Count Julian, or, The last days of the Goth a historical romance |
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 | Count Julian, or, The last days of the Goth |  |
2. BOOK SECOND.
1. CHAPTER I.
The sun was fast sinking in the western heavens, and but a few bright rose tints
remained, resting like so many smiles of a gentle spirit upon the gray hills over
which he had lingered, when a man in the prime of youth, but weary and wayworn,
descended one of the jutting ledges of rock which covered the scene in every direction.
His dress was torn and soiled with dust and mire, and his tread was feeble and
tottering. He went forward with an anxious step which might have been a hurried
one but for his physical inability to make it so. It was evident that he had travelled
far, and had suffered much from hunger and fatigue. His cheeks were sallow and
sunken—his eye dim and spiritless, yet sometimes it lighted up with an expression of
pride and energy, which spoke for concealed character that had once known lofty
purposes, and had been prompted and taught in a high condition. From his neck
depended the short thick sword which the Iberians preferred to use. It was without
sheath of any description, and the dint of many strokes might have been seen upon
both of its keen edges. Fresh stains were also plainly apparent upon its once polished
surface, and distinguished its wearer as one to whom danger had been recently
and fearfully familiar; though his desolate condition might well enough instruct
the observer to believe that his share in the strife had been less than fortunate.
Feeble though he seemed, he did not pause for rest when he descended the tedious
rocks over which he came, though the green and smiling beauty of the little valley
through which he wound, might well have tempted one less weary to repose. But
the traveller went forward, and after a momentary hesitation began to ascend the hill
which terminated the plain and lay directly in his path. It was painful to behold
his toil in this endeavor—so feeble had he become that nothing but the most unrelaxing
resolve of mind could possibly have sustained, while nothing but a conviction
of the last importance could have carried him forward. He reached the peak of the
eminence, and the last gleams of the sun fell cheeringly around him. He turned his
sad eye upon the inspirer, and stretched out his arms in the same direction, as if he
implored strength to pursue his way. While in this attitude the waning orb sank
suddenly from sight, and a cold chill fell upon the heart of the wayfarer. His eye
turned upon the space which he was yet to overcome, and it looked dismal and uninviting.
Once more he gazed wistfully toward the western summits, and sweetly
them. Then, as if he had too long delayed, he again set forward, and plunged
down the steep passages with a reckless determination that seemed desirous to forget
fatigue while invoking danger. Night closed around him ere he reached the bottom
of the valley, and when he did so his strength utterly failed him. He could go no
further. He sank down by a little hillock, and, in the first moment of despondency,
he refused to hope.
“Why should I struggle longer with my fate!” he exclaimed, mournfully, while
his cheek rested upon his hand, and his eyes peered into the bosom of the earth before
him, as if he would there look for shelter and repose; “wherefore resist; why
not yield, and let the strife cease? I have striven long and hopelessly—I have lost
all—I am myself lost. With my own hand I put away the crown of my ancestors—
with my own lips have I rejected the service of my people. What remains? Wherefore
should I live?”
His arm relaxed in the support which it gave to his head, and, as if he would
yield the struggle for life in compliance with the suggestion of his lips, he sank forward
upon his face without effort, and lay supine upon the earth. But he lay not
long in this manner. The mourner was young, and not utterly hopeless, though he
thus declared himself. He started from his dream of despair—he raised himself from
the earth, and the new-born emotions of his soul found utterance from his lips, having
no check in that evening solitude.
“Yes—there is one! She remains; and, having her, I have lost nothing. Let
the throne go to my brother. It were a toil to govern which I should not seek, having
my heart only filled with the one image of delight. She demands the sacrifice—
she forbids the step; and that is enough! She will reward me for the loss, if loss
there be; and, with her to cheer my solitude and fill my home, I know no solitude.
I lose no kingdom. I am still a king; prince of possessions far more worthy than
any I resign.”
To an imagination so fond and fervent, the pictures which the young man had
drawn before his mind's eye, had the effect of almost making him forget his weariness,
and he lay musing upon them for some time in silence, unconscious that the
night was thickening fast around him; making further travel difficult, if not dangerous,
among the hills. He started from his dream at length, with a sudden knowledge
of his difficulties. His momentary rest had brought with it a certain degree of
refreshment; and his fancies had filled him with new courage to pursue his way.
He started to his feet, and in the uncertain light which hung mist-like and vaguely
around his path, he set forward without hesitation. An hour later, and he lay motionless
at the opposite foot of the hill he was now about to ascend—stupor growing
fast upon his senses, and the feeling of despair, which he had just baffled, coming
over his heart with a darker gloom than ever. He resigned himself to his fate, and
his eyes closed; but a falling torrent at a little distance, unseen though heard, vexed
him with its trembling murmurs, and he vainly strove to sleep. While his eyes
were closed, a voice mingled with the waterfall and provoked his attention. The
voice was evidently calling at the foot of the hill, and from the very valley in which
he lay. He opened his eyes, and a new hope came to his heart. He, too, cried
aloud; and his desperate accents seemed to him like those of a feeble boy. Again
did he cry aloud, and he was answered. While he looked, a light gleamed before
his eyes, and he shut them the next moment in utter oblivion. When he again
opened them, he found himself upon a rude couch of straw, in the humble cottage
of a peasant.
“Where am I?” he demanded, hastily.
“With friends,” was the kind answer; and a woman stood beside his couch.
“Rest—do not fatigue yourself,” she said. “You are feeble—you need sleep”
“And food,” said the traveller. “But tell me; how far is it to the castle of count
Julian, of Consuegra?”
“It lies near at hand,” was the reply; “but a short two leagues from the mountain;
you may see its towers in the sunlight.”
The traveller seemed satisfied, and the woman brought him food. While he ate,
her husband came in, and described the situation in which he had been found. It
was with difficulty they persuaded him to forbear continuing his journey that very
night, so anxious was he to set forth when he learned that the castle of count Julian,
for which he inquired, was so near at hand. But his frame refused to answer the
desires of his mind, and even while he spoke of going forward, he sank into a deep
slumber.
The next morning, after partaking with the cottagers of their humble breakfast,
the traveller resumed his journey, and in a couple of hours the castle of count Julian
stood before him. But he did not approach it as was usually the wont of visiters to
do. He carefully avoided the public entrance, and the ordinary paths. Sinking into
the rear of the building, he sought shelter from passing observation among the trees
and hills. Here he waited patiently, watching the castle all the while, until at
length, as if an auspicious moment had arrived, he went to a secret place in one of
the rocks with which he seemed to have been previously familiar, and drawing from
it a bow and quiver, he approached a spot visible only from the eastern wing of the
edifice. Advancing from the cover of the trees into a clearer space, he shot three
shafts into the air, in an upright line; then, gathering them up, he again sank back
into the close cover, and awaited the result.
A keen and watchful eye in those towers had marked the flight of the arrows;
and after a brief space of time, the lovely lady Cava, the daughter of count Julian,
stole through the shade of the thicket to meet the stranger.
“My lord, my true lord!” she exclaimed, as he folded her to his bosom; “you
are come to me at last; and oh, how happy does your coming make me! Why have
you lingered from me so long? I feared, Egiza, I feared that some harm had befallen
you.”
“Dear Cava, your fears were idle!” exclaimed the youth, while he clasped her
fondly to his breast. “You see me at last—safe—unhurt, and as true to you as
ever.”
Her eye caught the stain of blood upon his garments, and they bore other traces
of the strife in which he had so lately been engaged. The color went from her
cheek as she surveyed these tokens.
“This blood upon your clothes!—speak—tell me, Egiza, your hand has been
mingling among the men who fight.”
“It is true. I have been striving against my enemy—against the enemy of my
people—against the tyrant who usurps my throne”
“You cannot mean it, Egiza!” exclaimed the maiden, withdrawing herself from
his embrace.
“It is true, Cava; and I fought perforce. It was no merit in the eyes of my
people that I took arms in their behalf. I could not help but fight since I was
assailed.”
“And you were defeated, Egiza!” demanded the maiden, anxiously.
“No! thank Heaven, we were not defeated. The good cause triumphed in the
fight. I waited but for that. I saw my brother a conqueror over his foe, and free.
I saw him with the crown of his people—my crown—upon his head. I heard him
love me not, if thou shouldst be untrue to me, I am lost!”
“Nay, doubt me not, my dear lord!” exclaimed the maiden, at a loss to account
for the deep expression of anguish, and the acute, wild fire that gleamed forth from
the face of her companion. He proceeded:
“Yes, Cava, I am still Egiza to you, though it may be to none other. I have
been true to you, though they proclaim me false to all beside. Do you believe my
truth—will you receive my vows—will you give ear to the protestations of one
whom all men call traitor?”
“Alas! my lord, your words are strange to me, and full of terror. What is it
that you mean?” was the reply of the apprehensive but fond maiden. “Who is it
so foul of speech as to call you traitor? You are all truth, and I would believe it
from no lip, not even that of my father.”
“Bless you, bless you, dear Cava! for the word. It is sweet, it is every thing
to my soul,” was the fervent response of Egiza; but, after the pause of a moment,
his manner and his language changed: “I am a traitor,” he exclaimed, “it is true
what they declare, my Cava; I am a traitor to my people—'tis you have made me
so.”
“I, my lord?” she replied in unaffected astonishment.
“Ay; but I blame you not, my beloved. Freely do I bear the scorn—calmly do
I hear the reproach, so that it come not from thy lips—so that thou love me not less
because of it. Oh Cava! I have come to you, indeed—but how poorly do I come!
I am still true to you, but how false to my people. To be yours, my Cava, I have
robbed others—to win you, you know not what I have lost, and forfeited.”
“What lost—what forfeited, my lord?” she demanded.
“My country—my crown—my brother's love—my people's homage, their reverence,
their service—all. They have taken from me all—pride, station, friends' love,
people's service, and honorable name!”
“Alas! it is not so; you do not mean it, Egiza! And it is I that have done this,
that have caused this evil? Oh, my lord, unsay your words. Tell me that you but
toyed with my childish fears—that you meant not the cruel speech in sooth.”
“'T is true!” he responded, gloomily; “'T is all true.”
“Speak—tell me how!” she asked in terror.
“I have met my people—the nobles of Iberia—in solemn council. They profferred
me the crown of Spain”—
“You took it not!” she hastily exclaimed.
“I thought of you, my Cava; I feared that it would rob me of your beauty, and
I refused it.”
The gladness of Cava's heart, as he spoke this, was visible in her eyes; but they
met with little of a glad response from his. Sadly he proceeded, for the memory of
his brother's scorn, and the unconcealed indignation of his nobles, was present to
his mind.
“They would have doomed and slain me,” he proceeded.
“But you escaped!” she exclaimed. “How?”
“My brother spoke for me, and though he spoke for me in scorn, he yet saved
my life—saved me for you, dear Cava.”
