Alcazar, or, The dark ages : a novel

Preface

THE events recorded in the following pages happened seven hundred years ago; and I assure the reader that neither I nor any of my family now living took any part in them.

I should have deemed it superfluous to make such a declaration had it not been insisted that I myself and the several members of my household, together with real events that had happened to each of us, had been introduced by me into my recent work entitled Modern Soctety in Rome. Because, in The Wabash, I had recorded what happened to us in our wild travels in the Back Woods of America, it was thought that we must play a part in every novel or chronicle that I might publish !

And as I do not make my novels a vehicle for personal histories, so I would request non-readers to believe that I do not use them as channels for controversial or religious disquisitions. 1 write h v1 PREFACE.

for the general public; and am neither a divine, a polemic, nor a missionary.

I should have deemed it superfluous to make this declaration also, had not one or two of my reviewers, who had evidently not read that Roman novel (and heaven save reviewers if they were obliged to read all they notice!) had not one or two of my reviewers totally misapprehended the whole story, and, judging doubtless from precedent or analogy, reported that it was entirely animated by religious or sectarian feelings and disquisitions. ‘That such was not the character of the book, is shown by the reception it met with from the three Catholic periodicals to which the publishers sent copies as a matter of course :—the editor of one of these reviewed it in what he thought a safe manner, and was told, by what he considered the highest authority, on such matters, in England, that, if he was unwilling to condemn the work, he ought not to have noticed it at all: the editor of the second declared that he would not write against it, and dared not write in its favour: whilst, for the third publication, an approving notice was prepared, at the request of the editor, but was rejected by the ecclesiastical censorship to which the writer chose to submit his paper! !

This last-mentioned gentleman is no politician oD ’

PREFACE, Vil but ranks, amongst his co-religionists, as one of the first theologiansin England. His approval of the work showed that it contained nothing which these parties could object to on theological grounds; whilst its condemnation by the others proved that its scope was not the furtherance of their own or any other religious views; but that they were scandalized by the liberality and freedom and independence of my remarks on the temporal administration of Rome. I knew Pius the Ninth himself to have Italian and liberal aspirations, and I did not spare counsellors and a system which he himself had not energy to discard. I am told that I should have been pardoned if I had condemned the Pontiff and spared the system.

It may well be believed that it is unpleasant to me to enter into these explanations. I am compelled to do so because it has been reported (however erroneously) that my novel has been placed in the Index of Books forbidden at Rome! No question of faith was involved in the matter of those volumes; for, as I was not called upon to advance any, so did I not compromise any :— though I have my own religious convictions, I do not feel myself called upon in these books to propose them, nor to shock those of others :—but questions of political government, questions af-

Vili PREFACE.

fecting the material well-being of Italy were involved; and because I wrote frankly on these subjects, I am denounced by English Catholic writers, who would deny to themselves the liberty of thought, speech and action which is exercised by their co-religionists all over the world. It may be gall and wormwood to these gentlemen: but if they exclude all liberal-minded Catholic politicians in Europe and America from fellowship, they will leave themselves, I am happy to say, in a very, very small minority indeed!

I trust to the honourable conduct of the general press of England to protect me from the misrepresentation of bigots and sycophants. Catholics are constantly told, “ If you disapprove the illiberal, violent, ultramontane conduct which we attribute to your co-religionists in this country, why do you not proclaim that you are animated by a different spirit?” Let those who call for such avowals, recognize and uphold the public men and the writers who make them.

But as the divines of whom I have spoken condemned my Roman novel because it was as liberal as Pio Nono himself had been in the first years of his reign, so many other critics objected to it because, instead of the republican principles of Mazzini (which every day shows to be more and more repudiated by Italians), it

PREFACE. 1x advocated a constitutional government of the Roman States, under the Popes, with the secularisation of the government offices. The plan was too moderate, the example of Sardinia (which I instanced as proving that a constitutional government was possible in Italy) was too convincing for my views not to be denounced by revolutionary and republican refugees in England. Many of these write English fluently: and not all my invectives against Austrian rule and Austrian intervention in Italy,—not all my objurgations against the mean tyranny of King Bomba,—could win me fayour in their eyes while I repudiated the Mazzinian dream. From one, who did not favour me with his name, I received fourteen foolscap pages, in manuscript, of minutely-critical abuse! It was gratifying to me that an anonymous clever man should have thought the book of an author, te whom he said that he also was unknown, worth so much of his time.

