Part 19

Dom Pedro's words found their echo in the heart of Duarte. They said what his own sense had told him, and he was filled with fears for the future, though he could not break his promise. One last effort he made, and this was an appeal to the pope as to whether it was lawful to impose a tax for the purpose of making war against the infidels. The pope and his cardinals decided that it was not, as the infidels had not made war upon him, and Duarte, though more than ever cast down, had not the courage to acknowledge that he had been hasty and foolish, and, bitterly though he repented of his weakness, he allowed Enrique to equip fleets in Lisbon and in Oporto.

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But when, at the end of August 1436, the hour of departure arrived, the king had recovered himself, and handed Enrique a paper of instructions which would probably have changed the fate of the expedition had they been followed. Unfortunately, Enrique was a headstrong man, and thought that he must know better than his stay-at-home brother, who had not seen a battlefield for eighteen years. He had listened contemptuously to dom Pedro when he pointed out that African conquests were both expensive and useless, that the cities, even if taken, could never become part of Portugal, and would always need garrisons to hold them, and smiled scornfully at the statement that any Portuguese force besieging Tangier would in its turn of a surety be besieged by a Moorish host, who would gather men from all parts and have a supply of provisions constantly at hand.

'Those whom the gods will to destroy they first infatuate,' says the proverb, and no man was ever more infatuated than the infante dom Enrique. The fourteen thousand men of which the king had spoken had dwindled down to six thousand, and these were but half-hearted. Small as the force was, dom Duarte had instructed Enrique to divide it into three, in order to prevent the Moors from concentrating large numbers upon one place. This counsel Enrique declined to follow, nor did he attempt to surprise and take Tangier by assault, which might possibly have been successful. Instead, he allowed the Moors to assemble a large army and to put the town in a state of defence. Finally, he totally disobeyed the wise counsel of Duarte to make his camp close to the sea, where his ships lay at anchor, in order that provisions and a retreat might be secured to them.

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Having thus done all in his power to ensure defeat, only one thing remained, and that was 'to die like good men with constant souls,' in the words which the poet Calderon puts into the mouth of Fernando. Too late Enrique perceived the snare into which his folly had led them, and assembling his little army, gave orders that at night, when the Moorish camp was quiet, they should cut their way through to the ships and put to sea. Their attacks on Tangier had been repulsed with heavy losses, he told them, and if the enterprise was ever to be carried through they must first seek reinforcements.

The men agreed with him, and prepared to sell their lives dearly. Silently at the appointed time they crept up to the Moorish tents, beyond which lay safety and the great galleons. But the chaplain, unluckily, had been before them. As soon as darkness fell he had deserted to the enemy, and the sight of the large force drawn up in order of battle was the first sign of warning to the Christians that they had been betrayed.

Even Enrique felt that in the face of such numbers fighting was useless, but he placed his men in the best position and awaited events. All the next day the Moors made no sign, but on the following morning envoys left the ranks and proposed terms of peace. Considering all things, they were not hard. Ceuta must be surrendered, the Moorish captives in Portugal be released, and the Christian camp with everything it contained abandoned to the captors. But the infantes wished to deal directly with the kings of Fez and Morocco, in order to make sure that the terms offered would be loyally carried out. They were still expecting the return of the envoys which they had sent when the Moors, who had grown more and more impatient at the long wait so close to their enemies, could be restrained no more and fell on the Portuguese.

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In spite of their small numbers, the Portuguese, commanded by dom Enrique and the bishop of Ceuta, fought so fiercely that after six hours the Moors were beaten back. After a short rest dom Enrique ordered every man to repair the trenches and to throw up earthworks to protect the camp, in case of another assault. They worked hard the whole of that night, which was Saturday, and when by sunrise on Sunday everything was finished, the soldiers sank down exhausted where they were, and cried for food and water. It was long in coming. Then a horrible suspicion, which turned the men's faces white, ran, no one knew why, from end to end of the camp. Was there any food? and, worse still, any water?

They had guessed truly; they had no provisions left, and the water had been cut off by the Moors. For two days they held out, then dom Enrique decided to accept the terms offered him. He would give up Ceuta and the Moorish prisoners, would abandon the camp, and would undertake that Portugal should sign a peace with the Barbary States lying along that part of the African coast for a hundred years. In return the former Moorish governor of Ceuta, Salat-ben-Salat, should hand over his son as a hostage, in exchange for four Portuguese nobles, but the pledge for the surrender of Ceuta was to be dom Fernando himself.

Bitter were the shame and grief that filled dom Enrique when the results of his folly were brought home to him, and he instantly begged that he might be accepted as hostage instead of his brother. No doubt the Moors would have agreed to this; it mattered little to them which of the infantes remained captive, but the council of war which Enrique summoned would not consent. Fernando knew nothing of war, they said, but Enrique, their commander, could not be spared, though it is hard to see what Enrique had done except lead them into traps which a recruit might have foreseen. Dom Fernando was present with the rest of the council, and was the first to declare that his brother's proposal was not to be thought of. Then, with a heavy heart, Enrique signed the treaty, and a few hours later Fernando and he had parted for the last time.

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Thus ended the expedition for the taking of Tangier; and what had it attained? As far as Portugal was concerned, the loss, as stipulated by treaty, of Ceuta, by which the country set such store; the death of five hundred out of the six thousand men under the walls of Tangier, which held out in spite of the field guns used in war for the first time; the waste of money which had been only raised by the oppression of the people; and the delivery of the king's favourite brother into the hands of a cruel race.