“Heaven save him for it with blessings, my dear-lord. We owe him much.”
“Much, much!” was the ironical and bitter response of Egiza. He proceeded:
“He saved me to my own shame, and for the scorn of others, dear Cava—nay,
even, perhaps, for thine.”
“Never, oh never! Speak not thus, Egiza. Why should I scorn you?”
“Have I not shrunk from the danger of this war, to head which they implored
me? 'T was I, dear Cava, who first set on the nobles, after my father's death,
against his murderer. I was the first to shrink from them. I leave them to the
danger—I desert them at the season when every sword is needful in their ranks, and
every head is numbered. This is my shame, dear Cava—my deep shame. For thee
have I done this; for thee have I given up my father's throne, and suffered dishonorable
words to blot my name. Wilt thou not scorn me for it, like the rest?”
“No, Egiza. Nor will they scorn you, who are wise. This war is hopeless.
How can your people attack king Roderick? Where are the soldiers, the arms, the
money? 'T is madness but to think it.”
“The greater reason, then, my Cava, that I, who have wrought them to this madness,
should be the last to leave them. If the cause be so hopeless, I should be the
first to meet with its dangers, and not the first to desert them because of its hopelessness.
Seest thou not that if thy argument be strong, the greater is my shame to
leave them. Thou takest to thy heart, my Cava, one who is scorned of all but
thee.”
“I will not think it, my Egiza; but if what thou sayest be true, I will love thee
more for the scorn of others. Do I not know that it is for me thou hast risked this
danger and incurred this shame. 'T is I have wrought thee to it; and shall I heed
the error, if it be error, which makes me thine the more certainly—which comes of
thy stronger love for me. No, Egiza, I will but pray Heaven that the power be
mine to requite thee with that love for which thou hast yielded up so much.”
“Thou wilt requite me?” he asked, hastily.
“I will be thine, Egiza; or, I will yield myself to none other.”
“But wherefore the doubt, my Cava? Is this all? Canst thou not say that thou
wilt certainly be mine?”
“My father, Egiza.”
“What! Thou waitest for him to give me to thy arms? Alas! Cava, he will
never give thee to me. Has he not drawn weapons upon me? Dost thou forget
when last we parted, when Pelayo came to my succor, and saved me from bonds or
death? What hope is there that he will yield thee to my prayers, when such has
been his temper.”
“He will relent. He denied thee when thou wast a foe to king Roderick, but
when he hears that you have left your people, and refused the crown, he will relent—he
will yield me to thy prayers; for greatly, dear Egiza, does my father love
me.”
“Would it were so, Cava; but I fear me much that he will not so readily confide
in my pledges—he will not believe my promises.”
“Fear nothing, Egiza; he cannot doubt thy truth—I know he cannot!” said the
relying maiden.
“But if he does, my Cava”— The lover paused in his speech.
“Alas!” exclaimed the maiden, as her head hung down droopingly at this suggestion
of denial.
“If he does withhold thee from my love, my Cava—if, heedless of my prayers
and thy consentings, he should deny me to thy arms—say, what, what wilt thou
say?—what, then, shall I do, that the happiness of both be not lost for ever?” exclaimed
the lover.
“Indeed, indeed, I know not!” said the maiden.
“Let me teach thee,” was the quick response. “Thou shalt fly to my arms, my
Cava; a priest shall be in waiting to wed us; and, far away from danger, in the seclusion
of the mountains of Asturia, we shall enjoy happiness and defy danger
thy father deny thee to my prayer?”
“Stay!” she cried—her hand uplifted, and her eyes turned upon a distant road,
which wound around the brow of a neighboring mountain. The eyes of her lover
were upon her, and he urged her reply to the demand which he had made. But
her mind had received an interruption, and she did not heed his earnestness.
“Stay—a moment, dear Egiza; look to the road from Toledo. What is it that
thou seest?”
He turned his eyes impatiently in the prescribed direction, as if all objects but that
of his quest had been of no importance—none, at least, which should interrupt his
pleadings.
“I see men,” he replied; “a goodly troop, shining with armor: but what is this
to us, my Cava?”
“They seek my father,” said the maid.
“But do not seek us. Let them speed, dear Cava, as they may; but hearken,
dearest, to the prayer I make thee. Thou hast heard what I have said—what I
would have thee say. For thee, and at thy wish have I yielded all; wilt thou yield
all for me? Should thy father refuse my prayer—should he deny thee thine—wilt
thou then free thyself from his power, and rely on mine? Speak, dearest, and make
me happy by a word”
“Alas! Egiza, what would you have me say—what would you have me do?”
“Be mine—be mine!”
“Why, so I would be. Doubt not, my lord, that my father, who truly loves me,
will yield me to thy prayer, knowing how much I love thee. He is kind—loves
me beyond all human things, and gives me all things I love. Wait but a while,
my lord—give thyself time to seek him, and to make thy worth be known to him,
and all will go well, even as we wish it.”
“I pray it may be so, my Cava—but should it not—say that he should deny me
—say that he holds me as an enemy, or that he would give thee to some other noble”—
“I would not wed another!” exclaimed the maiden.
“Thanks, many thanks, dear Cava!—but say that thou wilt wed with me, and I
will bless thee from my soul.”
“Alas! I know not—the thought is strange—I know not how to answer.”
“Dost thou love me?”
“Canst thou ask?” replied the maiden reproachfully; and she half withdrew
from his arms, which at this time were locked around her.
“Nay, Cava, chafe not with me. I speak like one most desperate. I am despe
rate. I have but one hope left. 'T is in your hands. Speak and save me, Cava—
or, if thou dost not love me as I would have thee love, speak and destroy me.”
“Oh, I am thine, all thine, Egiza; wherefore dost thou doubt me thus, and vex
thyself? I will be thine—thine only.”
With an almost frantic embrace he drew her to his bosom, and, for the moment,
such were his feelings, he had no other mode of speech.
“I hold thee bound, my Cava,” were his words at length, when he broke the silence
which his intense pleasure had imposed. “Should thy father withhold thee
from me, and deny my prayer, thou wilt still be mine. Thou wilt heed my summons;
thou wilt come to my signal as thou comest now.”
“I will, believe me, Egiza; but I must fly thee now. Look! the strange troop
approaches, and my father must not know of my absence from the castle, should he
demand my presence to receive them.”
The stirring sounds of the trumpet rang with a lively note as the troop wound
their way over the rocky defiles. Egiza surveyed the glitter of their armament with
a melancholy feeling, and his mind busied itself in comparing the gorgeous trappings
of the chiefs who led them, with his own miserable appearance. A jealous sentiment
rose to his lips.
“Thou wilt look on these gallant warriors, my Cava, and in thy thoughts thou
wilt compare them with the sorry looks of Egiza. Their gilded trappings will shine
in thy eyes, till thou turnest from the thoughts of him who seeks thee in so poor
a fashion.”
“Thou dost me wrong, Egiza. I will remember nothing but the trappings thou
hast given up for my love, and remembering these, I shall not regard the glitter which
I behold on others. Be as sure of the love of Cava, as thou hast made her confident
of thine. I leave thee now, Egiza; I will come to thee to-morrow, and we
will speak more of this matter. I will, when thou hast permitted me to speak, declare
to my father, all that thou hast now unfolded to me. Be not impatient, my
lord, in this matter; my love is too strong for thee to make it needful that thou
shouldst hasten the season when it may be thine.”
The gorgeous cavalcade which they beheld descending the hills, had now reached
the main entrance of the castle. They heard the martial summons of the trumpet
clamoring for admission, and the maiden hurried away from her lover, in her solicitude
to gain her chamber ere the arrival of strangers, while Egiza sank among the
covering hills with which he was familiar, and which had often already afforded
him a shelter.
2. CHAPTER II.
The maiden had but little time to effect her object, and gain her apartment, so
wilful and exacting is the devoted love—so impetuous and rapid had been the approach
of the strange warriors. The cavalcade was that of the Gothic monarch,
whom we have seen setting forth on a double mission for the castle of his lieutenant.
With that reckless hardihood of vice which distinguished his reign, and led to
his downfall, he came at the same moment to exact service from his subject, and to
inflict dishonor on his name. In his corrupt mind he already revelled in the charms
of La Cava, while her brave father was doing his battles and defending his country
from the infidel invader, But while purposing this deadly wrong to a faithful subject,
king Roderick was yet too well aware of the danger which he was about to incur
to suffer his secret thoughts to be known by others. He too well knew the
fierce and jealous nature of count Julian, who had come of the old Roman stock,
and he was not ignorant of the great influence which he possessed over the veteran
soldiers whom he had so often led to victory. To his creature Edeco, alone, from
whom—and the anonymous epistle of Oppas—the base incentive had come, did he
communicate his design. With more caution, therefore, than he was accustomed to
employ, he resolved upon pursuing his present object; and when he met count Julian,
who had come forth to the castle entrance to receive him, his manner and language,
though free and kingly, were yet singularly circumspect, for one so habitually
reckless.
“You do your poor noble honor, my lord king, when you so ride forth to see
him,” was the salutation of count Julian, while he held the stirrup for the monarcb
to alight.
“Ay, my lord; and had I known that your castle held so lovely a spot in command,
and the hills—they rise around thee like a natural rampart. Wert thou a rebel,
count Julian, it would need a goodly force to undo thee in thy stronghold.”
“It is thine, oh king! and little prospect is there that it will be held against thee
or thine. The air, as thou sayest, is grateful; and in the sunset, the hills wear a
look which will delight thine eye far more than now. But let us in, my lord; thou
shouldst need refreshment. Thou wilt find a cup of choice wine grateful after thy
toilsome travel among these hills.”
“The thought is good;” and the king alighted while he spoke. The grooms
came forward and took charge of the horses, while, following their master's example,
the nobles in the train of Roderick alighted also, and, at the bidding of count
Julian, followed them into the castle. When they had drunk and been refreshed,
the lady Cava descended from her chamber, and the eyes of Roderick for the first
time rested upon the features of his chosen victim. He whispered to Edeco, when
he beheld her:
“The billet speaks truth only; there is nothing half so lovely in Toledo.”
The favorite ventured no reply, but his finger was lifted to his lips as if in caution,
for he saw the eyes of count Julian were upon the king, and the pride and jealousy
of the warrior were well known to him. But Roderick, though he strove,
could scarcely keep his eyes from the maiden. His glance riveted hers, for it was
the first time that she had beheld the king, and she looked upon him with a wonder
and admiration, no less fearless than innocent. And truly might she regard him
with admiration, for the person of Roderick was extremely noble. He was taller
than the general race of men, yet so proportioned and symmetrical as to command no
regard in this respect, save when standing by the side of others. His face was full
and his eye commanding. His forehead was rather broad than lofty, and his look,
though it was not wanting in intellectual expression, spoke more for the love of
sway, the pride of pomp, and strong passions, than for the good mind which he possessed
naturally, but which the sudden gain of unlooked for power had either entirely
perverted or kept in subjection. These gave an air of animation to his manner
and countenance, which could not fail to attract the eye, and win the admiration
of those he looked upon kindly.
