by Jane Feather
They entered the Alhambra through the Gate of Justice just as the sun went down. Yusuf dismounted. Sarita stood passive in the court of the alcazaba, waiting for instruction. Where were slaves housed in this palace? Who governed them? What work was she to do? But she knew the answer to that … unless … unless Muley Abul Hassan had conceived such a distaste for her after the things she had said to him, after yet another failed attempt to flee from him. But why, then, would he have saved her from the slave trader? For she knew he had saved her. If he wanted nothing from her, he could have left her to whatever life fate and Ibrahim Salem decreed for her. If he wanted vengeance, then surely abandoning her would have been the perfect reprisal.
Yusuf produced one of his guttural commands, jerking his head at her, and she followed him, noticing even in her deliberately induced abstraction how, shrouded as she was, she drew not a glance from the men they passed.
She realized after a minute that they were taking the path to the tower. Surely, in her newfound, newly manifest servitude, she would not be housed in such a place? But Yusuf opened the wicket gate into the garden. She saw the scars on the door to the tower. Of course, she had locked it from the inside. They must have had to break the lock. He swung open the door and gestured in his usual fashion that she should precede him. She stepped in, remembering how the last time he had returned her to the tower she had slammed the door in his face. This time, she simply stood just inside, and the door closed behind her. She waited for the sound of the key; it didn’t come. But then, she wasn’t going anywhere. Everyone must know that by now.
The silence of the tower settled around her … a silence accentuated by the gentle plash of the alabaster fountain. It was as if she had never left this place. The oil lamps had already been lit against the approach of dusk. On the low table between the ottomans beside the fountain was a jug of wine, a basket of bread, a round of goat’s cheese, trays of olives, dates, and figs. Steam rose from a tall copper pitcher set beside a bowl and a pile of linen towels on a second table. Careful preparations had obviously been made for her return. There was everything here to ensure that she could see to her own comfort.
Sarita pulled off the enshrouding burnous, running her fingers through her hair, flooded suddenly with an overwhelming sense of security in the quiet of solitude, in the calm familiarity of her surroundings. Cupping her hand, she bent to drink from the fountain. The snug leather collar pressed into the soft flesh beneath her chin, and she jerked upright as if she had been stung. For those few minutes, in her relief, she had forgotten the collar. Now a cold despair replaced the relief, and a deep weariness of the spirit swamped her, so that her limbs were lead weights. She could barely drag herself over to the steaming pitcher, and it was almost too much effort to dip one of the towels in the hot water and bathe her face, wash her hands clean of the grime of the day’s imprisonment.
She managed somehow to remove her dress, shift, and hose, and to sponge her body where the dust and dirt of flight, a night in the open air, and the dreadful hours of the day were ingrained. Naked, the cool air of evening laving her skin, she poured a cup of wine, took a handful of dates, and half crawled up the stairs to the sleeping gallery. The divan was piled high with fresh silk coverlets and cushions. Every piece of silk she had used for her rope had been replaced. Sarita staggered to the balconied window. Her rope still hung there, mute reminder of disaster now rather than invitation. Why had Abul not had it removed? Presumably to underscore her failure. It hung there in mockery. She would never attempt to use it again. There was no more need to remove it than there was to lock the door. The locks were in her own mind now; they didn’t need to be touched, to be seen, to be effective. She knew what she was. A pile of gold in a dim chamber in the house of Ibrahim Salem had told her what she was: owned, a possession. And the soft leather collar at her neck declared her owner: the device on the lock bore the insignia of Muley Abul Hassan.
Chapter Thirteen
It was very early morning when Abul came to the tower. He stepped into the inner court, closing the door softly behind him. It was very still and quiet, and he stood listening for some sign of life. He knew she was there. Where else would she be?
“Sarita?”
There was no response. Still softly, he trod up the stairs to the sleeping gallery. The divan was empty, the rumpled coverlet evidence of the sleeper it had until recently contained.
“Sarita?” Quietly, he spoke her name again, looking around the gallery. There was still no response, and he moved further into the gallery. Then he saw her. She was wearing her orange dress, standing on the narrow balcony from where her rope hung, looking out across the ravine as the sun was rising.
“What are you doing?” He came up behind her.
She turned to face him, and a shard of remorse shivered in his belly at her extreme pallor, the haunted shadows in her eyes, huge in the small face. Her hand plucked at the leather collar. “Take it off,” she said. “I cannot bear it. You must take it off.”
“It is for your protection,” he responded, hardening his heart, hearing again the scorn and loathing in her voice as he had heard it when last she had spoken to him. “Should you succeed in leaving here again, whoever finds you will return you to me. You will never again be at the mercy of a slave trader. You belong only to me for as long as I choose to keep you.” He was wounding her as she had wounded him, and for the moment it felt right and proper. For the moment there was satisfaction.
“I do not belong to you. I do not belong to anyone.” But her voice was dead, as if the spring of conviction had broken.
“Twelve ecus d’or tells me otherwise, hija mía,” Abul said with harsh mockery.
A shudder ran through her. “Take it off. I cannot bear it,” she repeated, her voice still as lifeless as a corpse. Pulling at the collar, she turned back to the balcony.
