The Passion Flower · II

It was Good Friday night, and the inhabitants of Toledo, after attending the Tenebrae in their magnificent cathedral, had just given themselves over to sleep, or were recounting by the fireside legends like that of the Christ of the Light, which, stolen by some Jews, left a trail of blood by which the crime was discovered, or the story of the Holy Child of La Guarda, in whom the implacable enemies of our faith renewed the cruel Passion of Jesus. A profound silence reigned in the city, interrupted at intervals now by the distant voices of the night guards who at that time kept watch around the alcazar, now by the moans of the wind that made the weathercocks of the towers spin, or buzzed among the twisted turnings of the streets, when the owner of a small boat rocking tied to a post near the mills—which seem as if incrusted at the foot of the rocks washed by the Tagus and upon which the city sits—saw a person approach the bank, laboriously descending by one of the narrow paths that lead from the top of the walls to the river, whom he seemingly awaited with impatience.

“It’s her!” muttered the boatman between his teeth. “It’s as if all that devilish race of Jews were out and about tonight!... Where the deuce can they have appointed to meet Satan, since they all come to my boat when the bridge is so near?... No, they won’t be going to anything good, when they thus avoid running smack into the men-at-arms of San Servando... but, anyway, the fact is they give me good money to earn, and to every soul its palm, for I wash my hands of the whole business.”

Saying this, the good man, sitting down in his boat, readied the oars, and when Sara—for it was none other than the person he had seemingly awaited until then—had jumped into the skiff, he cast off the mooring that held it and began to row toward the opposite bank.

“How many have crossed tonight?” Sara asked the boatman as soon as they had moved away from the mills, as if referring to something they had already discussed previously.

“I haven’t even been able to count them,” replied the interrogated man; “a swarm!... It seems tonight will be the last time they gather.”

“And do you know what they are dealing with and for what purpose they leave the city at this hour?”

“I have no idea... but the fact is they are waiting for someone who must arrive tonight... I don’t know what they will be waiting for him for, though I suspect for no good.”

After this brief dialogue, Sara kept herself some moments plunged in a profound silence and as if trying to coordinate her ideas. “There is no doubt,” she thought to herself, “my father has surprised our love, and is preparing some horrible revenge. It is necessary that I know where they are going, what they do, what they intend. A moment of hesitation could ruin him.””

When Sara stood up for an instant, and as if to banish the horrible doubts that preoccupied her she passed her hand over her forehead, which anguish had covered with a glacial sweat, the boat touched the opposite bank.

“Good man,” exclaimed the beautiful Hebrew woman, tossing some coins to her conductor and pointing to a narrow and tortuoso path that climbed serpentining from among the rocks, “is that the path they follow?”

“That is it, and when they reach the Head of the Moor, they disappear to the left. Afterward the devil and they will know where they are heading,” replied the boatman.

Sara walked away in the direction he had indicated to her. For some minutes she was seen to appear and disappear alternately among that dark labyrinth of dark and sheer-cut rocks; afterward, and when she had reached the peak called the Head of the Moor, her black silhouette traced itself for an instant against the blue background of the sky, and finally disappeared among the shadows of the night.

Following the path where today is found the picturesque hermitage of the Virgen del Valle, and about two crossbow shots from the peak known vulgarly in Toledo as the Head of the Moor, there still existed at that time the ruinous remains of a Byzantine church, prior to the conquest of the Arabs.

In the atrium outlined by some boulders scattered on the ground, brambles and parasitic weeds grew, among which lay half-hidden, now the shattered capital of a column, now a masonry block coarsely sculpted with intertwined leaves, horrible or grotesque gargoyles, and formless human figures. Of the temple, only the side walls and some broken arches covered in ivy remained standing.

Sara, whom a supernatural presentiment seemed to guide, upon arriving at the spot her conductor had pointed out to her, hesitated some moments, undecided about the path she ought to follow; but finally, she directed herself with a firm and resolute step toward the abandoned ruins of the church.

