Romantic legends of Spain

by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

On setting out on this expedition, all believed that their commander was moved only by eagerness to avenge himself for the sufferings he had endured loaded with irons in the dungeon depth, but after the fortress was taken, the true cause of that reckless enterprise, in which so many good Christians had perished to contribute to the satisfaction of an unworthy passion, was hid from none.

The knight, intoxicated with the love which he had at last succeeded in kindling in the breast of the beautiful Moorish girl, gave no heed to the counsels of his friends, and was deaf to the murmurs and complaints of his soldiers. One and all were clamoring to go out as soon as possible from those walls, upon which it was natural that the Arabs, recovered from the panic of the surprise, would fall anew.

And this, in fact, was what took place. The Moorish chief called together the Arabs from all about; and, one morning, the look-out who was stationed in the watch-tower of the keep went down to announce to the infatuated lovers that over all the mountain range which was discernible from that summit, such a cloud of warriors was descending that he was convinced all Mohammedanism was going to fall upon the castle.

The Moor’s daughter, hearing this, stood still, pale as death; the knight shouted for his arms, and everything was put in motion in the fortress. The soldiers rushed out tumultuously from their quarters; the captains began to give orders; the portcullis was lowered; the drawbridge was raised, and the battlements were manned with archers.

After some hours, the assault began.

The castle might well be called impregnable. Only by surprise, as the Christians had taken it, could it be overcome. So its defenders resisted one, two, and even ten onsets.

The Moors, seeing the uselessness of their efforts, contented themselves with closely surrounding the castle, that they might bring its defenders to capitulation through famine.

Hunger began, indeed, to make frightful ravages among the Christians, but, knowing that once the castle was surrendered, the price of the life of its defenders would be the head of their leader, no one would betray him, and the very soldiers who had reprobated his conduct swore to perish in his defence.

The Moors, waxing impatient, resolved to make a fresh assault in the middle of the night. The attack was furious; the defence, desperate; the encounter, horrible. During the combat, the Moorish chief, his forehead cleft by an axe, fell into the moat from the top of the wall to which he had succeeded in climbing by the aid of a scaling ladder. Simultaneously the knight received a mortal stroke in the breach of the barbican where men were fighting hand to hand in the darkness.

The Christians began to give way and fell back. At this point, the Moorish girl bent over her lover, who lay in deathlike swoon on the ground and, taking him in her arms, with a strength born of desperation and the sense of peril, she dragged him to the castle court. There she touched a spring and through a passage disclosed by a stone, which rose as if supernaturally moved, she disappeared with her precious burden and began to descend until she reached the bottom of the vault.