Famous
leaders put on or took off armor in Santa Fe,--the
Marquis of Cadiz and many others only less than he in
estimation, and one Don Gonsalvo de Cordova, whose greater
fame was yet to come. Military and shining youth came to
train and fight under these. Old captains-at-arms, gaunt and
scarred, made their way thither from afar. All were not
Spaniard; many a soldier out at fortune or wishful of fame
came from France and Italy, even from England and Germany.
Women were in Santa Fe. The Queen had her
ladies. Wives, sisters and daughters of hidalgos came to
visit, and the common soldiery had their mates. Nor did
there lack courtesans.
Petty merchants thronged the place. All manner of rich
goods were bought by the flushed soldiers, the high and the
low. And there dwelled here a host of those who sold
entertainment,--mummers and jugglers and singers, dwarfs
and giants. Dice rattled, now there were castanets and
dancing, and now church bells seemed to rock the place.
Wine flowed.
Out of the plain a league and more away sprang the two
hills of Granada, and pricked against the sky, her walls
and thousand towers and noble gates. Between them and
Santa Fe stretched open and ruined ground, and here for
many a day had shocked together the Spaniard and the
Moor. But now there was no longer battle. Granada had
asked and been granted seventy days in which to envisage
and accept her fate.
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