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Updated: May 24, 2025
Affonso Henriques was very pleased with himself. He made a jest of the affair, and invited his intimates to laugh with him. But Emigio Moniz and the elder members of his council refused to laugh. They looked with awe upon a deed that went perilously near to sacrilege, and implored him to take their own sober view of the thing he had done. "By the bones of St. James!" he cried.
"Listen to that voice," Emigio answered him, and waved a hand to the open window. "How else will you silence it?" Affonso Henriques sat down on the edge of the bed, and took his head in his hands. He was checkmated and yet.... He rose and beat his hands together, summoning chamberlain and pages to help him dress and arm. "Where is the legate lodged?" he asked Moniz.
"What?" he cried, his voice a roar. "Release my mother, depose Zuleyman, recall that fugitive recreant who cursed me, and humble myself to seek pardon at the hands of this insolent Italian cleric? May my bones rot, may I roast for ever in hell-fire if I show myself such a craven! And do you counsel it, Emigio do you really counsel that?" He was in a towering rage.
Then he buckled on his great sword, and they departed. In the courtyard of the alcazar, he summoned Sancho Nunes and a half-dozen men-at-arms to attend him, mounted a charger and with Emigio Moniz at his side and the others following, he rode out across the draw-bridge into the open space that was thronged with the clamant inhabitants of the stricken city.
In full armour, a white cloak simply embroidered in gold at the edge and knotted at the shoulder, he rode to the Cathedral, attended by his half-brother Pedro Affonso, and two of his knights, Emigio Moniz and Sancho Nunes.
His swarthy face was overcast, his mouth set in stern lines under its grizzled beard. "God keep you, lord," was his greeting, so lugubriously delivered as to sound like a pious, but rather hopeless, wish. "And you, Emigio," answered him the Infante. "You are early astir. What is the cause?" "III tidings, lord." He crossed the room, unlatched and flung wide a window. "Listen," he bade the prince.
If Affonso Henriques thought that night that he had conquered, morning was to shatter the illusion. He was awakened early by a chamberlain at the urgent instances of Emigio Moniz, who was demanding immediate audience. Affonso Henriques sat up in bed, and bade him to be admitted. The elderly knight and faithful counsellor came in, treading heavily.
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