Still Egilona insists, her soft fingers clasped in his, her tempting lips resting on his own.
“There has been no real king in Spain,” she urges, “without a crown. I pray you, dear husband, do not refuse me.”
At first it was only worn in private, but the fact was too strange not to be noised abroad. The Moorish damsels in attendance on Egilona and the guards and eunuchs which fill an Eastern Court bore the news from mouth to mouth as a strange wonderment.
“The Emir not only has wedded a Christian wife, but he wears the Gothic crown,” is whispered in Seville. “He seeks to rule us as Roderich did.” To this was added by the many-tongued voice of calumny, “that not only Egilona had induced him to become a king, but, oh horror of horrors, that he was surely a Christian!”
“By the head of the Prophet, I swear it is a lie!” cried the discreet Ayub to the ancient counsellors Mousa had placed about his son, who, in their long dark robes, gathered round him in dismay. “Not a day passes but Abdul-asis may be seen offering up his prayers in the Zeca, his face turned towards Mecca. Ask the muezzin at the Giralda if it be not so. Five times a day does he prostrate himself; and as to purifying, there is not water enough in Seville to serve him.”
“But the crown, most powerful vizier, does not the Emir wear a crown?”
At this Ayub, feigning a sudden fit of coughing, turned aside. “I have never seen it,” he answers at last; “I swear I have never seen it.”
“That may very likely be,” is the answer; “but it is well known, and for a Moslem to wear a Christian crown is against the laws of the Koran. Allah Achbar! we have spoken.” So, covering their faces with their robes, as those that mourn the dead, they departed from the presence of Ayub.
Enemies were not wanting to Abdul-asis in Seville, his own, and those who hated him as the son of the famous Mousa.
These wrote hasty letters to Damascus, accusing him not only of detaining captives of price, but as seeking to establish the Gothic kingdom by right of Egilona, acknowledged as their queen by all the Christians.