The Promise · I

Margarita was weeping with her face hidden in her hands; she wept without a moan, but the tears ran silently down her cheeks, slipping between her fingers to fall upon the earth toward which she had bowed her forehead.

Beside Margarita was Pedro, who raised his eyes from time to time to look at her, and seeing her weep lowered them again, keeping in turn a profound silence.

And everything around was silent and seemed to respect her grief. The noises of the countryside faded; the afternoon wind fell, and shadows began to envelop the thick trees of the grove.

Thus some minutes passed, during which the last trace of light that the sun had left upon dying on the horizon vanished; the moon began to trace itself vaguely against the violet background of the twilight sky, and one by one the largest stars appeared.

Pedro broke that agonizing silence at last, exclaiming in a muffled, broken voice and as if speaking to himself:

«It is impossible... impossible!»

Then, drawing near the inconsolable maiden and taking one of her hands, he continued in a more affectionate and gentle tone:

«Margarita, for you love is everything, and you see nothing beyond love. Nevertheless, there is something as respectable as our affection, and that is my duty. Our lord the Count of Gómara sets out tomorrow from his castle to unite his host with those of King Don Fernando, who is going to deliver Seville from the power of the infidels, and I must depart with the count. An obscure orphan, without a name and without a family, I owe him all that I am. I have served him in the leisure of peace, I have slept beneath his roof, I have warmed myself at his hearth and I have eaten bread at his table. If I abandon him today, tomorrow his men-at-arms, upon riding out in a throng through the posterns of his castle, will ask, astonished not to see me: “Where is the favorite squire of the Count of Gómara?” And my lord will keep silence with shame, and his pages and his jesters will say mockingly: “The count’s squire is nothing more than a gallant of jousts, a fighter of courtesy.”»

Upon reaching this point, Margarita raised her eyes full of tears to fix them upon those of her lover, and moved her lips as if to address him; but her voice was drowned in a sob.

Pedro, with an accent still sweeter and more persuasive, continued thus:

«Do not weep, for God’s sake, Margarita; do not weep, because your tears hurt me. I am going to tear myself away from you; but I shall return after having won a little glory for my obscure name...»

«Heaven will help us in the holy enterprise; we will conquer Seville, and the king will grant us fiefs on the banks of the Guadalquivir to the conquerors. Then I will return to seek you and we will go together to dwell in that paradise of the Arabs, where they say even the sky is cleaner and bluer than that of Castilla.»

«I will return, I swear it to you; I will return to fulfill the word solemnly pledged the day I placed upon your hand this ring, the symbol of a promise.»

«Pedro!» exclaimed Margarita then, mastering her emotion and with a resolute and firm voice: «Go, go maintain your honor;» and upon pronouncing these words, she cast herself for the last time into her lover’s arms. Then she added in a duller, more moved tone: «Go maintain your honor, but return... return to bring me mine.»

Pedro kissed Margarita’s forehead, untied his horse, which was fastened to one of the trees of the grove, and rode off at a gallop down the far end of the poplar walk.

Margarita followed Pedro with her eyes until his shadow blended into the night mist; and when she could no longer distinguish him, she turned slowly to the place where her brothers awaited her.

«Put on your gala clothes,» one of them said to her upon entering, «for tomorrow we are going to Gómara with all the folk of the village to see the count who is leaving for Andalusia.»

«It saddens me more than it rejoices me to see those leave who perhaps will not return,» replied Margarita with a sigh.

«Nevertheless,» insisted the other brother, «you must come with us and you must come decked out and cheerful: thus gossiping people will not say that you have a sweetheart in the castle and that your sweetheart is going off to war.»

Scarcely had the first light of dawn streaked the sky when the sharp blaring of the count’s soldiers began to be heard throughout the countryside of Gómara, and the peasants arriving in numerous groups from nearby places saw the lordly banner unfurl to the wind on the highest tower of the fortress.

Some seated on the edge of the moats, others climbed into the crowns of the trees, these wandering across the plain, those crowning the crests of the hills, yet others forming a cordon along the roadway, the sightseers had already been awaiting the spectacle for nearly an hour, not without some beginning to grow impatient, when the flourish of bugles sounded anew, the chains of the bridge creaked as it fell sluggishly across the moat, and the portcullises were raised, while the heavy doors of the archway leading to the parade ground swung wide open, groaning on their hinges.

The crowd rushed to crowd upon the banks of the road to see more at their leisure the gleaming armor and luxurious trappings of the retinue of the Count of Gómara, famous throughout the region for his splendor and his riches.

The heralds-at-arms broke the march, stopping at intervals to proclaim in a loud voice and to the sound of drums the king’s decrees calling his vassals to the war of the Moors, and requiring the towns and free villages to give passage and aid to his hosts.

The heralds-at-arms were followed by the heralds of the court, proud in their silk chasubles, their coats of arms embroidered in gold and colors, and their caps adorned with showy feathers.

