I can recall having seen you blush once, When, When I touched the rose in your office, Women blush more easily than men, we're the weaker sex, Both sexes are weak, I was also blushing, How come you know so much about the weakness of the sexes, I know my own weakness, and something about the weakness of others, if books are to be trusted, Raimundo, Tell me, As soon as I'm on my feet again, I'll come and see you, but..., And I'll be waiting for you, Such fine words, What do you mean, Once I arrive there, you must go on waiting for me, just as I shall go on waiting for you, meanwhile we still don't know when we shall arrive there, I'll be waiting, Until soon, Raimundo, Don't be long, What will you be doing once we ring off, Camp in front of the Porta de Ferro and pray to the Most Holy Virgin that the Moors don't decide to attack at dead of night, Are you afraid, Trembling with fear, Is it that bad, Before engaging in this battle, I was a simple proof-reader whose only concern was to mark in a
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IF WE ACCEPT and rely on the facts as written by the aforementioned Fray Rogeiro in his letter to Osbern, then Raimundo Silva will have to be told not to deceive himself about the presumed easiness of camping, without further ado, in front of the Porta de Ferro or any other gate, for this perverse race of Moors is not so timorous as to have locked themselves in with seven turns of the key without putting up a struggle, relying on a miracle from Allah who is capable of dissuading the Galicians from their evil intentions. Lisbon, as we said before, has houses outside its walls, many houses and villas and not simply for summer retreats, but more like one city surrounding another, and if it is known that, within days, when the encirclement finally becomes a geometrical reality, the military headquarters will be comfortably installed here and all the dignitaries, both military and religious, thus spared the relative discomfort of the tents, now they will have to fight hard in order to expel the Moorish hordes from these delightful suburbs, from street to street, from patio to patio, from terrace to terrace, a battle that will last at least a week, and which the Portuguese only managed to win because they were more numerous on that occasion and because the Moors had not sent out all their battalions and the troops inside could not intervene in the confrontations 'with catapults and beasts for fear of wounding their brothers who, willingly or otherwise, had sacrificed themselves by fighting on the front line. Therefore do not let us censure Raimundo Silva, who, as he himself has never tired of telling us, is merely a simple proof-reader exempt from military service and with no experience of warfare, notwithstanding that amongst his books there is an abridged edition of the works of Clausewitz, bought from an antiquarian bookseller years ago and never opened. Perhaps he wanted to abbreviate his own narrative, considering that, after so many centuries, what counts are the main episodes. Nowadays people have neither the time nor the patience to keep historical data and minutiae in their heads, that might have been all right for the contemporaries of our King Dom Afonso the First, for they clearly had less history to learn, a difference of eight centuries in their favour is no joke, the advantage we enjoy is having computers, we can feed any encyclopaedia or dictionary into them, and hey presto, we no longer need to rely on our memory, but this way of understanding things, let's say it before someone else says it for us, is totally reactionary and quite unacceptable, because the libraries of our parents and grandparents served this very purpose, so that the neopallium should not become overloaded, it already does a great deal for its size, minuscule, buried deep down in the brain, surrounded by circuits on all sides, so when Mem Ramires said to Mogueime, Get ready, for I'm going to climb on to your shoulders, you might think this phrase was not the work of the neopallium, wherein there resides not only the memory of ladders and good soldiers, but also the intelligence, convergence or relationship between cause and effect, something no computer can boast of, because despite knowing everything, it understands nothing. Or so they say.
