University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

Meanwhile the crowd became conscious of the approaching danger. They regarded
no longer the body of the fanatic, which fared more fortunately than the living
thousands over whose heads it was hustled. It was borne in triumph out of the
mass, and was received by those who remained on the outside, and who bore it
away in triumph, to be hoarded up with other relics equally valuable and equally
maddening to the minds of thousands as well in that as in times more remote. The
escape of the living in that dense mass was not so readily effected; and, pressed on
every hand, in a court which was narrow in proportion to its great length, having
no guidance but the individual impulses which drove each other in a different direction,
and to the obstruction of one another, they struggled vainly for escape. Confused
by their fears and mutually baffled by their various impulses, when the alarm
was given from within of the approaching soldiers, they grew blind with very terror.
Shouts and shrieks of fear filled the area where they struggled, and falling upon
each other in heaps in their vain efforts at flight, they presented no obstruction to
those who sought their destruction.

The sound of a single trumpet silenced the clamors of the mob with increasing
terrors. Toro, the Gallician, still maintaining his burden, with failing limbs but
with unrelaxing resolution, with writhing neck, and eyes cast for a moment behind
him, sought to discern the condition of things among the enemies at whose mercy he
well knew the wild, thoughless, yet cowardly wretches were, who strove with
contrary minds at a single and common object. That one look was all that was allowed
him. In that glance he beheld Roderick himself rushing forth, mounted, at
the head of the guards, part of which were also on horseback, and attended by Edeco
and a few other noblemen. The king was in armor, but without his helmet. His
armor seemed to have been put on hurriedly, and his weapons seized in haste. The
Gallician saw that his features were full of fury. Indeed, it would be an idle attempt
to depict the anger of one like Roderick, the spoiled child of fortune, and for
so long a time accustomed to the most complete exercise of his own will, and the
most brutal disregard to the rights, not less than to the will, of all others. It was
absolutely fearful even to the eyes of one, like the Gallician, so entirely indifferent
to all the minor influences of fear. His eyes glared like those of the wild-boar,
whom the spear of the hunter hath pierced at the very entrance of the den where his
young are hidden. His cheeks were the color of a bright and sudden flame—his
hair floated wildly above his head, and its raven hue still more contributed to give
an air of fierce resolution to the almost scarlet terrors of his face. While Toro
gazed, he instinctively pressed forward; he saw that though there were numbers
still between the tyrant and himself, on whom his vengeance must first be wreaked,
he was yet conscious that these would offer but a brief obstruction to the passage of
men on horseback. To throw a greater number between was an object therefore,
but this was the object of hundreds, who were not, like himself, incumbered with a
burden, the weight of which, if it did not enfeeble the mind, increased its anxiety,
and oppressed it with apprehension that weighed it down, even more effectually than

its physical pressure did his body. The prayers and pleadings of the poor girl—her
entire dependence upon the strength and resolution of her brother, greatly increased
both, and never did man yet labor more desperately, and strive with less fear and
more zeal to achieve his object, and secure the saftey of the beloved one and the depending.

Help, Holy Mother!” he prayed inwardly—“help, Holy Mother!—give me
strength—thy blessed favor upon the young girl, not yet fifteen—a pure virgin, who
keeps thy thoughts in her mind, as, when she is at home in her chamber, she hath
thy image for ever before her eye. Be thy white arms of blessedness about her neck,
so that she be saved to our mother, and if it please thee, serenest Virgin, I will return
to the strife, and fight for thy grace and honor. Be with her, Mother of God,
and help us forth from these numbers!”

He did not pray only. He struggled bravely; but the Virgin did not heed his
prayer. The density was greater than ever, and in the next moment, Roderick
charged headlong, followed by his nobles and guards, upon the terrified and shrieking
populace. However provoked it may have been at first, nothing could have been
more wanton or unprovoked than this movement now. The people were only turbulent
in flight. They were seeking, on all hands, to effect their escape, and would
have been glad to disappear, and would soon have dispersed, had sufficient time been
allowed them. But this would have been no gratification to the reckless and remorseless
tyrant, to whom the unnecessary display of his power, in its most cruel
forms, was the highest pleasure. He had no thought, no mercy, for the thoughtless
and unreckoning wretches who were then scrambling forward in the very attitudes
—those of flight and fear—which would rather have called for the smile and forbearance
of the wise and merciful ruler, than his blows and fury. He charged upon
them as they flew—he smote recklessly on all hands, and looked not to see whether
his weapon descended upon the head of the resisting or trembling man—whether he
struck the wildest of his own sex, or the weakest and gentlest woman. His example
was closely followed by his soldiers, and for a few seconds their horses trampled
and their weapons mangled none but unresisting and screaming fugitives.

