SANTA Fe rose before me, a camp in wood, plaster and stone, a camp
with a palace, a camp with churches. Built of a piece where no town had
stood, built that Majesty and its Court and its Army might have roofs
and walls, not tents, for so long a siege, it covered the plain, a city
raised in a night. The siege had been long as the war had been long.
Hidalgo Spain and simple Spain were gathered here in great squares
and ribbons of valor, ambition, emulation, desire of excitement and
of livelihood, and likewise, I say it, in pieces not small, herded and
brought here without any “I say yes” of their own, and to their misery.
There held full flavor of crusade, as all along the war had been
preached as a crusade. Holy Church had here her own grandees, cavaliers
and footmen. They wore cope and they wore cowl, and on occasion many
endued themselves with armor and hacked and hewed with an earthly sword.
At times there seemed as many friars and priests as soldiers. Out and in
went a great Queen and King. Their court was here. The churchmen pressed
around the Queen. Famous leaders put on or took off armor in Santa
Fe,--the Marquis of Cadiz and many others only less than he in
estimation, and one Don Gonsalvo de Cordova, whose greater fame was yet
to come. Military and shining youth came to train and fight under these.
Old captains-at-arms, gaunt and scarred, made their way thither from
afar. All were not Spaniard; many a soldier out at fortune or wishful
of fame came from France and Italy, even from England and Germany. Women
were in Santa Fe. The Queen had her ladies. Wives, sisters and daughters
of hidalgos came to visit, and the common soldiery had their mates. Nor
did there lack courtesans.
Petty merchants thronged the place. All manner of rich goods were bought
by the flushed soldiers, the high and the low. And there dwelled here a
host of those who sold entertainment,--mummers and jugglers and singers,
dwarfs and giants. Dice rattled, now there were castanets and dancing,
and now church bells seemed to rock the place. Wine flowed.
Out of the plain a league and more away sprang the two hills of Granada,
and pricked against the sky, her walls and thousand towers and noble
gates. Between them and Santa Fe stretched open and ruined ground, and
here for many a day had shocked together the Spaniard and the Moor.
But now there was no longer battle. Granada had asked and been granted
seventy days in which to envisage and accept her fate. These were
nearing the end. Lost and beaten, haggard with woe and hunger and
pestilence, the city stood over against us, above the naked plain, all
her outer gardens stripped away, bare light striking the red Alhambra
and the Citadel. When the wind swept over her and on to Santa Fe it
seemed to bring a sound of wailing and the faint and terrible odor of a
long besieged place.
I came at eve into Santa Fe, found at last an inn of the poorer sort,
ate scant supper and went to bed. Dawn came with a great ringing of
church bells.
Out of the inn, in the throbbing street, I began my search for Don
Enrique de Cerda. One told me one thing and one another, but at last I
got true direction. At noon I found him in a goodly room where he made
recovery from wounds. Now he walked and now he sat, his arm in a sling
and a bandage like a turban around his head. A page took him the word I
gave. “Juan Lepe. From the hermitage in the oak wood.” It sufficed. When
I entered he gazed, then coming to me, put his unbound hand over mine.
“Why,” he asked, “‘Juan Lepe’?”
I glanced toward the page and he dismissed him, whereupon I explained
the circumstances.
We sat by the window, and again rose for us the hermitage in the oak
wood at foot of a mountain, and the small tower that slew in ugly
fashion. Again we were young men, together in strange dangers, learning
there each other’s mettle. He had not at all forgotten.
He offered to go to Seville, as soon as Granada should fall, and find
and fight Don Pedro. I shook my head. I could have done that had I seen
it as the way.
He agreed that Don Pedro was now the minor peril. It is evil to chain
thought! In our day we think boldly of a number of things. But touch
King or touch Church--the cord is around your neck!
I said that I supposed I had been rash.
He nodded. “Yes. You were rash that day in the oak wood. Less rash, and
my bones would be lying there, under tree.” He rose and walked the room,
then came to me and put his unhurt arm about my shoulders. “Don Jayme,
we swore that day comrade love and service--and that day is now;
twilight has never come to it, the leaves of the oak wood have never
fallen! The Holy Office shall not have thee!”
“Don Enrique--”
We sat down and drank each a little wine, and fell to ways and means.
I rested Juan Lepe in the household of Don Enrique de Cerda, one figure
among many, involved in the swarm of fighting and serving men. There
was a squire who had served him long. To this man, Diego Lopez, I was
committed, with enough told to enlist his intelligence. He managed for
me in the intricate life of the place with a skill to make god Mercury
applaud. Don Enrique and I were rarely together, rarely were seen by men
to speak one to the other. But in the inner world we were together.
