It was a burning and sultry noon, when, through a small valley, skirted
by rugged and precipitous hills, at the distance of several leagues from
Granada, a horseman, in complete armour, wound his solitary way; His
mail was black and unadorned; on his vizor waved no plume. But there
was something in his carriage and mien, and the singular beauty of his
coal-black steed, which appeared to indicate a higher rank than the
absence of page and squire, and the plainness of his accoutrements,
would have denoted to a careless eye. He rode very slowly; and his
steed, with the licence of a spoiled favourite, often halted lazily in
his sultry path, as a tuft of herbage, or the bough of some overhanging
tree, offered its temptation. At length, as he thus paused, a noise was
heard in a copse that clothed the descent of a steep mountain; and the
horse started suddenly back, forcing the traveller from his reverie.
He looked mechanically upward, and beheld the figure of a man bounding
through the trees, with rapid and irregular steps. It was a form that
suited well the silence and solitude of the spot; and might have passed
for one of those stern recluses--half hermit, half soldier--who, in the
earlier crusades, fixed their wild homes amidst the sands and caves of
Palestine. The stranger supported his steps by a long staff. His hair
and beard hung long and matted over his broad shoulders. A rusted mail,
once splendid with arabesque enrichments, protected his breast; but the
loose gown--a sort of tartan, which descended below the cuirass--was
rent and tattered, and his feet bare; in his girdle was a short curved
cimiter, a knife or dagger, and a parchment roll, clasped and bound with
iron.
As the horseman gazed at this abrupt intruder on the solitude, his
frame quivered with emotion; and, raising himself to his full height, he
called aloud, “Fiend or santon--whatsoever thou art--what seekest thou
in these lonely places, far from the king thy counsels deluded, and the
city betrayed by thy false prophecies and unhallowed charms?”
“Ha!” cried Almamen, for it was indeed the Israelite; “by thy black
charger, and the tone of thy haughty voice, I know the hero of Granada.
Rather, Muza Ben Abil Gazan, why art thou absent from the last hold of
the Moorish empire?”
“Dost thou pretend to read the future, and art thou blind to the
present? Granada has capitulated to the Spaniard. Alone I have left a
land of slaves, and shall seek, in our ancestral Africa, some spot where
the footstep of the misbeliever hath not trodden.”
“The fate of one bigotry is, then, sealed,” said Almamen, gloomily; “but
that which succeeds it is yet more dark.”
“Dog!” cried Muza, couching his lance, “what art thou that thus
blasphemest?”
“A Jew!” replied Almamen, in a voice of thunder, and drawing his
cimiter: “a despised and despising Jew! Ask you more? I am the son of
a race of kings. I was the worst enemy of the Moors till I found the
Nazarene more hateful than the Moslem; and then even Muza himself was
not their more renowned champion. Come on, if thou wilt--man to man: I
defy thee”
“No, no,” muttered Muza, sinking his lance; “thy mail is rusted with
the blood of the Spaniard, and this arm cannot smite the slayer of the
Christian. Part we in peace.”
“Hold, prince!” said Almamen, in an altered voice: “is thy country the
sole thing dear to thee? Has the smile of woman never stolen beneath
thine armour? Has thy heart never beat for softer meetings than the
encounter of a foe?”
“Am I human, and a Moor?” returned Muza. “For once you divine aright;
and, could thy spells bestow on these eyes but one more sight of the
last treasure left to me on earth, I should be as credulous of thy
sorcery as Boabdil.”
“Thou lovest her still, then--this Leila?”
“Dark necromancer, hast thou read my secret? and knowest thou the name
of my beloved one? Ah! let me believe thee indeed wise, and reveal to
me the spot of earth which holds the delight of my soul! Yes,” continued
the Moor, with increased emotion, and throwing up his vizor, as if for
air--“yes; Allah forgive me! but, when all was lost at Granada, I had
still one consolation in leaving my fated birthplace: I had licence to
search for Leila; I had the hope to secure to my wanderings in distant
lands one to whose glance the eyes of the houris would be dim. But I
waste words. Tell me where is Leila, and conduct me to her feet!”
“Moslem, I will lead thee to her,” answered Almamen, gazing on the
prince with an expression of strange and fearful exultation in his dark
eyes: “I will lead thee to her-follow me. It is only yesternight that I
learned the walls that confined her; and from that hour to this have I
journeyed over mountain and desert, without rest or food.”
“Yet what is she to thee?” asked Muza, suspiciously.
“Thou shalt learn full soon. Let us on.”
So saying, Almamen sprang forward with a vigour which the excitement of
his mind supplied to the exhaustion of his body. Muza wonderingly
pushed on his charger, and endeavoured to draw his mysterious guide into
conversation: but Almamen scarcely heeded him. And when he broke from
his gloomy silence, it was but in incoherent and brief exclamations,
often in a tongue foreign to the ear of his companion. The hardy Moor,
though steeled against the superstitions of his race, less by the
philosophy of the learned than the contempt of the brave, felt an awe
gather over him as he glanced, from the giant rocks and lonely valleys,
to the unearthly aspect and glittering eyes of the reputed sorcerer; and
more than once he muttered such verses of the Koran as were esteemed by
his countrymen the counterspell to the machinations of the evil genii.
