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Updated: June 26, 2025
In heavy darkness he cut the halters which held Dan's cows and horses to their stalls and drove the animals into the road. He also poisoned pond Penlan, and a sheep died before it could be killed and eaten. Dan wept very sore. "Take you the old water," he said. "Fat is my sorrow." "Not religious you are," Aben censured him. "All the water is mine." "Useful he is to me," Dan replied.
Thus he came to have more cattle than Rhydwen could hold, and he bought Penlan, the farm of eighty acres which goes up from Rhydwen to the edge of the moor, and beyond. In quiet seasons he and Aben and Dan dug ditches on the land of Rhydwen; "so that," he said, "my creatures shall not perish of thirst."
Now the queen of the Black Isles was the most beautiful woman in the world, but she was as cruel and wicked and cunning as she was beautiful. No man that looked upon her could help loving her; for not only was she as beautiful as a dream, but her beauty was of that sort that it bewitched a man in spite of himself. One day the queen sent for Aben Hassen the Wise.
In the mean time a scandalous bargain was made on the 17th March, 1493, between Ferdinand and Aben Comixa, in which the latter, as vizier and agent of Boabdil, though without any license or authority from him, made a sale of his territory and the patrimonial property of the princesses for eighty thousand ducats of gold, and engaged that he should depart for Africa, taking care, at the same time, to make conditions highly advantageous for himself.
Ferdinand persisted in his endeavors, and found means more effectual of operating on the mind of Boabdil and gradually disposing him to enter into negotiations. It would appear that Aben Comixa was secretly active in this matter in the interests of the Spanish monarch, and was with him at Barcelona as the vizier and agent of Boabdil.
Of a sudden a sickness struck him, and in the hush which is sometimes before death, he summoned to him his sons. "Off away am I to the Palace," he said. "Large will be the shout of joy among the angels," Aben told him. "And much weeping there will be in Sion," said Dan. "Speak you a little verse for a funeral preach." "Cease you your babblings, now, indeed," Sheremiah demanded.
The old man had a talisman that hung dangling from a chain, and which he offered for sale. When Aben Hassen saw the talisman he knew very well what it was that it was the famous talisman of King Solomon the Wise. If he who possessed the talisman asked it to speak, it would tell that man both what to do and what not to do.
As they passed Capel Sion, people who were gathered at the roadside to judge them remarked how that Aben was blind in his left eye and that Dan's shoulders were as high as his ears. At the finish of a round of time Sheremiah hired out his sons and all that they earned he took away from them; and he and Catrin toiled to recover Rhydwen from its slovenry.
After Aben Hassen learned all that it was possible for man to know, he said to himself, "Now I will take my ease and enjoy my life." So he called the Demon Zadok to him, and said to the monster, "I have read in my books that there is a treasure that was one time hidden by the ancient kings of Egypt a treasure such as the eyes of man never saw before or since their day. Is that true?"
The tidings of the capture of his niece gave poignant affliction to the vizier Aben Comixa. His royal master, Boabdil, of whom he was the prime favorite and confidential adviser, sympathized in his distress. With his own hand he wrote a letter to the count, offering in exchange for the fair Fatima one hundred Christian captives to be chosen from those detained in Granada.
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