The Hand of Fatima

by Ildefonso Falcones

  ‘I have nothing to do with any of that now,’ he said weakly. ‘Our community in Córdoba turned its back on me when they found out that I helped Christians during the war.’

  ‘We have all played that game,’ Don Pedro de Granada said. ‘Myself first and foremost. Look,’ he went on, pointing to a large chest behind Miguel de Luna, who stepped aside so that Hernando could see it more clearly. ‘Can you see the coat of arms? That is of the House of the Granada Venegas: we bore it when we fought with the Christian monarchs against our people. But can you see its motto?’

  ‘Lagaleblila,’ Hernando read out loud. ‘What does that mean . . .?’

  He himself answered, as he deciphered the meaning: wa la galib ilallah. ‘There is no victor but God!’ The motto of the Nasrid dynasty that was repeated throughout the Alhambra to the honour and glory of the one God: Allah.

  ‘We are not interested in what old people in the Morisco communities think we should do,’ Castillo said. ‘They are all in favour of either armed insurrection or conversion to the true faith. All of them are expecting the Turks, Berbers or the French to come to their aid. But we don’t think that is the answer. Nobody will come to our aid, and if they did – if anyone finally decided to do so – the Christians would annihilate us: we Moriscos would be the first to fall. And in the meantime, peaceful co-existence between the two communities grows more impossible by the day. The Moriscos in Valencia and Aragón are rebellious, and those from Granada are no more than a people without a homeland! Six months ago four thousand five hundred Moriscos who had gone back secretly to their previous homes were expelled from Granada a second time. There are many voices now clamouring for all the Moriscos to be expelled from Spain, or for far more cruel, bloodthirsty measures to be adopted against them. If things go on like this—’

  ‘Then what?’ Hernando cut in. ‘I know we don’t stand much chance in any armed conflict against the Spaniards and that it would be a miracle if anyone came to our aid. But that means all that is left is to be converted as the Christians require of us.’

  ‘No!’ Castillo protested vigorously. ‘There is another possibility.’

  ‘We have to go back to Córdoba!’

  Don Sancho burst into the study where Hernando was trying for the umpteenth time to explain what had happened in Juviles during the uprising. A few days earlier he had read over what he had written so far, then torn everything up. He raised his eyes from a sheet of paper that had remained blank since he had sat down at the desk more than an hour earlier, and saw the hidalgo striding towards him, grim-faced.

  ‘Why? What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ shouted Don Sancho. ‘You tell me! All the servants in the house are talking about you. You have sullied the honour of a judge in the royal chancery of Granada! If Don Ponce were to find out . . . How dared you do something like that? The gossip could spread through the whole city. I don’t want to even think about it! A judge!’ Don Sancho scratched the sparse grey hairs on his head. ‘We have to leave! To get back to Córdoba at once!’

  ‘What are the servants saying?’ Hernando asked casually, desperately trying to gain time.

  ‘You ought to know better than anyone: Isabel!’

  ‘Sit down, Don Sancho,’ Hernando said, but the hidalgo waved his hand dismissively, and continued pacing up and down in front of the desk. ‘I can see you’re angry, but I’ve no idea why. Isabel and I have done nothing wrong. I have not sullied anyone’s honour.’

  Don Sancho stopped pacing, rested his fists on the desk and studied Hernando as a teacher would his pupil. Then he looked over the Morisco’s shoulder at the garden behind him. Isabel was not there.

  ‘That’s not what she says,’ he lied.

  Hernando turned pale. ‘You’ve . . . you’ve spoken to Isabel?’

  ‘Yes. A moment ago.’

  ‘And what did she tell you?’ Hernando’s voice contradicted the self-assurance he was trying to project.

  ‘Everything,’ Don Sancho almost shouted. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to speak more quietly. ‘Her face told me everything. Her sense of shame is confession enough. She almost fainted!’

  ‘And how do you expect a pious Christian woman to react if you accuse her of adultery?’ Hernando tried to defend himself.