After a brief space of time given to ordinary subjects, and when the beautiful
Cava, at the command of her father, had retired from the presence to attend to such
concerns of the household as were fitly entrusted to young maidens, in those
days, the king addressed himself to count Julian upon the obvious subject of his
visit.
“I have brought you a heavy charge, Julian,” he said, “and I look for you to be
as heedful in our cause, of the honor and security of the nation, as you have proved
yourself in the time of our predecessor.”
“There are none to challenge the faith of Julian of Consuegra, I trust, oh
king!” was the reply of the count, who looked round while he spoke, with searching
eye, among the nobles who attended the sovereign. “The faith which I have
pledged to you, king Roderick,” he continued, “I have ever kept, as I now again
pledge myself resolute to keep it. Declare thy will, oh king! and receive my service.”
“I believe thee, Julian; I meant not to question thy honor by my speech, but,
declaring my firm confidence in thy ability, again to give it employment.”
“I am ready in thy service, oh king! Command me as thou wilt, in honor, and
my sword and life are thine.”
“I had deemed them so, Julian, ere I came to thee. Advices have reached me
again thy charge. We require thee to move for it by the morning, and do thy best
to chastise the foe.”
“Now, this instant, oh king! if thou wilt, I am ready to depart!” was the immediate
answer of the count.
“I knew thy promptness, Julian, but it will not need that thou shouldst depart
before the dawn, unless thou shalt deem it important to thy toils. Nor, indeed
canst thou well do it, since it is our purpose to be this night thy guest. We wildepart
together in the morning, and thou shalt ride with us to our royal city of Toledo,
where it is the will of the queen Egilona, that thy fair daughter, of whom she
hath heard, should abide until thy return. She shall be handmaid to the queen during
thy absence, and her happiness and instruction shall be our care. Does this
disposition please thee, count Julian?”
“It does, oh king! since this were but a wild and lonely region for my daughter
to abide in when I am absent; and still less would it suit that she go with me to
Algeziras, when the cloud of war hangs over the coast. In the presence of the noble
Egilona my daughter will learn the lessons of truth, and be confirmed in the
gentle virtues which I have toiled, and not in vain, to impart to her mind. Thou
hast well determined, oh Roderick! and I will not spare my sword in strife with
the Moor, remembering the sacred charge which I leave in thy protection.”
The object of the lustful monarch so far had been pursued successfully; and his
exultation could scarcely be concealed. The watchful Edeco beheld it, in his
quick, hurried glances, in the sudden flow of blood into his cheeks, and in the passionate
movements of his person. But these signs entirely escaped the observation
of count Julian, who, though jealous in the last degree of the honor of his name and
family, yet had not the slightest suspicion of the meditated bad faith of the sovereign
who had just yielded to his hands so great a trust; and one which would so readily
enable him to revenge himself for any such wrong. Nor did the reckless spirit of
Roderick, thoughtful only of personal indulgence, permit him to perceive the extent
of the security which he had thus given to Julian, for the honor of his daughter. It
he did, he was but too well disposed to defy consequences, to seek the correction of
his error. With a blindness which was like fatality, he gave to the man whom he
was about to wound in the most sensitive part, the command of a post, the most
important in his kingdom, and the exclusive control of ten thousand veteran soldiers.
But this thought troubled neither the mind of the monarch, nor that of his creature,
Edeco. As his sword-bearer, this man slept that night in a chamber adjoining that
of Roderick, and having access to it. When they were retired for the night, he gave
a loose to those congratulations on the success of his project, which he knew would
flatter the hopes of the king, whose foul appetites were all in activity. He exaggerated
the charms of La Cava, dwelt on her gentleness, which he mistook for weakness,
and with the peurile affectation of the fop discoursed of those topics which belong
rather to the vicious profligate. It need not be said with what impatience Roderick
longed for the departure of Julian, and the possession of his unconscious daughter
But what could exceed the agony of soul of La Cava, when she was apprised by
her father of his intention to remove her to the court. She would have pleaded
against his purpose, but that she had no pretence for doing so. To declare to him
the near neighborhood of her lover, might be to compromise his safety. To declare
to him how deeply she loved Egiza, would be no reason why she should not be
removed to Toledo, unless it could be shown that the supposed rebel could, in a
moment, reconcile himself to the usurper, and receive her immediately, in the eye
of the nation, as his wife. The more the mind of Cava reflected upon these matters
counsel, and she could only hope, by seeing Egiza before her departure,
to learn from him what remedy might yet be found to relieve her from the approaching
difficulties of her situation. The anxiety increased to agony, when, after several
attempts to steal forth, she found it impossible to succeed. The courtiers and
guards of Roderick were numerous, and they filled all the grounds of the castle.
Night came on at length, and she gave up the desire in despair. She slept not, or
only slept to dream of sorrows, and she rose the next morning only to realize them.
At an early hour, assisted by her father, she entered the covered carriage which had
been prepared for her, and, escorted by Roderick, who closely attended upon the vehicle,
she set forth, sick at heart, and paralyzed in hope, upon a journey, every step
of which carried her further from her lover. Did she imagine it only, or was it
the face of Egiza, that peered down upon their progress from the brow of the mountain,
as they wound their tedious way through one of its gorges? Did he know of
her departure—did he doubt her truth? How much would she have given that moment
to have breathed but a single sentence in his ears.
3. CHAPTER III.
It was while they wound through a lovely valley, on their approach to Toledo,
that they encountered a procession of holy men bearing the image of the Virgin.
They were returning to the house of the fraternity, which picturesquely crowned
an eminence that stood at a little distance and within sight. Though engaged in
holy offices, the brothers did not think it unseemly to pause in their progress to gaze
upon the royal cavalcade, which was so much more gorgeous, if not so much more
imposing than their own. It was this purpose of curiosity which Roderick had
ascribed to them, but it may be that there was yet another motive, for, as the king
approached, one of the venerable men emerged from among the crowd which gathered
upon the hill-side to let the royal train pass, and threw himself directly in the way
of their progress. Once seen, the countenance of that singular man was never to be
forgotten; and long ere the king drew nigh, he was troubled with the recollection
of circumstances which had not a little annoyed him when they had taken place.
The person was that of Romano, who had been the chief keeper of the house of
Hercules. He filled the very spot over which they were compelled to pass, and he
seemed resolute to maintain his position. His hands were uplifted as much in sign
to his bretheren—who looked on with mixed feelings of veneration and dismay—as
to the heaven to which they were raised; and with his white beard streaming to the
wind, his uncovered and shaven crown, his wild, fierce, and even haughty expression—as,
in his secret soul, he held himself the representative of God in his anger—
he was altogether the embodiment of a majesty before which even that of Roderick
was compelled to quail. While the monarch drew nigh, and when within hearing,
the words of Romano were heard addressed to his company:
“Witness for me, witness for me, my brethren, that I do what God has appointed.
That I stand without fear in the presence of the tyrant, and denounce upon his head
the wrath which is to come. I call ye to heed me now, my brethren, as ye shall
be asked for your testimony hereafter; look upon him, the enemy of God, walking
in the vain confidence of his earthly power—behold the servant of Heaven, humbled
of earth, and despised of man, yet strong of heart, as I feel that a power greater
than that of earth, and a sovereign before whom this tyrant is a shadow and a
father and the king, whose servants ye are!”
“Now, what does the old dotard mean?” demanded the king of those about him,
as these words reached his ears. “Ride forward, Edeco, and command him from
the path.”
Edeco rode forward as he was bidden, but Romano heeded him not:
“Not for thee—not for such as thee, are the words of Heaven. Thou art the
creature and the worm. I have no mission for thee. But I have that for the ears
of thy master which shall make him tremble in his secret soul. Bid him ride forward
and learn my message. Bid him haste that he may hear it. Let him not delay
to receive what I do not delay to impart.” And he turned from Edeco to the
brethren, while he continued to speak:
“There is a Daniel for every Belshazzar, my brethren, since by God's abundant
mercy it is that He wills not the death but the repentance of any sinner—no, not
even the vilest and the worst, which is always he whom power and the vain conceits
of earth have hardened into the enemy of Heaven. It may be that He means
not the destruction of this mortal, and that I am but to warn and to terrify, that the
repentance of Roderick may be free and flowing, and abundant like his sin. I know
not—I but speak as I am bidden: and I speak not for myself. If my words this
day, fall not upon unheeding ears, like good seed washed upon stony places, then
am I thrice blessed, since I am the minister of God's indulgence rather than of his
punishments. Let us pray, my brethren, that it be as I have said. Pray quickly,
all, for the sinner approaches.”
He crossed himself devoutly as he uttered these words, while his lips murmured
the prayer that he had prescribed to his brethren. A universal murmur of supplication
went through their ranks, in compliance with his suggestion, for the venerable
Romano had long been regarded among his fellows as one chosen of Heaven.
But the wrath of Roderick was scarcely restrainable when Edeco bore back the
answer of Romano. Hastily leaving the side of the carriage in which Cava rode,
he made his way to the front, and a few bounds of his steed brought him directly in
the presence of the zealot.
“Madman! wretched and reckless fool! get ye from my path!” cried Roderick,
fiercely, while his teeth were gnashed with such vexation that his words were
scarcely articulated.
“I do my duty!” cried Romano. “I speak for thy Master, Roderick. It is for
thee to hear!”
“Take him hence!” cried the king to the priests. “It is ye who encourage this
madman in his insolence. Take him hence, ere I strike him to the earth.”
But the timid priests manifested no disposition to interfere. The words of the
king were far less imposing to their senses than those of Heaven's messenger, as
they believed, or affected to believe, that Romano was. They only huddled more
closely together as the king spoke, as the timorous sheep crowd with apprehension
when the howl of the wolf reaches their ears, at evening. This movement only
left Romano more distinctly opposed to the king, and the soul of the venerable enthusiast
seemed to expand in its confidence, as the isolation of his person, which it
left more exposed to danger, served to increase the commanding character of his appearance.
“I need no encouragement from man!” exclaimed Romano. “I am commissioned
by Heaven, and the glory of my commission gives me the strength which I
need.”
“Get from the path!” exclaimed the monarch, hoarsely.
“Not till I have said Heaven's judgment, or, it may be, its warning only. That
shall be as thy pride or thy humility wills it, oh Roderick! when thou hast heard
me.”
“Will no one drag this miserable madman away?” cried Roderick.
