by Carla Kelly
She glanced farther down the clearing to the mules carrying her dowry. Maybe I have this wrong, she thought. Peace will bring threshing floors where women can laugh and work and not die. You are right, King Alfonso. I am now part of a great endeavor.
The thought gave her the energy to rise and pat Pablo’s shoulder, in imitation of her husband, who walked among his followers. She started to pat Jawhara, but the servant was already awake, her eyes pools of darkness in the moonlight. She wanted to tell the servant not to be afraid, but she knew no Arabic.
She took another look at the woman’s face and saw something instead of fear: a certain calculation. Are you measuring me? Hanneke asked herself, startled. Are you measuring all of us? Why?
She wanted to say something to her husband, but decided against it. What could she tell him? That Jawhara had something on her mind?
As they climbed steadily toward the summit of the mountain pass, she rode with Father Bendicio. “Father? Are you awake?”
“One of us had better be,” he answered, his voice muffled, as his chin rested in the heavy folds of his habit.
“Tell me more, please.”
He did not hesitate this time. “Old Señor Gonzalez would tell it when he was deep in drink, which was often enough. I speak of El Ghalib’s father now, a man equally bloodthirsty. It is not a pretty story.”
“I think Spain has no pretty stories. What is one more to me?”
“As I have heard it - this was before I was rescued – Santiago was two and Manolo – Manuel – was three. Juana was young, like Jawhara over there, who seems to be listening to every word I say. How curious. She speaks no Castilian.”
“Forget her,” Hanneke insisted. “Tell me.”
“Las Claves was on fire. They delayed too long in leaving, probably because Santiago’s mother was killed.” He shuddered. “Those who remember it say they can still hear the old señor wailing when he found her body, abused like those women on the threshing floor.”
“Vreselijk, vreselijk,” Hanneke murmured, crossing herself.
“As the story goes, he ordered Juana to carry the boys to safety. She tucked a child under each arm and made for the river. The men remained behind to cover the retreat, but before Señor Gonzalez sent her off, he begged her to get through with Manolo, even if it meant leaving Santiago behind, because he was younger.”
“What a thing to say!”
“This is a land of hard choices. People say Manolo is the image of his mother.”
They had reached the summit and were starting down, her husband leading. All the horsemen wore their helmets. She forced her attention back to the priest, even though she didn’t want to know any more.
“You can imagine the rest. The smoke, the heat, the noise, the confusion.” He shuddered. “And that peculiar sound the Almohades make as they ride into battle. Who can blame Juana for what happened?”
“Santiago?” She could barely say his name.
“She couldn’t run fast with both children so she left one behind in a gap in the rock. Covered him with a blanket. She thought she left Santiago.”
“It was Manolo,” Hanneke finished, when the priest could not. Cold prickles overruled the sweat running down her neck.
“They tell me that when she reached the river and noticed her mistake, it took four men to hold her back. When Señor Gonzalez and the rear guard arrived, he nearly beat her to death for her error.”
“Dear God,” Hanneke whispered.
“God was otherwise engaged that night. Later, maybe a day or two, they were joined by knights from Calatrava, and fought their way back to Las Claves.”
“What of…of Manolo?” Hanneke asked, almost not wanting to know.
“El Ghalib’s father found him, slit the muscles in one leg, and hung him by his heels from a tree. No one knows why he was still alive, except that the Gonzalez family is amazingly resilient.”
She heard the click of Father Bendicio’s rosary. “A curious thing is revenge,” he told her. “When Juana hadn’t the grace to die from the beating, Señor Gonzalez made her tend his motherless sons., reminding her constantly of her terrible mistake. And Santiago? He was raised knowing that he should have died. Juana somehow blames him for her confusion. Him!”
Hanneke sighed, astounded at such cruelty. “He was just a baby.”
“I doubt Señor Gonzalez said more than ten words to Santiago during his childhood. The boy had no friend or ally except Manolo. They have always been close, oddly enough.”
