A Divided Inheritance

by Deborah Swift

  ‘Why are you selling, then?’

  ‘Going abroad. I’ll get new in the New World.’ He wiped his moustache, then gestured at them. ‘Not worth the cost of transport. I need slaves with the local language.’

  He turned his attention to the youth, another Morisco, by the shape of him. He was watching the white women in quick darting glances. A look passed between him and one of the women and Zachary understood immediately she was his mother. They had the same features, the small sharp nose and high brow, as if pressed from the same mould. The lad hopped from foot to foot, impatient to know his fate. A barely disguised look of fear flitted across his mother’s face.

  Zachary crowded in closer. He had taken a fancy to this boy. Now he was rich he would need a runner to do errands and fetch and carry for him. A personal slave, not just a house slave like Ana. He elbowed his way through the crowd until he was right next to the lad. Now he was next to him he could see that the boy was shorter than he thought, his legs thin as rails. Zachary wondered whether he got called ‘Spindle-shanks’, the way he used to at his age.

  Perhaps he was being a little hasty – it might be better to wait and find something a little stronger. At that moment the boy turned to look up at him, and even in the dusky light he could see he had the most unusual blue eyes, blue the colour of the Spanish sky, not the commonplace brown or black. In that moment Zachary’s mind was made up.

  He watched the bidding with impatience. The two old Negroes, nobody wanted. Eventually they sold for ten reales apiece. The two Morisco women went to the same gentleman when he bid one hundred for the pair.

  A dark Jew standing next to Zachary said, ‘You buying?’

  ‘I might.’

  ‘He paid over the odds. Moriscos are nothing but trouble. You can’t trust them. Slit your throat in the night, given half a chance. Always better with a darkie. They know their place. Ah, here we go.’

  Zachary stood on his tiptoes to wave his hand as the bidding started. The Negro woman, described as a devout and baptised Christian, aroused fierce shouts and hand-waving, but finally went for one hundred and eighty, not to the man next to him but to a thick-set man with a nose bent out of joint to one side. He bid with a curt and barely perceptible nod, and was obviously a regular customer. He did not even smile when the girl went to him, but he was slapped on the back by the young and rowdy men who were with him, until he turned and gave them a disapproving glare. They fell back like a pack of dogs.

  ‘Now what are we bid for this one? Forty, shall I say? Good clean young lad, unbranded, ready for you to put your mark on. Worth forty of anybody’s money.’ The auctioneer started his patter.

  The man who bought the Negro woman strode over to inspect the boy – pulled his ears back to look behind them, made him open his mouth, lifted his shirt to reveal a bony ribcage. Zachary did not much like the way he did this, nor the way the lad cowered away, flinching, as if he might be struck at any moment.

  Tentatively, Zachary lifted his hand. ‘Forty,’ he said.

  The bent-nosed man stopped his examination, cast him a frosty look and called, ‘Fifty.’

  The four youths with him surrounded Zachary and the boy. He knew their type; they looked like bodyguards, they had the bound-up torsos of prize-fighters. ‘Sixty,’ he called out, in a voice cool as he could muster.

  ‘Sixty-five.’ At the other man’s words a sharp shove came from behind so that Zachary lost balance and stumbled forward. He landed face first into the dirt. Instantly he leapt to his feet, about to turn and protest, but then he realized – it was an old trick, to distract him from the bidding.

  ‘Seventy,’ Zachary shouted, brushing dirt from the grazes on his hands.

  ‘Seventy-five.’

  A tingle ran up the back of Zachary’s neck; the men behind had muscled in, so that he was boxed in on all sides. He placed his hand surreptitiously on his sword. One of them hissed in his ear, ‘Vete! Or we will break your back.’

  He ignored them, fingered the paring knife in his sleeve. ‘Eighty!’

  The crowd let out an ‘Ooh’, and people turned to stare. A tic moved in his opponent’s cheek. ‘Eighty-five.’

  His men could do nothing now as they had the crowd’s full attention. The boy cringed away, sensing trouble. But Zachary pressed on. He would not be deterred. He would have let it go, but the other man’s attitude had made him even more determined. Bully him, would he? Not if he could help it. ‘One hundred!’ It was his last bid. He had only that amount left in cash. The crowd muttered that he was mad, had lost his senses.

