Dogs of God

by James Reston Jr

  Ferdinand was still smarting from the breach of intelligence that had undercut his plan for Málaga. If spies had penetrated even his inner circle, he was determined now to trick both the moles and his enemy. He too had his spies. A report had come from Ronda that the morale of the garrison there was low, and that if its defenders could be drawn away by a diversionary action, the place might be easily taken.

  The governor of Ronda had been present at the disappointingly short battle for Coín weeks before, and he had returned home to his mountain redoubt itching for revenge. When he learned that the Christian army was heading due north for far-off Loja, he deemed it safe for a quick foray into the fertile pickings of Medina-Sidonia. Venturing out of his town and leaving its defense at about one third full strength, he marched west, where he amused himself for some days by ravaging the fat fields and barns of the Christian grandee.

  Meanwhile, the Christian forces marched north from Málaga, moving northeast as if they were heading for the northern stronghold of Loja. At the last moment, in a stealthy maneuver, two thousand cavalrymen under the marquis of Cádiz split off and made a dash west for Ronda. When the foolish ruler of Ronda returned to the outer hills of his town, buoyantly weighed down with booty, he was horrified to find it surrounded by the enemy.

  In the distance the banner of the Catholic monarchs waved in the breeze above the smoky encampment of the Christian army. Ferdinand had arrayed his forces in five groups around the town. The largest contingent faced the alcazaba, while the left flank was commanded by the marquis of Cádiz and the right by the count of Medina-Sidonia. The artillery was set up to the east of the town. Isabella was already there with her husband, tending to her well-stocked hospital of six tents and to the provisioning of her army. She had planned for enough bread, wine, and meat for a long siege. Characteristic of her attention to detail, she ordered that two piles of flour mixed with pork fat be left in front of each tent. If her supply line to Córdoba was interdicted, her soldiers could stay fit—or at least alive—by ingesting this disgusting medieval version of hardtack.

  But Ronda had an Achilles’ heel. Its sole access to water was through a secret passageway of 130 zigzagging steps that began in the rear of a noble house and had been cut through the limestone, leading down through dripping anterooms to the river. Known to a few as the water mine, this lifeline, however, was no secret to the marquis of Cádiz. His commandos immediately sealed it off when he arrived in Ronda’s vicinity ahead of the main Christian force.

  On the outer perimeter, Hamet El Zegri saw that there was no chance to break through the Christian lines, and so he ordered fires to be lit on the hilltops. When darkness fell, the Moors raced down the slopes, screaming their invocations to their God and their curses upon the enemy. The clatter was unnerving, but the Christian lines held. Ferdinand had ordered his soldiers not to stray from their posts for any reason, since the terrain around Ronda was unfavorable fighting ground.

  For four solid days, the bombards and catapults of the Christian army hammered the town without letup. As the gunpowder shells exploded, the screams of women and children added to the confusion. By the fourth day, all the towers were brought down, and the walls were breached. Hand-to-hand combat ensued. The most unusual of these fights took place on the roof of the town’s main mosque where, as a kind of metaphor for the entire war, the defenders of the faith fought their hardest against the crusaders atop their inviolable place of worship.

  On the tenth day of the siege, the Moors capitulated, and on May 23, 1484, Ferdinand entered the city. There the elders of the conquered town presented him with a letter that contained a rare piece of ecumenism. “O great and powerful King,” it read in part. “May God preserve the State and may He always be present in your deeds. Take from our days and add to your own. It is convenient for us to serve you, since God has made you the greatest of kings. Once we place ourselves in the hands of Your Majesty, we trust that we shall be treated with kindness, just as we were treated by other kings, especially since Your Majesty is more powerful, greater, and better than all the others.”

