“I did not want to be the messenger,” replies the Cid, gazing into her comely face with a great freedom of admiration, “except that I might again see my Infanta, and give her some comfort. I strove with the king not to send me. How could I refuse him whom I have sworn to stand by? Better I than another man.”
“That is true,” she replies, “but I think before you swore to the king, my father, you had bound yourself to me.”
Now this speech put the Cid in a great strait. He and Doña Urraca had had love passages together as long as he could remember, yet he had wooed another and married her, and the Infanta was still alone. The Cid was great in battle, but he was simple in the language of love. All he could do was to hang his head and blush, which made Doña Urraca very angry.
“Wretch that I am!” cries she, clasping her hands, “what evil messages have I had since my father’s death? This is the worst of all. As for my brothers, Alfonso is among the Moors; Garcia imprisoned like a slave with an iron chain; I must give up Zamora; and Ruy Diaz, my playmate is come to tell me so! Now may the earth open and swallow me up that I may not suffer so many wrongs! Remember, I am a woman!”
To all this the Cid answers nothing. He is bound by his oath to the king, but his darkened countenance shows how much he is moved as he sits straight upright on the estrade, contemplating the face of Doña Urraca.
Then her foster-father, Don Arias Gonzalo, stands out from the other counsellors, and says, “Lady Doña Urraca, prove the men of Zamora, whether they will cleave to you or to Don Sancho.” To which she agrees, and calling in her ladies to bring her mantilla and manto, she goes out through the broad corridor of the palace in which the banners and the armour are hung, by the gateway with her effigy over it, down to the church of San Salvador; the Cid, as her brother’s messenger, walking on her right hand.
The townsmen arrive, called by the voice of Don Miño, and thus they speak:
“We beseech you, Doña Lady Infanta, not to give up Zamora. We will spend all our money, and devour our mules and horses; nay, even feast on our own children, in your defence. If you cleave to us, we will cleave to you.”
Doña Urraca was well pleased. She had a bitter tongue but a warm heart, and now it was touched. The beauty returned to her countenance as she turned it on the Cid, the stately beauty of royalty to which no lower born can attain.
“See, Cid Campeador,” she says, proudly launching on him a look out of her glowing eyes, “many kings would have envied you, who were bred up with me, yet you hold me of little count. Go to my brother, and entreat him to leave me alone. I would rather die with these men in Zamora than live elsewhere. Tell him what you have seen and heard, and may God speed you on the way.” With which answer the Cid departs.