  ‘And five,’ said the other calmly.

  The boy’s eyes were on him. There was a hushed pause whilst the auctioneer waited, his clapper held up. It was no good, Zachary was out-bid, he could go no further. Reluctantly, he shook his head.

  The auctioneer rapped the clapper. ‘Sold!’

  He saw the boy droop, and it gave him a sharp pain of recognition.

  Zachary turned to walk away. He wished he had never begun. It was one thing to buy goods, but he had felt something for that boy, recognized something of himself.

  He glanced over his shoulder to see his rival’s heavy shoulders push through the crowd, and the auctioneer hold up the deeds of purchase for the crook-nosed man to sign. The boy was still staring at Zachary with an unfathomable gaze. He felt terrible then, that he could not have bought him.

  He needed to get away. But he hadn’t gone ten paces before he felt hands fasten round his throat and a jerk to his neck. ‘Hey!’ he shouted, but nobody heard him. The four youths bore him off into a shadowed back alley. Flies hung about the ground, telling him it was probably used as a piss-hole. Before he could say a word one of the men raised his fist and smashed it into his nose. ‘My master could have had him for forty,’ he said.

  The blow brought Zachary to his knees, where he felt the impact of a boot slam into the small of his back. The pain made him nauseous and he bent over to protect his face. There was no time to pull a weapon, nor room. Punches rained down on his head. His hands got the brunt of it; when it eventually stopped, he could hardly bear the pain in them. He looked up to see a pair of soft leather shoes and black hose. The burly man stood there, the Negro woman and the boy-slave at his side.

  ‘Good,’ he said.

  He ignored Zachary and walked away, his entourage wiping their fists and swaggering behind. As they were about to round the corner, the boy slave turned back, seemed to fix him with his blue eyes. It was not a look of blame, but one of understanding.

  Chapter 21

  Triana, Seville

  Luisa Ortega was waiting for her father to come out of the sword-master’s house, and as usual he was late. She passed the time by helping Daria scrub the vegetables. It was a backbreaking task as they needed so many aubergines to feed all those men with their swashing swords and all the apprentices and servants. Luisa scooped a handful of cold water from the tiled bowl and patted it on her face to cool it.

  The water always refreshed her. Papa told her that after she was baptized they rushed her home and scrubbed her face and head with hot water. They did this to all their infants, Papa said, in case the stink of Christianity should cling and turn them into infidels.

  She howled so much they had to stop and take her instead to be doused in the Guadalquivir river. But it hadn’t made any difference, the Christianity had clung, much to Papa’s disappointment.

  She liked to think that’s what gave her an affinity with water. As a child she was drawn to the jade green of the river and would often submerge herself face down, just floating, her hair drifting about her like weed. She’d lift her chin to breathe in the smell of wet and sand before dipping her head back in to watch the marbled depths for fish and eels. But now she was older there was no time for that, she had to content herself with a few snatched handfuls of water rubbed over her sun-scorched skin.

  ‘Oye soñadora, wake up!’ Daria passed her another basket of onions, and Luisa began to flake off their papery sk
ins.

  ‘Onions. Oh no. Better cover my eyes.’

  Daria smiled at her as she pared the aubergines. Unlike Luisa, she wore the manto, the head-covering, so that her face appeared from it like a moon under a drape of cloud. Daria was braver than she was, Luisa thought, because to wear the head-covering was to mark yourself out, and there were few of her age left clinging to that tradition. Mama and Papa approved of Daria, their neighbour’s daughter. They said it was women like her who kept their faith alive. They always ‘tsk’ed at Luisa, though, at her reckless attitude, at her unconcern for history and their disappearing Arabic tongue, at her devotion to the candle-lit cathedral and the Mass.

  Luisa picked up the peelings and tossed them into the bucket for the pigs.

  ‘We’ll need more aubergines,’ Daria said, shaking her head. ‘The men eat enough for two with all their thrashing.’

  ‘There’s more in the basket,’ Luisa said. ‘Amar gave me a full load. Borage and chard too. Nearly broke my neck carrying it all the way from the field on my head.’

