It was sunset as we turned away. The long mass of San Marcos stood boldly against the red glow of the sky. The horizon was outlined by the blue mountains of Asturias. With our imagination filled with the old days when pilgrims flocked here from England, from the forests of Germany, from the Po and the Danube, suddenly over the ancient bridge rode a troop of cavaliers on prancing steeds, in cloaks and plumed hats. The kindly blessed illusion hid the fact that our pilgrim-knights were sturdy peasants in the national capa, riding their long-haired horses back from the city fair.
"Sin el vivo calor, sin el fecundo
Rayo de la ilusión consoladora
¿Que fuera de la vida y del mundo?"
asks one of Spain's poets of the 19th century, Núñez de Arce, and in his native country it takes but little effort of the imagination to repeople the solemn churches, the narrow city streets, or the treeless plain with the romantic figures of the past.
The following day at dawn, after a miserable night in rooms like icy death, a true pilgrim night of endurance, we took the train for the west. As we entered the railway carriage Reservado para Señoras a sleepy railway-guard stumbled out of the further door; all through the journey in the north, we roused these cozily-ensconced railway-officials, for so rare are ladies alone on this route, that the conductors have fallen into the habit of sleeping in the carriage reserved for them. When our tickets were collected we were given many a severe look for daring to upset a cosa de España.
On the way from León to Astorga, little over thirty miles, the realization of the old pilgrim route is vivid. Before reaching Astorga comes the paladin's bridge,[15] of Órbigo, where in the reign of Isabella's father ten caballeros andantes challenged every passing pilgrim to a bout of arms; if a lady came without a cavalier to fight for her, she forfeited her glove, if any knight declined to fight he lost his sword and spur. The age of knight errantry which Cervantes has haloed with a deathless charm, breathes in this historic Pass of Honour. The leader, Suero de Quiñones, came of the great Guzmán family, to which St. Dominic belonged, and of which the Empress Eugénie was a scion. To show his captivity to his lady, every Thursday he wore an iron chain round his neck, but when victor in this tourney, it was removed with solemnity by the heralds. Suero's sword is to be seen to-day in the Madrid Armory where in an hour more of Spain's real history is learned than in years of reading.
The Roman walls of Astorga, seen from the railway present an imposing appearance: here, as at León and Lugo, the frequent half-circular towers do not rise above the crest of the walls. Astorga must have looked just like this when the pilgrims rode by to the shrine of St. James. A closer inspection spoils the illusion however, for the proud city that once ranked as a grandee of Spain is to-day a very tattered and worn hidalgo, and there is a sad air of desolation about its plaza and crumbling walls. Whether or not it was because our ramble was by early morning before the inhabitants were astir, at any rate I brought away a picture of a depopulated town. There were but a few silent worshipers under the clustered piers of the late-Gothic Cathedral, whose reddish tower is the important feature of the distant view. What had tempted us to pause a night in Astorga was the wood-carved retablo by Becerra in the Cathedral, but we found it by no means equal to the work of the carvers in Valladolid. Becerra had studied under Vasari in Rome, and the influence is shown too plainly. There is a curious weather cock on the church, a wooden statue called Pedro Mata, dressed in the costume of a singular tribe that lives in some thirty villages near by. The origin of the Maragatos is involved in mystery; some say they are the descendants of Moors taken in battle, some of Goths who sided with the Moors. During all these centuries they have kept separate from the people about them, like gypsies they marry only with themselves. They should not be confounded with gitanos, however, for the Maragatos are honest and industrious; they are the carriers of the countryside, with the privilege of taking precedence on the road. Here and there in Spain one stumbles on a strange, isolated relic of the past such as this. Astorga was still sleeping, in the literal as well as figurative sense, when we left; a walk on top of the walls looking out over the León plain, a regret that we could not sketch the artistic church of San Julián, with its faded green door and crumbling portal, and we turned south. On the train I discovered that a five franc piece given me in change by the innkeeper, was nothing but a bit of silver-washed brass advertising the cakes of one Casimiro in Salamanca, and I, seeing the king's effigy, had thought it a genuine Spanish dollar,—it is easy to be caught napping in León.
