THE CONFLAGRATION.--THE MAJESTY OF AN INDIVIDUAL PASSION IN THE MIDST OF
HOSTILE THOUSANDS.
It was the eve of a great and general assault upon Granada, deliberately
planned by the chiefs of the Christian army. The Spanish camp (the most
gorgeous Christendom had ever known) gradually grew calm and hushed. The
shades deepened--the stars burned forth more serene and clear. Bright,
in that azure air, streamed the silken tents of the court, blazoned with
heraldic devices, and crowned by gaudy banners, which, filled by a brisk
and murmuring wind from the mountains, flaunted gaily on their gilded
staves. In the centre of the camp rose the pavilion of the queen--a
palace in itself. Lances made its columns; brocade and painted arras its
walls; and the space covered by its numerous compartments would have
contained the halls and outworks of an ordinary castle. The pomp of that
camp realised the wildest dreams of Gothic, coupled with Oriental
splendour; something worthy of a Tasso to have imagined, or a Beckford to
create. Nor was the exceeding costliness of the more courtly tents
lessened in effect by those of the soldiery in the outskirts, many of
which were built from boughs, still retaining their leaves--savage and
picturesque huts;--as if, realising old legends, wild men of the woods
had taken up the cross, and followed the Christian warriors against the
swarthy followers of Termagaunt and Mahound. There, then, extended that
mighty camp in profound repose, as the midnight threw deeper and longer
shadows over the sward from the tented avenues and canvas streets. It
was at that hour that Isabel, in the most private recess of her pavilion,
was employed in prayer for the safety of the king, and the issue of the
Sacred War. Kneeling before the altar of that warlike oratory, her
spirit became rapt and absorbed from earth in the intensity of her
devotions; and in the whole camp (save the sentries), the eyes of that
pious queen were, perhaps, the only ones unclosed. All was profoundly
still; her guards, her attendants, were gone to rest; and the, tread of
the sentinel, without that immense pavilion, was not heard through the
silken walls.
It was then that Isabel suddenly felt a strong grasp upon her shoulder,
as she still knelt by the altar. A faint shriek burst from her lips; she
turned, and the broad curved knife of an eastern warrior gleamed close
before her eyes.
"Hush! utter a cry, breathe more loudly than thy wont, and, queen though
thou art, in the centre of swarming thousands, thou diest!"
Such were the words that reached the ear of the royal Castilian,
whispered by a man of stern and commanding, though haggard aspect.
"What is thy purpose? wouldst thou murder me?" said the queen, trembling,
perhaps for the first time, before a mortal presence.
"Thy life is safe, if thou strivest not to delude or to deceive me. Our
time is short--answer me. I am Almamen, the Hebrew. Where is the
hostage rendered to thy hands? I claim my child. She is with thee--I
know it. In what corner of thy camp?"
"Rude stranger!" said Isabel, recovering somewhat from her alarm,--"thy
daughter is removed, I trust for ever, from thine impious reach. She is
not within the camp."
"Lie not, Queen of Castile," said Almamen, raising his knife; "for days
and weeks I have tracked thy steps, followed thy march, haunted even thy
slumbers, though men of mail stood as guards around them; and I know that
my daughter has been with thee. Think not I brave this danger without
resolves the most fierce and dread. Answer me, where is my child?"
"Many days since," said Isabel, awed, despite herself, by her strange
position,--"thy daughter left the camp for the house of God. It was her
own desire. The Saviour hath received her into His fold."
Had a thousand lances pierced his heart, the vigour and energy of life
could scarce more suddenly have deserted Almamen. The rigid muscles of
his countenance relaxed at once, from resolve and menace, into
unutterable horror, anguish, and despair. He recoiled several steps; his
knees trembled violently; he seemed stunned by a death-blow. Isabel, the
boldest and haughtiest of her sex, seized that moment of reprieve; she
sprang forward, darted through the draperies into the apartments occupied
by her train, and, in a moment, the pavilion resounded with her cries for
aid. The sentinels were aroused; retainers sprang from their pillows;
they heard the cause of the alarm; they made to the spot; when, ere they
reached its partition of silk, a vivid and startling blaze burst forth
upon them. The tent was on fire. The materials fed the flame like
magic. Some of the guards had yet the courage to dash forward; but the
smoke and the glare drove them back, blinded and dizzy. Isabel herself
had scarcely time for escape, so rapid was the conflagration. Alarmed
for her husband, she rushed to his tent--to find him already awakened by
the noise, and issuing from its entrance, his drawn sword in his hand.
The wind, which had a few minutes before but curled the triumphant
banners, now circulated the destroying flame. It spread from tent to
tent, almost as a flash of lightning that shoots along neighbouring
clouds. The camp was in one continued blaze, ere a man could dream of
checking the conflagration.
Not waiting to hear the confused tale of his royal consort, Ferdinand,
exclaiming, "The Moors have done this--they will be on us!" ordered the
drums to beat and the trumpets to sound, and hastened in person, wrapped
merely in his long mantle, to alarm his chiefs. While that well-
disciplined and veteran army, fearing every moment the rally of the foe,
endeavoured rapidly to form themselves into some kind of order, the flame
continued to spread till the whole heavens were illumined. By its light,
cuirass and helmet glowed, as in the furnace, and the armed men seemed
rather like life-like and lurid meteors than human forms. The city of
Granada was brought near to them by the intensity of the glow; and, as a
detachment of cavalry spurred from the camp to meet the anticipated
surprise of the Paynims, they saw, upon the walls and roofs of Granada,
the Moslems clustering and their spears gleaming. But, equally amazed
with the Christians, and equally suspicious of craft and design, the
Moors did not issue from their gates. Meanwhile the conflagration, as
rapid to die as to begin, grew fitful and feeble; and the night seemed to
fall with a melancholy darkness over the ruin of that silken city.
Ferdinand summoned his council. He had now perceived it was no ambush of
the Moors. The account of Isabel, which, at last, he comprehended; the
strange and almost miraculous manner in which Almamen had baffled his
guards, and penetrated to the royal tent; might have aroused his Gothic
superstition, while it relieved his more earthly apprehensions, if he had
not remembered the singular, but far from supernatural dexterity with
which Eastern warriors and even robbers continued then, as now, to elude
the most vigilant precautions and baffle the most wakeful guards; and it
was evident that the fire which burned the camp of an army had been
kindled merely to gratify the revenge, or favour the escape of an
individual. Shaking, therefore, from his kingly spirit the thrill of
superstitious awe that the greatness of the disaster, when associated
with the name of a sorcerer, at first occasioned, he resolved to make
advantage out of misfortune itself. The excitement, the wrath of the
troops, produced the temper most fit for action.
"And Heaven," said the King of Spain to his knights and chiefs, as they
assembled round him, "has, in this conflagration, announced to the
warriors of the Cross, that henceforth their camp shall be the palaces of
Granada! Woe to the Moslem with to-morrow's sun!"
Arms clanged, and swords leaped from their sheaths, as the Christian
knights echoed the anathema--"WOE TO THE MOSLEM!"