A dozen of the king's attendants sprang forward at these words, but ere they
could lay hands upon Romano, the brotherhood had closed around him, with their
uplifted and extended crosses; they seemed to defy the soldiers, who shrank in hesitation,
as they feared to encounter that power which ruled monarchs, and had
shaken them from their thrones. The zeal of Romano received new encouragement
from these signs. Encircled as he was, by the priests, he showed no token
of apprehension; he extended no cross for his own protection, but with hands
stretched out to heaven,
“Be witness,” he cried, “be witness of this violence, and of my faith in Thee,
oh Father of the Universe! I fear not the shaft of the tyrant, while I speak Thy
vengeance upon his head.”
The fury of Roderick was indescribable, but Romano, utterly unaffected by it,
proceeded to address him:
“I call upon thee, oh Roderick! to read the writing of heaven—it is upon the
sky before thee—it is written in flames and blood, and it is spoken in words of
thunder. Look there—as upon a wall,” and he pointed to the eastern heaven, while
his eyes watched the same quarter with a devotion that conclusively proved to his
brethren, if not to the king, that he really saw what he called on them to witness.
It is indeed more than probable that many among them saw it also, and even the eye
of Roderick, like that of his followers, turned once involuntarily in the same direction.
“It is there!” cried Romano. “The letters—ye see them, ye see them! Ye cannot
help but see them, for they are written in flame. They have a deadly meaning.
oh Roderick! and the writing is for thee. It is fitting that, as thou hast been the
Belshazzar of this land, that as thou hast been voluptuous, and profligate, and cruel,
that as thou hast scorned the words of the wise, and trampled upon the things that
are holy, that thou shouldst have the warning and the doom pronounced against
thee which was written by the Eternal finger on the palace walls of the Assyrian.”
“Madman—away—away all, or I urge my horse upon ye!” exclaimed the king,
and he advanced as he spoke, though his limbs seemed to be feeble, and he trembled
even while he proceeded, with an ague that seemed to have arisen from his fears,
though it was most probably in consequence of his anger. The monks half receded
as they witnessed his movement, but Romano yielded not an inch, nor showed any
apprehension. With exulting eye as he witnessed the tacit homage which the king
by his seeming apprehensions, paid to his ministry, he continued to speak in the
same fearless and enthusiastic strain.
“Wo! wo! Behold the writing: `MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN!”'
Roderick urged forward his steed, but the wild look, the free, enthusiastic action,
and the supernatural elevation of Romano, seemed to have its effect upon the horse,
not less than upon his rider. The noble animal reared and receded, sinking back
upon the crowd that followed.
“Orelio! Orelio!” exclaimed the king, patting the steed upon his neck while
striving to urge him forward.
“Take counsel from thy beast, oh king!” cried the zealot, whose exultation was
now unbridled. “He has a better knowledge than his rider of what is due to Heaven's
messenger. He will not move forward till my mission is completed!”
“We shall see that, madman!” cried the king, and he drove the rowels into the
efforts, nor paused in his speech.
“The writing, the writing is before thee, Roderick. Hear, and be wise in season,
for, of a truth, even as He spake to Belshazzar through the prophet Daniel, doth the
Lord of Hosts speak to thee through my lips. He hath numbered thy kingdom—
He hath finished it.”
“Dog!” cried the now desperate king; and he snatched a javelin from one of
the soldiers.
“Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting!” continued the fearless
enthusiast.
“Not in strength to punish thy insolence am I wanting.” cried Roderick, hurling
the shaft with a desperate arm. Heedless of the bolt the zealot continued:
“Thy kingdom is divided,”— the arrow quivered in his thigh, and the sudden
pang of the wound broke the sentence of his lips, which was concluded by a slight
cry, the involuntary acknowledgment of the suffering flesh. In the next moment,
the snorting and terrified steed was driven forward by his raging rider, and the feeble
but erect and fearless form of Romano, was hurled aside and thrown against the
rocks. A cry of horror rose among the monks, as they beheld the injury done to
their comrade—an injury esteemed by them a sacrilege. They gathered around him
where he lay, and raised him up in their arms; and, even while Roderick rode on
with his train, his denunciations followed the monarch, and filled with gloom and
apprehension such of his company as honored the existing forms of religion, and
regarded with respect those superstitions of the time, which held a sway among the
lberians of far more potency than any in possession of the throne.
“Wo! wo!” was still the burden of that voice: and even the fears of Roderick
were aroused when he coupled what he had witnessed in the cave of Hercules,
with the report of the Moorish invasion, and these words of Romano, which he continued
to hear, even when out of sight of the enthusiast, and which predicted to
him the loss of his kingdom. It needed not then that Roderick should desire free
access to the daughter of Julian, in order to prompt him to urge the instant departure
of that warrior for the protection of the coast. Even in his voluptuous fancies,
there came to his mind dark pictures of his land's distress, his own overthrow, and
scenes of strife and bloodshed, which a prescient imagination might safely paint to
a tyrant and usurper, and which the coming time was not slow to realize, in all their
truth, and with increased and indescribable terrors.
“Now the garden which the king Roderick had made for the gentle queen Egilona,”
says a chronicler of the time, “was of a curious and a foreign elegance. It
stood upon the banks of the golden-bedded Tagus, and the sweet murmur of the waters
as they rolled on beside its walls, made a fitting refrain for the pleasant bird-music
that was for ever heard from within. Aromatic shrubs, which had been gathered
and brought from the far east, filled the air with fragrance; and, after the
Moorish fashion, gushing fountains were made to jet from the complaining well, so
that an ever-going murmur kept the solitude of the garden wakeful. The trees,
many of which were of distant lands, brought by the Roman conquerors into Iberia,
were carefully trained into curious shapes, and made to yield the goodliest fruits;
and Roderick commanded that a hundred of his Moorish slaves should be busy at
all hours, in the building of the garden, and of the palace which stood in the midst
of it, so that, long ere the people had dreamed of the curious labor, which was carried
on, within the massy walls which surrounded it, the nice perfection of king
Roderick's wish had been attained, and the palace and the gardens sprang into existence
as it were by magic, in the brief space of a single night. Thither in the oppressive
relax from the toils of the court, and attended only by her favorite maidens, enjoy
the perfect privacy and the soothing luxuries of so charming a retreat.”
It was to this garden of delight that the enamored, but as yet cautious Roderick,
conveyed the lovely Cava. It was here that the queen received her, and, pleased
with her sweet and modest appearance, nor less so with the singular simplicity of
her manners, she took her almost immediately into favor. While count Julian remained
in Toledo, and for a brief season after his departure, the king, with an exercise
of forbearance which was unusual with him, did not approach the maiden,
and Cava might have enjoyed almost perfect happiness in that fairy abode, the
beauties and sweetness of which had sunk into her soul, but that her heart was
too full of the desolate Egiza. When her father departed for his command at Cueta,
the tears of the maiden were unaccountable to him, as they spoke for the secret sorrows
which he did not conjecture. He left her with reluctance as he beheld her
grief, for she was as the apple of his eye, and something of a mournful presentiment
weighed down his heart, as he uttered his hurried language of farewell. It
was with an earnest solemnity of manner, that he yielded the sacred trust to king
Roderick.
“Be her friend and protector, oh king! while I serve in your wars abroad. It is
my wealth and my joy, my treasure and my blessing, which I yield to your protection;
and should it please Heaven, Roderick, that I perish in the strife with the infidel,
I pray you to remember that though you should lose a soldier and a faithful
servant in me, it is not fitting that you should suffer my child to feel that she has
lost a father.”
Roderick scrupled not to promise the noble soldier, and Julian departed, half relieved
of the gloom which had weighed him down. It had been well for Roderick,
and well for all, had he been less free to promise, or more scrupulous in performance
4. CHAPTER IV.
Meanwhile the hapless Egiza, poised on a ledge of rock which overhung the
great pass leading to count Julian's castle, watched with straining eyes the departure
of the glittering cavalcade which bore away the dear object of his affections. He saw
count Julian riding beside the usurper, and he readily conceived that the maiden of
whose dress he caught partial glimpses through the covering of the carriage, was the
lady of his love. His conjecture was confirmed as he listened to the dialogue of two
peasants which took place in the valley just below his place of watch. He descended
as the cavalcade passed on. Without a thought of what he should do—without
any distinct purpose in his mind—he hurried in pursuit. From rock to rock he kept
upon his way, without fatigue, without hunger, but with a singular feeling of thirst
which prompted him to stop at every spring or brooklet, and drink like one who had
famished long with the desire. In this pursuit, he was not at any time far behind
the travellers. Their progress, in that hilly region, was necessarily slow. More
than once he caught sight of them, as rising to the peak of one eminence, he beheld
the last glimpses of their train stretching away over another; and when he came to
the spot where the adventure of Roderick with Romano had taken place, he found
the venerable old man surrounded by his brethren, and feebly striving, with their assistance,
to ascend the little mountain on the brow of which stood the dwelling of
the yearning eyes which they cast upon the new comer, evidently called for his
more vigorous aid. He, too, began to fail from the fatigues of his journey, but the
excitements of his soul sustained him; and when, all in a breath, the monks told
him of the impious violence of Roderick, Egiza warmed into new strength with their
narrative, and lent the aid of his vigorous arm in sustaining the enfeebled Romano
up the mountain. It may be supposed that the version which Egiza heard of the
transaction, was wanting in most of the circumstances which might have qualified
the degree of criminality in the violence of Roderick, and, perhaps, to many minds
might have even justified it. The tale they told was one of unmitigated tyranny on
the part of the king; a tyranny for the punishment of which they did not cease, all
the while, to invoke the thunders of Heaven upon his head. Romano did not speak
until the tale was fairly ended. He did not seem to think the matter of sufficient importance
to demand the attention of one having the business of Heaven. But when
the monks had concluded their story, he fixed his eyes upon the gloomy features of
Egiza, and suddenly demanded whither he went.
“I know not, father,” was the sad reply. “I care not—to the city—to Toledo.”
“We will journey together,” responded the other, “let us first take refreshment,
since it is not written that the mortal, though he be called to the performance of duties
different from those commonly given to mortality to perform, should live on heavenly
manna, only. Brother, wilt thou give cheer to the aged servant of God, and
to this good youth who has come to our help. I ask thee in the name of the father.”
The solicitation was in truth a command. The entire possessions of the brotherhood
were at the bidding and disposition of Romano. But little time was given by
the two to the business of the feast. The zealot was never yet a voluptuary, and,
with such a burning passion at his heart as love—love denied, love doubtful, or love
apprehensive—youth has not often cared for food, however the need of physical
nature may have demanded it. They were soon satisfied, and once more on their
way together.
