The Hand of Fatima

by Ildefonso Falcones

  ‘Take him to the bishop,’ ordered the bailiff as the chaplain turned his back on them to rejoin the main party, which had set off again. ‘His Grace will order this delinquent’s expulsion.’

  If they removed him from the cathedral, he would be sentenced first by the duke but after that by the Count of Espiel. What would become of him – and his mother? Barbary! They had to escape to Barbary. That was what Don Julián was preparing for. All he could do now was to beg for mercy! He let himself fall as if he had fainted and as soon as the servants bent down to get a better grip on him, he broke free and set off at a run towards the man he believed to be the duke.

  ‘Mercy!’ he begged, kneeling in the duke’s path and throwing himself down to kiss his velvet shoes. ‘In the name of God and the Blessed Virgin!’ Several men leapt on Hernando, pulled him to his feet and dragged him out of the duke’s way. The nobleman did not even have to break his stride. ‘By the nails of Jesus Christ!’ Hernando shouted, kicking and struggling between the lackeys.

  By the nails of Jesus Christ!

  When he heard these words a look of surprise appeared on the duke’s face. For the first time he bothered to look at the commoner who was being such a nuisance. Hernando raised his head and his eyes met the duke’s.

  ‘Be still! Release him!’ Don Alfonso ordered his men.

  His party all came to a halt. Some at the back craned their necks to see what was happening. The members of the chapter started to approach him, and even the bishop narrowed his eyes to see what was happening.

  ‘I said release him!’ the nobleman insisted.

  Ragged and filthy, Hernando stood before the imposing Duke of Monterreal. They looked at one another in astonishment. There was no need for questions or confirmation. In the same instant the memories of nobleman and Morisco returned to the tent of Barrax, the corsair captain, on the outskirts of Ugíjar; where Aben Aboo had made his camp after the defeat at Serón.

  ‘What of La Vieja?’ Hernando suddenly asked.

  One of the bailiffs considered the question an impertinence, and made to slap him, but without taking his eyes from Hernando, Don Alfonso stopped him with an authoritative gesture.

  ‘She did her duty, just as you said she would.’ The chancellor and the secretary, severe and sober men, jumped visibly to see their master treat such a ragged person so kindly. Other members of the party exchanged whispers. ‘She carried me close to Juviles, where I met with the Prince’s soldiers on the road. Unfortunately I don’t know what happened to her after that. I was almost unconscious; they took me from there to Granada and then on to Seville, in order to treat me.’

  ‘I knew La Vieja wouldn’t let me down,’ said Hernando.

  They both smiled.

  The murmuring among the crowd grew louder.

  ‘Did you find your wife and mother?’ asked the nobleman in his turn, ignoring all the others around them.

  ‘Yes.’ Hernando’s answer was almost a sigh. Yes, he had found Fátima, but now he had lost her for ever . . .

  The duke’s words interrupted his thoughts: ‘Know one and all,’ he proclaimed, raising his voice, ‘I owe my life to this man they call the Nazarene, and from this day on he enjoys my favour, my friendship and my eternal gratitude.’

  1 With my admiration and thanks to the master of the novel, Miguel de Cervantes, from whom I have borrowed the ‘Madman of Córdoba’, a character from the second part of Don Quixote. (Author’s note.)

  PART THREE

  IN THE NAME OF FAITH

  . . . Since men have called me ‘God’, and ‘Son of God’, my Father, in order that I be not mocked of the demons on the day of judgement, has willed that I be mocked of men in this world by the death of Judas, making all men to believe that I died upon the cross. And this mocking shall continue until the advent of Muhammad, the messenger of God, who, when he shall come, shall reveal this deception to those who believe in God’s law.

  Gospel of Barnabas

  44

  Córdoba, 1584

  HERNANDO WATCHED the process of painting and remodelling the cathedral library to convert it, once empty of books, into the chapel of the sacrarium. The place held a powerful attraction for him and he went there regularly. Apart from horse riding and shutting himself away to read in the great library of the Duke of Monterreal’s palace, his new home, he had little else to do. The duke had resolved his problems with the Count of Espiel by means of some agreement of which Hernando never learnt the details. As was the way of Spanish noblemen, he forbade Hernando to work, assigning him a monthly sum so generous Hernando did not even know how to spend it. It would have been an insult to the House of Don Alfonso de Córdoba for someone enjoying his protection to be reduced to any form of remunerative work!