Indeed, her instinct had not deceived her. Daniel, who no longer smiled, Daniel, who was no longer the weak and humble old man, but rather, emitting anger from his small and round eyes, seemed animated by the spirit of revenge, surrounded by a multitude like him, avid to quench its thirst for hate in one of the enemies of its religion, was there and seemed to multiply himself giving orders to some, encouraging others in the work, arranging, in short, with a horrible solicitude the preparations necessary for the consummation of the dreadful work he had been meditating days and days while striking impassively the anvil in his hovel of Toledo.

Sara, who by favor of the darkness had managed to reach the atrium of the church, had to make a supreme effort not to let out a cry of horror upon penetrating its interior with her gaze. At the reddish glow of a bonfire that projected the shape of that infernal circle onto the walls of the temple, she had believed she saw some making efforts to lift on high a heavy cross, while others wove a crown with the branches of the brambles, or flattened upon a stone the points of enormous iron nails. A dreadful idea crossed her mind; she remembered that those of her race had been accused more than once of mysterious crimes; she vaguely remembered the terrifying story of the Crucified Child, which she until then had believed a gross calumny, invented by the common people to insult and taunt the Hebrews.

But now no doubt remained for her: there, before her eyes, were those horrible instruments of martyrdom, and the ferocious executioners awaited only the victim.

Sara, filled with a holy indignation, brimming with generous wrath and animated by that unshakable faith in the true God that her lover had revealed to her, could not contain herself at the sight of that spectacle, and bursting through the undergrowth that concealed her, suddenly presented herself on the threshold of the temple.

Upon seeing her appear, the Jews let out a cry of surprise; and Daniel, taking a step toward his daughter with a menacing demeanor, asked her in a hoarse voice: “What are you looking for here, wretch?”

“I come to cast upon your brows,” said Sara with a firm and resolute voice, “all the disgrace of your infamous work, and I come to tell you that in vain you await the victim for the sacrifice, unless you intend to gorge your thirst for blood on me; for the Christian whom you await will not come, because I have forewarned him of your ambushes.”

“Sara!” exclaimed the Jew, roaring with anger: “Sara, that is not true; you cannot have betrayed us to the point of revealing our mysterious rites; and if it is true that you have revealed them, you are not my daughter...”

“No; I am no longer so: I have found another father, a father all love for his own, a father whom you nailed to a shameful cross, and who died upon it to redeem us, opening for us for all eternity the gates of heaven. No; I am no longer your daughter, because I am a Christian and I am ashamed of my origin.”

Hearing these words, pronounced with that energetic fortitude that only heaven places in the mouths of martyrs, Daniel, blind with fury, threw himself upon the beautiful Hebrew woman, and throwing her to the ground and seizing her by the hair, dragged her like one possessed by an infernal spirit to the foot of the cross, which seemed to open its fleshless arms to receive her, exclaiming as he turned to those who surrounded them:

“There I deliver her to you; do you execute justice upon this infamous creature, who has sold her honor, her religion, and her brothers.”

The following day, when the cathedral bells thundered through the air ringing in glory, and the honest citizens of Toledo amused themselves by shooting crossbow bolts at straw Judases, much the same as they still do in some of our towns, Daniel opened the door of his little shop, as was his custom, and with his eternal smile upon his lips began to greet those who passed by, without failing for all that to strike the anvil with his little iron hammer; but the lattices of Sara’s Moorish ajimez never opened again, nor did anyone ever see the beautiful Hebrew woman leaning upon her sill of colored tiles.

They tell that some years later a shepherd brought the Archbishop a flower until then never seen, upon which were figured all the attributes of the Savior’s martyrdom; a strange and mysterious flower that had grown and entwined its stems among the ruined walls of the demolished church.

Digging in that place and trying to inquire into the origin of that marvel, they add that the skeleton of a woman was found, and buried with her as many divine attributes as the flower possessed.

The corpse, although it could never be ascertained whose it was, was preserved for many years with special veneration in the hermitage of San Pedro el Verde, and the flower, which has today become quite common, is called the Passion flower.