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Updated: August 3, 2024
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. For some days after hearing the news Fernando's grief, together with the stifling air of the cell, made him so ill that his companions expected that every hour would be his last.
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.
One thing, however, did not occur to him that it was Duarte's weakness in allowing the expedition which had brought about the fulfilment of the prophecy. After a while Lazuraque saw that unless he meant his captives to die, which would not have suited him at all, he must free them from their dungeon, so they were sent back to the gardens. Slowly the years 1439 and 1440 wore away.
By order of Lazuraque he was allowed to receive his fellow-prisoners in order to take counsel with them, and at length it was agreed that amongst them, by the aid of the king and their families, they would treble their former offer, and promise one hundred and fifty thousand doubloons and one hundred and fifty captives.
It was so much easier and happier for him to believe that the vizier, whose cruelty he knew, should be playing some trick on him than that Pedro should have left him to die without a word. Certain it is that fifty thousand doubloons were all the Portuguese would offer, and now Lazuraque demanded four hundred thousand!
Fearing the anger of Lazuraque should his prisoner escape him by death before the money was received, he at once reported the matter, and orders were given to remove the captive into a larger cell, where he could feel the soft winds blowing and even see a ray of the sun.
Lazuraque, though he still preferred a ransom, part of which he could have put in his own pocket, dared not refuse openly to exchange the prince for Ceuta, now that the envoys had come for the express purpose of delivering up the fortress.
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.
How long it might have stayed there we cannot guess, but shortly after Fernando's death Lazuraque was stabbed by some victim of his tyranny, and by-and-by the remnant of dom Fernando's fellow-captives obtained their release on payment of a small ransom, leaving in Fez the bones of three of their companions who had not long survived the Constant Prince.
The expenses entailed by all this would, Fernando understood, have prevented the raising of the large ransom required; and with the lightening of his despair at his apparent abandonment came suspicions of Lazuraque.
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