  However, and despite the esteem in which he was held by the duke, Hernando remained excluded from the other social activities with which those gentlemen of leisure amused themselves. The duke had his own duties and obligations at Court, as well as those imposed by his extensive, rich possessions, which obliged him to be absent from Córdoba for long periods. Although Hernando had saved the duke’s life, he was still a Morisco, tolerated only with great difficulty by haughty Córdoba society.

  If this was the case with the Christians, a similar thing also happened with his brothers in faith. The news that he had freed the duke in the war in the Alpujarra, and the favours this action now brought him were on the lips of the whole community. Hoping his fellow Muslims would understand in the end and not place undue importance on something that happened so long ago, Hernando accepted the noble’s protection. But when he tried to explain himself, the story spread round all Córdoba, and the Moriscos began to refer to him contemptuously by the name he hated so, which had pursued him since infancy: the Nazarene.

  ‘They don’t want your money any more. They don’t wish to feel obliged to a Christian,’ Aisha informed him one day when he tried to hand her a substantial sum to help rescue slaves.

  As well as the money destined for this endeavour, Hernando gave his mother enough to carry on comfortably sharing a house with several Morisco families. He went to look for Abbas, the only one of the former members of the council who had survived the outbreak of the plague that had devastated the city two years previously. Nearly ten thousand people, a fifth of the city’s population, had died, among them Jalil and the good Don Julián. Hernando found Abbas alone in the forge at the royal stables.

  ‘Why won’t any of you accept my help?’ he asked after muttering an almost unintelligible greeting. Their friendship had never recovered from Hernando’s violent reaction to the news of Fátima and the children’s deaths. ‘Fátima and I were the first to contribute towards the liberation of Morisco slaves, and we did far more than others in the community, remember?’

  For a few moments Abbas turned his attention away from the tools he was working with on a table. ‘Our people don’t want handouts from the Nazarene,’ he answered curtly, before turning back to his work.

  ‘You more than anyone should know I’m not a Christian. All the duke and I did was join forces to escape from a renegade corsair who—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear your explanations,’ Abbas interrupted him, without stopping work. ‘We all know many things that aren’t true, and yet . . . all the Moriscos swore loyalty to their King, that’s why they are here suffering this humiliation, because they lost the war. You also swore loyalty to the cause and yet you helped a Christian. If you were able break that oath, why are you such a harsh judge of those who have been unable to keep their promises?’

  With these words, the blacksmith straightened up in front of him. He was an imposing figure. Why do you continue to judge me? his eyes asked. There was nothing I could do to prevent your wife’s death, they seemed to want to say to him.

  Hernando remained silent. He rested his gaze on the anvil where the horseshoes were shaped. It was not the same: Abbas had promised to take care of his family; Abbas had assured him Ubaid would not trouble the
m. Abbas . . . he had failed! And Fátima, Francisco, Inés and Shamir were dead. His family! How could forgiveness exist for such a thing?

  ‘I hurt no one,’ replied Hernando.

  ‘Oh, no? You gave back life and freedom to a Spanish grandee. How can you guarantee you truly didn’t hurt anyone? The outcome of wars depends on them, on each and every one of them: on their fathers and brothers, on the agreements they can reach if one of their family is taken prisoner. This holy city’, continued Abbas, raising his voice, ‘let itself be reconquered by the Christians because a single nobleman, just one, Don Lorenzo Suárez Gallinato, convinced King Abenhut he was stationed with a large army in Écija, only seven leagues from here! And that he should go to assist Valencia instead of coming to the aid of Córdoba.’ Abbas snorted; Hernando did not know what to say. ‘A single noble changed the destiny of the Muslim capital of the West! Do you still say you hurt no one?’

  They did not even say goodbye.