Zamora is not many miles from Astorga and like the other sleepy towns of the province, it too seems to feel it has a right to a long pause in obscurity after its heroic centuries of Moorish warfare. The great hour of the city was the time of the Cid; the "Romancero" should be in one's pocket here. One of its stirring incidents is the death of King Ferdinand I, in 1065, and its sequel of battles and sieges. The king lies on his deathbed, holding a candle, great prelates at his head and his four sons on his right hand. With the fatal propensity of Spanish rulers to bequeath discord, he divides his kingdom among his sons; to Don Sancho, Castile; León to Alfonso; the Basque provinces to García; the fourth son already was of enough importance, "Arzobispo de Toledo, Maestre de Santiago, Abad en Zaragoza, de las Españas, Primado." The king's daughter Urraca, she who had given the Cid's wife, Jimena, her jeweled hair-net, now complains bitterly that she is left out of the inheritance, so her dying father gives her the fortress-city of Zamora, "muy preciada, fuerte es á maravilla," and "who takes it from you let my curse fall on him." In spite of which threat her wicked brother Sancho, besieges the city,—a Spanish proverb for patience runs: "No se ganó Zamora en una hora." With Sancho comes his chief warrior Roderick Díaz de Bivar, given the title of Cid Campeador, Lord Champion, by the Moorish envoys who here met him. The Cid had wellnigh fought an entrance into the city when the intrepid Urraca ascends a tower—to-day called the Afuera Tower—and delivers her famous scolding.
"¡Afuera! Afuera! Rodrigo,
El sóberbio Castellano!"
"Out! Out! Rodrigo, proud Castilian! Remember the past! When you were knighted before the altar of Santiago, and my father, your sponsor, gave you your armor, my mother gave you your steed, and I laced on your spurs! For I thought to be your bride, but you, proud Castilian, set aside a king's daughter to wed that of a mere Count!" And the ballad tells how the Cid, hearing her upbraiding with emotion, retired with his men.
The only present attraction of the decayed town is its Cathedral, set high above the Duero on the edge of the bluff along which Zamora stretches. It was built by the Cid's confessor, Bishop Gerónimo, the dome above the transept crossing being an original feature which the bishop was to elaborate later in the old Cathedral of Salamanca; as Trinity Church, Boston, is copied from this last, Zamora has a special interest for the visitor from New England. We had a four hours' pause there, ample time to see the city. It was raining so dismally that my fellow traveler decided not to face a certain drenching, as the long-drawn-out town had to be traversed before reaching the Cathedral. In an unfortunate moment I started out alone for what I supposed would be a leisurely exploring of a venerable city. Fleeing in distress would better describe the reality, for every hooting boy and girl in Zamora followed at my heels. Whether it was a white ulster or an automobile veil tied over my hat as the wind was high, or just the unaccustomed figure of a stranger in those narrow streets, an excited crowd pursued me the whole length of the town. In front, walking backward, open-mouthed, went a dozen urchins, and behind came a long brigade I hardly dared look back on, it so increased with every step. Men hastened to their shop doors to wonder at the crowd, and the passers-by stood still in astonishment; a feeling of horror came over me at such publicity. In vain I fled into churches in the hope of escaping the relentless little pests; when I emerged they greeted me with howls of pleasure. I angrily shook my umbrella at them, but that only added to the glorious excitement. Here and there a kind woman came to the bothered stranger's help, and scattered the crowd. The children merely scampered down side streets to meet me again in still greater numbers at the next corner. It is easy to laugh now that it is over, but at the time there is small amusement in fleeing through a foreign city pursued by forty hooting youngsters, to have them press round you in a stifling circle when you pause to look in your book, to have them gaze long and seriously at you, then burst into uncontrollable laughter so that in desperation you begin to feel if you have two noses or six eyes. We had decided that in most of the unfrequented towns of Spain, the children were a nuisance; in Zamora they were positive vampires. A visitor in the future had best wear black, a black veil on the head, a black prayer-book in the hand, as if on the way to church, then resembling other people, the children may let her pass. But a white ulster and a red guide book are magic pipes of Hamelin to lure every idle child in Zamora. In spite of wind and rain, and a lengthy disappearance within the Cathedral, it was only on reëntering the station, several hours after they had first seized on their prey, that the unsolicited escort left me, and even then they hung round the door till the shriek of the engine told them the escaped lunatic who had given them so splendid an afternoon's entertainment was out of reach.