Calavar; or, The Knight of The Conquest, A Romance of Mexico
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CHAPTER L.
In his sleep, the wounded cavalier was no longer a captive. Memory andimagination, acting together, bore him to the shores of theMediterranean; and as he trode the smooth beach, his eye wandered, withtransport, to the blue Alpujarras, stretching dimly in the interior. Butnot long did he gaze on those mountains, which intercepted the view ofhis distant castle. He stepped joyously along over the sands, obeyingthe voices and gestures of his conductors; for, it seemed to him, thathis hands were grasped, the one by the page Jacinto, the other by thepriestess of Mexico, both of whom urged him on with smiles, whilepointing to a group of palm-trees, under which reclined the long-lostmaid of Almeria. The cross of rubies shone upon her breast, and herdowncast eyes regarded it with a gaze of sadness; but, ever and anon, asthe cavalier vainly strove to approach, and called to her with hisvoice, they were raised upon him in tears; and the hand of Leila wasuplifted, with a melancholy gesture, towards heaven. With such a vision,repeated many times in his brain, varied only by changes of place, (fornow the scene was transferred to the deserts of Barbary, now the fairvales of Rhodes, and now the verdant borders of Tezcuco,) he struggledthrough many hours of torture; and, at last, awoke, as a peal ofthunder, bursting on the scene, drove, terrified away, as well hisguides as the maid of his memory.
As he started from his couch, confused and bewildered, the thunderseemed still to roll, with distant murmurs, over the city. His practisedear detected, in these peals, the explosions of artillery, mingled withvolleys of musketry; but for awhile, in his disorder, he was unable toaccount for them; and in a few moments they ceased.--Night had succeededto day; no taper burned on the table, and scarcely enough light shonethrough the narrow casement into the apartment, to show him that heoccupied it alone.
His lips were parched with thirst; he strode to the table, and findingnothing thereon to allay the burnings of fever, he called faintly onJacinto. No answer was made to the call; he seemed to be the only tenantof the house; and yet he fancied that the deep silence, which succeededhis exclamation, was broken by distant and feeble lamentations. Helistened attentively; the sounds were repeated, but yet with so low atone, that they would have escaped him entirely, had not his senses beensharpened by fever.
Obeying his instincts of benevolence, rather than his reason, for thishad not yet recovered from the disorder of slumber, he stepped from thechamber; and, following not so much the sounds, which had become nearlyinaudible, as a light that gleamed at a little distance, he foundhimself soon at the door of an apartment, through the curtain of whichstreamed the radiance.
The image of Leila, surveying the cross of rubies, had not yet departedfrom his imagination, when he pushed aside the flimsy arras, and stoodin the room; and his feelings of amazement and rapture, of mingled joyand terror, may be imagined, when he beheld, at the first glance, whatseemed the incarnation of his vision.--Before a little stool, whichsupported a taper of some vegetable substance, burning with odours andsmoke, there knelt, or seemed to kneel, a maiden of exquisite beauty,whose Moorish character might have been imagined in her face, but notdetected in her garments, for these were of Spanish fashion. The lightof the taper streamed full upon her visage, from which it was not twofeet removed, and showed it to be bathed in tears. Her eyes were fixedupon some jewel held in her hands, close to the light, which wasattached, by a chain of gold, to her neck; and the same look whichrevealed to Don Amador the features of the maid of Almeria, showed him,in this jewel, the well-known and never to be forgotten cross of rubies.The cavalier stood petrified; a smothered ejaculation burst from hislips, and his gaze was fixed upon the vision as on a basilisk.
At his sudden exclamation, the maiden raised her eyes, gazed at him aninstant, as he stood trembling with awe and delight; and the nextmoment,--whether it was that she struck the light out with her hand, orwhether the taper and the figure were alike spectral, and snatched awayby the same enchantment which had brought them into existence,--thechamber was left in darkness, and the pageant of loveliness and sorrowhad vanished entirely away.
No sooner had this unlooked for termination been presented, than DonAmador recovered his strength, and, with a cry of grief, rushed towardsthe spot so lately occupied by the vision. The stool still stood on thefloor, but no maiden knelt by it. A faint gleam of dusky light shonesuddenly on the opposite wall, and then as suddenly disappeared. It hadnot been lost to the cavalier; he approached it; his outstretched handsstruck upon a curtain hung before another door, which admitted him intoa passage, where a pleasant breeze, burdened with many perfumes, as froma garden, puffed on his cheeks. The sound of steps, echoing at the endof the gallery, and the gleaming of a light, struck at once upon hisears and eyes; he rushed onwards, with a loud cry, gained the door,which, he doubted not, would again reveal to him the blessed vision, andthe next moment found himself arrested by the Zegri.
