The exultation of the amorous tyrant, as he beheld the victim almost within his
grasp, could not be suppressed, and broke forth into triumphant language, as he bent
forward to embrace her shrinking form; but ere his extended hands could grasp the
innocent maiden, and even while her long and despairing shriek pierced the dull ears
of the slumbering echoes of the garden, a strange figure bounded madly upon the
scene, and, rushing with headlong fury from the cover of a neighboring grove, threw
himself recklessly between Roderick and the screaming girl. Well might the tyrant
give back in amaze, if not in apprehension, before the strange intruder Well might

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

he shiver with horror, as the wild yell of laughter with which the stranger answered
his first demand of inquiry, met his ears. Such a spectre had not often startled the
inmates of the pleasure-gardens of royalty and voluptuousness. The habit of the
monk concealed the person of Egiza; but the cowl was thrown back and the untonsured
hair was visible. The long black locks were matted on his brows; the glare
from his eyes was that of madness; and the wild laugh which broke fitfully from
his lips, mingled at moments with a choking inarticulateness, gave him all the appearance
of one who had just escaped from the bonds of the bedlamite. But there
was a terrible directness in his eye, as he gazed upon the shrinking tyrant, which,
though unlike the capricious and oblique stare of insanity, was not less fearful to
the spectator, as it spoke for a fixed resolve in the bosom of the intruder, which
might not be quite so readily disarmed and set aside as the wandering purpose of the
madman.

“Who art thou? Whence this insolence?” cried the monarch, after the pause
of a moment, in which he stopped to catch his breath. The wild and repeated laugh
of the intruder, was his only answer; and the ears of Roderick were pierced with
the shrill and mingling tenor of pain and pleasure, which the discordant sounds embodied.
Even the unhappy Cava, ignorant, in the disguise which enwrapped him,
that it was her lover who had come so timely to her relief, shrunk and crawled
away along the bank where she had fallen, as the strange sounds smote so unusually
upon her senses. But she was not long ignorant of the truth. Enraged by the
intrusion, the disappointment, and the seeming defiance of the monk, he repeated his
demand, in tones which showed the aroused tyrant, with whom further trifling would
be dangerous.

“Who art thou?” he cried. The answer was immediate:

“Thy foe! Ho! monster, have I tracked thee to thy den? Have I followed
thee through thy hellish purposes? Have I come in time to save?”—

And as he uttered these words, he turned a look of painful inquiry upon the shivering,
shrinking, but now fully conscious Cava. She clasped her hands as she beheld
him, and heard his words; and the smile which rested upon her lips, sad and
uncertain as it was, was yet such as to reassure him on the subject of his fearful
doubts.

“Or to avenge?” he continued fiercely, after the brief pause, in which he had
turned his glance upon her. “Ay, to avenge!—not thee, my Cava, not thee only—
though that were enough to drain all the blood from his accursed heart; but the
blood of the now sacred in heaven—the wrongs of the great and the good, whom he
hath doomed to the scaffold, to chains, to blindness, and (worst doom of all) to banishment.
Hear me, father!—hear me, Iberia!—hear me, Heaven!—I avenge ye
all! Thou shalt perish, tyrant! The tiger has been followed to his den. There
is no outlet. Thy guards are far: I left them on the outer wall, to the east. The
dagger is upon thy throat: there is nothing left thee but to die.”

And, as he spoke these words, with an utterance not less rapid than his action, he
leaped upon Roderick, and dashed him to the earth. With uplifted dagger he aimed
at his throat, and although the arm of the tyrant, quick, strong, and ready, parried,
and for the moment put aside the stroke, it was evident to him that he could not
long avoid his fate. At that instant he found an ally where he little looked for one.
Cava sprang to her feet, and rushing to the combatants, grasped the uplifted arm of
Egiza with both her hands, and the blow swerved harmlessly aside from the throat,
into which otherwise it had been unerringly driven.

“Spare him, spare him! Slay him not, I pray thee. However much he may
merit death, let not his blood be upon thy hands.”

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

“What! dost thou plead for him who would have wronged thee?” cried the desperate
Egiza. “Whence comes this unnatural mercy? Cava! woman! wouldst
thou have me hold thee guilty? Fond to him, thou art false to me. Away! Take
thy arms from my neck. If thou beggest for him I 'll no longer deem thee honest.”