The beads clicked more rapidly. “So it was, until that moment when we faced the Almohades. Even Señor Gonzalez could not withhold his pleasure when Santiago killed that poor heathen.” He silenced the beads. “Do you understand your husband a little better?”
It was a lesson he never forgot, or was allowed to forget, she thought, appalled but understanding. “Santiago knew killing Moors or… or… Almohades pleased his father. He cannot stop, can he?”
“Here endeth the lesson,” Father Bendicio said.
Poor man. Hanneke looked ahead at her husband, who rode beside Antonio, their heads together. Engracia, still slept, riding with Carlos, Juana close by. Pablo sat alone on his mule, his chin to his chest, asleep. Jawhara was gone.
Alert now, Hanneke weighed her own fear against greater harm. “Stop, Father. I must look for Jawhara.”
“No, Ana.”
“I must.”
She slid off the mule and hurried back down the narrow trail. To her enormous relief, Jawhara stood at the side of the path. She turned quickly when she heard Hanneke.
Hanneke tugged the servant back to Pablo’s mule. When the servant was mounted, and the recipient of Hanneke’s most fierce glare, Hanneke retraced her steps to where she found Jawhara, wondering why she was there. She reached the spot when Santiago rode up behind her.
Before she could express her deep misgivings about Jawhara, he grabbed her arm and yanked her into his saddle. “This is no time to run away,” he said. “Have you no brains?”
“But Jawhara… I’m…”
“Not one more word. My patience has run out.”
He won’t listen to me, she thought, humiliated more than worried. She could be fair, though. Mama always used to say women had a sense about things, but what man wants to hear that?
He set her down none too gently beside Bendicio’s mule. “Watch her!” he demanded. “Must I do everything?”
Embarrassed, Hanneke kept her head down, trying not to hear the low laughter of the soldiers at her expense. She was so thirsty she knew she would never swallow again, but this was no time to complain. Would this journey never end?
She was almost asleep when she heard a sound that she knew even then would remain with her the rest of her life: a warbling, sustained cry from many throats. The hair rose on the back of her neck, this strange sound that interrupted the quiet of early dawn. Then, “Allahu akbaru” screamed at them from all sides, surrounding them.
She knew.
Chapter Twelve
Santiago’s soldiers slammed down their helmet visors and drew their swords, almost in one motion. The warble became a yodeling wail that echoed in the narrow pass and crashed in from all directions, and no direction.
As the soldiers formed themselves into a line of defense, the muleteers yanked their terrified animals into a tight knot. The mules bumped into each other and bit whatever was handy.
Heard for centuries in this subjugated land, the war cry of Mohammed’s followers grew louder. Hanneke covered her ears and leaned against her mule, shutting her eyes.
Santiago raced toward them. “Run!” he shouted. He pointed down the slope with his sword. Behind his helmet, his eyes were alive with defiance and tenacity. She had seen eyes like that once before on a caged wolf. Hunters had brought the beast from Saxony and stored it in her father’s warehouse until it wa
s too starved and weak to resist.
The priest leaped off his mule, tugging Hanneke with him. Carlos handed the sobbing Engracia to Bendicio, who dragged her off the trail. The priest motioned for Pablo and Hanneke to follow. They scrambled down the rocky slope, raising a cloud of dust, slipping and sliding until they crouched under an outcropping of stone.
Hanneke closed her eyes and hugged the earth, feeling the hoof beats of the enemy’s horses through her body. Her sides heaved from running, and there was a funny taste of rust in her mouth.
The wailing of the Almohades joined with the centuries-old cry of “Santiago! España!” and the clang of sword against scimitar. Hanneke held Engracia’s hand tight against her breast while Pablo burrowed into her side, trying to dig them both into the mountain. Hanneke stroked his hair with her free hand.
They hugged the slope and listened to the battle. Shrieking horses and shouting warriors welded into one awful clamor that grew louder until there was nothing else in the world except war.
