At the first blush it seemed as though we were destined to fare every bit as badly as we merited. The last glow was dying out of the sky behind us, and a grumbling thunderstorm was nursing its wrath for us ahead. But our good luck came to our rescue, and found us a city of refuge:—the little hamlet of Montamarta, which was ambushed in a dip of the road.{138}
By this time we had learned not to be too dainty about our quarters; yet the Parador at Montamarta was so very unassuming that at first we gave it the go-by; and the landlord was an unshaven ruffian who seemed fully capable of the blackest crimes. But the dingy little den to which he ushered us was full of familiar faces:—Velasquez’ jolly “Topers” beaming over their wine-cups, the matchless “Booby of Cória,” and wild ragged goatherds and vine dressers, with whom Salvator Rosa might have joined in “painting jabeques.”[18] Rough as they looked, they were all in the mildest of humours. It was a sight to see our murderous-looking landlord truculently dandling his infant; while the mother crouched upon the great hearth in the centre, supervising a multitude of pipkins which were simmering in the glowing embers of the fire. “It is good, isn’t it?” she asked eagerly, as we essayed her stew: and she watched every mouthful down our throats with affectionate solicitude to be sure that we did justice to our meal. The kitchen was both dining and sitting-room, and our garret was shared with the children, but our hosts were determined to make us comfortable,{139} and we forgot their deficiencies in their zeal. There is no gilded luxury in a Parador, but at least we felt sure we were welcome. One barely obtains toleration in a Metropole or a Grand.
With dawn we were again on our journey, dodging our way past the cavalcade of country-folk who were pouring along to market from the various villages around. It was an easy stage. We had nearly made port yester even. Within a few miles we were at Zamora gates.
In our Protestant ignorance of times and seasons we were unaware that the day was the festival of Corpus Christi; consequently the apparition of a fifteen-foot pasteboard giant lurching deviously down the main thoroughfare occasioned us a little mild bewilderment. This wandering ogre, however, was fully entitled to liberty. All respectable Spanish cities retain a team of giants as part of their ordinary municipal outfit, and Corpus Christi day is the great occasion for parading them. The tourist should always arrange to spend that festival in some good old-established city where the choicest breeds are preserved.
Zamora itself is quite old enough for the purpose. Its fine old Romanesque cathedral was built by no less a person than the Bishop Don{140} Hieronymo, “that good one with the shaven crown,” who so ably represented the Church militant among the companions of the Cid. But long before his day the old frontier fortress had made itself a name by many a desperate resistance to the Moor, and the boast that “Zamora was not won in an hour,” still clings to the old dismantled ramparts which were once its justification.[19]
Moreover, the story of the greatest leaguer of all, is it not written in the book of the Chronicle of the Cid, and as famous in Spanish annals as the siege of Troy? For it came to pass that in the eleventh century King Fernando the Great,[20] on his deathbed, divided his kingdoms among his children; and the immediate and obvious consequence was a five-cornered family duel which set all the said kingdoms by the ears. Sancho of Castile had quickly dispossessed his brothers Garcia and Alfonso of Galicia and Leon; and his sister Elvira had yielded to him her town of Toro. Only Urraca his elder sister still held her patrimony;{141} and Zamora was too important a pledge to be left in any hands but his own.
