1492, Page 3

  CHAPTER III

  THE day passed. I had adventures of the road, but none of consequence.I slept well among the rocks, waked, ate the bit of bread I had with me,and fell again to walking.

  Mountains were now withdrawing to the distant horizon where they stoodaround, a mighty and beautiful wall. I was coming down into the plain ofGranada, that once had been a garden. Now, north, south, east, west,it lay war-trampled. Old owners were dead, men and women, or were_mudexares_, vassals, or were fled, men and women, all who could flee,to their kindred in Africa. Or they yet cowered, men and women, in thebroken garden, awaiting individual disaster. The Kingdom of Granada hadsins, and the Kingdom of Castile, and the Kingdom of Leon. The Moor wasstained, and the Spaniard, the Moslem and the Christian and the Jew. Whohad stains the least or the most God knew--and it was a poor inquiry.Seek the virtues and bind them with love, each in each!

  If the mountain road had been largely solitary, it was not so of thisroad. There were folk enough in the wide Vega of Granada. Clearly, asthough the one party had been dressed in black and the other in red,they divided into vanquished and victor. Bit by bit, now through years,all these towns and villages, all these fertile fields and bosky places,rich and singing, had left the hand of the Moor for the hand of theSpaniard.

  In all this part of his old kingdom the Moor lay low in defeat. In hadswarmed the Christian and with the Christian the Jew, though now the Jewmust leave. The city of Granada was not yet surrendered, and the Queenand King held all soldiery that they might at Santa Fe, built as it werein a night before Granada walls. Yet there seemed at large bands enough,licentious and loud, the scum of soldiery. Ere I reached the villagethat I now saw before me I had met two such bands, I wondered, and thenwondered at my own wonder.

  The chief house of the village was become an inn. Two long tables stoodin the patio where no fountain now flowed nor orange trees grew norbirds sang in corners nor fine awning kept away the glare. Twenty ofthese wild and base fighting men crowded one table, eating and drinking,clamorous and spouting oaths. At the other table sat together at an endthree men whom by a number of tokens might be robbers of the mountains.They sat quiet, indifferent to the noise, talking low among themselvesin a tongue of their own, kin enough to the soldiery not to fear them.The opposite end of the long table was given to a group to which I nowjoined myself. Here sat two Franciscan friars, and a man who seemed alawyer; and one who had the air of the sea and turned out to be masterof a Levantine; and a brisk, talkative, important person, a Catalan, andas it presently appeared alcalde once of a so-so village; and a young,unhealthy-looking man in black with an open book beside him; and astrange fellow whose Spanish was imperfect.

  I sat down near the friars, crossed myself, and cut a piece ofbread from the loaf before me. The innkeeper and his wife, a gaunt,extraordinarily tall woman, served, running from table to table. Theplace was all heat and noise. Presently the soldiers, ending their meal,got up with clamor and surged from the court to their waiting horses.After them ran the innkeeper, appealing for pay. Denials, expostulation,anger and beseeching reached the ears of the patio, then the soundof horses going down stony ways. "O God of the poor!" cried the gauntwoman. "How are we robbed!"

  "Why are they not before Granada?" demanded the lawyer and alertlyprovided the answer to his own question. "Take locusts and give themleave to eat, being careful to say, 'This fellow's fields only!' But thelocusts have wings and their nature is to eat!"

  The mountain robbers, if robbers they were, dined quietly, the gauntwoman promptly and painstakingly serving them. They were going to pay, Iwas sure, though it might not be this noon.

  The two friars seemed, quiet, simple men, dining as dumbly as ifthey sat in Saint Francis's refectory. The sometime alcalde and theshipmaster were the talkers, the student sitting as though he were inthe desert, eating bread and cheese and onions and looking on his book.The lawyer watched all, talked to make them talk, then came in andsettled matters. The alcalde was the politician, knowing the affairsof the world and speaking familiarly of the King and the Queen and theMarquis of Cadiz.

  The shipmaster said, "This time last year I was in London, and I sawtheir King. His name is Henry. King Henry the Seventh, and a goodcarrier of his kingship!"

  "That for him!" said the alcalde. "Let him stay in his foggy island! ButSpain is too small for King Ferdinand." "All kings find their lands toosmall," said the lawyer.

  The shipmaster spoke again. "The King of Portugal's ship sails ahead ofours in that matter. He's stuck his banner in the new islands, Maderiaand the Hawk Islands and where not! I was talking in Cadiz with one whowas with Bartholomew Diaz when he turned Africa and named it Good Hope.Which is to say, King John has Good Hope of seeing Portugal swell.Portugal! Well, I say, 'Why not Spain'?"

  The student looked up from his book. "It is a great Age!" he said andreturned to his reading.

  When we had finished dinner, we paid the tall, gaunt woman and leavingthe robbers, if robbers they were, still at table, went out intothe street. Here the friars, the alcalde and the lawyer moved in thedirection of the small, staring white and ruined mosque that was to betransformed into the church of San Jago the Deliverer. That was the onething of which the friars had spoken. A long bench ran by inn wall andhere the shipmaster took his seat and began to discourse with thosealready there. Book under arm, the student moved dreamily down theopposite lane. Juan Lepe walked away alone.

  Through the remainder of this day he had now company and adventurewithout, now solitude and adventure within. That night he spent in aruined tower where young trees grew and an owl was his comrade and heread the face of a glorious moon. Dawn. He bathed in a stream that ranby the mound of the tower and ate a piece of bread from his wallet andtook the road.

