Hart, Mallory Dorn

by Jasmine on the Wind

  "Salaam," the Moor greeted him.

  "Alecum salaam," Francho responded in his accent-perfect Arabic, scrambling to his feet. "I beg forgiveness for trespassing."

  "Stay where you are, minstrel." The man smiled. "You do no harm. Your music has enhanced the beauty of the countryside. I have been listening to you from my kiosk." The man, perhaps about ten years older than himself, Francho judged, did not seem rich enough to own this fine property. Perhaps a relation, or overseer...

  "I am happy to have given you pleasure, sayed." Francho bowed, touching the tips of his fingers to his forehead and chest.

  Surveying Francho's dusty tunic and knapsack the newcomer observed, "You are not from the city."

  "No, sayed, I am from Malaga, but recently I have lived in other towns. I have come to Granada to find my fortune."

  "As a musician?"

  "That is the only accomplishment I can offer to earn my bread. One hears there is already a surfeit of laborers and beggars in the city."

  "Unhappily you hear the truth. People have poured in from every corner of our besieged land, the city walls bulge with them. But perhaps they will find a few coppers to spare for a minstrel who lifts up their hearts for a while."

  Francho's unfeigned pride in his music asserted itself. He grinned and shook his head. "Allah provide I shall not have to play for coppers, my master. Tis not for the applause of the ignorant I have come; my training is too fine for their ears. I intend to enter the contest the Sultan holds every year on his birthday, and win a position with the royal musicians."

  "Then the stars are not with you, minstrel, for the Sultan will hold no festivities this year; the times are too uncertain."

  Francho's grin slowly disappeared. Without the Sultan's contest to gain him a royal audience his plans were seriously set back. "You do indeed tell me bad news, sayed! I had pinned my hopes on catching the Great Sultan's ear," he muttered from under his dismayed frown. The man would never know how true those words were. "Now what can I hope for except a place in one of the kavah houses, with only poverty and obscurity in return for my years of study." The personage of Jamal ibn Ghulam was real enough to Francho for such despair to come naturally. With growing upset he bound the guembri to his pack and swung the knapsack to his shoulder. The whole of Tendilla's scheme would be a hundred times more difficult to carry out unless he could discover some other way of getting to the Sultan.

  The Moor watched him for a moment and then asked, with mild interest, "Is the loss of the Sultan's contest such a blow to you that your face becomes a mask of distress?"

  "You cannot understand, master," Francho answered, even though he was anxious, now, to go on to the city. "It means an end to my hope of reaching the eminence of a royal musician, for I have no friends or influence in Granada. And what laughter remains to a man who loses his dream?"

  "Ah, but I do understand, minstrel, very well indeed. Yet—there are always next year's contests."

  Francho shrugged and turned his hands up; already the fatalistic Arab gesture seemed native to him. "Who knows where we shall be next year, sayed? Perhaps in the belly of the Christian monster or in Paradise. Allah does not tell me his designs, and I have found it wiser not to anticipate him. I must resume my journey now. Peace be with you." He salaamed respectfully and walked away.

  "Perhaps I can help you, minstrel. Wait for a moment," the Moor called to Francho's retreating back.

  Francho turned. "Help me? And why should you? I am a stranger to you, just another unfortunate who has come to take refuge in Granada."

  "I enjoy your music—and you have a sensitive face. Sometimes my judgments are based on less than that; I am prone to whims. So I will make a bargain with you, singer of songs. What is your name?"

  "Jamal ibn Ghulam."

  "I have some influence at the Alhambra, son of Ghulam. If you will come to my pavilion just beyond those trees and entertain me for an hour, I will see what I can do to bring you to the Sultan's attention. He is a great lover of music and will surely be very appreciative of my effort to introduce you."

  Francho thought fast. The Moor seemed, now that they had had some conversation, a man of means who had little to do and was idly looking for someone to help him pass the time. He doubted this individual really meant to extend himself for an itinerant musician who could not return the favor. On the other hand, there was always the chance that this fellow really was hoping to earn a monetary gift from a pleased ruler, or even a connection to the royal ear that his own standing could not bring him. The man was likable in his mild manner, and the brown eyes held a hint of something more than dilettante interest. An hour, more or less, would make little difference to Francho's plans, already in disarray, and might bring something to help them along. It was a small chance but worth taking.