  If Ferdinand’s heart was softened by this flattery, it would harden once again when three hundred Christian prisoners crawled out of Ronda’s dank dungeons. One by one these warriors from past battles emerged from their darkness, naked, hungry, with beards to their waists. Despite this, Ferdinand was temporarily magnanimous in his terms. The conquered were allowed to leave with anything they could carry, to emigrate to North Africa, or to Castile where they could go with a royal letter of protection. Ironically, several prominent, non-military families resettled in Seville on property confiscated by the Inquisition from conversos. Otherwise, those conquered could remain in the region, so long as they did not interfere with the occupation of their town and swore an oath of allegiance to the Catholic monarchs. Those who chose to stay were officially designated as mudéjares, or Moors who would be permitted to continue their Islamic beliefs, so long as they remained loyal to Ferdinand and Isabella. For them, the royal chronicler proclaimed, Ferdinand promised “on his royal word to preserve and protect the law of Muhammad.”

  Meanwhile, the encomiums to Isabella poured in. One knight wrote to Ferdinand of Isabella that “she fought no less with her many alms and prayers and by giving order to the things of war than you, my lord, with your lance in your hand.” From her quarters in the Palacio de Mondragon, Isabella supervised the transformation of Ronda’s mosques into Christian churches. Sacred books and lace and crosses were shipped in wholesale from Córdoba and Seville, along with new settlers to replace the Muslims who had left. The main mosque of the town was inviolable no more. It was consecrated as the Church of Santa María de la Encarnación, while other mosques were purified and renamed for the Holy Spirit, San Sebastian, and St. John the Evangelist.

  On June 2, 1485, the feast of Corpus Christi was celebrated in the new Ronda as if to mark its purification and its conversion. “Thus, this pestilent nest of warfare and infidelity, the city of Ronda, was converted to the true faith by the thunder of our artillery,” a chronicler later wrote. “The port of Marbella and some seventy-two other places soon followed suit in being rescued from the vile sect of Muhammad and placed under the benign domination of the Cross.”

  On the following day, Ferdinand dispatched a letter to the pope about the triumph in Ronda, “so that Your Holiness should see and know how Spain spends its time and money.” The king was beginning to regard himself as divinely guided. Forces of history were at work, and he was his Lord’s instrument. Those around him perceived this vanity and played to it shamelessly. The vision they promoted did not end with the reconquest of Spain for Christianity.

  “It is clear that our Lord intends to carry out what has been prophesied for centuries,” one important courtier said to him. “Namely that you shall not merely put these Spains under your royal scepter, but that you will also subjugate regions beyond the sea.”

  The celebration over the Castilian victory at Ronda was matched in the Alhambra by despair and loud wailing. With Muley Aben Hassan near death and Boabdil consorting with the enemy in Córdoba, the state of the Moors foundered without a proper king. With the blessing of the dying king, a delegation was dispatched to Málaga to persuade his brother, El Zagal the Valiant, to take the throne. El Zagal was reluctant to do so, for he knew that his legitimacy would be questioned, and he was more a fighter than a governor. Given the dire circumstance, however, he relented and was escorted grandly to Granada. The procession needed to be careful, for the road between Málaga and Granada passed by the Christian redoubt of Alhama, thought to be still under the command of the disciplined, chivalrous count of Tendilla. Unbeknownst to the Moors, the count of Tendilla had completed his tour there some months before, and a less chivalrous, less aggressive, and less exacting knight had taken his place.

  When El Zagal’s procession of three hundred knights came into the vicinity of Alhama, instead of well-organized sallies or disciplined harassment, the Moors came upo
n a hundred Christian soldiers spread out and sunbathing themselves in an open field, far from their horses. These easy pickings were too tempting to pass up. El Zagal saw an opportunity to make his entrance into Granada all the more magnificent. Several days later, his procession passed through the gate of Elvira below the Alhambra, led by eleven Christian captives, followed by ninety Christian horses, and by Moorish cavaliers from whose saddles dangled the heads of slain Christians.