“What did you expect?” He moved beside her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “What did you expect, Sarita? You told me clearly enough what you think of me and my people, of our customs and beliefs, our laws and rites. Such barbarism is surely only what you would have expected. It was barbarism, wasn’t it? That was the word you used so many, many times.”
She looked up at him, her hand at her throat, for the moment unable to answer, seeing again the hurt and anger in his eyes, hearing both in his voice. For a minute she was overwhelmed with the knowledge of what she had lost: the laughing, loving, sensitive man she had been insensibly growing to love.
“If I can treat my wife and child with such savagery, why should I have any consideration for you? One who deliberately strayed in my world, inviting the barbarisms of my world. Since I always take what I want, why should I have scruples where you’re concerned?”
She could hear her own voice in the bitter reprise of the words and accusations she had hurled at him, and a flicker of life appeared in her eyes at the knowledge that she had the opportunity to put this right. Maybe he wouldn’t believe her. Maybe it wouldn’t affect how he now saw her. But at least she could be at peace with herself.
“I didn’t mean any of those things,” she said. “I have been tormented by the pain I caused you. They were such dreadful things to say, but I had no choice.”
Abul stared down at her, disbelieving, hearing only a pathetic attempt to improve her situation. “Apologies are very easy to make,” he said shortly. “Particularly if one hopes they will serve a useful purpose.”
She shook her head. “Believe that if you wish. I suppose I deserve that you should. But surely you must understand I had no choice.”
He frowned. “Why?”
She shook her head again in a gesture of defeat. “How could I escape from this place if you were sharing my bed? I had to drive you from me, and the only way I could think of doing so was to give you such a distaste for me that you wouldn’t wish to be near me. I knew how sensitive you are about your troubles with Aicha and Boabdil. I knew I could exacerbate that and achieve my object.” She shrugged. “The rest I t
hrew in for good measure. It seemed to make little difference after what had already been said.” She turned back to the rail and her pointless yearning toward the mountains.
Abul closed his eyes and let out his breath on a long exhalation, inundated with a deep joy. How could he have been so blind? Misjudged her so badly? Failed to trust his own initial impressions? He didn’t doubt the truth of her explanation; it fitted all too neatly with what he knew of her, of her instinct for challenge and combat, of the intelligence that would find the right tool, of the determination not to accept what he imposed upon her.
His hands moved to the nape of her neck, and the collar fell from her, tumbling into the ravine.
She watched it fall, her own hands clasped now around her bare neck, tears of relief starting in her eyes.
“I never intended you should wear it for more than a few hours,” he said quietly, touching her back between her shoulder blades. “But I was very angry and wished to hurt you as you hurt me.” Again she said nothing, but her back felt fluid beneath his hand as the rigidity of despair finally left her.
“Why do you not wish to stay with me, Sarita?” Abul now asked, realizing it was the first time he had posed the question, realizing what a painful question it was, because the answer could only bring him pain. It could only be that she could never imagine feeling anything for him but the inconvenient stirrings of her body; that she could feel more than that only for her dead lover; that she could not settle for anything less than what she had known with the dead man. For the first time, Abul entered the mind of Sarita of the tribe of Raphael and tried to see things from her point of view, rather than comfortably telling himself that soon she would learn the errors of that point of view and come to embrace his … the only right-thinking way of looking at the world and relationships.
In wretched anticipation of pain, he waited for her answer.
Slowly, she turned from the rail. Her face was alive again now, her eyes burning with a passionate fire. “Don’t you understand?” she said. “It is not that I wish to leave you, but that I must know that I can.”
The scales fell from his eyes. All this time, believing that by holding her with him, he would wear her down, finally compel her to act upon the powerful currents that flowed between them, he had been doing the opposite: holding her without her agreement, he had succeeded only in strengthening her resolution to leave him. Only by giving her her freedom would she come to him. Oh, how blind … how he had deservedly suffered for his blindness. Sarita was not of his people; her unlikeness was what had drawn him to her in the first place. But he had treated her as if she were a woman of the kind he knew, assuming their beliefs and acceptances, and he had used the tactics that would have worked with such a woman. But with this woman, they had had the opposite effect. He had nearly lost her with his blindness … he who so prided himself on his wisdom, his far sight, his understanding of the differences between races. He had behaved like a green youth with no sense beyond the imperatives of his loins.
For a minute he said nothing, looking beyond her to the mountains that had so absorbed her. Then he glanced down at her. She was wearing her orange dress in her usual declaration of independence, but her legs were bare. He turned back to the sleeping gallery in search of the leather hose. He found them tossed over an ottoman and brought them out to her, to where she still stood immobile by the rail. The fire had died in her eyes, and he could read both disappointment and sorrow in their depths at his failure to respond to her appeal.
“Put these on.” He held out the hose.
“Why?” She made no attempt to take them.
“Because I am telling you to. Twelve ecus d’or invests me with the right to do so. Now put them on.” He wanted to laugh, to pull her to him, to kiss her with the swift and eager passion flowing in his veins, but he would not again make the first move of that kind … not until things were as they were supposed to be between them. Besides, he had a plan, and it was a good one, filling him with deep delight. Kisses at this point were not part of the plan.
