“Ah! good my lord,” came the soft voice of Doña Ava into his ear, as she went out to meet him with her ladies to the gate of Santa Maria, beside the river which flows by the walls of Burgos “remember, Don Garcia is my father.”
“Now prythee hold your peace, fair wife,” was his reply, “much as I love you he shall this time meet his due. Nor shall he return to Navarre until he pays me a full ransom.”
But like the gentle dropping of water (and drops, we know, wear even stones, much more the soft substance of which hearts are made) came the entreaties of the Infanta. After all they were married, and Don Garcia had suffered a grievous defeat, which had weakened him for mischief for many a day!
So at the end of a year the prison was unbarred and a great festival held in the old palace of Burgos, of which no trace remains; a throne glittering with cloth of gold was raised in the midst of carpets and screens and awnings of brocaded silk, a luxury borrowed from the Moors—from whom, much as they fought them, all refined tastes were acquired; and afterwards, at the board in royal robes, Don Garcia is seated side by side with Castile (Doña Ava, crowned with a royal diadem, between), as they quaff the generous wine of Valdepeñas in healths of eternal amity and alliance.
Again the Cortes were assembled in haste, in the northern city of Leon, to determine conclusions against the Moors.
The Caliph Almanzor, coming from Cordoba, had penetrated north as far as Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia, sacked the shrine, the very Mecca of Spain, where countless miracles were wrought by his bones; and, insult of insults, pulled down the bells and hung them (oh, horrors!) in the Mesquita of Cordoba, where they still remain! So that Fernan gladly hastened to obey Don Sancho’s summons, along with the kings of Aragon and Navarre. Years had passed, a son had been born to him, and many acts of courtesy exchanged, as between royal kinsfolk.
To recall the past was by no means in harmony