  To make El Zagal’s installation more splendid and less awkward, Muley Aben Hassan withdrew to the Costa del Sol before his brother arrived in Granada. The old king first took up residence in the port town of Almuñécar, surrounded by his fading star of a wife, Zoraya, and her children, and what treasure they had been able to haul south with them. Later, the deposed king moved east to more luxurious apartments in Salobreña, where he died a few weeks later. Before Hassan’s death, El Zagal made sure that the treasures Muley had taken with him to the coast were returned to Granada. The old king’s death caused little stir. It was reported subsequently that his bones were deposited in a charnelhouse and later transferred to a common, unmarked grave.

  Rumors of Muley’s ill-treatment at the end were coupled with a shocking revelation. Before Hassan’s death, no doubt because of his shoddy treatment by his brother, Muley Hassan had changed his will and donated his crown to his son, Boabdil. Overnight, El Zagal’s rule became illegitimate. For a considerable portion of the population, resentment against the new potentate was rife, as El Zagal was transformed from saviour to usurper. And thus, his honeymoon was brief. Old sentiments were rekindled, especially in the Albaicín across the Darro River from the Alhambra, where a contingent of die-hard, forgiving loyalists still dreamed of Boabdil’s return. The Unlucky One still languished pathetically in the enemy’s camp in Córdoba. Ferdinand had lost interest in him, given the fact that his potential for fomenting civil war seemed to have vanished. But when a delegation from Granada arrived seeking to persuade Boabdil to return home, Ferdinand perked up, and after deliberations, he provided Boabdil with enough money to create the illusion of royalty.

  Boabdil set up his shadow court in Vélez El Blanco on the far eastern frontier of the Granadian province and waited for things to develop. Though he was just a few miles within the Moorish state, his presence on Moorish soil gave heart to his supporters in the Albaicín, and once again, the Albaicín and the Alhambra faced off against one another across the Darro River. With the renewal of civil strife, no one was particularly happy. But it took the bizarre figure of the old Alfaqui to point the way. Emerging once more from his cave in Sacromonte, looking more ethereal and threadbare than ever, the dervish railed at the gathering crowd:

  “O Muslims, beware of men who are eager to govern, yet who are unable to protect you. Why slaughter each other for El Chico or El Zagal? Let your kings renounce their contests and unite for the salvation of Moorish civilization… or let them be deposed!”

  But the principals had other ideas. Around El Zagal, the air was thick with treachery. If Boabdil could be assassinated, all problems would be solved. And so with the promise of great reward, four plotters were recruited. Dispatched to Vélez El Blanco as messengers from El Zagal, they carried with them jewels as gifts and a letter which dripped with fake and obsequious sentiments of concession.

  “Beloved nephew,” it read.

  Desirous as I am to forget the origins of our contentions for the kingdom, and conscious that you alone are the lawful king, by virtue of my brother’s last will and testament, in which he appoints you his heir, I wish to surrender the government into your hands as rightful king and master, requesting only for myself to be able to spend my days in this abode, to live content and to owe you due allegiance. This I require for Allah’s and Mohammet’s sake, that the kingdom not be destroyed by its internecine quarrels. Return then as sole king to this city as its lord and master. I sincerely lament the disturbances that have passed and desire to atone by my future conduct for the part I have taken in them.

  From Granada, Muley Abdullah El Zagal

  When the assassins arrived at Vélez El Blanco, they demanded an audience with Boabdil to deliver their message and gifts from “the king.” But Boabdil had been tipped off. Surrounding himself with thirteen of his finest, well-armed guards, he admitted the culprits into his presence, read the letter, and then had the bearers seized. After they were tortured and confessed, they were hung, their bodies displayed from the battlements. And then Boabdil sat down and wrote his reply to his uncle.

