In due time the Cid Rodrigo came to Burgos with his heart full of Ximena, his old love for her mingling with gratitude that she had forgiven him for the terrible wrong he had done her, and already he seemed to see her winning smile and her soft and lustrous eyes, that looked so truthfully under the long, dark lashes that fringed them.
'Madre mia, where is Ximena?' he exclaimed, as he alighted from his horse.
'At Miraflores, whither you sent for her,' was the reply.
'I sent no such message—there is some mistake.'
'Or treachery,' said Donna Teresa; 'my mind misgives me, or I distrust Don Bellido.'
'Can he have decoyed her away!' exclaimed the Cid, with alarm and rage in his voice and eye.
But the old lady knew not what to think, and began to weep bitterly; and still more did she weep when sure tidings came that in revenge for repelling his addresses, the double traitor Bellido Dolfos had betrayed Ximena into the hands of Hiaja, the savage Caliph of Toledo.
Rodrigo was beside himself with sorrow and dismay; but bethought him at once of his sword, and prevailed upon his new master, Alphonso VI., King of Old Castile, to besiege the city of Toledo, offering him all his knights for that enterprise.
The report of this siege, and the cause thereof—a Christian lady of rare beauty and high rank, more than all, the betrothed of the Cid, being a captive in the hands of the odious Hiaja—brought many knights and princes from distant lands, particularly Raymond, Count of Toulouse, and two princes of the royal blood of France, of the branch of Burgundy.
Their armies covered all the fertile plain amid which Toledo stands, on a steep hill, round the base of which flows the Tagus. In some places the spears of the infantry—whose massed columns seemed like a sea of glittering steel—stood thick as upright corn; in others were the squadrons of barbed horse, the knights and men-at-arms, all clothed in chain armour, bright as winter frost or polished silver, their many-coloured plumes, their square banners, and swallow-tailed pennons streaming out upon the wind.