, – into the precincts of the great Patio de las Doncellas, so purely beautiful in the whiteness of its lacy arcades.

There, upon the Caliph’s burnished throne, sits Don Pedro, a canopy of gold over his head and damascened draperies behind. A terrible frown knits his brow and his eyes are dilated with rage, but Don Fadique does not heed. Forcing back the guards, he flings himself upon his knees before him.

“Brother! brother!” he cries, “what means this hostile array? I have come upon your word. Tell me that you have not deceived me!”

“Stand off, bold traitor!” answers the king savagely, casting him from him. “Have you forgotten your perfidy at Narbonne? Do you think I did not know that, and all else? Were you fool enough to imagine that I loved you?” and as he speaks he breaks into one of those fiendish peals of laughter, ever so terrible a climax to his wrath. “Surely, if the Lady Blanche is your leman, you are ready to shed your blood for her sake?”

Before this burst of passion the Grand Master stands as if turned to stone.

“What!” continues Don Pedro, ascribing his silence to fear. “Does your heart fail you in my presence? If so it is well,” and he arises as if about to rush upon him.

“Do with me as you list, brother!” answers the Grand Master, “but I swear to you, by this symbol of the living Christ” – and he raises the jewelled cross of his sword high in the air – “for me, the queen is as pure as when she left her mother. Let him who says other stand forth.” With that, tearing his mailed glove from his hand, he flings it upon the floor, the scales of the metal ringing on the marble. “Don Pedro of Castile, will you cross swords with me?” he asks, advancing to the foot of the throne where Don Pedro has seated himself, his eyes gleaming with fury. “By my faith!” and scorn is in Don Fadique’s voice, “you do well not to defend so vile a charge. Blood enough has flowed – my mother’s, my little brother’s, and now my own, whom you have lured here treacherously to slay. Oh! shame and disgrace of knighthood!”

“Miscreant!” roars Don Pedro, wounded to the quick at this reproach. “Prepare to die! On earth your time is short, and, por Dios! you deserve your fate, you smooth-faced hypocrite! Better to be an open foe like Enrique, than a caitiff conspirator! Out on you, you bastard! I will not cross swords with you!”

Stung by his insolence, Don Fadique is rushing upon him, when Don Garcia de Padilla interposes from behind and holds him back.

“Señor Infante, Grand Master of Santiago, you are my prisoner,” he says, laying his hand on his shoulder, and the men-at-arms move forward from the entrance to where he stands.

“I am no man’s prisoner!” cries Don Fadique, putting his hand on his sword. “If all were as faithful to the king, he would have truer followers than he has. Nor shall you take me, vile instrument of a strumpet’s vengeance,” turning to draw his weapon upon Don Garcia, but the hilt of the sword had become so entangled in the embroidered scarf he wears, taken from the queen at Valladolid, nothing will move it.

“Officers,” commands the king, rising from the throne and passing on through the gilded arches into the Hall of the Ambassadors beyond, with that majesty he knows so well how to assume – “do your duty.”

But the guards held back, spite of the order of the king. Don Fadique was an Infante, a great caballero, almost equal to Don Pedro, the Grand Master of Santiago, and moreover, though unarmed, boldly facing them.

“Traitors!” exclaims Don Garcia, drawing his rapier, “do you hesitate?” Then they all fell on Don Fadique, and a struggle for life ensued.

“God and Santiago to my aid!” cries Fadique, rushing from side to side of the open patio pursued by the men-at-arms, Don Garcia all the while standing in his place, and Don Pedro from behind the arches suddenly appearing, and shouting out: “At him! At him! Traitor and bastard! Kill him!”

At last, one of the officers – Hermanes by name, excited by the anger of the king, and seeing that the others were but half-hearted in their attack, touched by the desperate defence of an unarmed man – struck Don Fadique such a blow on the shoulder as felled him to the ground, with his face downwards, the rest falling on him until he died, his long auburn hair, clotted with blood, making a glory round him where he lay.

From the depths of the patio Maria de Padilla appeared, her taper fingers clasping the pearl embroideries of her long robe with such force, that as she moved she strewed them on the floor. She had seen all, hidden by the panels of a Moorish door.

Not for an instant had Don Fadique escaped her, from the moment he entered the Court of the Monteria until his mutilated body lay before her. He was her prey. Now she could assure herself that life was gone. In the calm of death he was beautiful, the last agony only marked in the widely open eyes, full of defiance, and the bloodless lips parted as with a groan.

So like was the dead face to Don Pedro, that for an instant Maria’s heart melted, and she turned away.

“What, Maria,” exclaimed Don Pedro, sneeringly, “fear you to look on the face of a dead enemy? Rather tremble before a living one! The boy is dead; all traitors deserve to die”; and advancing from where he stood in the archway, he spurned the body with his foot, laying bare the pool of blood in which it lay.

And strange to say, after the lapse of five centuries, the stain is there on the marble pavement still, close under three clustered pillars of green porphyry, supporting a richly worked Moorish arch.

But before Maria can reply, a shrill cry rises from the white pillars that makes the patio ring, and an ancient dame hurries forward, and with her stick puts back the guards who stand around.

With a horrified glance at the upturned face of the dead Grand Master, she turns upon the king:

“What bloody work is this, Don Pedro? I have a right to ask, for I reared you both at my breast. Oh! my child, my child!” sinking down beside him on the ground, and tenderly gathering the dead form in her arms. “Oh, my Fadique, my little one. So much you were alike, the queen-mother only knew you from the crown embroidered on Pedro’s robe. Even the queen loved the boy.” Then with a piercing shriek she raises herself from the ground, and her sunken eyes travel round upon the group, first on the king, then on Maria de Padilla. “Let the hand that struck him be accursed!”

“He was my enemy, and I killed him,” answers Don Pedro, but he did not chide her, nor question her right to speak.

“It is that accursed woman!” and the nurse raises her bony fingers and points towards Maria as her tall figure disappears in the deep shadow of the arches. “May Satan take her! And that soon! She has falsely accused him. Oh, Pedro! I loved you as much as him. Now I curse you, you cruel king! By the same bloody death shall you also die. The witch!” shaking her fist towards the spot where Maria has vanished; “a thousand such as she may be found in Spain, but who will replace the true brother that you have lost?” As she speaks, a strange fire shines in her dim eyes, and her wrinkled face is transfigured with a sudden light. The voice in which she speaks seems not her own, but strong and vigorous, as though a wave of youth had passed over her.

“I have spoken,” and she fell prostrate on the body of Don Fadique as the captain of the guard drew his sword, as if to smite her, and his men made a circle round.

“Ask the king if I shall die,” turning to Don Pedro, who has covered his face with his hands. “I care not, but let me lay him on my breast. Oh! child of my love, the youngest and the best!”

“Harm her not, Ruy Gomez,” orders the king, “and let her go.” And in deep thought he turns away.

In his general contempt for all mankind, the king held his nurse in great esteem. When he was sick or wounded she tended him, and in his darkest moods she could approach him when others fled.

But for his promise to Maria de Padilla, he would never have slain a brother who came in peace, under his roof, and now another is to die likewise; he had given her his word. Thinking of all this his brow grew dark as he mounted the secret stair which led into his retiring-room, with the skeleton heads of the four unjust judges hung over the door.