How or where Julian himself died is not certain. Some chronicles say he perished in the mountains of Navarre, where he had taken refuge; others that he met his death in the castle of Marmello, near Huesca, in Aragon. A violent death of some sort came to the great Kingmaker of Spain.
On his name a perpetual curse rests, and to this day, in Spain “Julian” is synonymous with traitor.
CHAPTER IX
The Moors at Seville—Mousa and Abdul-asis
EANWHILE the great Emir Mousa is moved by fierce jealousy of the success of Tháryk of the one-eye. Not only had he overrun the mountains of the Moon and conquered Granada, but the city of Toledo, the capital of Northern Spain, was opened to him by the Jews.
This is too much to bear from an inferior. Swift messengers are despatched across the Straits to bid him wait until Mousa arrives. He laughs to scorn the message, and battles as before, his light squadrons penetrating farther and farther into the north of Spain.
Mousa had many sons, but history concerns itself with one only, by name Abdul-asis, pale-skinned, with large romantic eyes and a too tender heart. Abdul-asis sailed with his father across the Straits, and a great army of Moors and illustrious emirs accompanied them.
“By the head of the Prophet,” quoth Mousa, as he consulted the map of Spain, “that hireling of the one-eye has left us no land to conquer. He is a glutton, who eateth all.” But on a more minute examination, it was found that there was still room in the vast country of Spain for earning further laurels. Tháryk had as yet left Andalusia unconquered.
Andalusia! the very name is poetry—mystic, unfathomed, vague! Reaching far back into fabulous ages where history cannot follow! The home of jonglerie, magic, and song! Would that I could paint the turquoise of its skies, the endless purple of its boundless plains, the dusky shade of orange and myrtle woods dashed with the vivid green!
What art! what knowledge! And the sensuous charm of a heavenly climate, where winter is never known, and spring passes into summer without a struggle; a land loved by the veiled beauties of the East, looking down through shadows of the fretted miradores, marble galleries, and patios, on barbican towers and Roman walls!