  Abbas’s reproach ate away at Hernando for several days. Time and again he tried to convince himself that the corsair Barrax only wanted Don Alfonso in order to obtain a ransom for him. His freedom could not have influenced the outcome of the war in the Alpujarra! He repeated this to himself insistently, but the blacksmith’s words kept coming back into his mind at the most inopportune moments. That was why he liked to visit the cathedral’s sacrarium chapel, the old library that held so many memories for him. There he found peace, whilst he watched how Cesare Arbasia, the Italian master contracted by the cathedral chapter, painted and decorated the chapel from floor to ceiling, including the walls and the double arches. Little by little the ochre and red-toned background was being covered with angels and coats of arms. The artist’s hand reached every corner; even the capitals of the columns were covered by a layer of gilt.

  ‘The great master Leonardo da Vinci said believers prefer to see an image of God than to read a document talking about God,’ he explained in Italian on one of Hernando’s visits. ‘This chapel will be identical to the Sistine of Saint Peter’s in Rome.’

  ‘Who is Leonardo da Vinci?’

  ‘My master.’

  Hernando and Cesare Arbasia, a serious, highly strung and intelligent man of about forty-five, had struck up a friendship. The painter couldn’t fail to notice the Morisco, always dressed impeccably in the Spanish manner of the duke’s court, sitting in the chapel watching him work for hours on end. The third time he saw him they began to talk. They got along well with each other.

  ‘Images don’t matter very much to you, do they?’ Arbasia had asked him one day. ‘Obviously you don’t look at them with devotion, but I’ve never seen you look at them even with curiosity. You’re more interested in the painting process.’

  It was true. What most attracted Hernando was the fresco technique the Italian used to paint the chapel of the sacrarium: it was so different from what he was used to with the leather embossers and painters of Córdoba.

  The Italian master plastered the part of the wall he wished to paint with a mixture of a particular thickness made with coarse sand and lime. Afterwards he scrupulously smoothed and then polished it with marble sand and more lime. It could only be painted on whilst still fresh and damp. On occasion, when the painter saw the plaster was going to dry out before he could finish, the shouts and curses in his mother tongue echoed round the entire cathedral.

  For some moments the two men silently observed each other. The Italian knew Hernando was a new Christian but sensed he continued to profess the faith of Muhammad. The Morisco was not worried about admitting it to him. He was sure Arbasia was also hiding something. He behaved as a Christian, painted God, the Virgin, the martyrs of Córdoba and angels; he worked for the cathedral; but something in his manner and his words set him apart from the pious Spaniards.

  ‘I prefer reading,’ admitted the Morisco. ‘I’ll never find God in simple images.’

  ‘Not all images are so simple; many of them reflect things that books hide.’

  That enigmatic declaration was the last thing the master said to him that day.

  The Duke of Monterreal’s palace was in the upper part of the district of Santo Domingo. The main section dated from the fourteenth century, the period when the city of Córdoba was reconquered, and an ancient minaret that rose from one corner recalled the splendour of the caliphs. The house consisted of two floors with very high ceilings, to which several buildings had been added until they formed a veritable maze. There were two large gardens and ten internal courtyards, which linked the different buildings. Altogether, the palace occupied an immense area of land. Displayed in the interior were the riches befitting a noble: a profusion of large pieces of furniture, sculptures, embossed leatherwork and tapestries (although these were gradually being replaced by oil paintings); silver and gold dinner services and cutlery. Leather and embroidered silk appeared everywhere. The palace had every convenience: multiple bedrooms and latrines, kitchen, storerooms and larders, chapel, library, accounts office, stables and vast halls for parties and receptions.

  In 1584 Hernando was thirty years old and the duke thirty-nine. Don Alfonso had a sixteen-year-old son from his first marriage. From his second, eight years ago to Doña Lucía, a Spanish noblewoman, he had two daughters aged six and four, as well as two-year-old Benjamín. Fernando, the first-born son, had been sent to the court in Madrid, but Doña Lucía and her three offspring lived in the Córdoba palace. Living with them were eleven relatives of varying ages, hidalgos without fortune from one or other branch of the family, whom Don Alfonso de Córdoba, as head of the family, took in and maintained.