“Thou dost me wrong. Oh! believe me,” cried the wounded maiden; “I am
true to thee, as ever was woman yet to the faith which she had plighted. He would
have wronged me, but he hath not; and I would not that his blood, or any blood,
should rest upon thy hands.”

“False and foolish mercy! I may not yield to thee, my Cava, since I should
but give freedom to the ferocious wolf, again to prey upon my fellow men. Let the
tyrant perish, that our people may live. Unloose my arm!—give way!”

“Spare him, spare him!” were her appealing words; but he listened to without
heeding them.

“Spare him!” he cried. “What, for further wrong—for other tyrannies—for
more lust and bloodshed? Thou art not wise to ask it, my Cava—neither for thyself
nor me. Seest thou not that if he live, thou art lost—I am lost—and life, and
all that is worth living for, is lost to us. No! I cannot spare him. I love thee too
well, my Cava, to heed thy prayer. He shall die!”

Meanwhile, Roderick struggled manfully to escape from the knee of his enemy,
which was pressed down upon his breast; but he struggled in vain. The arm of the
desperate Egiza threw off the hold of Cava, and a moment after the uplifted dagger,
which had been shaken in the face of Roderick during this brief conference, was
driven forward, with an unrelenting force and a true aim, at the throat of the victim.
But, even then, when the king deemed the struggle over, the doom spoken,
and his death certain, he was rescued. A stronger arm than that of Cava, arrested
the swift-descending weapon from behind, and forced it from the hand of Egiza. Ere
he could turn to meet his assailants, Edeco and the guard of the tyrant had grappled
him on every side. They had come opportunely to the rescue of their master. Another
moment, and they had been too late. But the fiend whom Roderick served had
not yet deserted him; and the unfortunate Egiza, in a single moment, found the position
of himself and the tyrant reversed. The guards secured him with a grasp,
from which all his efforts—and they were Herculean—failed utterly to extricate him;
and the bitterness of his captivity, under existing circumstances, came to his mind in
its fullest force, with an almost instinct consciousness.

Roderick rose silently from the earth, as soon as his enemy was taken from his
bosom. A grim smile rested upon his lips, as he surveyed his assailant, whom yet
he knew not. His eye glanced from the prisoner to the maiden, with looks of
inquiry.

“Who art thou?” at length he demanded of the former.

“I have answered thee,” said Egiza; “I am thy foe. I have no other name to
thee. Thou shalt know me by no other.”

“The thong shall force it from thy lips!” exclaimed the king. “Thine eyes shall
pay for the insolence of thy tongue. Away with him!” he exclaimed to the guards.
Cava sank at his feet.

“I kneel to thee, Roderick,” she cried; “thou wouldst have wronged me; I kneel
to thee—I forgive thee the wrong; but let him go free—let us both go free.”

“Plead not for me, Cava!” said the fearless prisoner. “Thou wrongest both of
us to bend the knee to such a monster. Alas! but for thy erring pity, we had not
needed thy prayer to our freedom; my dagger had freed us—avenging our own and
our country's wrongs at the same moment.”

But Cava continued to kneel and to implore the king. He answered her only by

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

demanding, with impatient and furious gesticulation, the secret which Egiza had
withheld.

“His name!—his name!”

But Cava well knew that the discovery of her lover's secret would be the signal
for his instant and cruel death. With eyes upon the earth and folded hands, she replied
mournfully to the demand of the tyrant:

“I may not tell thee, since he hath denied.”

“He dies! Away with him to prison!” cried Roderick.

Her shrieks filled the air, but did not move the tyrant. He motioned the guards
straightway to remove the prisoner; but the timid maiden had grown fearless for herself,
as she witnessed the danger of her lover, and strong in the desperation which her
want of strength occasioned her. She threw herself between the king and his victim—
she made her way to the prisoner, through the guards which environed him,
and, heedless of the reproach which at another time and under other circumstances
she would have expected naturally to follow such an act, she threw herself upon the
bosom of Egiza, and wept and implored by turns.

“Nay, dearest!” exclaimed the captive, who realized his situation perfectly, and
well knew that Roderick was not to be moved by any such exhibition. “This is
but weakness. Show thyself firm, and fear nothing. Thy prayers avail not with
the tyrant: he hears them but to scorn. I would not have him behold thy sufferings,
I would not that he should find pleasure in thy tears.”

