The Alhambra 20

The Alhambra 20

The Abencerrages, on the contrary, rallied round the sultana Ayxa;

partly through hereditary opposition to the family of Venegas, but

chiefly, no doubt, through a strong feeling of loyalty to her as

daughter of Muhamed Alhayzari, the ancient benefactor of their line.

 

The dissensions of the palace went on increasing. Intrigues of all kinds

took place, as is usual in royal palaces. Suspicions were artfully

instilled in the mind of Muley Abul Hassan that Ayxa was engaged in a

plot to depose him and put her son Boabdil on the throne. In his first

transports of rage he confined them both in the Tower of Comares,

threatening the life of Boabdil. At dead of night the anxious mother

lowered her son from a window of the tower by the scarfs of herself and

her female attendants; and some of her adherents, who were in waiting

with swift horses, bore him away to the Alpuxarras. It is this

imprisonment of the sultana Ayxa which possibly gave rise to the fable

of the queen of Boabdil being confined by him in a tower to be tried for

her life. No other shadow of a ground exists for it, and here we find

the tyrant jailer was his father, and the captive sultana his mother.

 

The massacre of the Abencerrages in the halls of the Alhambra is placed

by some about this time, and attributed also to Muley Abul Hassan, on

suspicion of their being concerned in the conspiracy. The sacrifice of a

number of the cavaliers of that line is said to have been suggested by

the vizier Abul Cacim Venegas, as a means of striking terror into the

rest.[11] If such were really the case, the barbarous measure proved

abortive. The Abencerrages continued intrepid, as they were loyal, in

their adherence to the cause of Ayxa and her son Boabdil, throughout the

war which ensued, while the Venegas were ever foremost in the ranks of

Muley Abul Hassan and El Zagal. The ultimate fortunes of these rival

families is worthy of note. The Venegas, in the last struggle of

Granada, were among those who submitted to the conquerors, renounced the

Moslem creed, returned to the faith from which their ancestor had

apostatized, were rewarded with offices and estates, intermarried with

Spanish families, and have left posterity among the nobles of the land.

The Abencerrages remained true to their faith, true to their king, true

to their desperate cause, and went down with the foundering wreck of

Moslem domination, leaving nothing behind them but a gallant and

romantic name in history.

 

In this historical outline, I trust I have shown enough to put the fable

concerning Boabdil and the Abencerrages in a true light. The story of

the accusation of his queen, and his cruelty to his sister, are equally

void of foundation. In his domestic relations he appears to have been

kind and affectionate. History gives him but one wife, Morayma, the

daughter of the veteran alcayde of Loxa, old Aliatar, famous in song and

story for his exploits in border warfare; and who fell in that

disastrous foray into the Christian lands in which Boabdil was taken

prisoner. Morayma was true to Boabdil throughout all his vicissitudes.

When he was dethroned by the Castilian monarchs, she retired with him to

the petty domain allotted him in the valleys of the Alpuxarras. It was

only when (dispossessed of this by the jealous precautions and subtle

chicanery of Ferdinand, and elbowed, as it were, out of his native land)

he was preparing to embark for Africa, that her health and spirits,

exhausted by anxiety and long suffering, gave way, and she fell into a

lingering illness aggravated by corroding melancholy. Boabdil was

constant and affectionate to her to the last; the sailing of the ships

was delayed for several weeks, to the great annoyance of the suspicious

Ferdinand. At length Morayma sank into the grave, evidently the victim

of a broken heart, and the event was reported to Ferdinand by his agent

as one propitious to his purposes, removing the only obstacle to the

embarkation of Boabdil.[12]

 

 

 

 

MEMENTOS OF BOABDIL

 

 

While my mind was still warm with the subject of the unfortunate

Boabdil, I set forth to trace the mementos of him still existing in this

scene of his sovereignty and misfortunes. In the Tower of Comares,

immediately under the Hall of Ambassadors, are two vaulted rooms,

separated by a narrow passage; these are said to have been the prisons

of himself and his mother, the virtuous Ayxa la Horra; indeed, no other

part of the tower would have served for the purpose. The external walls

of these chambers are of prodigious thickness, pierced with small

windows secured by iron bars. A narrow stone gallery, with a low

parapet, extends along three sides of the tower just below the windows,

but at a considerable height from the ground. From this gallery, it is

presumed, the queen lowered her son with the scarfs of herself and her

female attendants during the darkness of the night to the hillside,

where some of his faithful adherents waited with fleet steeds to bear

him to the mountains.

 

Between three and four hundred years have elapsed, yet this scene of the

drama remains almost unchanged. As I paced the gallery, my imagination

pictured the anxious queen leaning over the parapet, listening, with the

throbbings of a mother’s heart, to the last echoes of the horses’ hoofs

as her son scoured along the narrow valley of the Darro.

