And instant at the cry every sound ceased through the royal residence—every sound through the splendid city—every sound through the wide Vega. Every turbaned head was bowed in prayer, and a sabbath stillness seemed to consecrate the bridal of the earth and sky.
Ayesha rose from her divan, and while her lips murmured the words of devotion, and her fingers ran rapidly over the beads of her Comboloic or Moorish rosary, a strange, faltering flush ran over her fair brow. Her orisons ended, she caught some of the spray of the fountain in the palm of one of her fairy hands, and scattered it thrice over her long, dark tresses, on which it glistened in the soft moonbeams; for the moon now alone occupied the heavens, on the fragrant hills of the black hyacinth.
Again she resumed her attitude on the divan, but not her occupation; for the mood of her mind was altered, and for a while she hummed the burthen of an old, melancholy Moorish ballad—an old Moorish love-song, the words of which corresponded in no small degree to our own, “Oh! willow, willow”—since the proverb still holds good of burned Morocco or bright Spain, as of green, merry England—
“For aught that I did ever hear— Did ever read in tale or history, The course of true love never did run true.”
Ere long from the city gates far distant was heard the din of martial music—first, the deep clang of the kettle-drums and atabals alone, and the clear flourish of the silver trumpets which announced the presence of the king, and these only at intervals above or between the trampling of hoofs, the clash of armor, and the cheering of an excited multitude. Anon nearer and nearer came the sounds, with the clash of cymbals and the soft symphonies of lutes, and the clear, high notes of flutes and clarionets among the clangor of the trumpets, and the brazen rattling of the drums.
Nearer and nearer yet—and it is now at the Alhambra gates.
She started to her feet, and leaned far out of the embrasure commanding all the city, but her eye marked one object only, the royal train filing into the palace gates, from the royal sports on the Vega ended—and in that train, on but one person.
It was no turbaned head or caftaned form on which that ardent eye was fixed, now kindled into all a Moresca’s ecstacy of passion; it was on a tall Spanish crest and lofty plume. And, as if by a secret instinct, as her gaze was bent downward to the horse-shoe arch of the Alhambra gate, his glance soared upward to the airy turret’s top, and readily detected what would have escaped a less observant watcher, the dark eyes of his fair Ayesha gleaming through the palm-leaves and passion-flowers; their passionate fire half quenched by the tears of tenderness and hope.