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Leila; or, The Siege of Granada, a fiction by Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
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Book 5 - Chapter 6. The Return... |
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_ BOOK V CHAPTER VI. THE RETURN--THE RIOT--THE TREACHERY--AND THE DEATH It was the eve of the fatal day on which Granada was to be delivered to the Spaniards, and in that subterranean vault beneath the house of Almamen, before described, three elders of the Jewish persuasion were met. "Trusty and well-beloved Ximen," cried one, a wealthy and usurious merchant, with a twinkling and humid eye, and a sleek and unctuous aspect, which did not, however, suffice to disguise something fierce and crafty in his low brow and pinched lips--"trusty and well-beloved Ximen," said this Jew--"truly thou hast served us well, in yielding to thy persecuted brethren this secret shelter. Here, indeed, may the heathen search for us in vain! Verily, my veins grow warm again; and thy servant hungereth, and hath thirst." "Eat, Isaac--eat; yonder are viands prepared for thee; eat, and spare not. And thou, Elias--wilt thou not draw near the board? the wine is old and precious, and will revive thee." "Ashes and hyssop--hyssop and ashes, are food and drink for me," answered Elias, with passionate bitterness; "they have rased my house--they have burned my granaries--they have molten down my gold. I am a ruined man!" "Nay," said Ximen, who gazed at him with a malevolent eye--for so utterly had years and sorrows mixed with gall even the one kindlier sympathy he possessed, that he could not resist an inward chuckle over the very afflictions he relieved, and the very impotence he protected--"nay, Elias, thou hast wealth yet left in the seaport towns sufficient to buy up half Granada." "The Nazarene will seize it all!" cried Elias; "I see it already in his grasp!" "Nay, thinkest thou so?--and wherefore?" asked Ximen, startled into sincere, because selfish anxiety. "Mark me! Under licence of the truce, I went, last night, to the Christian camp: I had an interview with the Christian king; and when he heard my name and faith, his very beard curled with ire. 'Hound of Belial!' he roared forth, 'has not thy comrade carrion, the sorcerer Almamen, sufficiently deceived and insulted the majesty of Spain? For his sake, ye shall have no quarter. Tarry here another instant, and thy corpse shall be swinging to the winds! Go, and count over thy misgotten wealth; just census shall be taken of it; and if thou defraudest our holy impost by one piece of copper, thou shalt sup with Dives!' Such was my mission, and mine answer. I return home to see the ashes of mine house! Woe is me!" "And this we owe to Almamen, the pretended Jew!" cried Isaac, from his solitary but not idle place at the board. "I would this knife were at his false throat!" growled Elias, clutching his poniard with his long bony fingers. "No chance of that," muttered Ximen; "he will return no more to Granada. The vulture and the worm have divided his carcass between them ere this; and (he added inly with a hideous smile) his house and his gold have fallen into the hands of old childless Ximen." "This is a strange and fearful vault," said Isaac, quaffing a large goblet of the hot wine of the Vega; "here might the Witch of Endor have raised the dead. Yon door--whither doth it lead?" "Through passages none that I know of, save my master, hath trodden," answered Ximen. "I have heard that they reach even to the Alhambra. Come, worthy Elias! thy form trembles with the cold: take this wine." "Hist!" said Elias, shaking from limb to limb; "our pursuers are upon us--I hear a step!" As he spoke, the door to which Isaac had pointed slowly opened and Almamen entered the vault. Had, indeed, a new Witch of Endor conjured up the dead, the apparition would not more have startled and appalled that goodly trio. Elias, griping his knife, retreated to the farthest end of the vault. Isaac dropped the goblet he was about to drain, and fell upon his knees. Ximen, alone, growing, if possible, a shade more ghastly--retained something of self-possession, as he muttered to himself--"He lives! and his gold is not mine! Curse him!" Seemingly unconscious of the strange guests his sanctuary shrouded, Almamen stalked on, like a man walking in his sleep. Ximen roused himself--softly unbarred the door which admitted to the upper apartments, and motioned to his comrades to avail themselves of the opening, but as Isaac--the first to accept the hint--crept across, Almamen fixed upon him his terrible eye, and, appearing suddenly to awake to consciousness, shouted out, "Thou miscreant, Ximen! whom hast thou admitted to the secrets of thy lord? Close the door--these men must die!" "Mighty master!" said Ximen, calmly, "is thy servant to blame that he believed the rumour that declared thy death? These men are of our holy faith, whom I have snatched from the violence of the sacrilegious and maddened mob. No spot but this seemed safe from the popular frenzy." "Are ye Jews?" said Almamen. "Ah, yes! I know ye now--things of the market-place and bazaar'. Oh, ye are Jews, indeed! Go, go! Leave me!" Waiting no further licence, the three vanished; but, ere he quitted the vault, Elias turned back his scowling countenance on Almamen (who had sunk again into an absorbed meditation) with a glance of vindictive ire--Almamen was