Behind Abdalla stood the slave Ayub, bearing a torch, whose light shoneequally on the indignant visage of the renegade Moor, and the troubledaspect of his captive.
"Hath the senor forgot that he made me a vow?" cried Abdalla, sternly:"and that, in this effort to escape, he covers himself with dishonour?"
To this reproach, Don Amador replied only by turning a bewildered andstupified stare on his host; and the Zegri, reading in this the evidenceof returning delirium, relaxed the severity of his countenance, andspoke with a gentler voice.
"My lord does not well," he said, "to leave his chamber, while the feverstill burns him."
He took the cavalier by the arm, and Don Amador suffered himself to beled to his apartment. There, seating himself on the couch, he surveyedthe Moor with a steadfast and yet disturbed look, not at all regardingthe words of sympathy pronounced by his jailer. At last, rousinghimself, and muttering a sort of prayer, he said,
"Are ye all enchanters? or am I mad? for either this thing is thefabrication of lunacy, or the illusion of unearthly art!"
"Of what does my lord speak?" said the Moor, mildly, and soothingly. "Heshould not think of dreams."
"Dost thou say, dreams?" cried the cavalier, with a laugh. "Surely mineeyes are open, and I see thee. Dost thou not profess thyself flesh andblood?"
The Moor regarded his captive with uneasiness, thinking that his witshad fled.
"My noble patron does not ask me of his countrymen and friends," hesaid, willing to divert his prisoner's thoughts. "This day, did I beholdhis followers, and, in addition, his kinsman, the knight of Calavar."
At this name, the neophyte became more composed. He eyed the speakermore attentively, and now remarked, that, besides the leathern mailwhich he wore in the manner of the Mexicans, his chest was defended byan iron corslet, which, as well as the plumes of his tunic, was spottedwith blood. As the Moor spoke, Don Amador perceived him to lay upon thetable, along with the torch, which he had taken from Ayub, a sword dyedwith the same gory ornament; and he started to his feet, with a feelingof fierce wrath, which entirely dispelled his stupefaction, when herecognized in this, his own vanished weapon.
"Knave of a Zegri!" he cried, "hast thou used my glave on Spaniards, myfriends and brothers?".
"When I struck thee the blow which saved thy life," said Abdalla,calmly, "I was left without a weapon; for the steel shivered upon thycasque. I borrowed the sword, which, to thee, was useless, and I returnit, not dishonoured, for it has drunk the blood of those who are, in theeyes of heaven, idolaters and assassins. I give it back to thee, andwill not again use it, even in a just and righteous combat; for, thanksbe to God! it has been the means of providing me a store, which I hopeto increase into an armoury."
"Thou avowest this to me? and with exultation?" said the cavalier,passing at once, in the excitement of anger, from the effects, and eventhe remembrance, of the vision.
"If my lord will listen," replied Abdalla, not unrejoiced at the change,and willing to confirm the sanity of the prisoner, "he shall hear whatgood blows this rich and very excellent weapon hath this day struck. Abetter never smote infidel or Christian."
"There are many of the godless, both heathen and Christian, who haveslept the sleep of death this day," said Abdalla, knitting his browswith the ardour of a soldier; "many shall die to-morrow, some the nextday, but few on the last--for who shall remain to perish? Every day do Ilook down from the pyramid, and hearken to the groans of those whodestroyed Granada; and every day, though the lamentings be wilder andlouder, yet are they fewer. Heaven be thanked! a few days more, and nota bone shall be left to whiten on the square, that does not speak ofvengeance for the Alpujarras!"
"Moor!" said the frowning Spaniard, "have a care that thy ferocious andvery unnatural triumph do not cause me to forget that I am thy prisoner.It was, perhaps, proper, that thou shouldst fly from Don Hernan, seeingthat the slanders of very base caitiffs had prejudiced thee, and leftthy life in jeopardy; perhaps, also, the necessity to gain the favour ofMexicans for thyself and Jacinto, by fighting with them against theirfoes, may, in part, extenuate the sin of such impiety; but I warn thee,thou leapest wantonly into superfluous crime, when, instead of mourningthy cruel fate, thou rejoicest over the blood thou art shedding."