  He shrugged again and nodded. "Fair enough, sayed, my music for your influence. I had hated to depart this small bit of Allah's garden anyway. I am your servant."

  The Moor led the way along the bank of the brook, past a grove of blooming fruit trees, and thence to a clearing of clipped, velvet grass bounded by beds of flowers. In the center stood a pink marble confection of slender columns and delicate, mitered cornices, open on three sides, and shaded by willow trees and trembling aspens. They walked across the soft turf past a round marble pool, where great waterlilies floated serenely, and mounted the three low steps that gave entrance to the square pavilion.

  Water splashed in a low, carved fountain in the center of the bright mosaic floor. On a thick rug heaped with pillows Francho saw a leather volume lying open, abandoned when its owner had heard him singing. There were enamel bowls of dried apricots, fruits, and dates on a tray on the floor, along with a silver wine decanter and cup. A breeze brought the aroma of cherry blossoms from the trees about and ruffled the pages of the forgotten book.

  There are some who do not lead such a hard life, Francho reflected with envy, looking about at the kiosk with its gilded ceiling. At the other's invitation he folded himself cross-legged on a fringed rug and tuned his instrument, while his new friend lounged on his pillows. Smiling, Francho looked at the Moor inquiringly. "You have only to request, sayed, and instantly the tune will spring to my hand."

  "Just play, Jamal ibn Ghulam, just beguile me with whatever comes to your head and I will be content," the man said and smiled back.

  Francho plucked his guitar and began a medley of short canciones, which he performed so well and invitingly that his host slipped easily into joining the choruses, his tenor voice pleasant but not quite true, a growing, unself-conscious pleasure lighting up the sad eyes. After a while the Moor himself suggested several ballads and Francho obliged. Then he asked would the sayed care to hear some original compositions, and when the man said he would indeed, he played several of the minor-key coplas he had composed in a flush of inspiration at Mondejar. He ended the concert with his rousing rendition of the "Bullfight of Gazul," finishing the last chords with an exuberant flourish, and looking up to see his host truly beaming in delight.

  "Excellent, excellent, minstrel. You achieve sounds of a glory that would please the Prophet himself!" He tossed Francho a plump orange the color of sunshine.

  Francho did not mind the praise. "I am the most skilled musician in Granada, sayed, nay, in all of Iberia," he boasted, mindful of the situation. "And that is why it would be a pity should the Sultan not hear me. Some talents are rarely come by in a lifetime."

  The brown-bearded Moor threw back his turbaned head and laughed, genuinely amused. "By the beard of the Prophet, son of Ghulam, you are quite correct about your ability, but did your father not teach you the grace of modesty? It is not seemly for you to praise your own gifts."

  "One cannot eat modesty, sayed. Tis the merchant who cries his wares loudest and with greatest vigor who attracts the buyers in the souks. If the Sultan understands fine music and lauds me as the most splendid artist in all Islam, I shall tell him he is right, for I am that." Francho thought the jaunty white g
rin he flashed through his dark beard would soften the conceit, for all it was true.

  The affable gentleman's gaze drifted to the guitar in Francho's hands. "That is a very fine guembri you have. It is as elegantly made as the tones you coax from it." There was curiosity under his flattery.

  Francho's African guembri was shiny black and differed from a lute in its flatter silhouette and straight neck. It was inlaid with coral bits and mother-of-pearl, and the frets were of silver. "You wonder how a ragged minstrel came by such an instrument, sayed? Well, I did not steal it, it is mine. My father was a city official in Malaga, a tax collector, and we had a fine home with private baths and slaves. My mother had costly jewels and I was gently raised and taught music; in fact I can also play the lute and the harp. While I was on a visit in Gaudix the cursed Christians besieged and captured Malaga, and when I finally got through I found my father and mother and sisters dead and our house in ruins. Everything had been smashed or looted. But as I walked through the ruins I tripped over a piece of canvas and found under it my guitar, barely scratched. It was all that was left to me, accidentally, by the vile infidel."

  Francho was careful to keep his tone resigned. Belligerence was not in his role.