  Daria pattered over on bare feet and heaved the basket on to the table again, selecting three or four plump, purple fruits.

  ‘Still inside?’ Daria asked.

  Luisa threw the onions into a bowl and peered through the window again. ‘Yes, poor souls. He’ll be making them go through the gematria again. Still, at least they are cool in the library.’

  After the aubergines were pared, they sliced them and stacked them in salt to draw the bitterness out. Señor Alvarez always had a good supply of salt, unlike at home. Moriscos were not allowed to go down to the salt pans, so Luisa’s family never had any. Sometimes she dipped a damp finger into the white crystals when the block had been crushed in the pestle, and sucked her finger to taste the sea, but her conscience pricked her when she did that. It was like stealing, though it was only a few grains.

  She heard the murmur of voices outside and rubbed her hands on the sides of her skirts, which were already spattered with glazes from her day at the pottery. She went to the door and looked into the courtyard. Papa was descending the stone steps, his hand feeling for the wall, deep in conversation with the fencing master, Señor Alvarez. Two of the other young men followed close behind – she recognized them as Alexander Souter, the tall Dutch fellow with the pointed beard, and Etienne Galen the Frenchman.

  Señor Alvarez took the two young men off to the corner of the yard where a pile of bucklers lay waiting. Papa glanced in at the doorway and screwed up one eye at her. A moment later he was in the kitchen, lifting the heavy lid of the aubergine pot and bringing his head close to it to see. Papa’s vision was not so good.

  ‘Ah, Daria. Expecting the Spanish army, are we?’ he said.

  ‘You know what they’re like,’ she laughed. ‘If I don’t make enough, they’ll be fighting over the last mouthful like dogs – despite all their noble talk.’ Luisa giggled along with her.

  ‘How was it at the pottery today?’ Papa asked, his arm round Luisa’s shoulders as they went to the door. He waved a farewell at Daria, who nodded, used to their routine. Luisa and her father talked as they went, and the men training with swords and bucklers never so much as looked twice at them.

  ‘Good,’ Luisa replied to him. ‘I’m enjoying pressing the olambrillas for the tiles in the new hospital. Unusual octagonal moulds, and the glazes are beautiful. Every time Hammam lifts them from the kiln I think how beautiful they look. Turquoise and green like the river. They’re like the ones in the Alcazar, Hammam says. But these are for beggars and the infirm to enjoy. Makes a change.’

  ‘You should have seen the tiles in my old mosque in Granada, they were glorious. You know my nose must have been a hair’s breadth from them so often I knew the patterns by heart. That, and the dusty soles of Jamete’s feet. He always knelt in front of me.’ Papa’s laugh was lined with sorrow. ‘But they smashed the tiles in the last uprising. They razed the mosque to the ground. I remember seeing the shards in the street, and people stooping, picking them up, unable to believe anyone could have taken a hammer to something so beautiful.’

  Luisa said nothing, but squeezed his arm. She was used to him talking this way, as if one of those shards had lodged itself in his mind and, try as he might, he was unable to free himself of the pain of it. Mama could always soothe him. She understood him, understood his strange moods and contradictions.

  They walked companionably, taking their time. She had her hand always on his arm to guide him, lest he should trip over some unseen hazard.

  ‘The new student, Girard Thibault, he is not bad. By his voice I thought he would not have the patience for study, but I was wrong. We’ve been working on Plato’s solids, the dodecahedron – looking at the principle of twelve, how the archetype unfolds into everything. The planetary signs, the twelve maidens at the well in the Qu’ran –’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she said, having heard it all before.

  ‘Anyway, when I brought out the Agrippa, he sat with it and I swear he never moved the whole afternoon. I could hear his breath on the pages. He’s a good draughtsman, too, by all accounts; he’s shown señor some of his sketches.’

  ‘I know. He asked if he could draw my portrait. Huh. I said no, of course, I don’t want –’ she paused a moment to bow and greet another of their neighbours returning from the market place.

  Papa took the opportunity to interrupt. ‘Well, you should have agreed. Thibault is a mild young man, and of gentle blood. He would mean nothing by it except to sharpen his draughtsmanship. Besides, he knows it has always been a tradition in our culture to respect the woman.’