It was also gratifying to me that this writer, and, indeed, almost every other reviewer, recognized the truth of all my statements as to the domestic history of the times. I admit that I did not give my authority for everything that I promulgated as an historian: but I put my name to the work, and I so vouched for the truth of xX PREFACE, every historic statement which I advanced. Describing events of the truth of which I had gained evidence on the spot, I saw not wherefore my testimony should not be as sufficient as that of any other contemporary writer. Iadmit also that the fictitious personages whom I have introduced into that story are mere pegs on which to hang ‘anecdotes and incidents of the times: but the line which separates the fictitious and the imaginary from the real and the historic characters and portions of my drama, is quite sufficiently evident to whomsoever cares to mark it.

It is not questioned that the historical novel and drama is an excellent mode of familiarizing the mind with the domestic details of history: Shakespeare, Disraeli, Bulwer, Walter Scott, and a host of imitators, have established this beyond dispute. But it is questioned whether contemporary history can be properly introduced into a novel; and I am told that the epoch I have chosen to illustrate is all too recent. Do we not, I ask, do we not find the greatest charm of classical writers to consist in the more minute delineation of the domestic manners of their own times which they occasionally give us? Whenever they lift the curtain and let us glance into the interior of their domestic life, do we not eagerly peep under it? What would be the

PREFACE. Xi charm of Tacitus without his withering hits at familiar rascaldom? Some centuries hence, will the political novels of Disraeli be less valued because statesmen of contemporary history are introduced and play familiar parts in them ?

But enough: let me only thank the general public, and the great majority of the reviewers to whom I have alluded in this preface, for the favourable reception they have given the volumes in question. ‘This argument in approval of contemporaneous history, is one that it were unwise to follow further while I am introducing a work the events recorded in which happened in “ The Dark Ages”. Why I have given it such a title, I scarcely know; unless it were that when lately reading again Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, which he calls ‘‘ A Gothic Story’’, it occurred to me to challenge—not his inimitable style of composition—but the truthfulness of his description of the manners of the same Cimmerian period through which I myself was then disporting by the sure light of contemporary chronicles.

For I would be permitted to add that every personage introduced into this story excepting the Saracen and the couple who are made happy at the end, and who were necessary as types of a class then common in Sicily and Italy—that every other personage had a historical existence xl PREFACE.

and really played that part which I have attributed to him or her. [ am aware that events and incidents are so multiplied as to have sufficed for a score of novels. This may be a defect : but they all really occurred thus closely one upon the other; and I could not omit any in justice to the period I had undertaken to illustrate.

Chapter I

“ To be or not to be:—that is the question.” Hamlet.

Ir was a curious old pile, that castle of Beni-zekher, or, as the Sicilians have since called it by a very easy transition, San Benedetto! Straight walls of hewn stone, diversified by little Moorish arches and graceful cupolas, were flanked by two octangular towers, of rougher masonry, added on the outside of the southern wall, and by a large square Norman keep on the north, rising to the height of twenty feet or more above the rest of the building. ‘The appearance of the whole pile showed, at once,

WOls 1 B that it was a Saracen dwelling house, converted into a fortified castle by its more recent owners from the North.

It was in a room in one of the smaller octangular towers, a room of the shape of the outer walls, but reduced in size as much as was necessary for steps to wind in the thickness of the wall to the battlemented roof above—it was in such a room that conversed those who attract our notice and bespeak our interest. A sweet female voice, in light and joyous tones, has, for some while, reached our ear; and its merry prattle has seemed to rise still more gaily after it had momentarily yielded to the expostulating tones of deeper and more mellow accents. Joyous, indeed, was the look of that sweet female speaker: nor was the character of the physiognomy of the knight, who addressed her, so grave and thoughtful as the tones of his voice would have led a listener to suppose. They were both perfect specimens of male and female beauty. Let us not be told that every writer of romance so portrays his hero and his heroine; when a stroke of the pen can bestow attractions, he must, indeed, be a niggard scribe who would withhold them. Our personages are not, however, of our own imagining. Seven centuries have passed since either smiled on the other:

“The Knight’s bones are dust,

And his good sword rust—

His soul is with the saints we trust.” But we must not forestall our story: though, as we have owned that the parties lived nearly seven centuries ago, the reader will naturally imagine that they are not living now.