The fight raged along the trail above them like a great wounded animal, lurching and falling, then rising again, more desperate, more vengeful. A horse and rider tumbled down the slope right by them, the rider small and swathed in turban and robe. Hypnotized, Hanneke watched as the warrior and horse sailed off the slope, separating at last, and falling to the valley floor.
They huddled together, arms around each other, mud-smeared now from tears and sweat. Hanneke wiped Pablo’s dirty face with the hem of her dress.
He sniffed her dress. “It smells bloody.”
She raised the hem, seeing again her bloody shift, a relic of the threshing floor and burning village. Pablo sniffed again.
“Jawhara smells like that,” he said. “I noticed it all day yesterday and last night. She smells like your dress. I do not understand.”
“Nor do I, Pablo,” Hanneke said. “What are you saying?”
“I wish I knew.” He looked around. “Where is Jawhara? Did we leave her behind, Father Bendicio?”
“We had no time to account for everyone, my son.”
Hanneke covered her bloody shift and stared at the valley floor to distract herself. It didn’t work, but she saw a great river in the distance and longed for it. She looked up the slope and wondered who would come down first, one of the warriors swathed in blue or her husband.
“I don’t want any of this.” She spoke into the hillside, where no one could hear her. “Papa, surely you didn’t want this for me. Even you are not heartless.”
The sound of battle faded and stopped, but it wasn’t until the sun was directly overhead that they heard someone coming toward them. Engracia made animal noises deep in her throat and clutched her belly. Hanneke pulled Pablo close.
The footsteps grew louder than stopped in a cloud of dust, as if the person was too weary to take another step. When he started walking again, rocks and pebbles dislodged by his passage rained down on them. Pablo sneezed. Hanneke held her breath and closed her eyes.
“Bendicio? Ana?” The words were low and cautious.
Father Bendicio got to his knees and looked upward. ”We are here and well, Santiago, deo volente.”
Santiago balanced himself on the slope, then knelt beside Engracia. “Is she well?” he asked Juana.
“Yes, señor, she is well,” the servant replied. “It’s a good thing for you.”
Little pinpoints of light seemed to dance in his eyes. He stared at Juana until she had the grace to lower her own gaze. “Come.”
As they struggled up the slope, Hanneke looked behind her, wondering how they had managed to scramble down in the first place and avoid the fate of the Almohad rider.
Santiago stopped them below the edge of the trail. “Engracia, you and Juana remain here.”
“It is scarcely comfortable,” the priest chided, which brought a sharp look from Santiago.
“We have to move some of the bodies. Do as I say.”
Santiago reached the trail first and held out his hand for her. She couldn’t help the fear in her eyes, which softened his own. “It won’t get better with waiting, Ana,” he told her, but she heard the kindness. “I need your help.”
The dead were everywhere. She put her sleeve to her nose, but there was no escaping the smell of blood and loose bowels. In her terror she reached for Santiago. He circled her with his arms. “El Ghalib’s soldiers,” he said, “and too many of mine, God damn his eyes.”
From the shelter of her husband’s arms, she tried to find a view without bodies, but there was none. The Spaniards walked among their fallen enemies. She gasped when one soldier brushed past them, carrying two heads by their bloody hair. Holding her breath, she watched as he tied the heads to his saddle and grinned at her.
A few sharp words from Santiago, and the man led his horse away, only to disclose a row of wounded men lying by the path. One of them was Diego, the lighter man chosen to ride her mule, which stood close by, her dainty head down, as if she had failed him, too. Diego looked at her, pleading for help, an expression of great disbelief on his face.
She started toward him as he vomited a gout of blood and toppled over, dead, exposing the great hole that had been his stomach. His own face expressionless, Santiago picked up Diego and carried him toward the mule train. As if in a trance, Hanneke followed. Pablo joined her, grabbing her hand and staying close.