"Whose fault is it? and who shall account for my crime?" said the Zegri,with energy. "I came to these shores against my will; when I landed uponthe sands of Ulua, my heart was in the peace of sorrow. I besought thosewho held me in unjust bondage, to discharge me with my boy: had theydone so, then had I left them, and no Spaniard should have mourned forhis oppression; the wrongs of Granada had not been repaid in Mexico. Myprayers were met with mockery; the Zegri that hath sat in the seat ofkings, was doomed to be the bearer of a match-stick; and the boy, whoseblood runs redder and purer than that in the veins of the proudestcavalier of all, was degraded into the service of a menial, in the houseof the bitterest enemy of his people! What was left for me? To choosebetween slavery and exile, contempt and revenge.--The senor thinks thatthe base Yacub belied me: Yacub spoke the truth. From the moment when Iperceived I could not escape from the land, then did I know, that Godhad commissioned me to the work of revenge; and I resolved it should bemighty. I meditated the flight I have accomplished, the treason I havecommitted, the revenge I have obtained. I saw that I should remain inwo, with benighted barbarians; but I saw, also, that I should be afarfrom Spaniards. God be thanked! It was bitter to be parted, for ever,from the land of my birth, and the people of my love; but it is goodlyand pleasant, to see the Castilian perish in misery, and rememberGranada!"
Throughout the whole of this harangue, Don Amador de Leste preserved acountenance of inflexible gravity.
"Sir Zegri," said he, with a sigh, when it was concluded, "I perceive,that heaven hath erected a wall between us, to keep us for ever asunder.Whether thy bitter hatred of Spaniards be just or not, whether thyappetite for revenge be allowable or accurst, still is it apparent,that, while thou indulgest the one, and seekest to gratify the other, itis impossible I should remain with thee on any terms, except those ofenmity and defiance; for those whom thou hatest, and dost so bloodilydestroy, they are my countrymen. I love thy boy, but thee I detest. Andnow, having discovered that thou art of very noble blood, and beingimpelled to punish on thee the very grievous and unpardonable wrongs,which thou art doing to my country, I beg thou wilt release me from myparole, and fetch hither one of those swords which thou hast rifled fromSpanish corses, I arming myself with my own weapon, here befouled withSpanish blood. We will discharge upon each other, the obligations we areunder, thou to hate and slay Spaniards, and I to punish the haters andslayers of the same; for it is quite impossible I can live longer inpeace, suffering thee to destroy my friends. Fetch hither, therefore, asword, and let us end this quarrel with the life of one or the other;and, to ease thee of any anxiety thou mayest have, in regard to Jacinto,I solemnly assure thee, that, if thou fall, I will myself take thyplace, and remain a father to him to the end of my days."
As the cavalier made this extraordinary proposal, Abdalla surveyed him,first with surprise, then with gloomy regret; and when he had finished,with a glistening eye. Before Don Amador had yet done speaking, theZegri unbuckled his corslet, and, flinging it on the floor, at the lastword, said, with mild and reproachful dignity,--
"Behold! thy sword is within reach, and my breast is naked. What hindersthat thou shouldst not strike me at once? Thou speakest of Jacinto--Itis enough that thy hand saved him from the blow of thy countryman: atthat moment, I said, in my heart, though I spoke it not, 'Thou hastbought my life.' If thou wilt have it, it is thine. If thou hadst killedmy father, I could not aim at thine!"
"Of a truth," said the cavalier, moodily, "I should not slay thee out ofmere anger, but duty: yet I would that thou mightest be prevailed uponto assault me, so as to enforce me into rage; for, I say to thee again,so long as thy hostile acts continue, I must very violently abhor thee."
"They will not continue long," said Abdalla. "After a few days, therewill remain in my bosom no feeling but gratitude; and, then, my lordshall see, that the fury which has slain all others, has been his ownsecurity."
"Of this," said Don Amador, "I will have a word to speak with thee anon.At present, I am desirous, that thou shouldst relate to me the fate ofthis day's battle, which I am the more anxious to know, since thou hastspoken the name of Calavar."
"I am loath to obey thee," said the Zegri, struggling with the fiercesatisfaction that beset him at the thought, "for it may again excitethee to anger."
"Nevertheless, I will listen to thy story, with such composure as I can,as to a thing, it may be needful for me to know; after which, I havemyself a matter of which it is quite essential I should acquaint thee."
Thus commanded, the Moor obeyed; and his eyes sparkled, as he connedover in his mind the events of a day so dreadful to the Spaniards.