Days passed. We found nothing yet to do while all listening and doing at
Santa Fe were bound up in the crumbling of Granada into Spanish hands.
It seemed best to wait, watching chances.
Meantime the show glittered, and man’s strong stomach cried “Life! More
life!” It glittered at Santa Fe before Granada, and it was a dying ember
in Granada before Santa Fe. The one glittered and triumphed because the
other glittered and triumphed not. And who above held the balances even
and neither sorrowed nor was feverishly elated but went his own way
could only be seen from the Vega like a dream or a line from a poet.
For the most part the nobles and cavaliers in Santa Fe spent as though
hard gold were spiritual gold to be gathered endlessly. One might say,
“They go into a garden and shake tree each morning, which tree puts
forth again in the night.” None seemed to see as on a map laid down
Spain and the broken peasant and the digger of the gold. None seemed to
feel that toil which or soon or late they must recognize for their own
toil. Toil in Spain, toil in other and far lands whence came their rich
things, toil in Europe, Arabia and India! Apparel at Santa Fe was a
thing to marvel at. The steed no less than his rider went gorgeous. The
King and Queen, it was said, did not like this peacocking, but might not
help it.
They themselves were pouring gold into the lap of the Church. It was a
capacious lap.
Wars were general enough, God knew! But not every year could one find a
camp where the friar was as common as the archer or the pikeman, and the
prelate as the plumed chieftain.
Santa Fe was court no less than camp, court almost as though it were
Cordova. This Queen and King at least did not live at ease in palaces
while others fought their wars. North, south, east and west, through
the ten years, they had been the moving springs. It was an able King
and Queen, a politic King and a sincere and godly Queen, even a loving
Queen. If only--if only--
I had been a week and more in Santa Fe when King Boabdil surrendered
Granada. He left forever the Alhambra. Granada gates opened; he rode out
with a few of his emirs and servants to meet King Ferdinand and Queen
Isabella. The day shone bright. Spain towered, a figure dressed in gold
and red.
Santa Fe poured out to view the spectacle, and with the rest went Diego
Lopez and Juan Lepe. So great festival, so vivid the color, so echoing
the sound, so stately and various the movement! Looking at the great
strength massing there on the plain I said aloud, as I thought, to Diego
Lopez, “Now they might do some worthy great thing!”
The squire not answering, I became aware that a swirl in the throng had
pushed him from me. Still there came an answer in a deep and peculiarly
thrilling voice. “That is a true saying and a good augury!”
I learn much by voices and before I turned I knew that this was an
enthusiast’s voice, but not an enthusiast without knowledge. Whoever
spoke was strong enough, real enough. I liked the voice and felt a
certain inner movement of friendship. Some shift among the great actors,
some parting of banners, kept us suspended and staring for a moment,
then the view closed against us who could only behold by snatches.
Freed, I turned to see who had spoken and found a tall, strongly made,
white-haired man. The silver hair was too soon; he could hardly have
been ten years my elder. He had a long, fair face that might once have
been tanned and hardened by great exposure. His skin had that look, but
now the bronze was faded, and you could see that he had been born very
fair in tint. Across the high nose and cheek bones went a powdering of
freckles. His eyes were bluish-gray and I saw at once that he habitually
looked at things afar off.
He was rather poorly dressed and pushed about as I was. When the surge
again gave him footing, he spoke beside me. “‘Now that this is over,
they might do some great, worthy thing!’ Very true, friend, they might!
I take your words for good omen.” The throng shot out an arm and we were
parted. The same action brought back to me Diego Lopez. Speaking to him
later of the tall man, he said that he had noticed him, and that it was
the Italian who would go to India by way of Ocean-Sea.
King Boabdil gave up his city to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.
Over Granada, high against the bright sky, rose and floated the banners.
Cannon, the big lombards, roared. Mars’ music crashed out, then the
trumpets ceased their crying and instead spread a mighty chanting. _Te
Deum Laudamus!_
At last the massed brightness out in the plain quivered and parted. The
pageantry broke, wide curving and returning with some freedom but
with order too, into Santa Fe. I saw the Queen and the King with their
children, and the Grand Cardinal, and prelates and prelates, and the
Marquis of Cadiz, and many a grandee and famous knight. Don Enrique de
Cerda and his troop came by.
Diego Lopez and I returned to the town. I saw again the man who would
find India by a way unpassed, as far as one knew, since the world began!
He was entering a house with a friar beside him. Something came into my
mind of the convent of La Rabida.