When her attendants rushed in, aghast, to tell her of the death of the heir of Alcudiel, whose body, partly devoured by wolves, had been found that morning among the brambles on the Spirits’ Mountain, they discovered her motionless, convulsed, clinging with both hands to one of the ebony bedposts, her eyes staring, her mouth open, the lips white, her limbs rigid,—dead, dead of fright!
IV.
They say that, some time after this event, a hunter who, having lost his way, had been obliged to pass the Night of the Dead on the Spirits’ Mountain, and who in the morning, before he died, was able to relate what he had seen, told a tale of horror. Among other awful sights, he avowed he beheld the skeletons of the ancient Knights Templars and of the nobles of Soria, buried in the cloister of the chapel, rise at the hour of the Angelus with a horrible rattle and, mounted on their bony steeds, chase, as a wild beast, a beautiful woman, pallid, with streaming hair, who, uttering cries of terror and anguish, had been wandering, with bare and bloody feet, about the tomb of Alonso.
THE CAVE OF THE MOOR’S DAUGHTER
I.
Opposite the Baths of Fitero, on a rocky, precipitous eminence, at whose base flows the river Alhama, there may be seen to this day the abandoned ruins of a Moorish castle celebrated in the glorious memories of the Reconquest as having been the theatre of great and famous exploits, as well on the part of the defenders as of those who valiantly nailed to its parapets the standard of the Cross.
Of the walls there remain only some scattered ruins; the stones of the watch-tower have fallen one above another into the moat, filling it to the top; in the court-of-arms grow briers and patches of yellow mustard; in whatever direction you look, you see only broken arches, blackened and crumbling blocks of stone; here a section of the barbican in whose fissures springs the ivy, there a round tower, standing yet, as by a miracle; further on, pillars of cement with the iron rings which supported the drawbridge.
During my stay at the Baths, partly for exercise, which I was assured would be conducive to my health, and partly from curiosity, I strolled every afternoon along the rough path that leads to the ruins of the Arab fortress. There I passed hours and hours, closely scanning the ground in the hope of discovering some fragments of armor, beating the walls to find out whether they were hollow and might be the hiding place of treasure, and investigating all the nooks and crannies with the idea of hitting upon the entrance to some of those underground cells which are believed to exist in all Moorish castles.
My diligent search was, after all, a fruitless one.
But yet, one afternoon, when I had quite despaired of discovering anything new and curious on the rocky height crowned by the castle and had given up the climb, limiting my walk to the banks of the river which flows by its foot, I saw, as I walked along by the stream, a sort of gaping hole in the living rock, half hidden by thickly-leaved bushes. Not without a little tremor, I parted the branches covering the entrance to what seemed a natural cave, but what I perceived, after advancing a few steps, was a subterranean vault narrowing to the mouth. Not being able to penetrate to the end, which was lost in darkness, I confined myself to observing attentively the peculiarities of the arch and of the pavement that appeared to me to rise in great stairs toward the height on which stood the castle I have mentioned, and in whose ruins I then remembered having seen a closed-up trap door. Doubtless I had discovered one of those secret passages so common in the fortifications of that epoch, serving for covert sallies, or for bringing, in state of siege, water from the river which flows hard by.