The History of the Siege of Lisbon

Terraces, battlements and communication trenches are crowded with dark, bearded Moors making threatening gestures, but in silence, refraining from hurling insults, after all, the Christians might withdraw as they did five years ago, in which case they might as well save their breath. The two panels of the gate were opened wide, reinforced by iron bands and nails, and a number of Moors emerged at a slow pace, one of them, getting on in years, could be the governor, a tide which serves for everything and which in this case is used in the absence of any certainty about his precise title and the difficulty of choosing the right one from amongst several possibilities, besides it is just possible that they have sent out an alfaquí, cadi or amir, or even a mufti, the rest being functionaries and soldiers, their numbers strictly the same as those of the Portuguese outside, this explains why the Moors were slow in coming out, first they had to organise their delegation. We are usually led to believe that civil, military and religious authorities in ancient times were endowed with stentorian vocal organs, capable of being heard from afar, so much so that in historical narratives when some chief has to harangue his troops or other multitudes, no one is surprised that he should have been heard without difficulty by hundreds and thousands of noisy onlookers, often quite restless, when everyone nowadays knows how much work is involved in installing and tuning electronic sound equipment so that people in the back rows can hear perfectly, without any of those distortions or blurring of sound that would obviously affect the senses and change the meaning of what is being relayed. Therefore, contrary to custom and convention, and with the deepest regret at having to contradict the much applauded traditions of spectacle and historical stage sets, we are obliged out of love for the simple truth to declare that the envoys on both sides were only a few paces away from each other, and they spoke at close range as this was the only way of making themselves heard, while those looking on, whether the Moors in the fortress or the Portuguese with the delegation, awaited the outcome of this diplomatic colloquium, or whatever news the messengers might rapidly communicate as it was taking place, the odd phrase or snatch of rhetoric, sudden anxieties or dubious hopes. So it is established once and for all, that the exchanges in the debate did not echo over hill and dale, the heavens were not moved, the earth did not shake, nor the river turn back, in fact, human words have never been capable of making such an impact, not even words of threat and war such as these, contrary to what we might have believed by innocently trusting in the far-fetched descriptions given in the epics.