“Oh, I am dead of cold and fright!” answers Blanche, bursting into tears. “I care not if I die—one stab and all is over! I dream every night of Don Pedro, a dagger in his hand, and just as I am about to escape, the point falls here,” and she lays her hand upon her neck. “I know it will end so. All die who offend Don Pedro.”
“See!” cries Claire, as the darkness enveloping the lengthening lines of the gigantic pillars lifts, and a glint of light strikes like living fire on the famous statue of the Virgin, recovered from the Moors by San Fernando, seated upon an altar on a silver throne, and glittering with jewels, an exquisite canopy of fretted pinnacles of saints shrouding it, “See! the Holy Mother herself has come to comfort us.”
CHAPTER XIV
Don Enrique Welcomes Queen Blanche to Toledo
OURS pass, struck out from the Giralda tower in many-toned bells, each bell with its own name and recognised by its tone. Figures had glided in and out, dwarfed to pigmies by the vast size. Groups had formed at distant shrines, to vanish as they came. Veiled women had knelt on the marble pavement, and a crowd had gathered round a preacher in a far-off aisle.
At length, when hope seemed dead, the shrill blast of trumpets and the clatter of horses’ feet came to the ears of the ever-watchful Claire, from the direction of the Puerta de los Leones, dull at first, and low, but marvellously distinct.
Then steadily advancing footsteps are heard approaching, the heavy tread as of a company of armed men whose mailed feet fall heavy on the marble pavement.
With beating hearts Blanche and Claire start to their feet to await their doom.
The glare of many torches is thrown forward, calling up fantastic shapes; an armed figure emerges, clearly defined against the light, a long Castilian sword at his side, and a mailed hand is stretched forward.
“Welcome to Toledo, madam,” says the voice of Enrique de Trastamare. “Never could we have esteemed ourselves more happy in the fortune of war than by your presence.”