LEGEND OF THE TAKING OF THE CASTLE BY THE CHRISTIANS
Episode1
1. Lia's kindness
2. Ben Iussef's stratagem
3. The Christian woman's marriage to the Moor
Episode 2
4. The conspirator and the crime
5. Lia's transfiguration
6. The plan of revenge
Episode 3
7. Strange happenings
8. The murderer's meeting with the old woman from the water
Episode 4
9. The fulfillment of the prophecy
10. The castle robbery
11. Ben Aligula's escape
Episode 1
1. The kindness of Lia
Ben Iussef was the governor of the Castle. Between him and Cale, the land in power of the Christians, there was a kind of no-man's-land separating the two communities.
The fame that in Cale a rich man had a daughter gifted with great beauty and even greater kindness, whom every day he distributed to the needy who came to her near a small hermitage consecrated to St. Mary, had reached the Castle.
Ben Lussef, driven by curiosity, wanted to make sure what there might be of truth in the information he received from his spies. Dressed as a beggar, he approached Lia (as the rich man's daughter was called) to beg a piece of bread.
The beauty of the maiden soon fascinated him and he became one of her most assiduous poor, despite an imposition she made on her protégés: immediately after the meal, everyone had to enter the hermitage to give thanks to God.
Ben Lussef did not know how to pray, but he soon undertook to learn to pray with the maiden. After he had learned it was he who prayed most fervently in Lia's eyes.
For a long time he received from the hands of his benefactress a bountiful meal and at the hermitage he said his prayers.
With this prolonged coexistence a great passion was born in the Moor that he could no longer repress. Then, a thought took over his mind: Lia would be his.
But how, if he was reading from the Koran and she was reading from the Gospels of Christ?
To speak to him of his passion? It would be to throw everything away, it could even be the end of the truce in which Moors and Christians had long lived. But he was not a man to back down or give up in the face of difficulty.
2. Ben Iussef's stratagem
His imagination, fertile in stratagems, showed him how it would be possible to lead Lia to the Castle without running great risks, nor disturbing her relations with the Christians.
Between Cale and the place we now call Areinho, completely uninhabited at that time, there was a dense forest that would facilitate his kidnapping plans.
After having well studied the place and marked out a trail through the forest that gave him an exit to no man's land, he ordered one of his subjects, disguised as a Christian, and who knew his language well, to build in the shipyards of Cale a boat that could carry three horses with their riders.
This boat, after being built, was taken to the aforementioned place of Areinho and there it remained awaiting Lussef's orders. In the meantime, the Moor ordered six horsemen to be equipped and gave them the following instructions: at the end of the afternoon, Lia would be surprised at the hermitage and, in one swift blow, gagged and blindfolded, placed on one of the horses and immediately led towards the boat.
But before that, in the middle of the forest, the other three knights will come out to meet her, and they will be ambushed and will take charge of her, immediately entering the dense woods.
Meanwhile, the first ones, now slowly so that they can be seen and followed by the crowd that, it is to be expected, will approach the boat, boarding it towards the other shore, to lose the way, taking with them a figure that, seen from a distance, gives the idea of being Lia.
While the crowd will be left to vociferate against those on the boat, Lia by the previously studied paths will be led to the castle.
Once the tumult has calmed down, those in the boat, having abandoned it to the current that will carry it out to sea, will return to the fortress.
So it was done and everything went according to plan.
When Lia's gag and blindfold were removed, she was already in the castle in the presence of Lussef - that poor man to whom she fed on Fridays.
Finding herself a prisoner in the castle at the mercy of that beggar, now changed into a powerful Moor, she barely had time to implore the protection of the Holy Virgin Mary of Her her hermitage. A strong convulsion shook her and she fell inanimate.
Lussef was in great distress and immediately called his doctors to revive her. When he came to his senses, he violently questioned the Moor:
- Villain, how dare you commit such an infamy, knowing that I was a Christian, and that therefore neither with promises, nor with threats, nor with tortures would I consent that you should approach me?
You will never get anything from me. And so that your hopes may die in you as quickly as freedom died in me, with the end of my life, everything will end for you at this moment.
Saying this, in a repulsion, he launched himself against Iussef, and plucking the dagger from his belt, with it he wounded himself deeply in the breast, falling inanimate gushing blood.
All this was so fast that no one can stop this deranged gesture of Lia.
3. The marriage of the Christian woman to the Moor
For a long time unconscious, she was between life and death: but the care, affection and attention that Lussef gave her, and especially the respect with which she was treated by him, saved her life and restored her to health.
Reading thus treated, she no longer looked at the Moor with an angry air, she no longer repelled him.
Confident of the promises he had made her, she asked him to be with her to help her pray. As soon as she could, she sent a messenger to her father, telling him what had happened, but that she was well and would soon be with him.
In fact, a few days later Ben lussef made Lia drive to her father's house, where he disguisedly started visiting her.
Lia, during her stay in the castle, had shown herself so firm in her belief, so confident in the protection of the Virgin of her hermitage, and prayed with such fervour that Ben lussef, in the face of that living faith, felt so shaken that he eventually gave up the Koran and embraced Christianity.
Made a Christian for love of Lia under the greatest secrecy, he asked his beloved to marry him. When this was also done secretly, Lia returned to the castle.
Her beauty, dignity and innate goodness won over the garrison and she took advantage of this circumstance to introduce the seed of the Gospel, albeit very discreetly. Peace between Christians and Moors was complete and Lia felt happy.
Time went by without anything disturbing that happiness, but so that once again the saying "no good can ever last" was true.
Like it? Then share it!