  "You have my sympathy, minstrel. It was evident that you were not just a common wanderer." He looked Francho over frankly. "But you seem strong and healthy to me. Why do you not join the ranks of soldiers, if you can? Or perhaps the Sultan can find a place for you in his palace guard. He is greatly in need of loyal men."

  Francho allowed the corners of his mouth to droop in an expression of pain. His eyes mirrored hopelessness. "No one is the victor in war, master," he intoned with bitter fervor. "Never again shall I lift a weapon in these hands. 'The ruins of Zahara shall fall on our heads!' the old dervish wailed to Abul Hassan, and for my family and me this prophesy has come true. But in the charred remains of my home and my life I found this guembri, whole and waiting, and it was as if the hand of Allah touched me and a voice said, 'Here, here is your weapon, to soothe and to charm and to beguile away the deadly thoughts of war and of vain resistance from the minds of your doomed and suffering people.'"

  For the first time his listener's features were shadowed by disapproval. "What? Would you allow the unbeliever to take from us our land, our cities, our homes, and not lift a hand in defiance?"

  "I think only of beautiful Malaga that bravely resisted against clearly superior strength and finally falling was burned and sacked and decimated and her citizens taken as slaves. And then I consider Gaudix, which El Zagal gave over in a bargain and whose people are alive and still enjoying their own hearths and families, their possessions and business. Look you, master, we exist surrounded by the enemy and far from our friends; it is my opinion that our position is hopeless and that 'tis better to live than to die in vain battle. Do you think me craven? I shall tell you I am not. But I do not wish to wander the world like the Jews. Most important is to keep what we have left, this beautiful kingdom, and live to enjoy it."

  The Moor had given close attention to Francho's pacifist remarks. Francho did not expect him to agree, but in any case he dropped the seeds of passivity as part of his mission. If they did not germinate here, they would somewhere else.

  "And how would you go about retaining this kingdom?"

  "Pay whatever tribute is exacted and again pledge fealty to Los Reyes Católicos, just as our Grand Sultan once did. Which is why we are yet here to talk about it."

  The mild face had smoothed again into a calm expression. "Heaven is the reward for the warrior fallen in battle. Have you no desire to lie in the lap of Allah when you die?"

  Francho laughed disarmingly and stretched. "Ah, but so I shall, sayed. The hosts of Paradise are fond of music, and there is a great shortage of excellent minstrels these days!"

  The man chuckled. "You are a brash one, Jamal ibn Ghulam, but I like you. So I will caution you that if you fling about such philosophy you will make many enemies in Granada, for the people are in a warlike mood. In fact, I sympathize with your ideas and find them wise, but the citizens of Granada will abhor you."

  "Then I shall heed your warning, master, and keep my thoughts to myself. I do not want to educate the people, I want merely to entertain them." Francho glanced at the sun and found the hour he meant to stay was long past. "I must go on to the city now. I will have to search for lodging for the night." He stood up and refastened his guitar to his pack.

  Lounging on his pillows the Moor selected a fruit from one of the bowls and then regarded Francho amiably. "I believe you think I will overlook my part in our bargain. But you do not realize how you have brightened my day and dispelled the morose mood that was on me. Here, take this." He slipped from his finger a heavy silver ring hammered with the image of a fruit and held it out. "In four days, at this time of the afternoon, go to the Alhambra and present this ring to the Chief Keeper of the Second Gate. He will take you to an official of high position, whom I will have persuaded to allow you within earshot of the Sultan. From there on you will have only your own talent to rely upon."

  Francho took the ring, searching brown eyes that held no guile. A certain shyness drew color into the man's face and he pulled his gaze away. "This is a valuable bauble, sayed. How do you know I will not trade it for coin and disappear into the Albayzin?"

  "Then we will count it payment for your services. But I see you have determination; I have no fear you will show it to the gatekeeper to vouch for your appointment. Peace be with you, O singer of songs, and go on your way."

  Francho salaamed and was turning to leave when a thought struck him. "But—if the Chief Keeper asks who sent me? I do not know your name, sayed."

  "Only show him the ring and say it was given by Abdullah, grandson of Muhammed. That will be enough."