Romano led the way with a confidence of step and manner which did not arise
from the vigor of his frame. His was the strength of the mind, the strength of
mind even in its weakness—a strength which is always terrible in its insanity, and
which, though incoherent and without power in all things but one, is yet singularly
powerful to perform in that one. The few words which he had already uttered, impressed
Egiza with wonder and respect; but when, as they proceeded, he beheld
the erect carriage of the aged man, and beheld the deference which all paid to him
who met him, when he watched the eloquent fire that flashed out at moments from
his eyes, and perceived the ready instinct by which the decision and the words came
from his lips, and were sustained by his resolute bearing, the youth began tacitly to
give credit to the claims which Romano urged, to be the special messenger of God.
It is true that Egiza, had he given himself the trouble to reason on this matter,
would not have suffered such a thought in his mind; but youth is the season for
feeling, perception, impulse—not reflection; and, in those days, reason had never
yet dared to lift its voice, in question, for an instant, of the venerable superstition.
The awe which gradually came over his bosom as they thus pursued their way
together, was the tribute of youth to age, of passion to reflection, and credulity to
the ancient hypocrite of ages.
When the two reached Toledo it was night; and, for a moment, Egiza paused ere
he entered the walls of the city. Romano paused also, as he beheld the indecision
of the youth. He gazed upon his face intently, and seemed desirous to read the
thoughts in the mind of his companion. These thoughts were various enough, and
city of his birthright and feared to enter it. He was a stranger without a home—
an outlaw without hope; one whom any one might slay, and find not only impunity,
but reward for the deed. It would be too much to say that thoughts like these
did not press heavily upon his mind in the few moments which he yielded to hesitation
at the gates of Toledo; but his fears, if he felt any, passed away in an instant.
The monk laid his hand upon his arm:
“Where goest thou?” he demanded.
“I know not. I have no home in Toledo,” was the desolate reply.
“But thou hast business?”
“No; I know not,” said Egiza with similar tones of self-abandonment.
“God provides a home for the homeless!” exclaimed he. “God provides labor
for the unemployed. Thou hast duties, young man, or thou wouldst not have life.
Art thou heedless of this? art thou ignorant of them?”
Egiza was silent. It is not often that princes are taught that they have duties and
labors like common men. Seeing him hesitate, Romano proceeded:
“Go with me, my son, and when thou wouldst have comfort, confess to me thy
griefs. Thou hast them. Life must have sorrows, or Heaven would own no joys;
nor, if it did, should we desire them. Go with me, and, be sure, the God who gave
thee life will find thee employment.”
Still the youth hesitated. He was unwilling to commit himself to a companionship
which might stand in the way of his pursuit, and though he wished to go instantly
to the palace of his uncle, the archbishop Oppas, he was apprehensive that
in so doing he might compromise either his own or his uncle's safety, and possibly
both.
“Hast thou heard, my son,” said Romano with gentleness, “I have asked thee
to keep with me.”
“Where goest thou?” demanded Egiza.
“I go now to the dwelling of the most holy father, the lord bishop of Toledo.”
“What! the lord Oppas?” exclaimed Egiza.
“Even he!” said the other. “Hast thou knowledge of him.”
“No!” replied the other, after a brief pause, in which he deliberated upon the
propriety of falsehood in such a case, and found a justification for it in his own
mind, in his dangers and necessities; “but I have heard of the venerable father, and
I would see him; perchance, it may be as thou hast said, that God will provide
with fitting toils the wayfarer who hath none.”
“Thou hast the proper spirit, for heavenly furtherance,” said Romano, “and it
may be that I am the chosen instrument for guiding thee on the way to thy labors.
Let us go together.”
And the two entered Toledo: Romano full of wild fancies of heavenly anger, the
overthrow of tyranny, the upraising of the abused church, and the healing of its
many wounds; and Egiza divided between hopes and fears of a humbler, a more
selfish, earthly nature. He knew the danger of his present movement, but he did
that for love—and he felt the shame—which he had not been bold enough to do for
his throne and country. He had grown reckless from frequent risks, and desperate
from privation, and almost indifferent to detection; and with a boldness which, in
time of sudden peril, is perhaps, the best protection, he fearlessly went with his
conductor into the very heart of the city, where stood, in the near neighborhood of
his uncle's dwelling, the palace and the dangers of the usurper.
Romano at once proceeded to the dwelling of Oppas, and was instantly admitted.
alone, but his companion bade him follow close, and, with something like indifference,
careless whether Oppas should recognize him or not, in the presence of Romano,
he obeyed his directions. He relied upon his inferior garments, soiled and torn—
the length of his hair and beard, which he had left untrimmed, and his unexpected
coming, effectually to disguise him from the scrutiny of his uncle until such
time as he should think fitting to declare himself.
But the keen eye of the archbishop discovered him, as soon as Romano, having
told his own story, brought him forward. Egiza, at a glance, saw that he was
known, and pressed his finger upon his lips in sign of secresy. But such precaution,
with one skilled like Oppas in all secret arts, was unnecessary. He did not
seem to heed the prince, but bidding the servant conduct him to another chamber, he
advised Romano that he should take his companion, for the time, into his own protection.
For a long while did the archbishop and Romano converse together, the
former urging new measures upon the latter, which he seemed rather to educe from
the mind of the zealot than to prompt with his own. Such was the occult skill of
the former; and great indeed, was the service, which, under his instigation—which
he deemed to come from heaven and of his own head—the latter performed in promoting
the insurrectionary purposes of the ambitious Oppas.
When Romano had taken his departure, the archbishop called Egiza, and they
conversed long in secret together. The lord Oppas did not spare his reproaches of
the prince for the desertion of his brethren and of his people, of which he had already
heard through his emissaries; until at length the language of Egiza grew
fierce and scornful.
“Thou speakest, my lord uncle,” said he, “as if I might look but for little help
at thy hands. I care not for this, but am I to believe that thou wilt give me up to
the slaves of Roderick? If thou art resolved on this, or if thou but meditatest it, as
from thy harsh speech it would seem not unreasonable to apprehend, I am ready.
Go to your tyrant, and declare to him the truth. Why shouldst thou not have the
money for my blood as well as another.”
“Thou hast taken a tone from the mouth of Pelayo, my son, in this thy language,”
was the mild reply of the archbishop, whose policy it was rather to conciliate
than offend. “But let us,” he continued, “let us speak no more of this or any
matter again to-night. Thou art weary, and this makes thee angry and impatient;
I, too, am troubled with labors of greatest weight, and these make me stern, and
perhaps unjust. Come, my son. Let me lead thee to a secure chamber, and in the
morning I will procure thee a fitting disguise; for in Toledo we must move with caution.
Remember, Egiza, the guards of the tyrant are around us; his spies are busy
in his service ever; and however reckless thou mayst have become touching thy
own safety, thou wilt be heedful not to expose thy person needlessly, when thy
safety will affect that of another.”
With the dawn, Romano was again a visiter in the dwelling of the archbishop
Couriers had arrived during the night in Toledo, and the defeat and death of Edacer
the governor of Cordova, at the hands of an insurgent, under the lead of Pelayo, the
brother of Egiza, was generally known in the city.
“The arm of God shows itself at last,” exclaimed Romano. “His thunder, that
only spoke before, is now winged with the red lightning, and the shafts have stricken
to the hearts of the tyrant's followers. Thou hast heard, my lord Oppas.”
Egiza had given his uncle the intelligence but a few hours before, but the archbishop
was heedful not only not to say this, but to forbear admitting that he knew
of the events at all, until he received them from the zealot.
“And Julian has departed for the coast,” said Romano. “What warrior will
lead the force against Pelayo, my father? Will it be the silken slave, Edeco—the
piebald, pasteboard minion that the king so loves? If it be, then of a surety hath
God decreed that he shall go mad like Nebuchadnezzar of old, that out of his own
performances he may perish.”
“Of a truth, thou speakest his doom, my brother,” replied Oppas, with solemnity.
“God worketh out his judgments in fear and wonder, in many secret ways; and it
is a wholesome propriety, that which makes crime sooner or later the minister of its
own punishment. We behold in trust and fear, my brother, yet we behold not
calmly or idly. We contribute unconsciously to the good work, and the rightful
judgment of heaven, and like the blind bolts of the storming clouds, we go upon errands
of destruction, and know not what we do, till the victim lies before us. Sawst
thou not much that was a mystery to thee in the youth whom thou brought with
thee last night?” said Oppas, abruptly, seeming to change the subject, but, of a truth,
coupling the inquiry in the mind of his hearer with all that he had previously said.
“Of a truth, I did,” replied Romano, musing idly; for the drift of Oppas was beyond
his search.
“He is young, yet sad; he is strong, but his limbs lack service. He seems like
one quick to strike—to slay if need be, but God has not yet given the victim to his
knife. Wherefore so much sadness in his youth; why is he separate, as it were,
from all other men, and all other ties? Can it be, my brother, that such as he is
chosen for great service?”
“Wherefore not!” exclaimed Romano. “God loveth those whom He chasteneth,
and if this youth have sorrows early, he hath strength also, and he hath an appointed
service which shall lead him to high favor.”
“I think not that he came to your help upon the mountain without advisement—
I think not that he came to Toledo without a business. My brother, is he not an
instrument given into thy hands?”
“Truly, it would seem so, my father, though I thought not this. Verily, thou
art of the seed of those whom the generations which are gone of time, held wisest
of men.”
“Yet were this instrument—which thou must see was put into thy hands—but
an idle one, harmful to itself, and harmless where the just Providence would make
it hurtful, unless it have its sheath. The minister of vengeance were but a failing
minister, if he walked at midday, and concealed not his secret purpose. The youth
must be habited, my brother, in a guise which shall not be unfitting for him who is
appointed to a holy purpose, and which must be effectual to hide his purposes from
the sinner for whom he is sent in punishment, even as the red bolt is hidden in the
black cloud until the moment ere it smite with death.”
The zealot was convinced.
“I will bring thee a garb of my own for the youth,” he said as he hurried away
with this object. The disguise of a monk enveloped the person of Egiza, and he
walked the streets of Toledo with impunity. He urged his inquiries with comparative
prudence, and the circumspect archbishop adroitly helped him to such intelligence,
at intervals, as he thought might best promote his own various, if not sometimes
conflicting objects. The stern soul of Oppas looked forward to the time when
the crime, which was yet only in contemplation, but which Roderick meditated, and
of which Cava was the victim, might find its sudden avenger in the arm of Egiza.
“Let him strike!” exclaimed his archbishop to himself, as he meditated these
important matters in the secresy of his closet. “Let him strike, and strike succesfully,
and I care not though they hew him in pieces a moment after. He can serve
things beside.”
