"And the days darken round me, and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds."
The days passed on until October. Fernando saw no more of Catalina,
though he still laboured in her neighbourhood; and no incidents broke
his life of toil, till one day the Portuguese were sent for to the
presence of the prime minister. It was part of the humiliation laid
upon him that he was now and then, forced to appear in the midst of the
splendid court in his slave's dress, his hands stained with toil and
fettered, as they always were, except when actually engaged in working.
But spite of all this, and though his stiff limbs moved slowly and
feebly, there was no air of embarrassment, no consciousness of
degradation. He walked up the great hall, and looked Lazurac firmly in
the face, bowing to him with the courtesy of a superior, neither
shrinking nor defiant.
Lazurac burst out in sudden accents of fury.
"Now, slave," he cried; "now you are wholly in our power. What is to
prevent us from flaying you alive, beating you to death, in revenge for
the perfidy of your countrymen? And now no fleets will sail to deliver
you; we need fear no more from the vengeance of Portugal."
"And why?" said Fernando, as soon as Lazurac paused.
The Moor came and stood over him, his dark face convulsed with rage, a
strange contrast, with his splendid dress and infuriated aspect, to his
prisoner, whose clear calm eyes were raised to his without fear or
falter.
"Because the king, your brother, has died while shilly-shallying over
his intentions of freeing you. Here is the news of his death, and no
word of keeping the treaty. Ha! I have moved you now!"
For Fernando staggered, and would have fallen but for Lazurac's rough
grasp.
"My brother--my brother!" was all he could utter.
"Ay, there is a letter for you also; but the news is enough for you,
rest content."
"I pray you give me the letter?" said Fernando, faintly.
Lazurac laughed scornfully.
"Have you no mercy--no pity?" cried Fernando. "Offer me any insult you
will, but _give_ me the letter?"
It was the first time his calm dignity had been moved to intreaty or
anger; but now he flashed out suddenly--
"You do not dare to withhold it from me? Nay, nay, I would not anger
you; only give me the letter?"
Lazurac drew out the letter, with Enrique's writing above the great
black seal on the cover, and held it before his eyes.
"Kneel to me then; kneel to your master, and beg him of his favour to
grant you your boon."
Fernando drew himself up for a moment, while the other Portuguese rushed
forward and threw themselves on their knees.
"Give us the letter," they cried; "but spare this insult to our prince."
"Rise, friends," said Fernando, who had regained his self-control. "The
shame lies not with me; and to my Master I kneel;" and he knelt, and for
a moment raised his eyes to Heaven.
Lazurac flung him the letter, with a sense of gratified spite and
hatred, and the prisoners were suffered to withdraw. What mattered the
scene that had passed to Fernando; what mattered insult and hardship,
compared to the sorrow and anguish of heart of reading of the beloved
brother's illness and death! Tears such as all his suffering had never
wrong from him flowed fast as he read, and for the first time he was
unable to comfort and support his followers, who all knew that a much
blacker cloud had fallen on them, and that their chances of deliverance
were lessened by this blow.
"My son," said Father Jose, tenderly, "our beloved king suffered much
grief and anxiety. We may think of him now in the rest of Paradise."
"Grief and anxiety which I helped to cause," sighed Fernando.
"Doubtless it is well; but now, submission is hard."
And when the prince was thus cast down, the spirits of the whole party
failed utterly, and one after another fell into disgrace with their
tyrants, and suffered accordingly. At last, after a second night of
tears and anguish, Fernando regained the mastery over himself, and
before they started on their day of toil he called his friends around
him, and thus spoke--
"My friends, I think we must put hope away. It was my dear brother's
earnest wish to free us by ransom, by force, or even by the yielding of
the Christian city, for which, for my part, I think our poor lives were
a bad exchange. But what he could not do, our bereaved country in its
hour of trial will fail to accomplish. So pardon me my share in your
sorrows, my rashness first, and now that I cannot bring myself to beg
our freedom at the price they ask. Could I but bear it all--could I but
make in our own land such a home and rest as you deserve! But there
remaineth a rest for us all, where my brother is gone before. So let us
pray, my friends, that the will of the Lord may be perfectly fulfilled
in us; let us in utter submission find peace at last. For there is an
end to our trial, and a home from which we shall not be shut out."
And so Fernando wholly, and the others as far as they might, gave up the
restless hope of freedom, and set themselves to bear the suffering of
each day as it passed, not looking to the morrow. And so there came to
them in the midst of their toiling, driven lives, some still and
peaceful moments, some inward consolations that carried them through.