  As Francho cut across the elegant lawn he noticed horses and a mule hitched at a distance from the pavilion and, behind a hedge, the turbans of the man's pair of servants. From a nearby village the faint voice of the muezzin called the faithful to prayer and the turbans disappeared from view as their owners prostrated themselves among the flowers. Francho lengthened his stride. The day was waning fast.

  Chapter 17

  Much of Granada was built against two main hills divided by the deep gorge of the river Darro, one hill supporting the fine homes of the aristocracy and rich merchants and capped by the Alhambra; the other, called the Rabbad Albayazin, an opposing and noisome warren of the poor topped by a smaller fortress, the Alcazaba. Below, spread on the vega, was the Granada that encompassed the comfortable shopkeepers, lawyers, overseers, and petty officials, and the bazaars and businesses which earned them their livings.

  Francho revised upward Mendoza's estimate of a populace of two hundred thousand souls by at least another hundred thousand; he had never seen such throngs of people, such huge and crowded markets, and so many homeless in the alleys.

  The streets were narrow and crooked as in most cities, but lined with walled houses from whose gardens planted with flowers and blooming citron trees came a sweet fragrance which pervaded all the byways. The stepped rises and cobbles were swept clean and sluiced by gutters running down the middle of the streets, but what was a most unusual bemusement for one reared on the dry plains of Castile were the graceful carved fountains found at every corner with sparkling water jetting and splashing into their brimming bowls.

  Water was important to the Moors. Descended from desert nomads they had inherited a lust to see the life-giving fluid flowing in abundance around them. In addition, it was law for the religious Moslem to be clean before worship, to wash hands and feet, suck water into the nostrils, put wet fingers into ears and pass wet hands over hair, no matter where he happened to be when the call to prayer came, five times during the day. If no water was available to the orthodox believer, it was permitted to wash hands in sand or dust, but Francho could not imagine that anyone in this city of blossoms and greenery would ever have to resort to desert substitutes.

&nbs
p; He had decided to live in the Albayazin in order to be close to his contact. After entering the city through a vast, horseshoe-shaped gate, he had been obliged to ask directions several times to help him navigate through the bustling maze of streets and open plazas. At last the road began to climb, but even so one couldn't miss the quarter of the poor—the streets were more narrow and tangled, ill kept, with crammed, almost windowless houses. A typical city stench rose from the littered gutters.

  Painted harlots leaned from ramshackle balconies, where bedlinen and wash flapped like tattered ensigns. Barely veiled women in cotton mantles carrying water jugs or baskets on their head jostled past turbaned graybeards. Unemployed mercenaries gathered in grumbling groups. Urchins of all sizes and both genders darted between makeshift stalls, where vendors hawked their meager, second-rate wares. Alms-criers crowded around the slovenly public inns and shabby mosques. Faggot sellers and charcoal men shouted their presence, and boys with skins of goat milk knocked on each door. Now and then a decrepit donkey burdened with sacks of rice or old clothes and led by an abusive peddler would scatter the soiled tots playing directly in their path, and the children's shrill jeers and curses added to the incessant hubbub of people coming and going and living in the streets; Jews, humble in yellow turbans, penniless Moors from Ronda, Almeria, Malaga, Alhama, eking out precarious existences by day labor, glistening blacks prohibited from living elsewhere no matter how their purses jingled, citizens and freed slaves whose only crime was to be haunted by poverty, and the lees and dregs of the city—the thieves and pimps and whores—all of these, more than one hundred and sixty thousand souls jammed into the limited streets on the Albayazin slope.

  Francho tramped the inclined byways, footsore and tiring, inquiring at every scabrous lodging house, only to be told there was no chamber to let nor even dormitory space. He might have found room in a better part of the city, but that would have been out of character and taken him far from his contact. So continuing on doggedly he trudged from lodging sign to lodging sign, but none had even a niche left to rent him. It was after he emerged from the fifteenth hostel with the owner's curt, "We are filled to the rafters," still echoing in his ears that he realized that he had acquired a shadow, a little boy whom he had briefly noticed six inquiries back and who seemed to be deliberately trailing him. Francho put down his pack for a moment and slumped dejectedly against a building wall. Discouraged, fatigued, and hungry, he had just about decided to try another section of the city, be it however expensive and inconvenient, when the youngster he had noted sidled up to him.