This cold-blooded policy he encouraged, and many opportunities were secured
to Egiza for frequenting the various places in the city which it was known that
Roderick sought. Bribes, judiciously administered, and never without success in a
court where no other god than gold was worshipped, procured access even to the palace
for the apparent monk; and, with these opportunities, the unhappy prince soon
knew all that he most desired to know. From common rumor he learned that the
lovely Cava was an inmate of the gorgeous palace that stood in the royal gardens,
upon the golden-sanded Tagus, and around these walls he daily wandered, with a
wistful eye, and a burning and sleepless hope. Devoted to the one purpose, and
reckless in its pursuit, or thoughtless of the danger, he meditated nothing less than
to scale the walls, and in spite of the guards who watched them, to penetrate the
gardens, behold with his own eyes, and bear away, if possible, the only object for
which he cared to live, and without which, he was not unwilling, at any moment,
to perish.
5. CHAPTER V.
The fierce passions of the tyrant, clamorous for their victim, could hardly be restrained
until the departure of her father. He had scarcely gone when he bade the
miserable creature, Edeco, who had grown skilled in long pandering to his master's
views, prepare the way for the contemplated sacrifice. But the stunning intelligence
of the revolt in the neighborhood of Cordova, the defeat and death of Edacer, and the
successful flight of the insurgents under Felayo, whom they had crowned their king,
offered a brief interruption to the progress of his crime. Right gladly, however, even
then, so much moved had he been by the charms of Cava, would Roderick have set
aside the cares of empire, and given himself up to the lascivious objects in his view,
had he not possessed a true friend and faithful counsellor in the severe lord Bovis.
He would not suffer the king to be untrue to himself. It was to his palace in the
pleasure gardens on the Tagus, that this stern counsellor came to rebuke him for his
sloth, and urge upon some particular measures for the general safety. This trusty
nobleman, when he saw the loveliness of count Julian's daughter, as she appeared
in the train of the queen, readily conceived the reason why Roderick had himself
borne to Julian the foreign commission with which he had invested him; though he
did Julian the injustice to suspect that the brave count had connived with the king—
as was but too much the practice of the court—at the expense of his daughter's
virtue.
“Another, and yet another:” he said to himself as he surveyed with feelings of
pity, the evident innocence and surpassing beauty of the maiden. “Poor butterfly!”
he continued, “thou little knowest the price which thou payest for thy gilding. It
is, indeed, all gilt, the mere dust which glitters, and which the pressure of the unlicensed
hand, and the lustful lip, will tarnish and remove. To-morrow will another
like thee take thy place, and all thy satisfaction will be to know that she who has
succeeded thee, and for whom thou wilt be scorned, will in time be superseded by
another, and share in thy disgrace.”
Such were the unuttered thoughts of the stern Bovis, as he beheld the glittering
pageant of the court in which the wondering Cava first appeared before his eyes.
Nor did he spare the king himself, in uttering similar language.
“My lord king!” he said, “thou hast brought the daughter of count Julian to
court. May I ask of thee hast thou paid him her price, if thou hast not”—
He paused.
“And if I have not,” said Roderick, “what then?”
“Send for him instantly, take from him the commission which thou hast given
him, and with all possible haste thereafter, let his head crown the great gate of Toledo”
“And wherefore thus?” demanded Roderick.
“The girl is too fair, oh king! too fair to be long innocent in a court like thine,
and if thou wrongst her, and hast not secured the blindness of her father, thou hast
made him too strong for thy safety by this commission.”
“Pshaw, Bovis, thou hast the art of dreaming dangers, and thou findest enemies
in thy faculty, where other men behold but rushes. Go to—give thyself no heed to
this matter, but speak of the business which I gave thee in hand. What of Edacer;
hath he not sent the head of the rebel?”
“He hath sent nothing; but I look for his couriers to-night, when we shall, I
doubt not, be apprised of his success.”
The couriers brought other tidings, as we have seen; and for a moment the consternation
of the court was great. But only for a moment. The dream of sloth
and luxury was too soul-subduing in that region to keep it for any length of time
aroused by any remote excitement or foreign danger; and when the lord Bovis
brought his intelligence and dwelt upon the necessity of sending forth a strong army
on the instant to quell the insurrection, the dissolute Edeco, who really feared the
incorruptible counsellor whom he could not emulate, slyly suggested to Roderick to
send Bovis himself. The king, not less pleased to be rid of one whose counsels
were sometimes too free and too just to be always welcome, caught readily at the
suggestion, and commissioned him accordingly. The willing subject accepted the
appointment with alacrity, and proceeded to prepare himself for his new duties. At
leaving his master he barely said:
“I will strive honestly to win the victory for thee, oh Roderick! though I fear
me it will not much avail thee, since thy courtiers are too apt to lose what thy soldiers
win. If thou wilt make Edeco curtail his silks in the matter of tails and tassels
when I am gone, he will of a surety prove himself a better man, and to thee a
better subject.”
“Thou art but a wild animal, my lord Bovis, and I heed thee not. Go to—measure
thy garments as thou fanciest them; thy dull sense would strive in vain to take
the complexion or conceive the fitness of mine.”
Roderick laughed as the two thus jibed each other; but when the lord Bovis had
gone, he felt, in truth, that one was wanting in his court, whose absence—as he was
alike singular in honesty and wisdom—was more immediately felt than that of
any other. But his mind, bent as it was upon the one object of his desires, was rather
pleased that the severely virtuous Bovis had withdrawn. He felt as if a great
restraint were taken away; and assured that he had provided against the pressing
dangers, he once more gave a loose to his passions. With the aid of Edeco whose management
had been begun from the moment that count Julian had taken his departure,
he soon paved the way for the commission of the heinous crime which he meditated.
In the meantime the unconscious Cava, sad and lonely, retired, whenever
the opportunity was allowed her, to the solitary places of the garden, where, in secret,
she wept for her lover, and meditated upon the fortune which separated them.
She little knew that even then—more venturous for her love than ever he had been
for his throne and people—the sad Egiza, was compassing the walls which contained
groves of the royal garden. There were others as little conscious of this fact as
herself, to whom its knowledge might not have been so agreeable.
In a remote chamber of the palce, Roderick and Edeco conferred together upon
the base purpose of the tyrant.
“Is all secure?” demanded the former.
“Security itself, cannot be more so, oh king!” was the reply of the creature.
“Thou hast sent the guards to the northern wall?”
“I have, oh Roderick! Thy clamorous summons might bring them to your wish,
but they are else beyond ear-shot.”
“ 'T is well—and she, the bird—where didst thou leave her?”
“In the far quarter of the garden close to the eastern waterfall; she sits upon a
rock that lies below it; yet the trees fence her in thickly, so that, though she can
hear the fall, she yet sees it not. Thou mayst approach, unheard, and look upon
her.”
“How looks she, Edeco?”
“As some desolate dove whom the fowler has just robbed of its mate. She murmurs
little, but you may sometimes catch the burden of a deep sigh, with which the
rude waterfall has no sympathy, and half drowns with its noisy clamor. Were it
not, oh Roderick! that this show of sorrow adds to the loveliness of her charms, I
should deem it but wise in thee to forbear until she hath caught a truer feeling of this
garden's pleasure. Her lip would be sweeter, if, like the buds which bloom around
her, it smiled when it was pressed, though even its present sadness would seem to
increase its sweets.”
“Lead me to see her, Edeco, where I may enshroud myself safely and be awhile
unseen,” said Roderick, whose prurient imagination had been greatly awakened by
what his favorite had said. Edeco led the way, and with cautious footsteps the
king followed him to a spot, where, hidden from sight, yet able to see his victim, he
looked down upon her where she sat in the pleasant shade.
“Leave me now,” said Roderick in a whisper. “Leave me, Edeco, yet see that
thou keep at hand to hear my summons, only, and to restrain the approach of others.
Should the queen awaken—thou knowest.”
Edeco well understood the directions which Roderick did not conceive it necessary
to conclude, and retired with an assurance of obedience, upon which the tyrant well
knew, from past experience, that he might rely with safety. Alone he surveyed his
victim, until passion grew strong within him from long forbearance. He descended
from the little eminence, the shrubbery of which had concealed him, and suddenly
stood before her.
She started, with looks full of surprise, but without distrust.
“Ha! the king!” was the unintended exclamation.
“Your slave, fair Cava. I am no king to you. The name is something formal—
something cold. You will affright me from you if you use it.”
“What should I say, my lord: I know not else?” returned the maiden with a
simplicity which added to her charms in the sight of one who, among the beauties
of his court, was accustomed to see but little of such a quality.
“Call me by any name but that—make your own choice to name me, and I shall
be well content. I am sick of being be-kinged, fair Cava; and from the lips of those
I love, it vexes me to hear such stiff discourse. My courtiers `king' me, ever. Do
they need service, bounty or station, they approach me thus. 'T is still `Oh!
king'—`my gracious lord and maste'—`bestow me this'—`provide me with this
station.' Wonder not then, I sicken of such speech. I would forget the king—the
cares, false professions, and heartless attachments. Think it not strange, sweet Cava,
if I would have a different language from thy lips; I would not have thee take
the abused language of the common crowd who throng about me ever. Mere
mighty names but fetter intercourse—make ice of the court atmosphere, dear lady;
and to the poor king, flattered by mouth-service, deny the freedom of the meanest
bird, that sings when he is saddest. Do not then, Cava, err in the common fashion.”
The face of Roderick looked the sentiment admirably which his lips uttered, and
the lady Cava fairly pitied the poor king, in her simple ignorance, who thus be wailed
the royalty that fettered him in his intercourse with men, and denied him those pleasures
of which he envied the humblest of his subjects the possession. Perhaps there
may have been some truth in the language, which, nevertheless, he employed only
for the purposes of deception; for certainly, the monarch who is an usurper of his
station, and whose daily practices are vicious, must live in an atmosphere too artificial
and constrained, to suffer him to know things except through a false medium.
But, though Cava sufficiently commisserated the speaker to look in his face with an
expression of sympathy, she did not suffer herself to employ any other than the
most respectful language in her reply.
“Alas, my lord, what language should I use? Are you not the king, and is it not
the name by which the good subject alone should know you? My father bade me
ever know you by that title, and I feel that I should not speak wisely, oh king! if
I did not obey him.”
“ 'T is a good rule, sweet Cava, for the mere subject. Indeed it is needful too, for
the protection of our kingly state, that our people should approach us with fitting
obeisance; but there are exceptions from this observance, and he or she whom the
king favors does wisely to forget the state, and regard the man only. For you, and
when with you, sweet Cava, Roderick would fain be no king, but Roderick only.”
“But why, my lord, with me—why would you have it so?” replied the simple
girl, without any apprehension.
“For the true love I bear you, my sweet Cava. To you, I am no sovereign, I
could be none. I am a slave—a subject, when I seek you.”
“My lord!” was the exclamation of the bewildered maiden. He smiled at her
simplicity, which seemed to fill him with pleasant, but, as it proved, mistaken auguries.
“You do not conceive me, sweetest. It is true, I am your slave, your subject, not
your sovereign. The king commands, but Roderick solicits you. He can bestow
upon you nothing of half so much value as that which he implores.”