But this could not last for ever. The sheer physical impracticability of flight where
such numbers struggled, was, of itself, sufficient reason why those should turn to
defend themselves who could no longer hope to fly. They did so with their staves
and sticks, and such rude instruments as they had seized in their haste. At first
they did not aim at anything more than to parry the thrusts of the soldiery; but this
show of defence was soon changed into positive conflict, by the ill-judged haste and
ill-reasoning anger of the king. He could not brook to see the base plebeians striving
even to protect themselves from harm, and with increased impetuosity charging
them himself, he bade those who followed him do likewise. They needed no second
exhortation—they rushed on with a fury kindred to that which now filled the bosom
of their savage master, and only paused in their brutal melee, when it became
necessary, for the slaughter of more victims, that they should tear away their
pikes from the writhing bodies, to which they had already given the fatal and the
final strokes.

The madness of despair seized upon the crowd, and they grappled the spearmen
about their necks while engaged in this bloody work. Roderick, shouting the warcry
of the Goth, plunged amid the thickest of the fray, cleaving down with his
heavy-handled sword, all who stood before him. The rising hoofs of his steed hung
over the heads of the brave Gallician and his trembling sister. The madness which
filled the crowd wrought with redoubled violence upon him. With a mighty strength
he raised her above the crowd, and throwing her forward, by this means increasing

the space between the poor girl and the ferocious monarch, he stood alone, and more
ready and resolute to confront his fury. As the hoofs of the steed descended, he
leaped aside and boldly grasped the bridle with his hand. His swarthy cheek grew
purple with his rage—his coal-black eye looked the anger which the words from his
lips expressed and as Roderick beheld the look, the action, and the general manner
of the Gallician, he could not but see in him one who would not scruple, if it needed,
to strike even at the bosom of royalty itself. The thought enraged him, and rising
on his stirrups, he waved his sword above the head of poor Toro, resolved that the
descending blow should cleave him in twain.

“Ha! slave!” he exclaimed twice, as he struck. He struck heavily, but the blow
descended upon a head which it could not harm—the steel was buried in the skull
of one whom he had slain before. The agile Gallician, as he saw the meditated
stroke, swinging upon the bridle of the steed which he had grasped, threw himself
completely under the animal's neck, and out of the way of the impending blow. In
the next instant, and ere the tyrant could recover his weapon, the sharp knife of
Toro was driven up to the handle in the bosom of the plunging animal. He bounded
forward among the crowd, uttered one wild snort of fear, and struggling and plunging
with his fearless rider, he sank dead, while the populace, unable to escape,
closed around him.

“Toly! Toly!” cried the Gallician, in a piercing voice of terror.

A faint cry came to his ears in return—a suffocating cry, and he shivered, though
he rushed forward as he heard:

“Toro! oh, dear Toro!” said the grasping accents.

“Here Toly! I come—I come!”

“Come!” was the faint and scarcely intelligible word with which she replied.
He leaped with an agonizing apprehension over the heads of those who stood between
him and the spot from whence the sounds arose—he dashed aside the peering
heads of the curious and the trembling, and paused in doubt, for he knew not where
to turn. The hoarse voice of Roderick was heard at the place where his steed had
plunged and fallen; and then, once more, the faint accents came to his ears, seemingly
from the same quarter:

“Come, Toro! come!”

He rushed forward, though the enemy was there. He could see the form of Roderick
rising—he could hear his furious language—and his uplifted sword was visible
to his eyes; yet he hurried toward him. The faint voice of his sister was again heard
in a feeble scream, which at length died away in a murmur. He leaped on the dead
horse—her face was barely visible beneath it. Her eyes were closing, but a faint
light was perceptible to his beneath the shutting lids. She seemed to recognize him,
and the lids partly receded, while she looked upon him. In another instant they
were shut for ever.