At the time, then, of which we write, and on that particular day when they conversed in the little octagon room, the lady’s fair face was lighted up by a smile which showed more soul and expression than one would have thought features so fair could ever haye conveyed. Her hair, indeed, was almost as white as flax; her eyes were of the blue of those southern skies; her skin was so transparently white that no one would have supposed she could have been exposed for twenty years to the wear and tear of the world. Her figure was slight; her step active: her dress was indescribable. We do not mean to say that we are incompetent to describe it; we have it all there before our mind’s eye—her little bejewelled Saracenic jackets—her flowing Grecian robes—her Norman untrowsered modesty. But when the dress of so many nations was combined in the attire of one female, it may well be supposed that fashion ruled not with immutable sway ; that the fancy of the wearer was the only guide constantly followed; and, consequently, that were we to give up a whole chapter to detail the outward attire of our heroine, we should not be enriching the heads of antiquaries by details of forgotten lore, but should only be describing one fanciful woman’s fancy of the day. All will admit that this were loss of good room.

Nor can we give much space to describe the appearance of the person whose deeptoned voice we had heard so finely contrasted with the musical treble of the lady. And yet he had a noble presence! A clear olive skin mantled over a set of the finest features ever moulded out of earth, and perfected in five-and-twenty years. Large black eyes seemed to shoot forth the fire of a resolute and undaunted soul. And yet the long dark eye-lashes which added so much to his beauty, seemed to soften an expression which might otherwise have become fixed and stern. You thought it was the eye-lashes which did this; but as you watched that speaking face, you saw an unsteadiness in the glance itself, and a slight vibration about the well-formed lips and the corners of the mouth, which showed that, in truth, the owner’s character was not, perhaps, so firm and resolute as the first fire of those black eyes would have led you to believe. A something unsettled—a something wavering seemed to lurk behind, and to be striven against by the conscious mind. But then, how well trimmed was his beard, and what noble locks he wore flowing all around his neck, and lying, like coiled and glistening snakes, upon his satin hood!

This hood was now thrown back, so as to show his head to the best advantage, and was joined to a hauberk or outer tunic, which bedecked limbs of perfect symmetry, but of dimensions above the common mould. It was formed of primrose-coloured satin, too slightly wadded, indeed, to resist even a sword-cut, but this insufficiency was guarded against by polished rings of gold and silver, fixed, in alternate rows, upon the dress; and, although about two inches in diameter, lapping lightly over one another so accurately as to form a sort of

~ chain-armour, which no slight thrust could have pierced. Nothing could be richer than this dress: it was open before and behind, that it might not imcommode the wearer when on horseback; open also at the sleeves, which did not reach below the elbows: but underneath, a close tunic of pale blue silk fitted tightly to the well-formed limbs, and allowed them to be seen in all their fine proportions. Boots of highly prepared leather lined with blue satin, folded back over the calves of his legs: and in front of each leg was a diamond brooch to which the long pointed toes of the boots were fastened up by a slight chain of gold. When we add that, on his right hip, he wore, suspended through a loop in his hauberk, a long curved scimeter, whose jewelled handle stood up above its golden scabbard, we shall have given the picture of such a young man as no lady’s heart could fail to admire in these degenerate days.

Was such, however, the feeling of the lady in that little room? Perhaps the following conversation will enlighten us on the subject.

“Nay, beautiful Countess,” interposed the young man (whose person and dress we beg to say we have described as it is portrayed by contemporary historians), “nay, beautiful Countess,” he expostulated, “can you not, will you not be serious?”

“In very truth, then,” she lightly answered, “I neither can nor will, when I hear you talk of falling on your knees. Don’t, I pray you. I should laugh so much that you would be offended outright.”

“And you would be still better pleased if I were offended outright,” expostulated the knight in a tone half of sorrow and half of anger. ‘‘ You, who will never allow me to say what you know I wish to express, would be right joyful were I so displeased as to free you from my importunities for ever.”

“ J know what you wish to express, Don Matteo!” exclaimed the lady. ‘* Why you must think me as great a prophet as padre Giovacchino himself. How is it possible that I can know your sentiments when you do not know them yourself ?”

“Ts it possible, then, that my devotion for so many years...”

“Many years! discourteous Chevalier ; how old, then, would you make me?” gaily interposed the lady.

“ Saint Agatha forbid that I should make you responsible for having tortured mankind for one year longer than you can be justly charged withal,” said Don Matteo reproachfully. “But you know that ever since your widowhood—ever since your hand has been free—”

“You have wished to throw yourself at my feet, is it not so—when you have seen me?” she archly asked; “and have been ready to do the same by half a dozen other

Sicilian dames when you have seen them.

Oh, Don Matteo, I know your heart and character better than you do yourself. You have so much to be proud of justly, that you would never acknowledge to yourself how unstable you are.”

