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CHAPTER IV
SANTA Fe rose before me, a camp in wood, plaster and stone, a campwith a palace, a camp with churches. Built of a piece where no town hadstood, built that Majesty and its Court and its Army might have roofsand walls, not tents, for so long a siege, it covered the plain, a cityraised in a night. The siege had been long as the war had been long.Hidalgo Spain and simple Spain were gathered here in great squaresand ribbons of valor, ambition, emulation, desire of excitement andof livelihood, and likewise, I say it, in pieces not small, herded andbrought here without any "I say yes" of their own, and to their misery.There held full flavor of crusade, as all along the war had beenpreached as a crusade. Holy Church had here her own grandees, cavaliersand footmen. They wore cope and they wore cowl, and on occasion manyendued themselves with armor and hacked and hewed with an earthly sword.At times there seemed as many friars and priests as soldiers. Out and inwent a great Queen and King. Their court was here. The churchmen pressedaround the Queen. Famous leaders put on or took off armor in SantaFe,--the Marquis of Cadiz and many others only less than he inestimation, and one Don Gonsalvo de Cordova, whose greater fame was yetto come. Military and shining youth came to train and fight under these.Old captains-at-arms, gaunt and scarred, made their way thither fromafar. All were not Spaniard; many a soldier out at fortune or wishfulof fame came from France and Italy, even from England and Germany. Womenwere in Santa Fe. The Queen had her ladies. Wives, sisters and daughtersof hidalgos came to visit, and the common soldiery had their mates. Nordid there lack courtesans.
Petty merchants thronged the place. All manner of rich goods were boughtby the flushed soldiers, the high and the low. And there dwelled here ahost of those who sold entertainment,--mummers and jugglers and singers,dwarfs and giants. Dice rattled, now there were castanets and dancing,and now church bells seemed to rock the place. Wine flowed.
Out of the plain a league and more away sprang the two hills of Granada,and pricked against the sky, her walls and thousand towers and noblegates. Between them and Santa Fe stretched open and ruined ground, andhere for many a day had shocked together the Spaniard and the Moor.But now there was no longer battle. Granada had asked and been grantedseventy days in which to envisage and accept her fate. These werenearing the end. Lost and beaten, haggard with woe and hunger andpestilence, the city stood over against us, above the naked plain, allher outer gardens stripped away, bare light striking the red Alhambraand the Citadel. When the wind swept over her and on to Santa Fe itseemed to bring a sound of wailing and the faint and terrible odor of along besieged place.
I came at eve into Santa Fe, found at last an inn of the poorer sort,ate scant supper and went to bed. Dawn came with a great ringing ofchurch bells.
Out of the inn, in the throbbing street, I began my search for DonEnrique de Cerda. One told me one thing and one another, but at last Igot true direction. At noon I found him in a goodly room where he maderecovery from wounds. Now he walked and now he sat, his arm in a slingand a bandage like a turban around his head. A page took him the word Igave. "Juan Lepe. From the hermitage in the oak wood." It sufficed. WhenI entered he gazed, then coming to me, put his unbound hand over mine."Why," he asked, "'Juan Lepe'?"
I glanced toward the page and he dismissed him, whereupon I explainedthe circumstances.
We sat by the window, and again rose for us the hermitage in the oakwood at foot of a mountain, and the small tower that slew in uglyfashion. Again we were young men, together in strange dangers, learningthere each other's mettle. He had not at all forgotten.
He offered to go to Seville, as soon as Granada should fall, and findand fight Don Pedro. I shook my head. I could have done that had I seenit as the way.
He agreed that Don Pedro was now the minor peril. It is evil to chainthought! In our day we think boldly of a number of things. But touchKing or touch Church--the cord is around your neck!
I said that I supposed I had been rash.
He nodded. "Yes. You were rash that day in the oak wood. Less rash, andmy bones would be lying there, under tree." He rose and walked the room,then came to me and put his unhurt arm about my shoulders. "Don Jayme,we swore that day comrade love and service--and that day is now;twilight has never come to it, the leaves of the oak wood have neverfallen! The Holy Office shall not have thee!"
"Don Enrique--"
We sat down and drank each a little wine, and fell to ways and means.
I rested Juan Lepe in the household of Don Enrique de Cerda, one figureamong many, involved in the swarm of fighting and serving men. Therewas a squire who had served him long. To this man, Diego Lopez, I wascommitted, with enough told to enlist his intelligence. He managed forme in the intricate life of the place with a skill to make god Mercuryapplaud. Don Enrique and I were rarely together, rarely were seen by mento speak one to the other. But in the inner world we were together.