“I do not take your meaning, oh king!” was the response of the untutored maid.
“I am but a dull maiden of Andalusia—your speech sounds strangely in my ears.”
“There is a language, sweet Cava, which I trust you are better taught to understand,”
exclaimed the king, as he impressed a burning kiss upon her lips, ere she
could comprehend his intention.
The deep blush which then overspread her cheeks, her trembling, and startled
apprehensiveness of her air and utterance, spoke audibly for her innocence.
“Oh, my lord,” she exclaimed in insuppressible emotion, as she started from the
seat, and strove to fly. “Oh, my lord, what have you done—what would you do?
Spare me! Let me go. It is wrong, oh king! it is wrong. Let me go to the queen.”
His arm arrested her, and he drew her back to the seat beside him. She trembled
with apprehensions, the source of which were rather in her instincts than in her
mind. Her terrors were those of the bosom and not of the brain, and she shivered
with the agony which they excited.
“And wherefore leave me, sweet Cava; and what is the wrong of which thou
speakest? Those lips—think you that they were bestowed upon you for non-performance?
They have their joys, my sweet Cava, and you must learn to use them.
Remember, 't is a king that pleads”—
“A man, my lord!” was the quick response, as she availed herself of a distinction
which he himself had suggested. “I know you, my lord, as you yourself commanded,
but as a man, not as a king.”
“As a man, then, Cava—sweet Cava, only as a man would I have you know me.
Behold I put by the sovereign—I command no longer. I am at your feet.”
And kneeling as he spoke, but still preserving his hold upon her arm, Roderick
strove to persuade her to the embrace which, at the same moment he half enforced.
She struggled in his grasp, and with a strength beyond his anticipation, arose to
her feet, compelling him, by her successful movement, as he still maintained a hold
upon her arm, to rise along with her. Her voice acquired strength and volume as
his object became less equivocal.
“I pray you, king Roderick, that you wrong not my ears by such discourse. Remember,
sire, I am the daughter of count Julian; and the Roman blood, from which
I come, will suffer no dishonor.”
“These are words, sweet Cava!”—
“But life rests upon words, oh! king; and a goodly name, and a fearless heart
which is strong in its innocence, must yet be heedful that words, which are yet mere
breath, do not stun what they might not else injure. You do me injury, oh king!
and you do yourself wrong. I would esteem you, sir, as the father of your people;
and I pray you that you strive not thus, and speak not that which shall rob you of
my esteem in this. I pray you let me leave you.”
“No—not yet, sweet Cava. Thou shalt not leave me in anger”—
“I am not angry, my lord. It is not meet that one, young and ignorant, like me,
should presume on anger, and”—
The king interrupted her.
“Nor yet misapprehend me, sweet Cava. Wherefore thy alarm. What is it,
dost thou think, that I purpose? Speak—tell me.”
“I know not, indeed, my lord; but I fear that thou hast not purposed rightly,”
was the bold reply.
“What didst thou fear?” continued Roderick.
“I know not even that, my lord; but the thoughts were strange which have come
to me, and such fears trouble me as have not a name in my mind, and cannot have
a place upon my lips. I pray you, oh king Roderick! release me—let me now seek
the queen.”
“Thou shalt be my queen, fair Cava—the queen of my subjects, and of me; and
I will love you better, my sweet, than all queens, and subjects beside.”
“Oh! my lord speak not thus. You cannot mean it,” she replied with looks of
fright.
“By Hercules, I do!” replied the king, mistaking the tones for those of doubt.
“If thou art noble, king Roderick, thou wilt release me. If thou wouldst not be
held guilty of unmanly violence, thou wilt be silent, thou wilt bid me go from thee,
and spare me further cruelty like this.”
“Cruelty, sweet Cava! Truly thou dost much mistake my temper, or grievously
do I misuse my language. Cruelty! 't is love, I tell thee, sweet. 'T is love I hold
for you. Hear me, dear Cava, never yet have mine eyes looked on woman whom
they better loved to look upon than thee.”
The cheeks of the maiden kindled with a deeper red, and her eye flashed fire,
tyrant.
“Thou errest my lord—thou hast twice erred in thy speech,” she scornfully replied.
“As how?” he demanded.
“Thou hast erred to think that thou didst love—still more hast thou erred to
think that the love of this lowly heart could be thine. Even were it not that to regard
thee with other than such feeling as becomes the subject, would be crime, I
freely tell thee, king Roderick, that my love is given to another. I am betrothed to
one, I shame not to declare, whom I love above all other men of earth.”
“His name!” demanded the king, while a flashing fury mingled with the lustful
gaze of his dark and rolling eye.
“Pardon me, oh king! but I may not tell thee!” was the resolute reply.
“Thou shamest to speak his name!” responded Roderick—“some lowly youth
I trow. Comes he not from Catalon, fair Cava. Thou canst not love such a creature.
'T is in vain. Those eyes are for the court—those lips, that form—oh Cava!
thou shalt love me. I will not suffer thee to throw thyself away on thy poor chief
of Catalon. I will not. Such as are not of the court were but too much honored
in thy scorn.”
There was an increased flush upon the cheek of the maiden as she replied to this
speech, so full of mingled taunt and admiration. But her manner was even more
cool and firm than before, and her words less tremulously uttered.
“I meet your censure with a smile, not so much for the mistake which finds a
birth-place for the man I love, as that you can discern no good in Catalon. I was
taught other lessons. Worth and the elements of virtue spring from timely cultivation,
never from mere place; nor, as I learn, are they the growth of a particular soil.
The Greek was mighty—was the Roman less, or the Goth less than either? There
is no chosen land for noble deeds—high virtue, great endeavor, as I hear, though
some are still inferior to the rest”—
She paused, as she beheld a smile pass over the lips of the king, who was in
truth pleased with the novel directness of her simplicity.
“Forgive me, my lord; but I have spoken too idly. All this you knew before”—
“I marvel, sweet Cava, you are beyond the time. The graybeards lose the palm.
The bookmen's lore hath made solid the silver of your tongue; and you speak, even
against my will, truths so bewitching that I cannot help but hear.”
Her face became even graver in its expression:
“I have been too bold, my lord, to speak thus flippantly. I would retire.”
“Not yet, sweet Cava; but a little while. Why wouldst thou leave me? Dost
thou doubt my speech? Do I not say I love thee?”
“Thou forgettest, my lord; I said I loved another,” was her prompt reply.
“And what of that? Thou shalt love me too, Cava. Thou canst do this; thou
canst try.”
“No, sire, I may not! I would be his wife—his true wife. I would look him
in the face without fear and without deception, and love him only.”
“Pshaw! this is idle, Cava; a virtue now-a-days unknown and stale, not common
to the court. Thou shalt be the wife of thy chosen, if so ye both will it; but
there needs not that thou wilt love him only. Give to thy state some license, and
be mine”—
“I pray thee hold, oh king!—speak not of this. I fear what thou wouldst say,
and beg thy silence. I would still esteem you, oh king!”
“Why, so you may, sweet Cava: more—you may love me. Yield to my
prayer”—
“A slave!” was the only exclamation of the maiden in reply, as she once more
strove to withdraw from his grasp.
“A tyrant, rather, my sweet Cava. You know not how I 'll love you.”
“Without my will, oh king! what am I but a slave?”
“Have thy own will, dear Cava, as thou willest; but I pray thee bend thy sweet
will to mine.”
“My lord, once more I pray thee release me; let me seek the queen. I have but
too long forgotten myself to speak with thee thus. Sire, I am the daughter of count
Julian—a Roman born, of Roman blood, oh king! I will not hear you further!”
“Thou shalt, sweet Cava. With gentle force I 'll take thee to my arms. Nay,
nay, thou canst not fly.”
“My lord, beware! I warn thee. If thou dost me wrong, my father's vengeance”—
“Sweet, simple girl! I have no fear, I tell thee. I am all love. My heart has
no room in it for fear, unless of thee. I have no fear of man.”
“Of Heaven, then!” she cried desperately, as he grasped her arms and drew her
toward him with a fierce determination, not the less visible in his eyes than in his
action.
“None, none! sweet Cava, if it stands between us.”
“Heaven save—Heaven strengthen me!” she cried, as with a violent effort, that
seemed to be awarded to her prayers, she broke from his embrace, and bounded
down upon the bank. With the speed of wings she darted through one of the little
groves, into which Roderick pursued her. Her fleetness surprised him; and he almost
began to fear she would still escape him, when her feet stumbled, and she fell
upon the ground a little before him.
“Now, Cava, thou art mine! What now shall keep thee from my arms? Who
shall arrest me? Nor Heaven nor man shall help thee now! Thou art mine—all
mine!”
“Spare me!—oh spare me, king Roderick! If thou hast mercy—if thou art a
man, spare me! I am weak—I am alone—I have none to aid me, if thou wrong'st
me! Spare the poor maiden, oh Roderick!—the helpless maiden—and I will bless
thee, I will pray for thee, for ever.”
“Thou pleadest vainly, my beauty, my bird of beauty, my beloved Cava. But I
will not harm thee. It is with love—with a warm, fond love, that I seek thee;
and as I have not the heart to harm thee, thy fears and thy pleadings are alike idle
Thou art mine! Thou art mine!”
6. CHAPTER VI.
The exultation of the amorous tyrant, as he beheld the victim almost within his
grasp, could not be suppressed, and broke forth into triumphant language, as he bent
forward to embrace her shrinking form; but ere his extended hands could grasp the
innocent maiden, and even while her long and despairing shriek pierced the dull ears
of the slumbering echoes of the garden, a strange figure bounded madly upon the
scene, and, rushing with headlong fury from the cover of a neighboring grove, threw
himself recklessly between Roderick and the screaming girl. Well might the tyrant
give back in amaze, if not in apprehension, before the strange intruder Well might
his first demand of inquiry, met his ears. Such a spectre had not often startled the
inmates of the pleasure-gardens of royalty and voluptuousness. The habit of the
monk concealed the person of Egiza; but the cowl was thrown back and the untonsured
hair was visible. The long black locks were matted on his brows; the glare
from his eyes was that of madness; and the wild laugh which broke fitfully from
his lips, mingled at moments with a choking inarticulateness, gave him all the appearance
of one who had just escaped from the bonds of the bedlamite. But there
was a terrible directness in his eye, as he gazed upon the shrinking tyrant, which,
though unlike the capricious and oblique stare of insanity, was not less fearful to
the spectator, as it spoke for a fixed resolve in the bosom of the intruder, which
might not be quite so readily disarmed and set aside as the wandering purpose of the
madman.
“Who art thou? Whence this insolence?” cried the monarch, after the pause
of a moment, in which he stopped to catch his breath. The wild and repeated laugh
of the intruder, was his only answer; and the ears of Roderick were pierced with
the shrill and mingling tenor of pain and pleasure, which the discordant sounds embodied.