Then came the high steward of the household, armed cap-a-pie, mounted upon a dark-bay colt, bearing in his hands the banner of the nobleman with its devices and its cauldrons, and at his left stirrup the executioner of the lordship’s justices, dressed in black and red.

Preceding the high steward were up to a score of those famous trumpeters of the lowlands, renowned in the chronicles of our kings for the incredible strength of their lungs.

When the sharp clamor of the formidable trumpets ceased to buffet the wind, a dull, measured, and uniform murmur began to be heard. It was the foot soldiers of the retinue, armed with long pikes and provided with leather bucklers. Behind these the engine-tenders were not slow to appear, with their tools and their wooden towers, the squads of climbers, and the humble folk of the pack-mule service.

Then, enveloped in the cloud of dust kicked up by the hooves of their horses, and casting sparks of light from their iron breastplates, the men-at-arms of the castle passed by in thick platoons, which in the distance resembled a forest of lances.

Finally, preceded by the drummers who rode powerful mules with caparisons and plumes, surrounded by his pages who wore rich garments of silk and gold and followed by the squires of his household, the count appeared.

Upon seeing him the crowd raised an immense clamor to greet him, and amid the confused shouting the cry of a woman was drowned out, who at that moment fell fainting and as if struck by lightning into the arms of some people who rushed to her aid. It was Margarita, Margarita who had recognized her mysterious lover in the very high and very feared lord Count of Gómara, one of the noblest and most powerful vassals of the crown of Castilla.

The army of Don Fernando, after leaving Córdoba, had marched by stages all the way to Seville, not without having fought beforehand in Écija, Carmona, and Alcalá del Río de Guadaíra, where, once the famous castle was taken by storm, it pitched camp in plain view of the city of the infidels.

The Count of Gómara sat in the tent upon a larch bench, motionless, pale, terrible, his hands crossed upon the hilt of his greatsword and his eyes fixed on space with that vagueness of one who seems to gaze at an object yet sees nothing of all that surrounds him.

To one side and standing, the oldest of the squires of his house spoke to him, the only one who in those hours of black melancholy would have dared interrupt him without drawing down upon his head the explosion of his wrath.—What ails you, sir?—he said to him.—What evil afflicts and consumes you? Sad you go to battle, and sad you return, even coming back with victory. When all the warriors sleep worn out by the day’s fatigue, I hear you sigh in anguish; and if I run to your couch, I see you there struggling with something invisible that torments you. You open your eyes, and your terror does not vanish. What is the matter with you, sir? Tell me. If it is a secret, I shall know how to keep it in the depths of my memory as in a sepulcher.

The conde seemed not to hear the squire; nevertheless, after a long space, and as if the words had taken all that time to travel from his ears to his understanding, he emerged little by little from his immobility, and drawing him toward himself affectionately, said to him in a grave and unhurried voice:

“I have suffered much in silence. Believing myself the plaything of an idle fancy, until now I have kept quiet out of shame; but no, it is not an illusion what happens to me.”

I must find myself under the influence of some terrible curse. Heaven or hell must want something of me, and warn of it with supernatural deeds.

“Do you remember the day of our encounter with the Moors of Nebrija in the Aljarafe of Triana? We were few; the fight was hard, and I was on the point of perishing. You saw it: in the thickest of the combat, my wounded horse, blind with fury, rushed toward the bulk of the Moorish host. I struggled in vain to hold him back; the reins had slipped from my hands, and the fiery beast ran, carrying me to certain death.”

Already the Moors, closing their squadrons, rested the butts of their long pikes on the ground to receive me upon them; a cloud of arrows whistled in my ears; the horse was a few feet distant from the wall of iron into which we were about to dash ourselves, when... believe me, it was no illusion, I saw a hand that, grasping him by the bridle, stopped him with a supernatural force, and turning him in the direction of the ranks of my soldiers, saved me miraculously.

In vain I asked this one and that one for my savior; no one knew him, no one had seen him.

“When you flew to dash yourselves against the wall of picas,” they told me, “you went alone, completely alone; for that reason we marveled to see you return, knowing already that the steed no longer obeyed the rider.”

“That night I entered my tent preoccupied; in vain I wished to banish from my imagination the memory of the strange adventure; but upon heading toward the bed, I saw again the same hand, a hand beautiful, white to the point of paleness, which drew back the curtains, disappearing after drawing them back. Since then, at all hours, in all places, I am seeing that mysterious hand which anticipates my desires and outstrips my actions. I have seen it, upon storming the castle of Triana, catch between its fingers and snap in the air an arrow that came to wound me; I have seen it, at the banquets where I sought to drown my grief amid confusion and tumult, pour the wine into my cup, and always it is found before my eyes, and wherever I go it follows me: in the tent, in the combat, by day, by night... right now, look at it, look at it here resting softly upon my shoulders.”