Days passed. We found nothing yet to do while all listening and doing atSanta Fe were bound up in the crumbling of Granada into Spanish hands.It seemed best to wait, watching chances.
Meantime the show glittered, and man's strong stomach cried "Life! Morelife!" It glittered at Santa Fe before Granada, and it was a dying emberin Granada before Santa Fe. The one glittered and triumphed because theother glittered and triumphed not. And who above held the balances evenand neither sorrowed nor was feverishly elated but went his own waycould only be seen from the Vega like a dream or a line from a poet.
For the most part the nobles and cavaliers in Santa Fe spent as thoughhard gold were spiritual gold to be gathered endlessly. One might say,"They go into a garden and shake tree each morning, which tree putsforth again in the night." None seemed to see as on a map laid downSpain and the broken peasant and the digger of the gold. None seemed tofeel that toil which or soon or late they must recognize for their owntoil. Toil in Spain, toil in other and far lands whence came their richthings, toil in Europe, Arabia and India! Apparel at Santa Fe was athing to marvel at. The steed no less than his rider went gorgeous. TheKing and Queen, it was said, did not like this peacocking, but might nothelp it.
They themselves were pouring gold into the lap of the Church. It was acapacious lap.
Wars were general enough, God knew! But not every year could one find acamp where the friar was as common as the archer or the pikeman, and theprelate as the plumed chieftain.
Santa Fe was court no less than camp, court almost as though it wereCordova. This Queen and King at least did not live at ease in palaceswhile others fought their wars. North, south, east and west, throughthe ten years, they had been the moving springs. It was an able Kingand Queen, a politic King and a sincere and godly Queen, even a lovingQueen. If only--if only--
I had been a week and more in Santa Fe when King Boabdil surrenderedGranada. He left forever the Alhambra. Granada gates opened; he rode outwith a few of his emirs and servants to meet King Ferdinand and QueenIsabella. The day shone bright. Spain towered, a figure dressed in goldand red.
Santa Fe poured out to view the spectacle, and with the rest went DiegoLopez and Juan Lepe. So great festival, so vivid the color, so echoingthe sound, so stately and various the movement! Looking at the greatstrength massing there on the plain I said aloud, as I thought, to DiegoLopez, "Now they might do some worthy great thing!"
The squire not answering, I became aware that a swirl in the throng hadpushed him from me. Still there came an answer in a deep and peculiarlythrilling voice. "That is a true saying and a good augury!"
I learn much by voices and before I turned I knew that this was anenthusiast's voice, but not an enthusiast without knowledge. Whoeverspoke was strong enough, real enough. I liked the voice and felt acertain inner movement of friendship. Some shift among the great actors,some parting of banners, kept us suspended and staring for a moment,then the view closed against us who could only behold by snatches.Freed, I turned to see who had spoken and found a tall, strongly made,white-haired man. The silver hair was too soon; he could hardly havebeen ten years my elder. He h
ad a long, fair face that might once havebeen tanned and hardened by great exposure. His skin had that look, butnow the bronze was faded, and you could see that he had been born veryfair in tint. Across the high nose and cheek bones went a powdering offreckles. His eyes were bluish-gray and I saw at once that he habituallylooked at things afar off.
He was rather poorly dressed and pushed about as I was. When the surgeagain gave him footing, he spoke beside me. "'Now that this is over,they might do some great, worthy thing!' Very true, friend, they might!I take your words for good omen." The throng shot out an arm and we wereparted. The same action brought back to me Diego Lopez. Speaking to himlater of the tall man, he said that he had noticed him, and that it wasthe Italian who would go to India by way of Ocean-Sea.
King Boabdil gave up his city to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.Over Granada, high against the bright sky, rose and floated the banners.Cannon, the big lombards, roared. Mars' music crashed out, then thetrumpets ceased their crying and instead spread a mighty chanting. _TeDeum Laudamus!_
At last the massed brightness out in the plain quivered and parted. Thepageantry broke, wide curving and returning with some freedom butwith order too, into Santa Fe. I saw the Queen and the King with theirchildren, and the Grand Cardinal, and prelates and prelates, and theMarquis of Cadiz, and many a grandee and famous knight. Don Enrique deCerda and his troop came by.
Diego Lopez and I returned to the town. I saw again the man who wouldfind India by a way unpassed, as far as one knew, since the world began!He was entering a house with a friar beside him. Something came into mymind of the convent of La Rabida.