alone. In less than a quarter of an hour Ximen returned to seek his master; but the place was again deserted. It was midnight in the streets of Granada--midnight, but not repose. The multitude, roused into one of their paroyxsms of wrath and sorrow, by the reflection that the morrow was indeed the day of their subjection to the Christian foe, poured forth through the streets to the number of twenty thousand. It was a wild and stormy night; those formidable gusts of wind, which sometimes sweep in sudden winter from the snows of the Sierra Nevada, howled through the tossing groves, and along the winding streets. But the tempest seemed to heighten, as if by the sympathy of the elements, the popular storm and whirlwind. Brandishing arms and torches, and gaunt with hunger, the dark forms of the frantic Moors seemed like ghouls or spectres, rather than mortal men; as, apparently without an object, save that of venting their own disquietude, or exciting the fears of earth, they swept through the desolate city. In the broad space of the Vivarrambla the crowd halted, irresolute in all else, but resolved at least that something for Granada should yet be done. They were for the most armed in their Moorish fashion; but they were wholly without leaders: not a noble, a magistrate, an officer, would have dreamed of the hopeless enterprise of violating the truce with Ferdinand. It was a mere popular tumult--the madness of a mob;--but not the less formidable, for it was an Eastern mob, and a mob with sword and shaft, with buckler and mail--the mob by which oriental empires have been built and overthrown! There, in the splendid space that had witnessed the games and tournaments of that Arab and African chivalry--there, where for many a lustrum kings had reviewed devoted and conquering armies--assembled those desperate men; the loud winds agitating their tossing torches that struggled against the moonless night. "Let us storm the Alhambra!" cried one of the band: "let us seize Boabdil, and place him in the midst of us; let us rush against the Christians, buried in their proud repose!" "Lelilies, Lelilies!--the Keys and the Crescent!" shouted the mob. The shout died: and at the verge of the space was suddenly heard a once familiar and ever-thrilling voice. The Moors who heard it turned round in amaze and awe; and beheld, raised upon the stone upon which the criers or heralds had been wont to utter the royal proclamations, the form of Almamen, the santon, whom they had deemed already with the dead. "Moors and people of Granada!" he said, in a solemn but hollow voice, "I am with ye still. Your monarch and your heroes have deserted ye, but I am with ye to the last! Go not to the Alhambra: the fort is impenetrable--the guard faithful. Night will be wasted, and day bring upon you the Christian army. March to the gates; pour along the Vega; descend at once upon the foe!" He spoke, and drew forth his sabre; it gleamed in the torchlight--the Moors bowed their heads in fanatic reverence--the santon sprang from the stone, and passed into the centre of the crowd. Then, once more, arose joyful shouts. The multitude had found a leader worthy of their enthusiasm; and in regular order, they formed themselves rapidly, and swept down the narrow streets. Swelled by several scattered groups of desultory marauders (the ruffians and refuse of the city), the infidel numbers were now but a few furlongs from the great gate, whence they had been wont to issue on the foe. And then, perhaps, had the Moors passed these gates and reached the Christian encampment, lulled, as it was, in security and sleep, that wild army of twenty thousand desperate men might have saved Granada; and Spain might at this day possess the only civilised empire which the faith of Mohammed ever founded. But the evil star of Boabdil prevailed. The news of the insurrection in the city reached him. Two aged men from the lower city arrived at the Alhambra--demanded and obtained an audience; and the effect of that interview was instantaneous upon Boabdil. In the popular frenzy he saw only a justifiable excuse for the Christian king to break the conditions of the treaty, rase the city, and exterminate the inhabitants. Touched by a generous compassion for his subjects, and actuated no less by a high sense of kingly honor, which led him to preserve a truce solemnly sworn to, he once more mounted his cream-coloured charger, with the two elders who had sought him by his side; and, at the head of his guard, rode from the Alhambra. The sound of his trumpets, the tramp of his steeds, the voice of his heralds, simultaneously reached the multitude; and, ere they had leisure to decide their course, the king was in the midst of them. "What madness is this, O my people?" cried Boabdil, spurring into the midst of the throng,--"whither would ye go?" "Against the Christian!