  Don Sancho pounded the desk with his fist. ‘Don’t try to be clever. I know what went on. One of the Christian maids tried to convince a Morisco slave to show her the pleasure that you apparently give her mistress. She wants to be taken “like the Moors do”, as she put it.’

  Hernando could not hide a tiny smirk of self-satisfaction. It had taken him days and repeated furtive meetings with Isabel to persuade her to give herself to his caresses.

  ‘Satyr!’ the hidalgo shouted at him when he saw the Morisco was pleased with what he had heard. ‘You have not only taken advantage of the innocence of a young girl who most probably fell into your arms out of a sense of gratitude, but you have perverted her in an obscene, shameless way, violating all the precepts of the Holy Mother Church.’

  ‘Don Sancho!’ Hernando objected, trying to calm him.

  ‘Don’t you realize?’ the hidalgo silenced him again, this time speaking slowly and deliberately. ‘The judge will kill you. With his own bare hands.’

  Hernando stroked his chin. Behind his back the rays of the sun filtered down into the courtyard.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ insisted Don Sancho.

  That this was not the moment to stop, Hernando would have liked to tell him. That he was succeeding in making Isabel’s eyes look dreamy, and for her to sigh more and more deeply as he caressed her and bit her playfully: sure signs that she now actively wanted to make love. That at each new meeting Isabel left routine ever further behind, rising above guilt, prejudice and Christian teachings. That she was almost ready to experience an ecstasy she had never even imagined. And that, thanks to the pleasure her body showed, he himself would perhaps reach the heavens as he once had with Fátima. Hernando could sense his member stirring in his breeches. In his mind’s eye he saw Isabel naked, desirable and voluptuous, straining at the touch of his fingertips and tongue, avid to discover the world.

  ‘I don’t think I can leave for Córdoba now,’ he told the hidalgo. ‘The bishop is expecting my report and, as you know, your friends in the Casa de los Tiros want to see me again.’

  ‘What you should know’, Don Sancho roared, ‘is that according to law, once Don Ponce has ended your life, he is obliged to kill her as well.’

  ‘Possibly he will not kill either of us.’

  ‘I’ll write to my cousin telling him what is going on,’ the hidalgo threatened him.

  ‘You will be very careful not to call a lady’s honour into question.’

  ‘Is she really worth so much you would risk your life for her?’ Don Sancho retorted, striding out of the room before Hernando had time to reply.

  What is my life worth? Hernando asked himself after the hidalgo had left, slamming the door. He owned nothing more than a good horse, which he could not ride anywhere because he had nowhere to go and nobody waiting for him: not even his own mother! The duke would not allow him to work, but was sending him out to help the same King who had humiliated his people and expelled them from Granada. He had agreed to work for the bishop’s men. ‘Keep on drawing up the list of martyrs,’ Castillo had advised him in one of their talks. ‘We have to be more Christian than the Christians,’ he had stressed. The same thing that Abbas had once said! What was the life worth of someone who was always pretending to be something he was not? What was his goal? To allow his life to flow along comfortably thanks to the duke’s generosity, as his fawning relations did?

  After they had got to know him better, Don Pedro de Granada, Castillo and Luna had revealed their plan to Hernando: to convince the Christians of the good qualities of the Muslims living in Spain, so that they would change their opinion of them. Luna was writing a book entitled The True History of King Rodrigo. This was base
d on the events described in an imaginary Arab manuscript found in El Escorial library, and was intended to show that the conquest of Spain by Muslims from Barbary had been to liberate the Christians suffering under the tyranny of their Goth kings. After the conquest, as he pointed out, there had been eight centuries of peace when the two religions had co-existed side by side.

  ‘Why can’t we achieve the same now?’ Luna had asked himself rhetorically.