The latter part of this sentence was spoken in more serious tones than any she _had yet used, and with an expression of feeling that evidently much moved the young nobleman. His eyes fell beneath her steady look of interest; and he stood silent and irresolute before the beautiful widow—who, though so young, had now, however, been a widow for several years. She watched him keenly and with an increasing look of interest when she saw his glance fall before her own. She allowed time for her words to produce their effect upon his mind; and only when she saw that he was about to speak, did she again break silence.

“ And say not,” she then added, “ that my hand is free. What heiress or what fe-

THE DARK AGES. ig male holder of any lands is free to dispose of herself or of them as she may please? You know well what a controul that odious Majone keeps over every fief: and my brother, the king, seems to feel and to own our relation as little as the Church and the laws do. By Saint Martin of Tours,” she said in a tone of rising anger, “I am less free than the veriest bondswoman that walks through the streets of Palermo!”

“This must, this shall be amended!” ejaculated the knight warmly.

* Nay, do not think I have said it would be any better for you if it were amended, as your valour would doubtless propose,” interrupted the lady with forced gaiety. *“ But now,” she added, “leave me, Sir Baron. We have had a long conference to-day: and if the Lord Admiral Majone hears of it, he will be inclined to send me out of harm’s way, with my cousin, poor Tancred, and all the other noble prisoners whom he has lodged so snugly under the palace. Go, then, before he grow suspicious; and success attend you with the lady to whom you are about to carry your constant vows.”

* Cruel—cruel Clemence—” began the knight; but she waved her hand in such a style of remonstrance as, at once, cut short his intended protestations; and then held it out to him with an air of more than regal condescension, while a tear rose up and suffused those bright blue eyes. The Baron caught her fair hand; and bending one knee, pressed it with devotion to his lips: then, obedient to a second sign, he hastily turned him away and left the apartment.

In the small court below, the knight found his horse and attendants; and as this visit had been somewhat private for the reasons hinted at by the Countess, he had come with a smaller train than generally followed one so wealthy and so admired for his splendour. ‘Two mounted attendants, besides his squire, were all who now waited on him. One of the former of these held his lord’s charger—a small but spirited animal, showing the strength of bone of the Norman war-horse, united to the symmetry and fire of the Arabian breed. Without saying a word, the nobleman leapt into the high-peaked Asiatic saddle, which rested upon a flowing cloth of silk and gold, and turned his horse through the postern gateway; while he drew the hood over his own head, more for the purpose of sheltering it from the rays of the afternoon sun than as a protection from the balmy air of a Sicilian summer. The squire and attendants followed. The two latter were dressed in the red quilted gambaisons of the period, covered, of course, with the iron shirt of steel rings: on their heads were the low iron skull-caps common to men-at-arms. Straight swords on their thighs, and, at their backs, those bows and a quiver of those arrows for which the Normans had ever been so celebrated, were all their offensive arms.

The squire, however, who closely followed his lord, calls for our more particular notice. He was a young man of fair complexion, who could scarcely have numbered more than twenty-two years; and whose dress and general appearance were somewhat singular, even in a country where so many different nations lived together, and maintained their own several habits. Richard MacMardagh was, by birth, an Ivishman: his father had been a follower of the deputation which, a few years before, had vainly waited upon Adrian IV (the Englishman who then filled St. Peter’s chair); had vainly waited upon him in the attempt to avert that bull which handed over his country to the gentle mercies of the English monarch. Disappointed in the object of their mission, the father had died in Italy: and the son, friendless and a stranger, had had the good fortune to recommend himself to the noble Baron of Taverna, and to bespeak his goodwill and favour. Being

THE DARK AGES. 5D of gentle birth (gentle enough, at least, to pass muster with the descendant of one of the Norman adventurers who had accompanied the great Count Roger, half a century before, in his first descent upon Sicily) —Richard MacMardagh had been permitted to approach his lord’s person in the quality of page. He had soon risen into favour by his trustworthiness, and by his frank and cheerful bearing: and now often attended him as a favoured squire. Still, however, the Irishman could not forget the land of his fathers; and every year, every month that he passed away from it, made his thoughts recur to it more and more often, and dwell upon it more and more fondly. Thus, though living among those who placed their greatest pride in the splendour of their arms and in their warlike equipments, nothing could induce Richard Mac- Mardagh to forego the prejudices of his own father-land, which taught him to see in all defensive armour only so many proofs of the cowardice of the wearer. He still adhered to the customs of his own countrymen as much as his patron would permit him to do so: and the latter, who felt the pride of a young man in having followers from different countries, did not require his favourite squire to forego that dress and equipment which marked him out as a stranger from some unknown land. Richard had, also, many arguments by which to prove his wisdom in refusing to be burthened with defensive armour: he had, he said, to bear his knight’s helmet or his heavy lance, to carry his shield, and often, when he was on visits of courtesy like the present, to hold the heavy straight warsword or battle-axe with which he would not encumber his own person. How much more conveniently could he do this when clothed only in his tight-fitting national dress of black woollen, with a sling and a supply of bolts suspended under his left arm! Thus would he argue; and although he had so far deferred to the habits of his adopted country as to have stuck in his belt a handseax, or Anglo-Saxon dagger, to be used as occasion might require in freeing his lord or otherwise defending him should he be unhorsed in battle, he never would forego the machue or pile which, in shape much like the Ivish shillelah, he had had forged of steel, and now always carried thrust through his belt in the manner in which the others bore their swords. Some Norman laws (those of our English conqueror for example) had marked these piles or maces as the weapons of serfs, who were not allowed to bear lances and swords, the proper arms of knighthood; but not even this disparagement could induce Richard MacMardagh to forego his accustomed " weapon.