  ‘I can’t say I’ve noticed,’ she replied, immediately bristling.

  ‘No, I’m being serious. You are the keepers of the tradition, the long line of blood stretching back to infinity.’ He stopped, pulled her into the shade. ‘Lalla, Luisa, they want rid of us. There is talk again of us being exiled from Spain, sending the conversos back. And when that happens, many will fight – fight for our land and our livelihoods. And as they must, many will die.’

  She did not look him in the face, but pulled again on his arm.

  He did not come. ‘You do not want to believe it, but it is true. Then you will be the torchbearers, you women. Remember the story of Job and Rahma. It has always been so.’

  ‘It is just rumour.’

  ‘But rumour starts somewhere, like a small spring. Soon it gathers more water until it is a river, wide as the Guadalquivir.’

  She set off walking again, tugging on his sleeve. She did not want to believe it. It was just tattle as usual, this talk of exile. She had known nothing but Spain since she was scrubbed in the water of the river on the day she was born. She was Spanish to the core. Why did her father insist on calling her Lalla, when he knew everyone else called her Luisa, a good solid Spanish name? What use had she for the name of some half-mad Sufi from centuries ago?

  He could not be right. There were too many conversos in Seville; the authorities surely would not be able to expel them all. She tugged again at Papa’s sleeve in exasperation to make him keep up. Seville was her city, and she loved every last stone of it.

  The stories that Papa was so fond of telling, about the expulsion from Granada, that was forty years ago. It was just history. He could only have been a boy then, he probably didn’t understand. And he would keep bringing up those old Muslim tales, like the story of Rahma, who carried the ailing Job and his faith to the tribe of Israel. It sounded archaic, all the business of carrying the word of Allah, as if it were somehow a basket on someone’s head. Besides, she certainly did not want the sort of responsibility Rahma had.

  Anyway, if there was to be an uprising, Papa would be too old and blind to be a part of it. No, they would leave the Sevillians alone, peaceable as they were. They were no threat to anyone, she thought, they had been there too long, they were no raw incomers. She chewed on this as they walked, impatient with Papa, internally rebelling against his hand on her sleeve.

  When the
y reached Triana, she let go and hurried on ahead. Papa knew every turn in the street by feel, and here they were amongst friends. She burst through the door to find Mama had already put out the mat on the floor, the board with the barley bread, and the bowls steaming with fragrant couscous and cazuela blanca. She was all smiles to see them as usual.

  ‘Luisa!’ her brother Husain leapt up at her and wound his skinny knees round her waist.

  ‘How’s my little monkey?’ She grinned at him, and tickled him under the arms until he was forced to release his grip from round her neck and wriggle down.

  ‘Will you cut me the crust?’ he said. ‘I’m starving. Look, I helped Mama make the twist in the bread.’

  She squatted and pushed her skirts aside and picked up the knife to cut the loaf. Behind her she heard Papa come in and go through the back to the yard to strip and wash.

  Husain jumped up and rushed after him. ‘Papa! Papa!’

  But Papa sent him away. ‘Later, my little chap, give a man a chance to clean up.’ Papa made all these ablutions every day, even though she told him it was a waste of time and he would probably not be any holier by doing it. He frowned at her when she said this, and Mama told her to have more respect.

  ‘Are you nearly done?’ Luisa shouted, through the opening to the yard. ‘We’re hungry!’

  ‘Let him have his way,’ Mama said. ‘If it makes him feel good, let him do it.’

  ‘But we’re not supposed to, you know we’re not.’

  ‘Where’s the harm in being clean?’

  ‘Yes, where’s the harm in being clean?’ echoed Husain, who was always the grubbiest child in the barrio.

  She sighed. Papa insisted on clinging to the old ways like a raft, even though it would bring him nothing but trouble.

  Mama went to close the shutters tight, Papa blessed the food, and then they ate. They hunkered down, feet tucked underneath out of view. The oil in the lamps gave a smoky haze to the room, a musky scent that mingled with the smell of cooking. Papa and Mama ate silently, to give the food their full attention. Their silent meals were so different from the busy tables in the market place. But she was used to it; it had been like this every day since she was born.