  ‘We have to combat the image the Christians have of the Moriscos,’ said Don Pedro. ‘Their writers and priests are creating the fiction that we Moriscos are extremely fertile because our women marry as girls and have lots of children. But that’s not true! They have the same number as Christians. They also say our women are promiscuous and adulterous. And as for us men, they say since we do not have to do military service or go into the Church, the new Christian population is increasing out of all proportion, and is amassing gold, silver and all kinds of possessions, and so ruining the kingdom. But that’s false! They say we are perverted, and murderers. That in secret we profane the name of God. It’s all lies! But when it’s repeated over and over, when it’s shouted out in sermons or published in books, they start to believe it. So we have to use the same weapons to convince them the opposite is true.’

  ‘Listen,’ added Castillo. ‘If a Berber crosses the strait to come and live in Spain and convert to Christianity, he is received with open arms. No one is suspicious of these new converts, although they may have little real intention of embracing the Catholic faith. But Moriscos who have been living for almost a century as baptized Christians are not accorded the same privileges. We have to change these deep-rooted ideas. To do that we need educated people like you who know how to read and write and who can fight alongside us.’

  This had been the story of Hernando’s life ever since he was a boy in Juviles, when he had been chosen to guard their goods and look after their livestock in order to avoid paying taxes. And it had been the same in Córdoba. Where had all that got him? To try to win the Christians round seemed as crazy to him as trying to defeat them in a new uprising.

  He dropped the quill he still had in his hand on to the blank sheet of paper.

  ‘Yes, Don Sancho,’ he murmured towards the closed door of the room, ‘it is probably worth risking an absurd life even if it is only for a single moment of pleasure with a woman like her.’

  But, he thought, he would have to be careful from now on.

  That night after dinner Don Ponce de Hervás withdrew to his study to work. Shortly afterwards, a servant hoping to earn a few coins for supplying his lord with such important information knocked hesitantly at the door. The judge listened to the man’s stammered account just as impassively as he listened to the litigants in the chancery.

  ‘Are you sure of what you are telling me?’ he demanded when the servant had finished.

  ‘No, your excellency. I only know it is what is being said in the kitchens, the vegetable garden, the servants’ bedrooms and your stables, but I cannot vouch for the truth of it. I thought, though, that you would wish to know.’

  Don Ponce sent him on his way with his reward and instructions to keep him informed. When the servant had left, he screwed the piece of paper on which he had been writing up into a ball. His fists clenched, he trembled with rage in the very same chair where a few hours earlier Hernando had decided to risk his life for the sake of the hope of ecstasy with Isabel. And yet, although he was accustomed to taking decisions, this time he choked back his anger and stifled his first impulse to get up, give his wife a thrashing, and then kill the Morisco.

  The silence of the night enveloped house and garden. Don Ponce still sat there, punishing himself with visions of Isabel in the arms of the Morisco. ‘They try to give each other pleasure,’ the servant had told him, ‘they . . . they don’t fornicate,’ he had managed to stammer, bowing in front of the judge, the knuckles of his hands white as he clenched them. The whore! Don Ponce breathed into the night. Just like a common prostitute in the bawdy house! He knew what the servant had been referring to: the forbidden pleasure he himself sought in the brothel. For hours Don Ponce imagined Isabel as the blonde girl he enjoyed in a bed there: obscene, painted and perfumed, revealing her body to the Morisco dog while she kissed and caressed him. In the brothel he had chosen a girl because she looked like Isabel, and now the Morisco was savouring the pleasures he himself had never known with his wife. The thought of killing them filled his mind.

  However, in the early hours, as the night breeze wafted in from the garden, refreshing his sweat-slicked body, Don Ponce decided not to do anything as drastic as killing the two of them. If he slew Isabel, he would lose the substantial dowry provided by the Los Vélez; even more importantly, he would lose his influence in the circles around the King and in the various royal councils, which were vital to his interests. Fighting for their honour was something that only the very rich, the very poor or stupid people could contemplate, and he was none of those. He therefore decided that to accuse someone who was protected by the marquises was both a risky as well as a dishonourable move. At the same time, however, there was no way he could allow adultery in his house . . . that cursed Morisco son of a whore! He had treated him like a gentleman, had organized a celebration in his honour . . . and yet he could not even take his legitimate revenge on him without causing ribald gossip. The Morisco was a hero! The saviour of the Christians! The Duke of Monterreal’s protégé . . .