 

I next sought the gate by which Boabdil made his last exit from the

Alhambra, when about to surrender his capital and kingdom. With the

melancholy caprice of a broken spirit, or perhaps with some

superstitious feeling, he requested of the Catholic monarchs that no one

afterwards might be permitted to pass through it. His prayer, according

to ancient chronicles, was complied with, through the sympathy of

Isabella, and the gate was walled up.[13]

 

I inquired for some time in vain for such a portal; at length my humble

attendant, Mateo Ximenes, said it must be one closed up with stones,

which, according to what he had heard from his father and grandfather,

was the gateway by which King Chico had left the fortress. There was a

mystery about it, and it had never been opened within the memory of the

oldest inhabitant.

 

He conducted me to the spot. The gateway is in the centre of what was

once an immense pile, called the Tower of the Seven Floors (_la Torre de

los siete suelos_). It is famous in the neighborhood as the scene of

strange apparitions and Moorish enchantments. According to Swinburne the

traveller, it was originally the great gate of entrance. The antiquaries

of Granada pronounce it the entrance to that quarter of the royal

residence where the king’s body-guards were stationed. It therefore

might well form an immediate entrance and exit to the palace; while the

grand Gate of Justice served as the entrance of state to the fortress.

When Boabdil sallied by this gate to descend to the Vega, where he was

to surrender the keys of the city to the Spanish sovereigns, he left his

vizier Aben Comixa to receive, at the Gate of Justice, the detachment

from the Christian army and the officers to whom the fortress was to be

given up.[14]

 

The once redoubtable Tower of the Seven Floors is now a mere wreck,

having been blown up with gunpowder by the French, when they abandoned

the fortress. Great masses of the wall lie scattered about, buried in

luxuriant herbage, or overshadowed by vines and fig-trees. The arch of

the gateway, though rent by the shock, still remains; but the last wish

of poor Boabdil has again, though unintentionally, been fulfilled, for

the portal has been closed up by loose stones gathered from the ruins,

and remains impassable.

 

Mounting my horse, I followed up the route of the Moslem monarch from

this place of his exit. Crossing the hill of Los Martyros, and keeping

along the garden-wall of a convent bearing the same name, I descended a

rugged ravine beset by thickets of aloes and Indian figs, and lined with

caves and hovels swarming with gypsies. The descent was so steep and

broken that I was fain to alight and lead my horse. By this _via

dolorosa_ poor Boabdil took his sad departure to avoid passing through

the city; partly, perhaps, through unwillingness that its inhabitants

should behold his humiliation; but chiefly, in all probability, lest it

might cause some popular agitation. For the last reason, undoubtedly,

the detachment sent to take possession of the fortress ascended by the

same route.

 

Emerging from this rough ravine, so full of melancholy associations, and

passing by the _puerta de los molinos_ (the gate of the mills), I issued

forth upon the public promenade called the Prado; and pursuing the

course of the Xenil, arrived at a small chapel, once a mosque, now the

Hermitage of San Sebastian. Here, according to tradition, Boabdil

surrendered the keys of Granada to King Ferdinand. I rode slowly thence

across the Vega to a village where the family and household of the

unhappy king awaited him, for he had sent them forward on the preceding

night from the Alhambra, that his mother and wife might not participate

in his personal humiliation, or be exposed to the gaze of the

conquerors. Following on in the route of the melancholy band of royal

exiles, I arrived at the foot of a chain of barren and dreary heights,

forming the skirt of the Alpuxarra Mountains. From the summit of one of

these the unfortunate Boabdil took his last look at Granada; it bears a

name expressive of his sorrows, _La Cuesta de las Lagrimas_ (the hill of

tears). Beyond it, a sandy road winds across a rugged cheerless waste,

doubly dismal to the unhappy monarch, as it led to exile.

 

I spurred my horse to the summit of a rock, where Boabdil uttered his

last sorrowful exclamation, as he turned his eyes from taking their

farewell gaze: it is still denominated _el ultimo suspiro del Moro_ (the

last sigh of the Moor). Who can wonder at his anguish at being expelled

from such a kingdom and such an abode? With the Alhambra he seemed to be

yielding up all the honors of his line, and all the glories and delights

of life.

 

It was here, too, that his affliction was embittered by the reproach of

his mother, Ayxa, who had so often assisted him in times of peril, and

had vainly sought to instil into him her own resolute spirit. “You do

well,” said she, “to weep as a woman over what you could not defend as a

man”; a speech savoring more of the pride of the princess than the

tenderness of the mother.

 

When this anecdote was related to Charles V., by Bishop Guevara, the

emperor joined in the __EXPRESSION__ of scorn at the weakness of the

wavering Boabdil. “Had I been he, or he been I,” said the haughty

potentate, “I would rather have made this Alhambra my sepulchre than

have lived without a kingdom in the Alpuxarra.” How easy it is for those

in power and prosperity to preach heroism to the vanquished! how little

can they understand that life itself may rise in value with the

unfortunate, when naught but life remains!

 

Slowly descending the “Hill of Tears,” I let my horse take his own

loitering gait back to Granada, while I turned the story of the

unfortunate Boabdil over in my mind. In summing up the particulars, I