Their lives were very monotonous, chiefly varied by the sickness of one
or other, often of Fernando himself, which held them solitary prisoners
in the miserable, airless lodging where they dwelt, or by a different
overlooker at their toil, or a change in the part of the gardens where
they pursued it. Now and then, too, they saw their old friend the
Majorcan merchant, who brought them little comforts; on which occasions
Fernando's appetite was often found to fail, and he would beg some other
to take his share.
They had very little opportunity of intercourse with the other slaves,
by whom a chance word or look from Fernando was highly valued; but since
the Moors were not all fiends incarnate, Fernando's faultless life and
ready performance of all that was allotted to him won him some favour
from his masters, and with some of them a little courteous intercourse.
Their lot, with its toil, squalor, and hardship, was bad indeed, but
endurable when not made worse by wilful cruelties.
Soon after the news of the king's death, Fernando and Manoel, alone of
their party, were digging out the ground for some new fountains in the
ladies' garden. Their overseer was a certain Hassan, the mildest of his
race, and he was superintending the other prisoners at a little
distance, sitting cross-legged on a bank, smoking his hookah.
Princess Zarah and her maidens were seated at some distance, watching
the alterations. Manoel worked slowly, and paused often for breath.
"Rest, now," said the prince, "there is nothing to do here but what I
can finish easily."
"I would gladly save your highness from doing one stroke of it," said
Manoel, wearily; "but sometimes I think, sir, my sorrows are nearly
over."
"If so, dear lad," said Fernando, with a smile, "the rest of us might
envy you; sorely, as I, at least, should miss your face."
"But for you, my lord, I could not have held out so long," said Manoel,
as, weak and faint, he sank down on the ground. The prince raised him
in his arms, and looked round for help.
"Princess! princess!" said Leila, who was stringing beads for her
mistress, "one of the slaves is fainting."
"It was very stupid of Hassan not to send men who can do their work. He
should whip them when they are idle," said Zarah, indolently.
"Oh, princess! let me take him water; he will die!" cried Leila.
"If you like," said Zarah, putting a sweetmeat between her lips.
Leila seized a jar of water, and some fruit and bread, and came towards
the prisoners. She looked frightened and shy; but held out the jar of
water to Fernando, who bathed Manoel's face with it.
"He does not revive," said the girl.
"Yes! his eyes open!--Manoel, dear friend!"
But as Fernando looked in his face, he saw that the last hour was come,
and Father Jose far away on the other side of the gardens. He laid
Manoel down, with his head on a heap of turf, and kneeling beside him,
made the sign of the cross over him, and repeated the Pater Noster,
while a smile of peace passed over the face of the dying boy.
Beside them knelt Leila, brought there by her sweet impulse of pity.
She clasped the cross still hanging within her dress, and the
long-forgotten words of the prayer taught in her childhood rose to her
lips. The words were hardly said, Fernando bent down to kiss Manoel's
brow, when the end came, and with a long, gasping sigh, _one_ prisoner
was free.
"_He_ is at rest," said Fernando, in thankful accents, though his lips
quivered as he thought how much he should miss the special love which
this poor boy had borne him.
Leila stood trembling beside him, hardly knowing that she looked on
death, and Hassan, seeing something amiss, came hurrying down to them,
and not unkindly summoned some of the other Portuguese to bear away
their comrade, allowing Fernando to follow, while he called other slaves
to finish their work.
Leila was surrounded by her companions, who pressed her with a thousand
frivolous questions, more amused at the exciting incident than horrified
at it.
Leila shrank away from them, and as soon as she found herself alone, sat
down under a tree and tried to think--tried to remember.
Long ago a strange pang had shot through her, when she had recognised in
the toiling slaves her fellow-Christians. And the sight of Fernando had
awakened in her a whole world of recollections; had made her suddenly
feel, as well as know, that she was not of kin to the soft luxurious
life around her--her kindred were these wretched toiling slaves--her
faith should be their faith--in their sorrows she, too, ought to suffer.
Leila could not have clearly explained this to herself; she could only
feel the strong impulse that twice had carried her to the aid of a
Christian slave in distress. And now an odd sort of instinctive respect
for the prince, who had been the hero of her babyhood, rose up in her
mind. She had been taught but little religion to put in the place of
the forgotten faith she had learnt with her sister so long ago; and the
only result of being a Christian that could occur to her was miserable
slavery. A great terror came over her, she tried to wake as from a
dream, and ran back hurriedly to her companions.