  Don Ponce found it impossible to sleep the whole night, but by dawn the next day, his mind was made up: Isabel was not to leave her apartments; he told the household she was suffering from a fever. She remained in her room until later that morning, when in response to an urgent call, his cousin Doña Ángela, a dry, grim-faced widow, arrived. As soon as she entered the house she took charge of the watch over Isabel.

  After a short conversation with her cousin, Doña Ángela set to work immediately. Isabel’s young chambermaid disappeared that same day. Someone said she was later seen in the dungeons of the chancery, accused of theft. That afternoon Doña Ángela had the other maid, the one who’d sought sexual pleasure with the Morisco slave, flogged, using the excuse that she had shown her disrespect. She also ordered that another servant should lose part of his salary for not working to her satisfaction.

  Within a single day, therefore, the judge and his cousin had sent all the servants a clear message. There was very little they could do about it: according to the law, unless they were expressly dismissed, they faced a penalty of twenty days in jail and banishment for a year if any of them left Don Ponce without permission to serve in any other household in the city of Granada or its surroundings. If anyone did leave without his agreement, they would either be obliged to emigrate or to find work as a day labourer, and there was no denying that in the judge’s house they never went hungry.

  It was not only the servants who were given a swift demonstration of the cousin’s harsh character: neither Don Sancho nor Hernando escaped her attentions. Doña Ángela made sure that all her decisions were made in the open, so that the Morisco immediately saw what was going on. Late in the afternoon, just before sunset, she told Isabel to leave her room. Dressed in black, the two women strolled round the gardens of the property, in full view of everyone but in particular Hernando, who was thus given to understand he would never again be able to approach his lover in private.

  It was not only Hernando who saw that Isabel was now being kept under close watch by Doña Ángela. Don Sancho saw it too, and realized that the judge had uncovered the affair. When he twice met Don Ponce during the day, the judge cut him dead; Don Sancho immediately went to have it out with Hernando.

  ‘We will leave tomorrow morning, without fail,’ he ordered him. Hernando didn’t reply. ‘Don’t you understand?’ Don Sancho shouted at him. ‘What are you thinking of? If you have any respect – or whatever it is you feel for that woman, you have to get away from her. You’ll never see her on your own again! The judge must have fo
und out, and is taking steps to prevent it.’ The hidalgo let a few seconds go by. ‘As your own life seems to matter so little to you, at least consider that if you continue to behave in this way, you will be ruining hers.’

  Hernando was surprised to find himself agreeing with his companion. How briefly his determination had lasted! But it was true; the hidalgo was right. How could he get near to Isabel? When he saw her dressed in black and walking, head bowed, through the gardens alongside the haughty, defiant figure of Doña Ángela, he realized it would be impossible. Besides, if the rumours had reached the judge, it would be madness!

  ‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘We’ll leave first thing tomorrow.’

  That night Hernando began to pack up his things for the journey. Among his clothes, he found the rich garments the judge had provided him with for the celebration in his honour. The night he had worn them, Isabel . . . He tried to convince himself it had all been a foolish adventure. As Don Sancho said, what right did he have to ruin the life of an honest woman? He might well feel that she desired him with increasing intensity, but perhaps it was true that he had taken advantage of someone who was merely grateful to him. He looked round him: was he forgetting anything? What about those clothes? He took them and threw them as far away as he could, in a corner of the room. It was not true that he had taken advantage of Isabel’s innocence, as Don Sancho had accused him. She was the one who had pressed against him during the fireworks display, and she had stretched out her hand to him. What did it all matter now anyway? He was on his way back to Córdoba.

  Hernando collapsed into a chair adorned with decorated, beaten silver. He stared out at the Alhambra and the play of light from the braziers and the moon on its red stones. It was past midnight. The house and gardens were silent: so it seemed was the whole of Granada! A wandering breeze cooled the room and helped make up for the day’s stifling heat. Hernando relaxed, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.