Even the unhappy Cava, ignorant, in the disguise which enwrapped him,
that it was her lover who had come so timely to her relief, shrunk and crawled
away along the bank where she had fallen, as the strange sounds smote so unusually
upon her senses. But she was not long ignorant of the truth. Enraged by the
intrusion, the disappointment, and the seeming defiance of the monk, he repeated his
demand, in tones which showed the aroused tyrant, with whom further trifling would
be dangerous.
“Who art thou?” he cried. The answer was immediate:
“Thy foe! Ho! monster, have I tracked thee to thy den? Have I followed
thee through thy hellish purposes? Have I come in time to save?”—
And as he uttered these words, he turned a look of painful inquiry upon the shivering,
shrinking, but now fully conscious Cava. She clasped her hands as she beheld
him, and heard his words; and the smile which rested upon her lips, sad and
uncertain as it was, was yet such as to reassure him on the subject of his fearful
doubts.
“Or to avenge?” he continued fiercely, after the brief pause, in which he had
turned his glance upon her. “Ay, to avenge!—not thee, my Cava, not thee only—
though that were enough to drain all the blood from his accursed heart; but the
blood of the now sacred in heaven—the wrongs of the great and the good, whom he
hath doomed to the scaffold, to chains, to blindness, and (worst doom of all) to banishment.
Hear me, father!—hear me, Iberia!—hear me, Heaven!—I avenge ye
all! Thou shalt perish, tyrant! The tiger has been followed to his den. There
is no outlet. Thy guards are far: I left them on the outer wall, to the east. The
dagger is upon thy throat: there is nothing left thee but to die.”
And, as he spoke these words, with an utterance not less rapid than his action, he
leaped upon Roderick, and dashed him to the earth. With uplifted dagger he aimed
at his throat, and although the arm of the tyrant, quick, strong, and ready, parried,
and for the moment put aside the stroke, it was evident to him that he could not
long avoid his fate. At that instant he found an ally where he little looked for one.
Cava sprang to her feet, and rushing to the combatants, grasped the uplifted arm of
Egiza with both her hands, and the blow swerved harmlessly aside from the throat,
into which otherwise it had been unerringly driven.
“Spare him, spare him! Slay him not, I pray thee. However much he may
merit death, let not his blood be upon thy hands.”
“What! dost thou plead for him who would have wronged thee?” cried the desperate
Egiza. “Whence comes this unnatural mercy? Cava! woman! wouldst
thou have me hold thee guilty? Fond to him, thou art false to me. Away! Take
thy arms from my neck. If thou beggest for him I 'll no longer deem thee honest.”
“Thou dost me wrong. Oh! believe me,” cried the wounded maiden; “I am
true to thee, as ever was woman yet to the faith which she had plighted. He would
have wronged me, but he hath not; and I would not that his blood, or any blood,
should rest upon thy hands.”
“False and foolish mercy! I may not yield to thee, my Cava, since I should
but give freedom to the ferocious wolf, again to prey upon my fellow men. Let the
tyrant perish, that our people may live. Unloose my arm!—give way!”
“Spare him, spare him!” were her appealing words; but he listened to without
heeding them.
“Spare him!” he cried. “What, for further wrong—for other tyrannies—for
more lust and bloodshed? Thou art not wise to ask it, my Cava—neither for thyself
nor me. Seest thou not that if he live, thou art lost—I am lost—and life, and
all that is worth living for, is lost to us. No! I cannot spare him. I love thee too
well, my Cava, to heed thy prayer. He shall die!”
Meanwhile, Roderick struggled manfully to escape from the knee of his enemy,
which was pressed down upon his breast; but he struggled in vain. The arm of the
desperate Egiza threw off the hold of Cava, and a moment after the uplifted dagger,
which had been shaken in the face of Roderick during this brief conference, was
driven forward, with an unrelenting force and a true aim, at the throat of the victim.
But, even then, when the king deemed the struggle over, the doom spoken,
and his death certain, he was rescued. A stronger arm than that of Cava, arrested
the swift-descending weapon from behind, and forced it from the hand of Egiza. Ere
he could turn to meet his assailants, Edeco and the guard of the tyrant had grappled
him on every side. They had come opportunely to the rescue of their master. Another
moment, and they had been too late. But the fiend whom Roderick served had
not yet deserted him; and the unfortunate Egiza, in a single moment, found the position
of himself and the tyrant reversed. The guards secured him with a grasp,
from which all his efforts—and they were Herculean—failed utterly to extricate him;
and the bitterness of his captivity, under existing circumstances, came to his mind in
its fullest force, with an almost instinct consciousness.
Roderick rose silently from the earth, as soon as his enemy was taken from his
bosom. A grim smile rested upon his lips, as he surveyed his assailant, whom yet
he knew not. His eye glanced from the prisoner to the maiden, with looks of
inquiry.
“Who art thou?” at length he demanded of the former.
“I have answered thee,” said Egiza; “I am thy foe. I have no other name to
thee. Thou shalt know me by no other.”
“The thong shall force it from thy lips!” exclaimed the king. “Thine eyes shall
pay for the insolence of thy tongue. Away with him!” he exclaimed to the guards.
Cava sank at his feet.
“I kneel to thee, Roderick,” she cried; “thou wouldst have wronged me; I kneel
to thee—I forgive thee the wrong; but let him go free—let us both go free.”
“Plead not for me, Cava!” said the fearless prisoner. “Thou wrongest both of
us to bend the knee to such a monster. Alas! but for thy erring pity, we had not
needed thy prayer to our freedom; my dagger had freed us—avenging our own and
our country's wrongs at the same moment.”
But Cava continued to kneel and to implore the king. He answered her only by
withheld.
“His name!—his name!”
But Cava well knew that the discovery of her lover's secret would be the signal
for his instant and cruel death. With eyes upon the earth and folded hands, she replied
mournfully to the demand of the tyrant:
“I may not tell thee, since he hath denied.”
“He dies! Away with him to prison!” cried Roderick.
Her shrieks filled the air, but did not move the tyrant. He motioned the guards
straightway to remove the prisoner; but the timid maiden had grown fearless for herself,
as she witnessed the danger of her lover, and strong in the desperation which her
want of strength occasioned her. She threw herself between the king and his victim—she
made her way to the prisoner, through the guards which environed him,
and, heedless of the reproach which at another time and under other circumstances
she would have expected naturally to follow such an act, she threw herself upon the
bosom of Egiza, and wept and implored by turns.
“Nay, dearest!” exclaimed the captive, who realized his situation perfectly, and
well knew that Roderick was not to be moved by any such exhibition. “This is
but weakness. Show thyself firm, and fear nothing. Thy prayers avail not with
the tyrant: he hears them but to scorn. I would not have him behold thy sufferings,
I would not that he should find pleasure in thy tears.”
“Remove her, Edeco; separate them,” said the king. “As for the traitor, away
with him to his dungeon, and see that he be well secured. I must have time to
meditate a fitting punishment for one so insolent.”
The commands of Roderick were peremptory; and, not often accustomed to dispute
them, the mercenaries were sufficiently prompt in their execution. They seized upon
the prisoner with unscrupulous force. With a resolve not less unyielding, though
of softer seeming, the fantastic Edeco laid his hands upon the maiden. Her shrieks
denoted her agony, though they failed to serve her will.
“You shall not separate us!” she cried, wildly. “You will not—you cannot!”
she said, imploringly, as she heard the commands of Roderick, and beheld the obedience
expressed in the eyes and in the action of his creatures.
“He is my lord—my betrothed—my husband. We must, we will go together—
to the prison, to the scaffold, any where; but you shall not part us—you shall not
tear us asunder!”
A bitter smile passed over the face of Roderick, as he heard these words. They
were so much poison to his soul. He waved his hand impatiently to the guards.
The maiden would have still implored him, but Egiza interrupted her.
“You plead to him in vain, my Cava. He hath neither truth nor mercy in his
heart. Go plead to stocks and stones, ere you waste breath on such as he. The
wolf shall have an ear to supplication when he hath none—ay, weep with pity
when both his eyes are dry. Plead no more, Cava, I pray you plead no more. You
wrong your noble nature, when you bend it to ask grace from the unworthy. You
debase the creature for whom you pray, when you plead for him to the base.”
“You are proud in stomach, sirrah; but the scourge shall teach you a becoming
humility!” said Roderick. “Away with him!” he cried to the guards; and they
could easily see how greatly he was enraged, as his words were always few in his
anger.
“Ye will not!” exclaimed Cava, now addressing herself vainly to the guards;
“Ye will not! Surely ye have wives, and daughters! You, my lord!—you!”
Edeco laughed and simpered when the appeal was made to him, and his fore-finger
had become somewhat deranged.
“I thank you,” he said, effeminately; “but I have never been so afflicted. It is
toil enough, sweet lady, to serve and succor my neighbors. I would not emulate
their virtues. They all have wives and daughters.”
The occult meaning of this speech was not perceptible to the unsophisticated sense
of Cava; but she understood enough from the licentious looks and puerile air of the
fopling, to know that he was incapable of feeling her afflictions. She continued her
appeal to Roderick and his guards alternately, and with all the earnestness of a devoted
heart and a warmly excited spirit; but the wrath of the tyrant was immovable,
and as for the guards, a moment of calm reflection would have taught the unhappy
maiden that they were incapable of one sentiment of generous pity while in the service
of such a master. Little did they heed her prayers or agonies. They obeyed
the harsh and repeated commands of Roderick, and with ruthless violence tore her
from the bosom to which she had not ceased to cling with a most convulsive effort;
and she only ceased to scream and struggle in the utter exhaustion of her nature.
She fell back in a swoon within the arms of Edeco; and Roderick, as he beheld her
condition, made a sign to the servile creature, which he seemed readily to understand,
and at once proceeded to obey. The gesture of the king had not been unseen by
Egiza; and the agony of his soul may be better understood than recorded, as his
mind conjectured its base and sinister import. Was it indeed true, that he, so lately
the arbiter of the tyrant's fate, was now so soon, so suddenly the victim of his will?
Could it be, that she, the innocent and blessed idol of his affection, was in the grasp
of one whose voluptuous inclinations had already been made so fearfully manifest?
And could he not protect, and save, and avenge her? The thought, the conviction,
was maddening. He strove with his captors; he shook them with a giant's strength
from his bosom, but they clung to him again and again; and, writhing and striving
all the while, he beheld the maiden at length borne away from his sight to the secret
places of the usurper's lust, and he had no power to arrest her progress, or weapon
to avenge her fate. His head dropped upon his bosom in his despair, and he had no
spirit to send back from his lips the scorn which he felt in his soul, as the tyrant,
taunting him with the power which he possessed over both himself and the maiden,
bade the guards hurry him to the deepest prison in Toledo.
| Count Julian, or, The last days of the Goth | |