Such was the tale which the fugitives had to tell on their arrival at Lisbon. And while the king was debating the best means of rescuing the captive, let us see how Fernando himself was faring.

Accompanied by his chaplain, his doctor, his secretary, and a few friends, who would seem to have gone with him of their own will, dom Fernando was sent by his captors to the fortress of Tangier, and closely imprisoned for several days. Perhaps the Moors may have been waiting for Enrique, who had gone to Ceuta, to deliver up the keys of the town; but as nothing was heard of him, the captives were taken next to the little town of Arzilla, further down the coast. Here the Portuguese were kindly treated by the governor, and Fernando, though the hardships he had gone through had told heavily on his health, did all he could to help his friends, who fared no better than himself, and devoted what money was left to him to ransoming those who had been for some years in captivity.

For seven months Fernando and his companions remained in Arzilla, and during all that time both he and his gaoler, Salat-ben-Salat, expected to receive answers to the many letters the captive prince had been suffered to write to Enrique respecting his promise to surrender Ceuta, where he stayed for some time after the embarkation of the Portuguese army. But after five months the only news that reached Arzilla was that Enrique had returned to Portugal; so Fernando then wrote to the king himself, imploring that he would redeem his pledge and set him free. It seemed little to ask, seeing that a treaty is considered sacred, and Duarte, from every point of view, was ready to fulfil the stipulation; but there was a strong party in the state which held that a Christian city should never be delivered up to the unbelievers, and even Enrique advised him instead to offer a large ransom and the Moorish captives then in Portugal in exchange for the infante.

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Always distrustful of his own opinion, and fearful of taking any decided action, Duarte next appealed for counsel to the pope and to the kings of all the countries of Europe. They sent the politest and most sympathetic answers to his questions. No words could express their admiration for dom Fernando's patience under his sufferings, and their pity for his hard lot, but--faith with Moslems need never be kept, and at all costs Ceuta must be retained.

Thus, after all, it was the Christians, and not the Moslems, who failed to keep their word and were responsible for the death of Fernando.

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At length news reached Fernando that dom John was starting with a fleet for his rescue, and then the doom which he dreaded befell him, for he was sent with his fellow-captives at once to Fez, a city far in the interior, and delivered over to Lazuraque, the vizier of the young king, a man whose name was a proverb of cruelty throughout the whole of Barbary. On their arrival at Fez, after a journey in which the whole population turned out to howl at and to stone them, they were thrust into a tiny cell without a ray of light. The four months that they spent in this black hole were bad enough, but worse was yet to follow. The little money that Fernando had left was taken from him, and heavy chains were fastened to the ankles of the prisoners, while their food was hardly fit for dogs or enough to keep them alive. But Fernando at least never grumbled, and tried to keep up the hearts of his friends.

One morning a warder entered the cell and roughly informed the prince that he was to go and clean out the vizier's stables, while the others were to dig up the royal garden. Of course Fernando had never done such a thing in his life, and now, hardly able to stand from weakness, and with fetters on his legs, it seemed an impossible task. Still, only to get out into the sunshine again was delightful to him, and he worked away with a will. However, he could not have done his cleansing very thoroughly, or else the vizier had merely wished to humiliate him, for the next day he was sent to the gardens with the rest. Here he was almost happy; he loved flowers, and he had the company of his friends, to whom he could talk freely, for the gaolers, satisfied that they could not escape, left them very much to themselves. As to food, each man had two loaves a day, but no meat; however, in this respect Fernando fared better than the others, for when the king of Fez and his wives walked through the gardens, as they often did, they would speak to him with the politeness to which he had long been a stranger, and bid their slaves bring him fruit and wine from their own table. It seems curious that king Abdallah did not insist on better treatment for the Portuguese prince, but he was afraid of Lazuraque, who had ruled the kingdom from Abdallah's childhood, and dared not interfere.

When darkness fell the captives were taken back to their prison, and here Fernando had a cell all to himself, and, tired out with his labours, was glad enough to throw himself on the two sheepskins covered by an old carpet which served him for a bed, and lay his head on the bundle of hay which was his pillow.

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Matters had gone on in this way for a few weeks, when one day the captives were told that they were to work in the gardens no more; heavier chains were fastened to their arms and legs, and they were all thrust together into one tiny dungeon. Then a message came that dom Fernando was to be brought before the vizier. With a beating heart the infante gladly followed his gaoler. Surely Lazuraque would not have troubled to send for him unless deliverance had been at hand? But his hopes fell at the sight of Lazuraque's face, which was cruel and stern as usual.

'Your brother the king of Portugal is dead,' were the words that fell upon Fernando's ears, and he sank fainting to the ground. When he came to himself, he was lying chained in his cell, with his friends anxiously bending over him.

Dom Pedro was now regent, ruling for Duarte's little son, Alfonso V., and besides the view which he had always held that the honour of the country demanded the surrender of Ceuta, he felt bound to carry out the late king's will, which directed him to deliver Fernando at any cost. But now it was not Ceuta that Lazuraque wanted, but a huge ransom, impossible for Portugal to raise, and till this was forthcoming the horrors of the prisoners' captivity were increased.