Opposite the Baths of Fitero, on a rocky, precipitous eminence, at whose
base flows the river Alhama, there may be seen to this day the abandoned
ruins of a Moorish castle celebrated in the glorious memories of the
Reconquest as having been the theatre of great and famous exploits, as
well on the part of the defenders as of those who valiantly nailed to
its parapets the standard of the Cross.
Of the walls there remain only some scattered ruins; the stones of the
watch-tower have fallen one above another into the moat, filling it to
the top; in the court-of-arms grow briers and patches of yellow mustard;
in whatever direction you look, you see only broken arches, blackened
and crumbling blocks of stone; here a section of the barbican in whose
fissures springs the ivy, there a round tower, standing yet, as by a
miracle; further on, pillars of cement with the iron rings which
supported the drawbridge.
During my stay at the Baths, partly for exercise, which I was assured
would be conducive to my health, and partly from curiosity, I strolled
every afternoon along the rough path that leads to the ruins of the Arab
fortress. There I passed hours and hours, closely scanning the ground in
the hope of discovering some fragments of armor, beating the walls to
find out whether they were hollow and might be the hiding place of
treasure, and investigating all the nooks and crannies with the idea of
hitting upon the entrance to some of those underground cells which are
believed to exist in all Moorish castles.
My diligent search was, after all, a fruitless one.
But yet, one afternoon, when I had quite despaired of discovering
anything new and curious on the rocky height crowned by the castle and
had given up the climb, limiting my walk to the banks of the river which
flows by its foot, I saw, as I walked along by the stream, a sort of
gaping hole in the living rock, half hidden by thickly-leaved bushes.
Not without a little tremor, I parted the branches covering the entrance
to what seemed a natural cave, but what I perceived, after advancing a
few steps, was a subterranean vault narrowing to the mouth. Not being
able to penetrate to the end, which was lost in darkness, I confined
myself to observing attentively the peculiarities of the arch and of the
pavement that appeared to me to rise in great stairs toward the height
on which stood the castle I have mentioned, and in whose ruins I then
remembered having seen a closed-up trap door. Doubtless I had discovered
one of those secret passages so common in the fortifications of that
epoch, serving for covert sallies, or for bringing, in state of siege,
water from the river which flows hard by.
That I might be more sure of the truth of my inferences, after I had
come out from the cave by the same way in which I had entered, I fell
into conversation with a workman who was pruning some vines in that
rough region and whom I accosted under pretence of asking a light for my
cigarette.
We talked of various matters: the medicinal properties of the waters of
Fitero; the last harvest and the next; the women of Navarre and the
cultivation of vines; indeed, we talked of everything which occurred to
the sociable body before we spoke of the cave, the object of my
curiosity.
When, at last, the conversation had reached this point, I asked him if
he knew of any one who had gone through it, and seen the other end.
“Gone through the cave of the Moor’s Daughter!” he
[Illustration: A MOUNTAIN GROTTO]
repeated, astonished at hearing such a question. “Who would dare? Do you
not know that from this cave there comes out, every night, _a ghost_?”
“A ghost!” I exclaimed, smiling. “Whose ghost?”
“The ghost of the daughter of a Moorish chief, she who yet wanders
mourning about these places and is seen every night coming out of this
cave, robed in white, and filling at the river a water-jar.”
Through this good fellow I learned that there was a tradition clinging
to this Arab castle and the vault which I believed to communicate with
it. And as I am a most willing hearer of all these legends, especially
from the lips of the neighbor-folk, I begged him to relate it to me, and
so he did, almost in the very words in which I in turn am going to
relate it to my readers.