Old Court Life in Spain, vol. 1/2

by Frances Minto Dickinson Elliot

dearer and dearer to her, and fainter and fainter grew the remembrance of her African home, and that Tunisian bridegroom she had never seen; until, at last, her dainty lips opened with a “Yes,” to his entreaties, and Egilona consented to become a Christian and his queen.

Wonderful are the ways of love! All this took place in a brief space. Not only Egilona, but many of her Moorish damsels, wooed by Gothic knights, eloquent with the words of passion, found their arguments so convincing, that they also not only shared in her conversion, but followed her example in marriage.

Happy Egilona! The shops in the Yacatin, the Jews’ quarter, and the bales of the African merchants travelling from city to city, were ransacked for her use. The most precious merchandise, silks, gems, perfumes, and sweetmeats—all that Europe and the East possessed richest and rarest to please a lady’s eye—were showered upon her, when Don Roderich led her by the broad marble stairs of the Alcazar into the pillared patio, followed by her African retinue, down the steep streets to the Cathedral—very different to what we see it now, though standing on the same spot, and in all ages a fair and stately edifice, said to have been founded by the Virgin herself. Children, according to ancient custom, ran before to throw flowers in her path; and bowls filled with uncut jewels and gold coins were presented to her by noble youths in silken robes. The wedding chorus was sung as she passed by, a poet reciting “How the god of love had wounded the heart of the king,” the Archbishop Opas himself meeting them at the great Puerta, and blessing them as they knelt.

Jousts, tournaments and banquets, followed; the great chiefs appearing resplendent in burnished armour, embossed and enamelled in the ancient style; nothing was too costly for these delicate descendants of the rudely armed Alaric; carpet knights, all plumes and banners and worked scarfs, glittering in and out of silken tents; and revelry and dances presided over by the king and queen.

For twenty days princes and knights, assembled from all parts of Spain, kept holiday at Toledo. Every tongue declared the dark-skinned Egilona peerless among queens, and Don Roderich the comeliest of the Gothic race. Egilona was adored by her Christian consort. He turned no more longing eyes upon the venal fair who hitherto had contended for his favour, and the vessel of state glided over a crystal sea to the soft winds of prosperity under a cloudless sky.

The old lays and ballads make Roderich, in the magnificence of his youth, a rival of the Cid Campeador himself. Even his mortal enemies, the Moors, glorify him in their songs sung to the cither under the orange groves of Granada.

But already the “cloud no bigger than a man’s hand” is rising on the horizon, by-and-by to obscure and darken the sun of his success.

A crown acquired by violence sits uneasily on the usurper’s head. Like Witica, Don Roderich was tormented with suspicions of conspiracies and treachery among his powerful nobles. So little did the fate of his ill-starred predecessor teach him wisdom, that he permitted the same fears to haunt him, of all who were allied to him by blood. Witica’s two sons were banished from Spain, and, to avoid the chance of rebellion, such defences in walls and castles as yet remained were thrown down, and the carefully constructed fortifications of the Romans levelled to the earth. Nor could a rude and warlike race be expected to maintain their early valour in the midst of such luxury and licentiousness as prevailed. For two hundred years the Gothic kings had held Spain by the prowess of their arms, and the simple habits of their forefathers—Ataulfo, Sigeric, Theodoric, Alaric, Amalaric, and his successors up to the frugal-minded Wamba, the “Farmer King.”

Now, under Witica and Roderich, effeminacy and sloth led on to cowardice. The Gothic soldiers who had been galvanised into a temporary show of valour by the recent strife between Witica and Roderich, soon sank back into the inactivity of a wanton court, feasting, dancing, and wassailing in a style more becoming the satraps of an Eastern potentate than the chiefs of a free and generous people. Who could have recognised in these voluptuous youths, who hung about the person of Don Roderich, the descendants of those stern and frugal Teutonic heroes of the North, marching down like thunder-gods to conquer the nations?

Pomp there was, it is true, and splendour, and civilisation, and an elegance of manners and of thought unknown before; but the heart of the Gothic nation was cankered at the core, and the warlike Moors, ever on the lookout to snatch from their grasp the fertile Peninsula showing out so fair across the Straits, noted it with joy.