DON QUIXOTE – THE CAPTIVE’S TALE – PART 7

(This post is a continuation of Don Quixote – The Captive’s Tale – Parts 1 through 6. If you haven’t done so already, it’s probably best to read those posts before continuing on here.)

Last week, the captive and his companions began putting into effect their plans for ransom and escape. This week, they pursue those plans further. Plus… the captive has a face-to-face meeting with Zoraida, the young Moorish woman responsible for his liberation.

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Within fifteen days of our all being ransomed, our renegade purchased an excellent vessel with room for more than thirty persons. To make the transaction safe and lend a color to it, he thought it well to make, as he did, a voyage to a place called Shershel, twenty leagues from Algiers on the Oran side, where there is an extensive trade in dried figs. Two or three times he made this voyage in company with the Tagarin already mentioned.

The Moors of Aragon are called Tagarins in Barbary, and those of Granada Mudéjares. In the Kingdom of Fez, however, they call the Mudéjares Elches, and they are the people the king chiefly employs in war.

Every time he passed with his vessel, the renegade anchored in a cove that was not two crossbow shots from the garden where Zoraida was waiting, and there, together with the two Moorish lads that rowed, he purposely stationed himself, either going through his prayers, or else practicing as a part what he meant to perform in earnest.

He would go to Zoraida’s garden and ask for fruit, which her father gave him, not knowing him. The renegade afterwards told me that he sought to speak to Zoraida and tell her who he was, and that by my orders he was to take her to the land of the Christians, so that she might feel satisfied and easy. He had never been able to do so, however. With Christian captives, the Moors permit their women freedom of intercourse and communication, even more than might be considered proper, but the women do not allow themselves to be seen by any Moor or Turk unless their husband or father bid them.

For my part, I should have been sorry if the renegade had spoken to Zoraida, for perhaps it might have alarmed her to find her affairs talked of by renegades. But God, who ordered it otherwise, afforded no opportunity for our renegade’s well-meant purpose.

Seeing how safely he could go to Shershel and return, and anchor when and how and where he liked, and that the Tagarin his partner had no will but his, and that, now I was ransomed, all we wanted was to find some Christians to row, the renegade told me to look out for any I should be willing to take with me, over and above those who had been ransomed, and to engage them for the next Friday, which he fixed upon for our departure.

On this I spoke to twelve Spaniards, all stout rowers, and such as could most easily leave the city. It was no easy matter to find so many just then because there were twenty ships out on a cruise and they had taken all the rowers with them. Those I engaged would not have been found were it not that their master remained at home that summer without going to sea in order to finish a galliot that he had upon the stocks.

To these men I said nothing more than that the next Friday in the evening they were to come out stealthily one by one and hang about Hadji Morato’s garden, waiting for me there until I came. These directions I gave each one separately, with orders that if they saw any other Christians there they were not to say anything to them except that I had directed them to wait at that spot.

These preliminaries having been settled, another still more necessary step had to be taken, which was to let Zoraida know how matters stood so that she might be prepared and forewarned, so as not to be taken by surprise, if we were suddenly to seize upon her before she thought the Christians’ vessel could have returned. I determined, therefore, to go to her father’s garden and try if I could speak to her.

The day before our departure, I went to the garden under the pretense of gathering herbs. The first person I met there was Zoraida’s father, Hadji Morato himself. He addressed me in the language that all over Barbary, and even in Constantinople, is the medium between captives and Moors, and is neither Morisco nor Castilian, nor that of any other nation, but is a mixture of all languages, by means of which we can all understand one another. In this language, he asked me what I wanted in his garden, and to whom I belonged. I replied that I was a slave of Arnaut Mami (for I knew as a certainty that he was a very great friend of Hadji Morato’s), and that I wanted some herbs to make a salad. He asked me then whether I was on ransom or not, and what my master demanded for me.

While these questions and answers were proceeding, the fair Zoraida, who had already perceived me some time before, came out of the house into the garden, and as Moorish women are by no means particular about letting themselves be seen by Christians, as I have said before, she had no hesitation in coming to where her father stood with me. Moreover her father, seeing her approaching slowly, called to her to come.

It would be beyond my power now to describe to you the great beauty, the high-bred air, the brilliant attire of my beloved Zoraida as she presented herself before my eyes. I will content myself with saying that more pearls hung from her fair neck, her ears, and her hair than she had hairs on her head. On her ankles, which, as is customary, were bare, she had carcajes (for so bracelets or anklets are called there) of the purest gold, set with so many diamonds that she told me afterwards her father valued them at ten thousand doubloons, and those she had on her wrists were worth as much or more.

The pearls were in profusion and very fine, for the highest display and adornment of the Moorish women is decking themselves with rich pearls and seed-pearls, and of these there are therefore more among the Moors than among any other people. Zoraida’s father had to the reputation of possessing a great number, and the purest in all Algiers, and of possessing also more than two hundred thousand Spanish crowns. Zoraida, who is now mistress of me only, was mistress of all this.

Whether thus adorned she would have been beautiful or not, and what she must have been in her prosperity, may be imagined from the beauty remaining to her after so many hardships, for, as everyone knows, the beauty of some women has its times and its seasons, and is increased or diminished by chance causes, and naturally the emotions of the mind will heighten or impair it, though indeed more frequently they totally destroy it.

In a word, she presented herself before me that day attired with the utmost splendor and supremely beautiful. At any rate, she seemed to me the most beautiful object I had ever seen, and when, besides, I thought of all I owed to her, I felt as though I had before me some heavenly being come to earth to bring me relief and happiness.

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For a further installment of The Captive’s Tale, see the next post in this blog.