“Remove her, Edeco; separate them,” said the king. “As for the traitor, away
with him to his dungeon, and see that he be well secured. I must have time to
meditate a fitting punishment for one so insolent.”

The commands of Roderick were peremptory; and, not often accustomed to dispute
them, the mercenaries were sufficiently prompt in their execution. They seized upon
the prisoner with unscrupulous force. With a resolve not less unyielding, though
of softer seeming, the fantastic Edeco laid his hands upon the maiden. Her shrieks
denoted her agony, though they failed to serve her will.

“You shall not separate us!” she cried, wildly. “You will not—you cannot!”
she said, imploringly, as she heard the commands of Roderick, and beheld the obedience
expressed in the eyes and in the action of his creatures.

“He is my lord—my betrothed—my husband. We must, we will go together—
to the prison, to the scaffold, any where; but you shall not part us—you shall not
tear us asunder!”

A bitter smile passed over the face of Roderick, as he heard these words. They
were so much poison to his soul. He waved his hand impatiently to the guards.
The maiden would have still implored him, but Egiza interrupted her.

“You plead to him in vain, my Cava. He hath neither truth nor mercy in his
heart. Go plead to stocks and stones, ere you waste breath on such as he. The
wolf shall have an ear to supplication when he hath none—ay, weep with pity
when both his eyes are dry. Plead no more, Cava, I pray you plead no more. You
wrong your noble nature, when you bend it to ask grace from the unworthy. You
debase the creature for whom you pray, when you plead for him to the base.”

“You are proud in stomach, sirrah; but the scourge shall teach you a becoming
humility!” said Roderick. “Away with him!” he cried to the guards; and they
could easily see how greatly he was enraged, as his words were always few in his
anger.

“Ye will not!” exclaimed Cava, now addressing herself vainly to the guards;
“Ye will not! Surely ye have wives, and daughters! You, my lord!—you!”

Edeco laughed and simpered when the appeal was made to him, and his

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

fore-finger was employed in re-twisting the floating locks on his temples, which in the confusion
had become somewhat deranged.

“I thank you,” he said, effeminately; “but I have never been so afflicted. It is
toil enough, sweet lady, to serve and succor my neighbors. I would not emulate
their virtues. They all have wives and daughters.”

The occult meaning of this speech was not perceptible to the unsophisticated sense
of Cava; but she understood enough from the licentious looks and puerile air of the
fopling, to know that he was incapable of feeling her afflictions. She continued her
appeal to Roderick and his guards alternately, and with all the earnestness of a devoted
heart and a warmly excited spirit; but the wrath of the tyrant was immovable,
and as for the guards, a moment of calm reflection would have taught the unhappy
maiden that they were incapable of one sentiment of generous pity while in the service
of such a master. Little did they heed her prayers or agonies. They obeyed
the harsh and repeated commands of Roderick, and with ruthless violence tore her
from the bosom to which she had not ceased to cling with a most convulsive effort;
and she only ceased to scream and struggle in the utter exhaustion of her nature.
She fell back in a swoon within the arms of Edeco; and Roderick, as he beheld her
condition, made a sign to the servile creature, which he seemed readily to understand,
and at once proceeded to obey. The gesture of the king had not been unseen by
Egiza; and the agony of his soul may be better understood than recorded, as his
mind conjectured its base and sinister import. Was it indeed true, that he, so lately
the arbiter of the tyrant's fate, was now so soon, so suddenly the victim of his will?
Could it be, that she, the innocent and blessed idol of his affection, was in the grasp
of one whose voluptuous inclinations had already been made so fearfully manifest?
And could he not protect, and save, and avenge her? The thought, the conviction,
was maddening. He strove with his captors; he shook them with a giant's strength
from his bosom, but they clung to him again and again; and, writhing and striving
all the while, he beheld the maiden at length borne away from his sight to the secret
places of the usurper's lust, and he had no power to arrest her progress, or weapon
to avenge her fate. His head dropped upon his bosom in his despair, and he had no
spirit to send back from his lips the scorn which he felt in his soul, as the tyrant,
taunting him with the power which he possessed over both himself and the maiden,
bade the guards hurry him to the deepest prison in Toledo.

Previous section

Next section