P.
THE SPANISH MOTHER.
During that dark and ill-recorded period in which Spain was little more than a field of battle between the Moors and the Christians, the Sanchos of Navarre held the most conspicuous rank among the peninsular potentates, and Sanchez “el Mayor” was the most conspicuous of the Sanchos. Besides the throne of Navarre, he had succeeded to the royalty of Arragon, and the sovereignty of Castile was the dower of his queen. He had married the beauteous Elvira Muna early in life; and before he had reached the full prime of manhood, two of his sons, Garcia and Gonsalo, were able to bear the panoply of a knight; and a third, Fernando, a boy of thirteen, was sighing for the day to come when he too should have the spur upon his heel and the sword upon his thigh. Another son, also, King Sancho boasted of, but not by Donna Elvira. In his very first battle he had been taken prisoner by a Moorish captain of high rank, and confined in a dreary dungeon many days and nights, until at length his escape was effected by means of the daughter of his conqueror, a maiden of exquisite beauty named Caya, who had seen him, and fallen in love with him. This Moorish girl the generous young prince would gladly have married, if the political or religious laws of Navarre would have permitted him; but he tried to persuade himself and her, that, under such circumstances, the tie which bound them together after their flight from her father’s fortress would be nearly as sacred as if it were a conjugal one. The offspring of their love was a boy, whom Sancho named Ramiro, and who grew up with the king’s legitimate children. Caya too—it was the custom of those days—lived at court, and was paid respect and honour besides, as the deliverer of the country’s hope. She had abjured, at least outwardly, her Moslem creed, and, for the sake of her son, whom she tenderly loved, conformed in all respects to the customs of her adopted one. In truth, however, she was a quiet, unpretending creature, who never said or did anything to the injury of anyone with malice prepense, and not being feared, was not hated. Even Elvira herself, hateful to Caya for giving her no reasonable cause for jealousy since her marriage with Sancho (which was a mere matter of state policy), made the Moorish woman the confidante of most of her joys and sorrows. And many were the sorrows of that gentle queen. Sancho had ever been indifferent towards her, though she repaid his coldness with devoted attachment. He was, besides, continually away at the wars, in imminent danger from the chances of battle, while she, at home, was ever mourning over the neglect of her lord and the disobedience of her children. Garcia had made, before his twentieth year, no fewer than three different attempts to excite a revolt in Ribagorza during the absence of the king, impatient as he was to seize the reins of command. Gonsalo, cunning as a fox, and darkly-working as a mole, was continually endeavouring, by secret machinations, to render the people of Navarre discontented with the government of his mother and her councillors; and even the child Fernando had exhibited signs of a rebellious nature, and was but too apt to listen to the dangerous instructions of his brothers. Elvira, therefore, was greatly to be pitied, debarred, as she thus found herself, from all the joys which she naturally yearned for as a wife and a mother. If Caya was an ambitious woman, as most of her nation were, or if she had cherished, under an outward show of meekness and contentedness, thoughts and purposes of bringing about by means of her opportunities the establishment of the Moorish dynasty in Christian Spain, she might have drawn hope of success in her schemes from the dissensions of the royal family; at least she might have sought in them some excuse for making her darling Ramiro a sharer in one of those arbitrary partitions of the Spanish kingdoms which the barbarous notions of the times rendered of frequent recurrence. But Caya was gifted with too noble a mind to seek any advantage, however tempting, by unworthy means. She still fondly loved the chivalrous prince with whom she fled from a cruel father’s roof, and with whom, for a few happy, happy years, she had forgotten the pleasant olive groves of Grenada, under the wild pine forests and glaciers of the Pyrenees. She sincerely compassionated the sorrows of Elvira, and therefore the afflicted queen had a safe and steady friend in her generous rival. Let the reader “judge with knowledge” these two women in their affection for one another—
In those old, romantic days,
Mighty were the soul’s commandments
To support, restrain, or raise!
Their rivalry was of the forbearing kind which existed between the two wives of that old crusader mentioned in the Orlandus of Kenelin Henry Digby, and which the first poet of our day[1] has thought it worth his while to embalm for all eternity in his “Armenian Lady’s Love.” But Elvira had another trusty friend in Sancho’s “master of the horse,” whom he was wont to leave behind him as deputy when he went to the wars. Don Pedro Sesse was a faithful minister and a merciful viceroy. A gallant soldier in his youth, he was an enemy to treachery and to everything that tended to infringe the laws of chivalry. He it was who had frustrated the designs of Garcia and Gonsalo, and had therefore earned their hatred. Elvira looked to him as her best guide and protector amidst the sorrows of her lot.
In this state was the kingdom of Navarre, when the news came of a great victory gained by Sancho over the Moors of Corduba, a place at that time the metropolis of Moorish Spain. As this event was considered a decisive blow to the hopes entertained by the Moors of obtaining possession of Castile, which was their principal object, Sancho’s speedy return, after an absence of several years, was anticipated at home, and great were the preparations made for his triumphal entry to the fortress of Najara, where was the royal palace and the residence of the chief nobility. In the midst of these preparations, however, matters took place which turned the palace into a scene of mourning and dismay.
Don Pedro had a beautiful daughter named Blanca, whom the unprincipled Garcia had long but vainly tried to influence by his dishonourable proposals. The virtuous Blanca repelled his advances with proper scorn; and when at length he found that he could not obtain her willing consent, he determined to carry her off by violence. An opportunity soon arrived. Blanca was sitting alone one day in her garden, enjoying the loveliness of the prospect that stretched from the terrace-foot to the summits of the distant mountains, when Garcia, who had been waiting for a favourable moment, seized her in his arms, and bore her away towards a spot where he had horses and attendants ready for the accomplishment of his villanous project. Before the maiden was out of the reach of aid from such as might be disposed to assist her, her shrieks were heard by Ramiro, who happened to be sauntering near the place. He was at her side in an instant with his drawn sword in his hand.
“Ruffian, desist!” exclaimed he, with wrath in his voice and eye, as, passing his left arm round the waist of Blanca, he waved his armed right hand before the ravisher’s face; “though thou bearest my father’s blood in thy degenerate veins, it shall dye the turf at our feet, if thou loosest not hold of this maiden.”