“Come now,” and a cynical smile spreads over his fair young face, “remember! Did not a stranger help you to unload a raft? A fellow you found sleeping under a boat wrapped in a cloak? Did you not wake him and promise to pay him well, if he would aid you to land certain timber so that you might start before sunrise?”
“O King, it is true; we spoke with such a fellow—mean, almost in rags—and he did help us after sunset to land some wood. We paid him and let him go, and the king’s dues on it were lodged at the Torre d’Oro before we left.”
“Villains!” cries the king, his features darkening. “A pretty example! This is how my subjects rob and cheat and lie. I should like to cut off your heads with my own hand. Know you that I was that fellow who helped you, ‘that mean person in rags.’ Did you not say the night was dark, and that no man would see you land the timber and you would escape the dues? And did you not add that those dues were wrung unjustly from poor men? and that the king who slept in the golden chambers would be none the worse if he lost them? And did I not tell you that my name was Pedro—Pedro?” Here the cruel boy broke into a mocking laugh, more terrible than threats. “Now I am that Pedro, King of Castile and Leon and Caliph of Cordoba and Seville!”
Then turning to the mutes, who stood with drawn swords behind: “Cut off the heads of these carrion and set them on the wharf, that all men may know me as I am, El Rey Justiciero.”
Looking at Don Pedro, son of Alonso XI.—1312—(who was cruel also and made away with his enemies remorselessly)—he is not such a remote personage after all. He was contemporary with the Black Prince, son of Eleanor of Castile, daughter of Alfonso el Sabio, and four short reigns bring him almost into modern times with Fernando and Isabel, the parents of Caterina of Aragon, wife of Henry VIII.
The times were stirring when he came to the throne. The Crusades were not over, and the world was moved by wars, murders, and pestilence.
Young as he was, under twenty when he succeeded his father, Don Pedro fixed the attention of Europe; the most prominent figure in Spain since the time of San Fernando, and as fantastic, brave, handsome, and unscrupulous as a Castilian prince should be.
Yet it must not be forgotten that during his short reign he civilised the south of Spain by a close alliance with the cultivated Moors of Granada; that he loved the arts and industries in which they excelled, and during his brief periods of leisure from incessant wars, surrounded himself with all that was illustrious in the Mussulman race—still the mediæval depositors of knowledge in Spain, as the monks were in Central Europe. As long as he lived he never abandoned these artistic tastes, and has left in the Alcazar a monument of exquisite architecture, which sends down his name to posterity with honour.
In a small plaza not far from the Casa de Pilatos, popularly believed to have been constructed on the model of the Proconsular Palace at Jerusalem in which Pilate lived, by a travelled ancestor of the San Sidonia family, a small bust of Don Pedro is let into a house wall.
From this we know him as he was: regular aquiline features, with soft youthful lines, long waves of rippling curls fall on his shoulders, and a low pointed crown presses upon his smooth brow. One hand rests on the hilt of a sword, the other grasps a Gothic sceptre. The place where the bust is placed is called the Calle del Candilejo, in the middle of narrow alleys unaltered since the Moors.