Away off above, in a hollow in the gaunt mountain, I made out gradually the form of a man sitting pensive, elbows on knees, gazing dark-browed down upon me. He was in royal robes, and all at once he seemed to start, to grow in size, and a line across his breast expanded to the letters "Felipe II." Larger and larger he grew until he overtowered the mountain itself; then slowly, scowlingly he rose and strode down upon me. A women joined him, a scrawny woman who laid a hand inertly in his, and I recognized Bloody Mary, who seemed thus in an instant to have leaped over the seas from her island kingdom to join her gloomy husband.
In rapid succession new figures appeared,--Herrera first, a torpid, lugubrious man strangely like the building he has left behind; then quickly a multitude, through which strolled a man whose crown bore the name "Pedro," running his sword with a chuckle of devilish laughter through any that came within easy reach, young or old, asleep or awake. Of a sudden there stalked forth from nowhere a lean, deep-eyed man of fifty, a huge parchment volume under one arm, an almost cynical, yet indulgent smile on his countenance; and as if to prove who he was there raced down over the mountain a man not unlike him in appearance, astride a caricature of a horse, and behind him a dumpy, wondering peasant ambling on an ass. The cavalier sprang suddenly from his hack and fell affectionately on the shoulder of the parchment-bearer, then bounding back into the saddle he charged straight for Felipe, who, stepping to one side, flung, backhanded, Mary his wife far out of sight over the mountain.
A sound drew my attention to another side. Across the plain was marching with stately tread a long file of Moors, each carrying in one hand his head, by the hair.
"Los Abencerrajes!" I seemed to shout; and almost before it was uttered there remained only Felipe and behind him a score of indistinct forms. He waved a hand toward me and turned his back, and the company moved down upon me unlimbering a hundred instruments of torture. Distant bells were tolling mournfully. A priest advanced holding aloft a crucifix and chanting in sepulchral voice:
"The hour of heretics sounds."
Louder and funereally rang the dismal bells; the torturers drew near; I struggled to rise to my feet--and awoke.
The bells of the monastery were booming out over the night.
CHAPTER XI
CRUMBLING CITIES
It was well along in the next afternoon that I descended at the station of Avila and climbed a long dusty mile into the city. A scent of the dim, half-forgotten past hovered over the close-walled, peculiarly garbed place. When I had made a circuit of her ancient wall, through which her no less time-worn cathedral thrusts its hips, I drifted down into the dusty vega below, where in the church of Santo Tomás sleeps the dead hope of "los reyes católicos." If the sculptor be trustworthy the prince would have been an intelligent, kindly lad, even though his martial valor might never have rivaled that of his stout-hearted mother. Returned to the city, I strolled for an hour along the lofty Paséo del Rastro, watching the sun sink red behind the serrated jumble of mountains on the far western horizon, beyond which lay my next stopping-place; and so to bed in the Posada de la Estrella amid the munching asses and snoring arrieros.