Day after day, the troubled man paced the ramparts with the fierce unrest of a caged beast of prey, straining his eyes southward in the vain hope of seeing another Moorish courier appear over the dark hilltop. Night after night, he started from feverish dreams of struggling in the grasp of the victorious Moors, or, worse still, finding himself arrayed in turban and caftan, and ranked among the sworn foes of the Cross. El Zagal naturally supposed the terrible White Knight to be pining for fresh battles, and wondered what secret cause doomed him to this galling inaction; and Alured’s rough soldiers, knowing nothing of the truth, began to mutter that he must be bewitched!
At last, just as he began to despair of any further answer, and to fear some new and darker plot of his foes, he saw one evening a single Moor riding swiftly over the hills from the direction of his brother’s prison at Tormas.
This man bore a letter to De Claremont from the commandant of Tormas, Ali Atar, who invited the “great Christian chief,” with many florid Eastern compliments, to visit him there as an honoured guest, and settle the proposed exchange of prisoners, Don Alvar having just been sent from Grenada to Tormas to be exchanged for the emir.
This, coupled with what he already knew or guessed, seemed to Alured a polite invitation to come and be killed or made prisoner. But he was not to be so easily caught; nor did he take long to devise a plan for foiling his wily foes with their own weapons.
“Effendi (master), here is a Christian knight from Santa Fé, who would speak with thee.”
“Is it the White Knight?” eagerly asked Ali Atar, who, though prostrated by severe illness, still directed from his sick-bed the movements of his wild followers.
“Not so, O my father; it is but one of his knights, with a letter that he is bidden to give into thine own hand. Thou knowest that when I bore thy message to the White Knight, I found him laid on his couch, and bowed down by sickness; and all his men were sorely out of heart.”
The grim old sheikh muttered a curse under his breath; but, furious as he was at finding his plans thus foiled, the commandant of Tormas was far too good a general to lose a chance of seeing into those of his enemies.