Several of the mules were dead, the dowry goods they carried jumbled from the packing and strewn on the ground. Bright-colored bolts of cloth mingled with spices and broken crockery. She stared at the mess of her dowry, trampled by mules and stained with their blood.
Pablo’s hand tightened his hand in hers as he raised their hands and pointed. “Look. Jawhara.”
Engracia’s servant crouched in the middle of the mules, her eyes darting here and there like minnows in a quiet pond. As she saw Hanneke, Jawhara rose and backed away from her, clutching something under her dress. When she turned to run, Santiago handed Diego to a soldier, and clubbed her with the blunt edge of his sword. She dropped without a sound.
“How can you?” Hanneke asked. She knelt by the unconscious servant, brushing her tangle of hair off her face.
“I have never trusted her.”
“I didn’t trust her either,” she said. “I wanted to say something to you back down the trail.”
He pulled up the unconscious woman’s dress. “Let’s see what she was trying to hide from us.”
Hanneke watched in amazement as Santiago unrolled her own dress, the bloody one from the threshing room floor. “I left that behind,” she said. “I do not understand.”
Pablo leaned closer and sniffed. “That is why she smelled so bloody.”
Santiago shook out the dress. The fabric hung in strips, as if someone had been tearing it to pieces. Hanneke watched with growing uneasiness as dangerous lights played in his eyes. He knelt by Jawhara, turned her over and shook her. The girl dangled in his arms, unconscious. He dropped her back in the dust and gestured for Antonio.
He held out the dress. “Ride as far back down the trail as you think prudent and see if you can find any scraps of this dress. Take Pablo along. He can pick up scraps. I want to know where you find them.”
The men looked in each other eyes until Antonio directed his gaze to Jawhara. “Were we betrayed?”
“We will know when you return.”
Santiago walked him to his horse, Pablo following. “Watch Jawhara,” he told Hanneke over his shoulder.
Hanneke sat by Jawhara, chafing at her uselessness. When she couldn’t stand another moment alone with her fears, she told Juana to watch, and turned her attention to the soldiers who were carrying their dead comrades to burial, except she saw no shovels.
They took the bodies to a clearing a little way from the press of mules and horses. As she watched in disbelief, they removed all valuables and lay six bodies
side by side, and then the remaining five on top. When they were symmetrical in death, another soldier started a fire. He wrapped cloth from her dowry around a stout tree branch someone else had broken off and trimmed. He set the improvised torch in the flames, turning it over and over.
“No,” Hanneke said softly. “Please no.”
Santiago took the torch from the soldier, holding it until other men had stuffed dry grass among and over the bodies. Bendicio joined her, praying out loud, as Santiago walked slowly around the corpses, touching off the grass.
“Why?” she asked Bendicio.
Strange how a young man could look suddenly old. “If we bury them, El Ghalib will only dig them up again. That is why.”
The flames caught the grass, devouring the corpses like a starving animal, licking and murmuring and biting deeper. Thick black smoke rolled off the flaming pyre. The heat from the flames and the sun caused the air to undulate. As she watched in horror, the bodies seemed to move, made restless by the fire.
In tears, Hanneke ran to the edge of the trail. She tripped and sprawled in the dust, then picked herself up and ran back down the slope where she had huddled earlier. Covering her nose with her dress, she tried to mask the odor of flesh on fire. She cried until she slept, exhausted.
Chapter Thirteen
When she woke, Hanneke knew she was not alone. For one absurd moment, she wanted the man sitting there to be Antonio, who seemed more of a calm presence. What nonsense.
Pablo knelt a little distance from her. “Pablo?”
He said nothing. She touched his shoulder and he started to weep, this cheerful knight of hers who took life as it came. “Pablo?”
He grasped her hand on his shoulder. “I want to go back to the kitchen at the monastery.”
“Where they beat you when you dropped things?” This was not her Pablo, her true knight.
She remembered his errand with Antonio. “Is Antonio well?”