Lisbon is surrounded at last, the dead have already been removed for burial, the wounded transported with them in the same ships to the other bank of the estuary and from there, carried uphill, some to the cemeteries, others to field hospitals, the latter indiscriminately, the former according to social rank and nationality. In the encampment, if we discount the sorrow and mourning for the losses suffered, and not all that demonstrative, because these people are stoical and not much given to tears, you can detect much confidence in the future and an exalted faith in the intercession of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who on this occasion need not take the trouble of appearing as He did in Ourique, He has already worked enough wonders by making sure that the Moors, in the haste of their retreat, should have left behind to satisfy the appetite of their enemy, that is to say, ours, generous stocks of wheat, barley, corn and vegetables to feed the entire city, and which for lack of space were stored in open caves halfway up the slope, between the Porta de Ferro and the Porta de Alfofa. And when this fortunate discovery was made, Dom Afonso with a wisdom rare in one so young, at the time he was only thirty-eight, a mere stripling, uttered those famous words which immediately entered the thesaurus of Portuguese sayings, He that saveth his dinner, will have the more for supper, before prudently giving orders that these supplies should be requisitioned before it became necessary to invent another maxim, Better belly burst than good food lost, the best time for rationing is when there is plenty, he concluded.
A week had passed since Raimundo Silva had made his mistaken forecast, that of his first strategy, when he thought that by noon on the day after the troops moved from the Monte da Graca, there would be a simultaneous attack oin all the city gates, in the hope of finding a weak spot in the enemy's defence where an entry could be forced, or, of attracting reinforcements to the spot, thus leaving the other fronts unprotected with the obvious consequences. There is nothing more to be said. On paper, all plans seem more or less feasible, however reality has shown its irresistible urge to deviate from what is written on the page and to tear up all plans. It was not simply the fact that the Moors had converted the outskirts into strongholds, this problem had just been solved, although with numerous casualties, the question now is knowing how to penetrate securely locked gates, defended by posses of warriors perched on the towers that flank and protect them, or how to attack the Moors at such a height, beyond the reach of ladders and where the guards are never asleep. In a word, Raimundo Silva is in an excellent position to judge the difficulties of the enterprise, because from his verandah he can see that he would not even need to have an accurate aim to kill or wound any Christians who might try to get near this Porta de Alfofa, were it still here. The news spreads throughout the encampment that disagreements are brewing between their leaders, divided between two operational proposals, the one favouring an immediate assault with all the means at their disposal, starting with a heavy bombardment to drive the Moors off the battlements and ending with the use of huge battering-rams to storm the gates until they cave in, the other less adventurous that defends the setting up of a blockade so tight that not even a rat could leave or enter Lisbon, or, to be more precise, let those who wish leave, but let no one enter, for we shall finally bring the city to its knees. The opponents of the first proposal argue that the outcome, that is to say, the victorious entry into Lisbon, is based on a false premise, namely, the assumption that the bombardment would be enough to drive the Moors off the battlements, This, dear friends, is what is known as counting your chickens before they're hatched, the chances are that the Moors won't budge an inch, besides all they have to do is to provide themselves with some form of cover, a roof of some kind to afford them shelter, so that in all safety they might shoot us at their ease from above or douse us with boiling oil, as is their wont. Those in favour of an immediate attack insist that to wait for the Moors to succumb to famine would scarcely be worthy of nobles of such high lineage as those present and that it was already an act of undeserved charity to have suggested that they should withdraw, taking with them all their wealth and possessions, now only blood can wash from Lisbon's walls this infamous stain that for more than three hundred and fifty years has contaminated these places which must now be restored to Christ. Having listened to the arguments of both factions, the king finds their proposals unacceptable, for while recognising that it scarcely befits his dignity to wait for the fruit to fall from the tree when ripe, he is not convinced that an attack launched at random will have any effect, even if he were to storm the Moorish gates with all the battering-rams in his realm. Then the knight Heinrich asked to be allowed to remind everyone present that in all the sieges mounted throughout Europe, mobile wooden towers were used to the best possible effect, that is to say, mobile up to a point, because to move anything so gigantic into place requires a multitude of people and animals, what matters is that at the top of the tower, once it has reached the right height, we shall build a cat-walk, which, well-protected from any assaults, will gradually advance towards the wall where our men, like an irresistible torrent, will launch themselves, carrying the nefarious rabble before them without mercy or recourse, and he ended this explanation by telling them, This is only one, amongst many, of the modern
