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 the broken garden, awaiting individual
disaster. The Kingdom of Granada had sins, and the Kingdom
of Castile, and the Kingdom of Leon. The Moor was
stained, and the Spaniard, the Moslem and the Christian
and the Jew. Who had 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 this road. There were folk enough in the wide Vega
of Granada. Clearly, as though 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 the Spaniard.
In all this part of his old kingdom the Moor lay low in
defeat. In had swarmed the Christian and with the Christian
the Jew, though now the Jew must leave. The city
of Granada was not yet surrendered, and the Queen and
King held all soldiery that they might at Santa Fe, built as
it were in a night before Granada walls. Yet there seemed
at large bands enough, licentious and loud, the scum of
soldiery.
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