It might be an hour that they had thus journeyed together, when Almamen
paused abruptly. “I am wearied,” said he, faintly; “and, though time
presses, I fear that my strength will fail me.”
“Mount, then, behind me,” returned the Moor, after some natural
hesitation: “Jew though thou art, I will brave the contamination for the
sake of Leila.”
“Moor!” cried the Hebrew, fiercely, “the contamination would be mine.
Things of yesterday, as thy Prophet and thy creed are, thou canst not
sound the unfathomable loathing which each heart faithful to the Ancient
of Days feels for such as thou and thine.”
“Now, by the Kaaba!” said Muza, and his brow became dark, “another such
word and the hoofs of my steed shall trample the breath of blasphemy
from thy body.”
“I would defy thee to the death,” answered Almamen, disdainfully; “but
I reserve the bravest of the Moors to witness a deed worthy of the
descendant of Jephtha. But hist! I hear hoofs.”
Muza listened; and his sharp ear caught a distinct ring upon the hard
and rocky soil. He turned round and saw Almamen gliding away through
the thick underwood, until the branches concealed his form. Presently,
a curve in the path brought in view a Spanish cavalier, mounted on an
Andalusian jennet: the horseman was gaily singing one of the popular
ballads of the time; and, as it related to the feats of the Spaniards
against the Moors, Muza’s haughty blood was already stirred, and his
moustache quivered on his lip. “I will change the air,” muttered the
Moslem, grasping his lance, when, as the thought crossed him, he beheld
the Spaniard suddenly reel in his saddle and lay prostrate on the
ground. In the same instant Almamen had darted from his hiding-place,
seized the steed of the cavalier, mounted, and, ere Muza recovered from
his surprise, was by the side of the Moor.
“By what harm,” said Muza, curbing his barb, “didst thou fell the
Spaniard--seemingly without a blow?”
“As David felled Goliath--by the pebble and the sling,” answered
Almamen, carelessly. “Now, then, spur forward, if thou art eager to see
thy Leila.”
The horsemen dashed over the body of the stunned and insensible
Spaniard. Tree and mountain glided by; gradually the valley vanished,
and a thick forest loomed upon their path. Still they made on, though
the interlaced boughs and the ruggedness of the footing somewhat
obstructed their way; until, as the sun began slowly to decline, they
entered a broad and circular space, round which trees of the eldest
growth spread their motionless and shadowy boughs. In the midmost sward
was a rude and antique stone, resembling the altar of some barbarous and
departed creed. Here Almamen abruptly halted, and muttered inaudibly to
himself.
“What moves thee, dark stranger?” said the Moor; “and why dost thou
mutter and gaze on space?”
Almamen answered not, but dismounted, hung his bridle to a branch of a
scathed and riven elm, and advanced alone into the middle of the
space. “Dread and prophetic power that art within me!” said the Hebrew,
aloud,--“this, then, is the spot that, by dream and vision, thou hast
foretold me wherein to consummate and record the vow that shall sever
from the spirit the last weakness of the flesh. Night after night hast
thou brought before mine eyes, in darkness and in slumber, the solemn
solitude that I now survey. Be it so! I am prepared!”
Thus speaking, he retired for a few moments into the wood: collected
in his arms the dry leaves and withered branches which cumbered the
desolate clay, and placed the fuel upon the altar. Then, turning to the
East, and raising his hands he exclaimed, “Lo! upon this altar, once
worshipped, perchance, by the heathen savage, the last bold spirit of
thy fallen and scattered race dedicates, O Ineffable One! that precious
offering Thou didst demand from a sire of old. Accept the sacrifice!”
As the Hebrew ended his adjuration he drew a phial from his bosom, and
sprinkled a few drops upon the arid fuel. A pale blue flame suddenly
leaped up; and, as it lighted the haggard but earnest countenance of
the Israelite, Muza felt his Moorish blood congeal in his veins, and
shuddered, though he scarce knew why. Almamen, with his dagger, severed
from his head one of his long locks, and cast it upon the flame. He
watched it until it was consumed; and then, with a stifled cry, fell
upon the earth in a dead swoon. The Moor hastened to raise him; he
chafed his hands and temples; he unbuckled the vest upon his bosom; he
forgot that his comrade was a sorcerer and a Jew, so much had the agony
of that excitement moved his sympathy.
It was not till several minutes had elapsed that Almamen, with a
deep-drawn sigh, recovered from his swoon. “Ah, beloved one! bride of my
heart!” he murmured, “was it for this that thou didst commend to me
the only pledge of our youthful love? Forgive me! I restore her to the
earth, untainted by the Gentile.” He closed his eyes again, and a strong
convulsion shook his frame. It passed; and he rose as a man from a
fearful dream, composed, and almost as it were refreshed, by the terrors
he had undergone. The last glimmer of the ghastly light was dying away
upon that ancient altar, and a low wind crept sighing through the trees.
“Mount, prince,” said Almamen, calmly, but averting his eyes from the
altar; “we shall have no more delays.”
“Wilt thou not explain thy incantation?” asked Muza; “or is it, as my
reason tells me, but the mummery of a juggler?”
“Alas! alas!” answered Almamen, in a sad and altered tone, “thou wilt
soon know all.”