The queen travels mounted on a mule, seated on a golden saddle--a rich kirtle of velvet with hanging sleeves forms her robe, cut square on the neck, and a long mantle and a black hat complete her attire.
As she advances through the defile, the Rock of the Lovers (_Pina de los Enamorados_) opens to the sight, so called because a Christian knight, who loved a Moorish maid, flung himself from the summit to die with her in his arms.
Higher up in the mountains the queen is met by a splendid train of knights, headed by the elegant Ponce de Leon, courtly as he is brave--indeed, from his actions in this war he has been named the second Cid--and Lord Rivers, the English volunteer, mounted _a la guisa_ (meaning with long stirrups), wearing over his armour a velvet cloak and a French hat and feather, attended by pages in silk, and foot soldiers.
The earl, as eccentric as he is brave, bare-headed makes a reverence to the queen, which she returns, at the same time graciously condescending to compliment him on his valour in the siege of Loja, further condoling with him on the loss of his two front teeth, knocked out by the hilt of a Moorish scimitar.
“But Earl Rivers might,” continues Isabel, in her soft voice, bending on him the calm lustre of her blue eyes, recorded as such a beauty in her faultless face, “have lost the teeth by natural decay, whereas now their lack will be esteemed a glory rather than a shame.”
To which the earl, bowing to his saddle-bow, replies that he returns thanks to God for the honour her Highness has done him in allowing him to meet her; that he is contented, nay, even _happy_
in the loss of his teeth seeing that it was for the service of God and of her Highness; for God having given him all the teeth he possesses, in depriving him of _two_ has but opened a window in the house of his body, the more readily to observe the soul within.
As the royal cavalcade approaches the great gonfalon of Spain, the queen makes a low reverence and passes to the right hand, awaiting Ferdinand, who appears in state, armed _cap-à-pie_ in mail so wrought with gold it seems all of that metal--a snowy plume waving over a diadem on his neck, a massive chain, the links inwrought with gems of the rough workmanship of Gothic times when everything was ponderous, mounted on a chestnut charger, and attended by the Christian knights. But as they approach each other, these royal spouses, in the presence of the army and in a hostile land, it is not in the guise of mutual lovers, but as allied sovereigns that they meet. Three formal reverences are their salutation, the queen taking off her hat as Ferdinand approaches and formally kisses her on the cheek. He also kisses his daughter and blesses her, and so they pass into the camp to the lofty tent prepared for Isabel. In the centre of the camp, not, indeed, a tent, but a pavilion in the Oriental taste, formed of sheets of cloth of gold, divided into compartments of painted linen lined with silk, each compartment separated from the other by costly arras. Lances make its columns, brocade and velvet its walls, and it covers such an extent of ground as might have been occupied by a real palace.