  The all-powerful God, creator of heaven and earth suffers not the wickedness of man to remain concealed, but causes it to be brought to light, as he has done your horrible conspiracy. Your letter teemed with more treachery than the famous Greek horse at Troy. You offer me friendship and yet you persecute my friends and those who acknowledge me as their rightful king. There actions witness the insincerity of your professions of friendship. But the time will come, I trust, when you shall atone for your crimes. The kingdom was my father’s, and it descends to me, and yet you wish me harm, because I have formed an alliance with the Christians. You must admit that by virtue of the treaty I have made with them, the Moors aligned with me are allowed to cultivate their lands and live in security, while the Moors who are aligned with you can do neither, and are constantly attacked and pillaged by the Christians…

  The ruffians you sent to me with hearts as dark as your own, who came with the intent to slay me, have died the death of traitors. You will suffer also. Your jewels I have cast into the fire, suspecting treason even in them, treason that is so evil a nature that I confess, it greatly surprises me when I reflect that we are sprung from the same royal lineage.

  From Vélez El Blanco, The lawful king of Granada

  With the two pretenders to the throne at one another’s throats, the wise men gathered and divided the realm in two. The Valiant One was to receive the important cities of the province: Granada, Málaga, Vélez-Málaga, Almería, Almuñécar, while the Unlucky One gained control of the northern provinces, most importantly, the fortress of Loja. With Boabdil in Loja, in close proximity to the Córdoba of his handlers, it was supposed in this end game that vassalage rather than hostility might save the northern part of the kingdom from ruin and create a buffer for the heart of the kingdom, the city of Granada itself.

  Warily, with strong guards protecting them, the principals gathered in Granada to seal this unholy alliance. Boabdil and El Zagal circled one another like lions. El Zagal regarded his nephew with utter contempt, a weakling, traitor to his land and his faith, and cursed by the fates; while Boabdil saw his uncle as a thief and usurper and assassin. After the stiff formalities, Boabdil mounted his horse and prepared to ride north. But before he moved out, the notorious hermit, Alfaqui, emerged once again from the shadows and detained Boabdil with a parting shot.

  “Be true to your country and your faith,” he warned. “Hold no further communication with these Christian dogs. Do not trust the hollow gestures of friendship of this Castilian king. He is mining the earth beneath your feet. Choose one of two things: be a sovereign or be a slave. You cannot be both.”

  14

  Gossamer, Velvet,

  and Blue Silk

  CÓRDOBA

  In mid-1485, as the Spanish sovereigns savored their victory at Ronda and pondered their next move, Christopher Columbus in Lisbon had concluded that the King of Portugal could not be moved to support his project, at least not any time soon. And so he prepared to leave Lisbon in search of more welcoming patrons. His departure, however, was fraught with anxiety and awkwardness. The most tangible of these difficulties was that in his tireless and seemingly interminable self-promotion he had saddled himself with considerable debt. His savings from his commercial ventures depleted, he had no way to pay his insistent creditors. In all he owed various creditors a total of 220 ducats. To leave precipitously might make him subject to arrest as a fugitive scofflaw.

  On the surface, his relations with João II rem
ained friendly. The ruling of the Junta of Mathematicians had not extinguished the king’s interest entirely, and this gave Columbus the hope that his project was not so much rejected as tabled. Indeed, three years later, in 1488, calling the Italian his “special friend,” João II invited Columbus to return to Portugal from Spain for more discussion. The king promised that on this return trip the would-be explorer would have no trouble with the police over his debts.

  But this was on the surface. What was the Portuguese king really thinking? Was this another double deal? If he was not ready to back Columbus’s bold adventure, the king was not quite ready for it to be handed gratuitously to someone else, especially not the king and queen of his arch rival, Spain. João’s treachery had already been demonstrated. It was entirely possible that the Portuguese king would block Columbus’s exit or even arrest him to keep him in Portugal, if only to squeeze more information out of him, that might again be handed to native explorers.

  Thus, quietly and secretly, Columbus left Portugal by ship one night. Years later, the mariner imputed divine intervention to his rejection. God had blinded the Portguese king to his arguments, for He had another plan.