Dumbly, she took the hose and went past him into the gallery. She put them on as he stood watching her, hiding his enjoyment in her movements, the deftness as she drew the garment up her legs, smoothing the butter-soft material, wriggling it over her hips, fastening the buttons at the waist. She let the dress fall back and met his gaze, still saying nothing.
“Come,” he said, going past her to the stairs.
Sarita followed. She could think of no good reason for refusing. She had made her bid for understanding and lost. So what did anything matter now?
He led the way to the court of the alcazaba, where he spoke in a low voice to an officer. The man went off and the caliph stood pensively, Sarita beside him in silence, feeling the sun warm on her bent neck as she looked down at the cobbles, filled with the lassitude of powerlessness.
The lassitude dissipated to some extent when a great bustle began in the court. Armed men in pronged helmets appeared from the alcazaba. Horses were led in from the stables, one of them the dappled gray palfrey she had ridden before.
“Up with you.” Abul’s voice broke the silence between them. He didn’t wait for a response, simply caught her around the waist and lifted her atop the horse before mounting his own great steed.
Their escort this time was much larger and more fiercely armed than before, and there was no mule train laden with the necessities for a dinner under the sun. They clattered out onto the road and turned to the northwest. The narrow track snaked ahead, away from the city of Granada, and Abul rode in the same pensive silence he had maintained earlier.
At last Sarita was able to bear the suspenseful silence no longer. “Where do we ride with such an escort?” Her voice sounded stiff as if from disuse.
Abul remained looking ahead. “To Castile.” He made the two words sound as if they were the most ordinary answer to a rather simple-minded question.
Sarita stared at him. “Castile?” she repeated stupidly. “But that is several days’ ride.”
He nodded airily. “Certainly, but we shall find hospitality on the road. And our escort is more than a match for brigands; you need have no fears.”
“But why? Why do we go to Castile?” Sarita felt as if she were struggling to swim upward through some weed-tangled pond with the dark water obscuring the sunlight of comprehension. Nothing made sense anymore. He had taken off the collar, had spoken gently to her, had seemed to accept her apology and explanation for her assault, but then he had withdrawn from her, was making her accompany him on this strange expedition for which there was no explanation.
Abul glanced sideways at her, his expression calm. “Forgive me, hija mía, but I had the forceful impression that you wished to go to Castile. So I am taking you there. You cannot go alone; that has surely been made clear to you.”
“You are taking me to Castile … to the border … out of this kingdom?” She was still struggling to swim through the pond weed and up to the sunlight.
“I am taking you to the border, where I will leave you. You will have that horse, and I will give you a purse of gold and one man to escort you to the nearest town. More than that I cannot do for you. But you will be in your own land and will surely find a friendly face.”
Sarita broke through the weed and into the brilliant sunshine of illumination. She hadn’t lost at all. Finally, Abul understood.
For a minute she was silent, basking in that blissful sunlight, filled with a profound happiness. She swallowed, trying to organize her thoughts, and then spoke carefully. “If … if perhaps I decided I didn’t wish to go to Castile today, would you escort me on some other day, when I did wish to go?”
“Whenever you wish, Sarita.” Now he turned to look at her properly, and there was warmth, love, and a deep yearning in his eyes, a deep and anxious yearning, and she knew he was laying himself before her, risking everything, letting go, in a way that he must never have done before. This man was not accustomed to letting slip that which he desired
. “Whenever you wish to go into Castile, you will have the escort, the horse, the purse. You have only to say so.”
The sweetest joy filled her, filled her until it brimmed from her eyes, spilling in salt tears, so that she dropped her gaze to the palfrey’s embroidered saddlecloth to hide her face. When she had herself in hand again, she said, “I think … I think perhaps today is not a good day for such a journey. It might storm; do you not feel it? There is a heaviness in the air.”
“Indeed, I believe there is,” he said gravely, overwhelmed with exaltation and relief. He had gambled and won. But then, perhaps it had not been such a gamble; Sarita had told him so many times what he had to do; he just hadn’t understood before. He had been too frightened of losing her, he realized. But now he could accept that she would stay with him while she chose to do so, and he would honor his word and release her whenever he was no longer enough for her. It would be for him to ensure that that time never came.
“Do you then wish to return to the Alhambra?” he asked in the same grave tone, as if he were not singing inside, as if his blood were not sweeping through his veins in a tide of anticipation.
“For today,” she replied. “Yes, I think for today I would wish to return.”
He turned his horse on the steep track, calling to the escort, who without comment moved off the track to let the caliph and his companion through, and then fell in behind them.
“And what would you wish to do when we return?” Abul inquired after a while.
Sarita gave him a look of pure mischief. “I would visit the baths, my lord caliph. I feel sorely in need of repose and harmony as preparation for the loss of repose to come.”
He laughed delightedly at this reminder of the conversation of their last outing. “The loving may be unreposeful, Sarita mía, but there will be true harmony at the finish.” His eyes darkened, took on a smoky glow as they held the green clarity of hers. “I promise you that.”