  As well as these proud and arrogant knights, akin to the one who had once paid Hernando four reales to tell him who had questioned his lineage, other more distant relatives inhabited this diverse court. They were withdrawn and silent, like Don Esteban, an infantry sergeant with the use of only one arm, who was one of the pobres vergonzantes, ‘proud poor’, whom Don Alfonso brought into his home.

  The ‘proud poor’ were a special category of beggars. They were men and women with nothing to fall back on, whose honour prevented them from working as well as from begging, and who were accepted by decent Spanish society. How could honourable men and women be expected to beg for money? Brotherhoods were established to attend to their needs. If investigations into their origins and circumstances showed them to be genuinely needy, the brotherhoods themselves went from house to house asking for money on their behalf. The fruits of these missions were then handed over in private. During one of his sojourns in the city, Don Alfonso de Córdoba presided over the brotherhood, and thus discovered the existence of his distant relative; the very next day he offered him his hospitality.

  Hernando returned to the palace after spending the afternoon with Arbasia. He slowly covered the distance between the cathedral and the Santo Domingo district, stopping occasionally for no other reason than to waste time, as if he wanted to put off the moment of crossing the palace’s threshold. Only on the rare and infrequent occasions when the duke arrived in Córdoba, and asked him to sit at his side, did he feel at ease in the beautiful and tranquil mansion. In contrast, when Don Alfonso was away, Hernando was subjected to many subtle humiliations. He had often considered the possibility of leaving the palace, but found himself incapable of taking any decision. The deaths of Fátima and his children had shrivelled his heart and diminished his will-power, leaving him without the strength to face up to life. He spent many nights unable to sleep, clinging to his memories; and many more plunged into nightmares where Ubaid murdered his family time and again, and he could do nothing to prevent it. Then, little by little, these terrible images that haunted his dreams began to make way for other, happier memories, which filled his mind as he slept: Fátima in her white shawl, smiling; Inés, serious, waiting for him in the doorway of their house; and Francisco, totally absorbed in writing the numbers dictated by Hamid’s dear voice. Hernando took refuge in these visions, but this meant he found the days interminable, and
all he did was wait for them to end. Night reunited him with his loved ones once more, albeit in dreams. The rest mattered little to him: apparently his place was neither with Christians nor Moriscos. He did not know how to do anything except ride a horse. His work in the royal stables had ended after the terrible incident with Azirat: he had no friends left there now. What future awaited him if he left the palace? A return to the tannery? Facing daily the contempt of his brothers in faith? On one occasion, convinced a job would help him out of his melancholy state, he had dared to suggest to Don Alfonso the possibility of his working as a horse-breaker. The answer he received was unequivocal:

  ‘Surely you do not want people to think I am not generous towards the man who saved my life?’ They were in the duke’s office. Don Alfonso was reading a document while a large group of people waited in the anteroom. ‘Are you trying to tell me you are lacking something here?’ he added, his eyes not leaving the paper. ‘Are you not well treated?’

  How could he tell the duke that his own wife was the first to humiliate him? Hernando knew that Don Alfonso de Córdoba’s gratitude was sincere, and could not detect a single jot of deceit in him, but Doña Lucía . . .

  ‘Well?’ insisted the noble from behind his desk.

  ‘It was just a foolish notion,’ Hernando excused himself.

  Come what may, he would never return to the tannery, he told himself yet again as he reached the palace gates that day. The doorkeeper made him wait just a second too long before opening the door. He received Hernando in silence, without the bow with which he greeted the other gentlemen. The Morisco handed him his cape.

  ‘God be with you,’ he said anyway, as the man took it without even looking at him.

  Knowing full well the doorkeeper was watching him from behind, Hernando suppressed a sigh and walked into the immense palace: from that moment, until he could take refuge in the solitude of the library, he would have to face a barrage of petty insults. The evening meal was soon to be served and Hernando saw several servants moving silently and hurriedly about the palace. More than a hundred people attended the duke and duchess, their family and all those who swarmed around them.