Physically I was not alone; for there were faded and strident tourists in the marble-paved court of the Alberca, whom I fain would have had stopped outside and put into appropriate costume for fairyland; but spiritually I had the place to myself.
[pg 310] The little glittering fish, like tropical flowers under green glass, flashed towards me through the beryl water, just as ancestor fish had flashed when jewelled hands of harem beauties crumbled cake into the gleaming tank. My mother had told me a legend, that fair favourites of banished sultans prayed to return after death to the Alhambra, in the bronze and gold, rose and purple forms of these fish of the Alberca; and now I half believed the story. Where—since Mahomet grants no heaven to women—could they be happier than here? Floating ever under their roof of emerald, did they think themselves more fortunate than their husbands, lovers, and brothers permitted to rest within the Alhambra walls in the guise of martens wailing shrilly for days that might not come again?
Dreaming, I passed into the Court of Lions, where I and the twelve quaint, stone guardians of the place stared at one another across a few feet of marble pavement that measured centuries. Each prim beast, beautiful because of his crude hideousness differing from his fellows; each with a different story to tell if he would. Which one remembered that night when the brave Abencerrages faced death, there in the hall to the right, where the fountain kept ominous stains of brown? Which had the seeing eye in these fallen times, to watch when the ghost of those noble Moors passed by silent and sad in the moonlight? Upon which had blood-drops spattered when the boy princes died for jealous Fatima's pleasure? Which had known the touch of Morayma's little hand or lovely Galiana's?
I asked the questions; yet the deep answering silence of the court, and of all this hidden, secret, fairy palace seemed to say so much that it was not like silence, but reserve.
“The Alhambra is music and colour and knowledge,” I said to the lions. “When I am gone I shall shut my eyes and hear as well as see it; hear the magic music of the silence, played on silver lutes of Moors, and tinkling fountains, a siren's song to draw me back again; and I shall know and feel things which I've never been able to think out quite clearly before.”
[pg 311] Would Monica come here? I wondered. No face more lovely than hers had ever looked down from those latticed windows supported by pillars delicate as a child's white arm. If I could but see her face now! Not seeing it, I knew that no place, however beautiful, could be perfect for me. Shadows of sorrow, of separation, would stand out the blacker against the sunlit, jewelled walls of the fairy palace; and even happiness must sing in minor notes here, lest it strike out a discord in the tragic poem of the Alhambra. No wonder, in losing their crown jewel, the Moors lost hope, and with it all the art and science which had set them far above their Christian rivals! No wonder they plunged, despairing, into the deserts they had left, mingling among savage races as some bright spring mingles with a dark subterranean river, never to glitter in the light again.
But none of my day dreams cheated me into losing count of time.
If my messenger were true, soon Monica would be in one of the patios of Carmona's palace, looking up at the Alhambra towers. “The middle window as you go into the Hall of the Ambassadors,” I repeated, and found my way back through the court of the Alberca; for you do not need to know the Alhambra to find your way from sala to sala, seen a hundred times in imagination.
So beautiful had I guessed that room above all others, that I had not expected to be surprised; yet I was surprised, and oddly excited, for supreme beauty is always exciting to the Latin mind. A vast bower of jewels, and old point-lace embroidered with tarnished gold threads and yellowing pearls, it seemed; its portals lace-curtained too; rich hanging folds of lace and fringe, like the lifted drapery of a sultan's tent, supported on delicate poles of polished ivory.
Behind me was the beryl block of the fish-pond, set in silver instead of marble by the sunshine in the court. Before me, across the pink-jewelled dusk of the Sala de los Ambajadores, a blue [pg 312]and green picture of sky and mountains was framed by lace and precious stones.