--against the Goth!" shouted a thousand voices. "Lead us on! The santon is risen from the dead, and will ride by thy right hand!" "Alas!" resumed the king, "ye would march against the Christian king! Remember that our hostages are in his power: remember that he will desire no better excuse to level Granada with the dust, and put you and your children to the sword. We have made such treaty as never yet was made between foe and foe. Your lives, laws, wealth--all are saved. Nothing is lost, save the crown of Boabdil. I am the only sufferer. So be it. My evil star brought on you these evil destinies: without me, you may revive, and be once more a nation. Yield to fate to-day, and you may grasp her proudest awards to-morrow. To succumb is not to be subdued. But go forth against the Christians, and if ye win one battle, it is but to incur a more terrible war; if you lose, it is not honourable capitulation, but certain extermination, to which you rush! Be persuaded, and listen once again to your king." The crowd were moved, were softened, were half-convinced. They turned, in silence, towards their santon; and Almamen did not shrink from the appeal; but stood forth, confronting the king. "King of Granada!" he cried aloud, "behold thy friend--thy prophet! Lo! I assure you victory!" "Hold!" interrupted Boabdil; "thou hast deceived and betrayed me too long! Moors! know ye this pretended santon? He is of no Moslem creed. He is a hound of Israel who would sell you to the best bidder. Slay him!" "Ha!" cried Almamen, "and who is my accuser?" "Thy servant-behold him!" At these words the royal guards lifted their torches, and the glare fell redly on the death-like features of Ximen. "Light of the world! there be other Jews that know him," said the traitor. "Will ye suffer a Jew to lead ye, O race of the Prophet?" cried the king. The crowd stood confused and bewildered. Almamen felt his hour was come; he remained silent, his arms folded, his brow erect. "Be there any of the tribes of Moisa amongst the crowd?" cried Boabdil, pursuing his advantage; "if so, let them approach and testify what they know." Forth came--not from the crowd, but from amongst Boabdil's train, a well-known Israelite. "We disown this man of blood and fraud," said Elias, bowing to the earth; "but he was of our creed." "Speak, false santon! art thou dumb?" cried the king. "A curse light on thee, dull fool!" cried Almamen, fiercely. "What matters who the instrument that would have restored to thee thy throne? Yes! I, who have ruled thy councils, who have led thine armies, I am of the race of Joshua and of Samuel--and the Lord of Hosts is the God of Almamen!" A shudder ran through that mighty multitude: but the looks, the mien, and the voice of the man awed them, and not a weapon was raised against him. He might, even then, have passed scathless through the crowd; he might have borne to other climes his burning passions and his torturing woes: but his care for life was past; he desired but to curse his dupes, and to die. He paused, looked round and burst into a laugh of such bitter and haughty scorn, as the tempted of earth may hear in the halls below from the lips of Eblis. "Yes," he exclaimed, "such I am! I have been your idol and your lord. I may be your victim, but in death I am your vanquisher. Christian and Moslem alike my foe, I would have trampled upon both. But the Christian, wiser than you, gave me smooth words; and I would have sold ye to his power; wickeder than you, he deceived me; and I would have crushed him that I might have continued to deceive and rule the puppets that ye call your chiefs. But they for whom I toiled, and laboured, and sinned--for whom I surrendered peace and ease, yea, and a daughter's person and a daughter's blood--they have betrayed me to your hands, and the Curse of Old rests with them evermore--Amen! The disguise is rent: Almamen, the santon, is the son of Issachar the Jew!" More might he have said, but the spell was broken. With a ferocious yell, those living waves of the multitude rushed over the stern fanatic; six cimiters passed through him, and he fell not: at the seventh he was a corpse. Trodden in the clay--then whirled aloft--limb torn from limb,--ere a man could have drawn breath nine times, scarce a vestige of the human form was left to the mangled and bloody clay. One victim sufficed to slake the wrath of the crowd. They gathered like wild beasts whose hunger is appeased, around their monarch, who in vain had endeavored to stay their summary revenge, and who now, pale and breathless, shrank from the passions he had excited. He faltered forth a few words of remonstrance and exhortation, turned the head of his steed, and took his way to his palace. The crowd dispersed, but not yet to their homes. The crime of Almamen worked against his whole race. Some rushed to the Jews' quarter, which they set on fire; others to the lonely mansion of Almamen. Ximen, on quitting the king, had been before the mob. Not anticipating such an effect of the popular rage, he had hastened to the house, which he now deemed at length his own. He had just reached the treasury of his dead lord--he had just feasted his eyes on the massive ingots and glittering gems; in the lust of his heart he had just cried aloud, "And these are mine!" when he heard the roar of the mob below the wall,--when he saw the glare of their torches against the casement. It was in vain that he shrieked aloud, "I am the man that exposed the Jew!" the wild wind scattered his words over a deafened audience. Driven from his chamber by the smoke and flame, afraid to venture forth amongst the crowd, the miser loaded himself with the most precious of the store: he descended the steps, he bent his way to the secret vault, when suddenly the floor, pierced by the flames, crashed under him, and the fire rushed up in a fiercer and more rapid volume, as the death-shriek broke through that lurid shroud. Such were the principal events of the last night of the Moorish dynasty in Granada. _ |
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