Such were those who composed the small cavalcade that now emerged from the castle of Beni-zekher and rode through the wild scenery around it. Wild, indeed, and beau-

VOL. I. Cc tiful were those wooded hills. Shrubs of every variety covered the rocks above, and opened into green glades as they neared the plain around. -Tall clumps of dark green stone pine trees towered, here and there, above the copsewood, and contrasted beautifully with its bright foliage. The ground in the open spaces was covered with wild flowers of every variety—wild flowers in that favoured region—but choice ereen-house plants could they be transported into our northern clime: and this varied carpeting of every hue was broken, here and there, by large patches of purple convolvulus, matted together in luxuriant masses of flower, or climbing up the naked stems of the lofty pine.

The noble knight rode slowly and pensively through this quiet woodland; and thought, over and over again, on the conversation which had just passed between him and the lady he loved. She was, indeed, a beautiful and high-spirited woman :

and he thought how, two generations ago, one of his haughty Norman race would have been fired in the pursuit of her by those very dangers which she had just hinted at. Was he less brave than they had been? or was he enervated by having been born in that slothful clime, and by carrying in his veins the blood of that young and noble Sicilian Greek whom his father had rescued from his ruder fellownorthmen and honourably married? At times, he thought it must be so. At times, he was glad to excuse to himself that want of energy and perseverance which he secretly felt within him, by throwing the blame on circumstances over which he could have had no control. And yet the Countess Clemence was, indeed, a prize worth contending for—so beautiful in herself, so wealthy in the many fiefs which her father, the late king, had heaped upon his favourite, though illegitimate daughter. And why should he, why should he, Mathew of Taverna, fear to strive for the prize? What though the king himself should oppose ?—the king was but one of themselves. His father had, indeed, deservedly ruled, for more valiant or wiser monarch never won or swayed a kingdom : but this king, his son, had been long known as the least deserving of his offspring; had only come to the throne by the unexpected death of his four elder brothers:—why should such an one rule over the descendant of those Norman warriors who had chosen their sovereign from among the most worthy, and had only bowed to him as such ?

Long the thoughts of the young knight wandered on in this dangerous and tempting vein, while his horse scarcely moved through the shade of those high overhanging boughs. Anon they turned to the High Admiral Majone, the king’s favourite —his sole minister. Clemence had alluded to him more strongly even than to the

THE DARK AGES. at king. He would, indeed, be a dangerous enemy with whom to contend: powerful— unprincipled—and surrounded by unscrupulous dependents. Should he risk an encounter with such an adversary? Could not fame and power be more securely won by conciliating him? Fame and power: —who panted more eagerly than he did to achieve them? What but his earnest aspirations for fame and power, what but his own secret pride had made him hold himself so much aloof, not only from the High Admiral and the court, but, also, from his brother barons? This must be no longer. Years were passing :—five-and-twenty had already slipped away; and yet he had achieved nothing. Brave spirits were astir all over the world. None excelled him in arms, this he well knew; and he had been told, by those whom he did not deem flatterers, that he possessed that rude eloquence which was most prized amongst his compeers. Such opportunities should no longer be thrown away. He would do something. He would win Clemence or, at all events, he would win power and fame.

They were now approaching the natural gorge that winds through the summit of the rocks that enclose that quiet valley ; and such thoughts as we have attempted to portray were coursing more and more wildly through the brain of the ambitious Baron, when he was aroused from his reveries by Richard MacMardagh, who rode to his side at the same time that a shrill cry overhead caused him to look up to the top of the rock beside the gorge.