CHAPTER IX.
WAITING AND FEARING—A WILDERNESS OF BEAUTY.
Aurora obeyed her grandmother almost hopefully; for her faith in the Sibyl was unbounded. In a little time she appeared in the outer cave, arranged in the picturesque costume which should have been her wedding-garments. The old woman had been pouring a quantity of the poison drao into a vial, which she thrust into her bosom as the girl came in.
“Why do you take that?” she faltered out, struck with new dread.
“It is for him—the Busne, if he falters in doing what I shall ask.”
“Be it so,” said my mother, sadly, pointing toward the bowl. “There will be enough left—I will go with him”——
“You must,” answered the Sibyl, sharply. “Now come.”
They left the cave, closing the door after them.
“Stay,” exclaimed the old woman, going back, “you will want food and drink.”
She was gone a little time, and returned with a bottle of water and some bread. These she handed to Aurora and walked on, moving down the ravine toward the Alhambra.
It was wonderful how much strength excitement had given to that old crone; she scarcely seemed to feel the great fatigue of the night, but with a quick, scrambling walk led the way in silence, only calling back now and then for Aurora to move faster, or the day would be upon them.
They entered the enclosure of the Alhambra by La Torre del Pico, and kept within the shadows, for, though the moon was down, it leaves a transparent atmosphere behind it in Granada; and once or twice the Sibyl fancied that she heard footsteps amid the ruins.
Near La Torre del Pico stood, at that time, the grand mosque of the Alhambra, the most exquisite remnant of Moorish art in the world. An entrance to this mosque was easy, for sacred as it had been, all its rich beauty lay exposed to ruin like the rest.
Papita led the way, holding my mother by the hand. A dim light fell amid the delicate pillars innumerable as the young trees in a forest, but guided by far-off memories, the Sibyl threaded them confidently as if she had been walking through her own barranca. She paused before that portion of the mosque formerly the seat occupied by the Moorish Kings in their worship. Here, by the gleam of azulejos, richer and far more brilliant than any to be found elsewhere in Spain, and which even the darkness could not subdue, she found the Mih-rab or recess in which the Alcoran had been kept.
It was a deep vaulted recess set thick with azulejos, that burned like gems on a bed of gold. The floor was a single slab of agate; and a belt of precious stones had spanned the arch like a petrified rainbow. It was broken and partly defaced now, but the very fragments were a marvel of beauty.
Another might have looked with reverence on a spot so enriched, that it might be worthy to hold the treasure kept most sacred by a fallen nation. But to the old gipsy woman such feelings and such things were a scoff.
“Hide yourself in there,” she said, thrusting Aurora toward the niche. “You will be driven out by no Moors coming to worship; sit still if any one enters the mosque, or if steps turn this way, stand up close to one of the porphyry pillars yonder, moving so that it will be placed between you and the intruder whichever way he comes.”
“But where do you go? How long must I wait?” said Aurora, placing her foot on the glittering pavement of the Mih-rab.
“I go to find him,” was the terse answer. “Wait till he comes, or till I come. You have food: be patient, and on your life, let none of the tribe find you!”
Aurora shrunk back into the recesses at this command, and stood there motionless as stone till daylight glittered upon the azulejos around her, and she was shrined, as it were, in a mass of living gems.
At length the terror that had kept her so motionless gave way. She changed her position; sat down, began counting the exquisite fragments that jewelled the wall, tracing the delicate lines of gold and silver that crept like glittering moss around them, with the tip of her fingers. At last, emboldened by the silence, she stepped down from the recess, and wandered restlessly around the body of the mosque.
Notwithstanding the great causes for anxiety that beset her, and though she had been in that spot before, she wandered through its gorgeous mazes with a strange and delicious swell of the heart. Love, the great magician, had unsealed her eyes to the beautiful. Never before had she distinguished the grand and varied richness of those columns. The deep, many-tinted greens engrained in the verd-antique, jasper of that rare kind which seems clouded with blood, grew beautiful in her eyes. She saw pillars of oriental alabaster rising among the forest of columns, like snow mellowed to golden richness by a meridian sun; and others with sweeping clouds of the deepest ruby tint, stained into a ground of dusky yellow. These mingled with columns of glittering black, or sheeted from floor to arch with gold, contrasted gorgeously with the snow-white shafts that rose on every hand; some with capitals, dashed lightly with gold; others cut, as it were, from solid pearl, and all made precious with the most perfect sculpture.
Filled, as I have said, with a new-born sense of the Beautiful, my mother wandered through all this Byzantine gorgeousness, amazed that she had never seen it before. With no knowledge of architecture, she felt without understanding the beautiful proportions of the building, while her eyes were fixed upon its pillars supporting arches graceful as the bend of a rainbow, and enriched with a beauty hitherto unknown even to Moorish art.
Her heart was numb for the time, and she wandered on like one in a dream—now looking upon the pavement, then lifting her eyes upward where traceries of snow, delicate as a spider’s web, but yet of a pearly richness, linked with blossoms of silver, ran through the arches, chaining the pillars together with a gleaming network. The doors, the royal seat, everything around was one blaze of rich mosaic—the pavement of white marble, starred with gorgeous tiles, spread away beneath her feet. Broken, soiled by neglect, in ruins, as all this was, perhaps it seemed but the more enchanting for that! for to a keen imagination these fragments of beauty were suggestive of an ideal perfection, which no art ever reached. But my mother could not long be won from the great causes of anxiety that surrounded her. Her heart began to ache again, and with a weary step she sought the Mih-rab, and seating herself on the agate floor, sat pondering over her own miserable thoughts till the sun went down.
With strained eyes and a weary heart, she saw the rich light fade away from the pillars till the arches were choked up with blackness, and all the slender columns seemed like spectres crowding toward her hiding-place. She grew feverish with anxiety; her lips were parched; a faintness crept through her frame. It was not hunger, but she was exhausted, and remembering the food her grandame had left, felt for it in the darkness.
She drank of the water, and tasted a mouthful of bread; but it was suspense, not want of food, that had taken away her strength. She could not endure to look out from her hiding-place, for now that crowd of pillars seemed like men of her tribe, all greedy and athirst for her young life.
Thus she remained; it might be hours or minutes; it seemed an eternity to her, and then she heard footsteps and a voice.