  The sun mounted above the trees. A man upon a mule came up behind me andwas passing. "There is a stone wedged in his shoe," I said. The riderdrew rein and I lifted the creature's foreleg and took out the pebble.The rider made search for a bit of money. I said that the deed wasshort and easy and needed no payment, whereupon he put up the coin andregarded me out of his fine blue eyes. He was quite fair, a young manstill, and dressed after a manner of his own in garments not at all newbut with a beauty of fashioning and putting on. He and his mule looked acorner out of a great painting. And I had no sooner thought that thanhe said, "I see in you, friend, a face and figure for my 'Draught ofFishes.' And by Saint Christopher, there is water over yonder and justthe landscape!" He leaned from the saddle and spoke persuasively, "Comefrom the road a bit down to the water and let me draw you! You are notdressed like the kin of Midas! I will give you the price of dinner."As he talked he drew out of a richly worked bag a book of paper andpencils. I thought, "This beard and the clothes of Juan Lepe. He canhardly make it so that any may recognize." It was resting time and theman attracted. I agreed, if he would take no more than an hour.

  "The drawing, no!--Bent far over, gathering the net strongly--Andrew orMark perhaps, since, traditionally, John must have youth."

  He had continued to study me all this time, and now we left the road andmoved over the plain to the stream that here widened into a pool fringedwith rushes and a few twisted trees. An ancient, half-sunkenboat drowsing under the bank he hailed again in the name of SaintChristopher. Dismounting, he fastened his mule to a willow and proceededto place me, then himself found a root of a tree, and taking out hisknife fell to sharpening pencil. This done, he rested book against kneeand began to draw.

  Having made his figure in one posture he rose and showed me another anddrew his fisherman so. Then he demonstrated a third way and drew again.Now he was silent, working hard, and now he dropped his hand, threwback his head and talked. He himself made a picture, paly gold of locks,subtle and quick of face, plastered against a blue shield with a willowwreath going around.

  I stood so or so, drawing hard upon the net with the fishes. Then athis command I approached more nearly, and he drew full face andthree-quarter and profile. It was between these accompli
shings that hetalked more intimately.

  "Seamen go to Italy," he said. "Were you ever in Milan? But that isinland."

  I answered that I had been from Genoa to Milan.

  "It is not likely that you saw a great painter there Messer Leonardo?"

  It happened that I had done this, and moreover had seen him at work andheard him put right thought into most right words. I was so tiredof lying that after a moment I said that I had seen and heard MesserLeonardo.

  "Did you see the statue?"

  "The first time I saw him he was at work upon it. The next time hewas painting in the church of Santa Maria. The third time he sat in agarden, sipped wine and talked."

  "I hold you," he said, "to be a fortunate fisherman! Just as this fisherI am painting, and whether it is Andrew or Mark, I do not yet know, wasa most fortunate fisherman!" He ended meditatively, "Though whoever itis, probably he was crucified or beheaded or burned."

  I felt a certain shiver of premonition. The day that had been warm andbright turned in a flash ashy and chill. Then it swung back to its firstfair seeming, or not to its first, but to a deeper, brighter yet. TheFisherman by Galilee was fortunate. Whoever perceived truth and beautywas fortunate, fortunate now and forever!

  We came back to Messer Leonardo. "I spent six months at the court inMilan," said the fair man. "I painted the Duke and the Duchess and twogreat courtiers. Messer Leonardo was away. He returned, and I visitedhim and found a master. Since that time I study light and shadow andsmall things and seek out inner action."

  He worked in silence, then again began to speak of painters, Italian andSpanish. He asked me if I had seen such and such pictures in Seville.

  "Yes. They are good."

  "Do you know Monsalvat?"

  I said that I had climbed there one day. "I dream a painting!" he said,"The Quest of the Grail. Now I see it running over the four walls of achurch, and now I see it all packed into one man who rides. Then againit has seemed to me truer to have it in a man and woman who walk, orperhaps even are seated. What do you think?"

  I was thinking of Isabel who died in my arms twenty years ago. "I wouldhave it man and woman," I said. "Unless, like Messer Leonardo, you canput both in one."

  He sat still, his mind working, while in a fair inner land Isabel and Imoved together; then in a meditative quiet he finished his drawing. Hehimself was admirable, fine gold and bronze, sapphire-eyed, with a facewhere streams of visions moved the muscles, and all against the blue andthe willow tree.

  At last he put away pencil, and at his gesture I came from the boat andthe reeds. I looked at what he had drawn, and then he shut book and, themule following us, we moved back to the road.

  "My dear fisherman," he said, "you are trudging afoot and your dressexhibits poverty. Painters may paint Jove descending in showers ofgolden pesos and yet have few pesos in purse. I have at present ten. Ishould like to share them with you who have done me various good turnsto-day."

  I said that he was generous but that he had done me good turns. MoreoverI was not utterly without coin, and certainly the hour had paid foritself. So he mounted his mule and wished me good fortune, and I wishedhim good fortune.

  "Are you going to Santa Fe?"

  "Yes. I have a friend in the camp."

  "I go there to paint her Highness the Queen for his Highness the King.Perhaps we shall meet again. I am Manuel Rodriguez."

  "I guessed that," I answered, "an hour ago! Be so good, great painter,as not to remember me. It will serve me better."

  The light played again over his face. "_The Disguised Hidalgo_.Excellent pictures come to me like that, in a great warm light, andexcellent names for pictures.--Very good. In a way, so to speak, I shallcompletely forget you!"

  Two on horseback, a churchman and a knight, with servants following,came around a bend of the dusty road and recognizing Manuel Rodriguez,called to him by name. Away he rode upon his mule, keeping company withthem. The dozen in their train followed, raising as they went by such adust cloud that presently all became like figures upon worn arras. Theyrode toward Santa Fe, and I followed on foot.