by Jane Feather
He would surprise the conspiracy by attending the secret council to which the other emirs had been summoned. His presence alone would be enough to dispel the rumors of inattention, and he could permit himself a calculated show of displeasure at the effrontery of interfering with his private affairs. A man’s harem was his own business.
Not that Sarita was a member of his harem. Abul could not suppress a chuckle as he thought of how his compatriots would react if they knew exactly how matters stood between their caliph and the Spanish woman. There was an acknowledged equality to the relationship that would dumbfound an outsider.
The thought was an amusing distraction, but he put it aside as just that. Such a visit to his father-in-law would also serve as an opportunity to present his own case vis-à-vis Aicha. He would forestall criticism by publicly declaring the circumstances and his decision. Properly executed, his statement would include more than a hint of criticism of the man who had bred such a daughter and used her to gain entrance to the powers of the Alhambra.
No … it would do very well, Abul decided. The decision made, he put all thoughts and reconsiderations behind him in customary fashion and summoned the vizier and the cadi. An hour should see him through the rest of the morning’s imperative business, and then he could return to his apartments, to a wholesome and hopefully inviting Sarita.
It was rather more than an hour, however, before he crossed the antechamber to the guarded door, anticipation in his step. He stopped on the threshold. The chamber was in semidarkness, despite the brightness of early afternoon. The heavy winter curtains had been pulled across the long windows and doors onto the portico, and the soft afterglow of the charcoal brazier mingled with the perfumed golden halos from oil lamps strategically placed around the chamber.
He blinked, accustoming his eyes to the change; then he saw Sarita. She was lying on an ottoman, quite naked, her body gleaming palely in contrast to her hair, tumbling in shining extravagance across her shoulders, foaming on the cushions beneath her head. She moved one hand in a languid gesture of invitation, and Abul approached the ottoman, a smile of mingled amusement and delight on his mouth.
“I had not expected to be received by an odalisque,” he said softly, kneeling beside the ottoman. “What are you up to?”
“Why, nothing.” She shifted on the cushions and stretched languorously, offering him the feast of her body, its curves and hollows cast in light and shadows by the seductive illumination. “I am simply resting, my lord caliph, as you desired me to do.”
“I see.” He held back from touching her but inhaled the warm scents of her body, the fragrance of her hair. “Then I will not disturb you.”
Her teeth caught her bottom lip, and ready laughter sprang in the seaweed eyes, quite at odds with her indolently alluring pose. “That would be a pitiable waste of a deal of preparation, my lord Abul.”
Silently, Abul drew his embroidered robe over his head. As always in the day, he wore a serviceable shirt and britches beneath, and Sarita watched with unabashed eagerness as he divested himself of these garments, until, naked, he stood over her as she lay offering herself on the ottoman.
“You belong to me,” he asserted, a deep throb in his voice. “Every cell, every pore of your body, every hair of your head, every inch of your skin.”
“Then you should take possession of that which you possess,” she said softly, “so that I may take possession of that which I possess.”
He knelt on the ottoman at her feet, slowly, purposefully, running his eyes over her body, but still without touching her. “I want you to give yourself to me, Sarita.”
The husky demand hung in the scented air as she gazed up at him. Towering over her soft exposed vulnerability, his body was hard and powerful, predatory in its aroused hunger. Her breath caught in her throat at the recognition of that physical power against her own fragility, and the knowledge that only the tenuous threads of trust bound woman to man in the sharing of bodies; only the indefinable emotion called love transformed the use of another’s body into the joyful sharing of pleasure.
Slowly, she ran her hands over her body, acknowledging each part of it as hers even as she made of the exploration an exhibition … an offering. At the very last, her thighs parted, and she rendered the core of herself to his eyes and the hands that finally he laid in possession upon her …
“Shall we stay in this chamber with the world shut out forever?” Sarita turned her head against his breast, pressing her lips into the hollow of his throat where the pulse beat strongly.
Abul smiled, playing idly with her hair as she broke the deep silence of satiation. Her voice sounded strangely loud in the dim, glowing chamber, although she had spoken barely above a whisper, but only the short, husky words of passion had been heard in the room for many hours, it seemed. “Forever is a long time, querida.”
“Then for many days.” She propped herself up on an elbow and leaned over him, enclosing them both in the fragrant flaming tent of her hair, her mouth hovering over his. “Let us stay here, naked in the lamplight, and ignore the world for a week.”
He raised his hand to push her hair away from her face and lightly cupped the curve of her cheek. “I wish it were possible. But we must settle for hours rather than days.”
“Oh.” She sensed a suddenly provoked tautness in him. “You have business?”
He didn’t want to tell her that he would soon have to leave her to journey to the Mocarabes. Such information would sully the peace and unity of the time they could spend enclosed in their own world. “There is always business,” he said. “Are you not hungry? We have not dined, and it must be well into the afternoon, although it’s hard to tell in this cavern.”
Sarita contemplated the question. “I suppose I am a little. And if I am a little, then you must be a lot. Shall I ring?” She reached for the handbell.
Abul regarded her with some amusement as he caught her wrist, arresting her movement. “That bell will bring one of the guards in here. Do you intend to receive him in your skin?”
“I am too lazy to move,” she said. “Fetch me a coverlet from the sleeping chamber.”
Abul’s eyes narrowed as he pulled his robe over his head. “You are growing somewhat importunate, Sarita mía. It seems to me that you are developing an inflated sense of your own consequence.”
She laughed. “That’s what I said to you.”
“I remember. And I also remember I intended to take issue with you on the subject …” His voice faded slightly as he went into the next-door chamber. “After we have dined, we shall talk about this predilection you seem to be showing for most unwomanly hauteur.”
“Before we take siesta or afterward?” she inquired impishly.
“Instead, I believe.” He dropped a silk coverlet on her stomach. “Cover yourself, immodest creature.”
Sarita, with a self-satisfied smile, arranged the cover over herself and settled back against the cushions as Abul went to the door and gave orders to the men outside.
“You do not have any further business for today, though?” she asked, reverting to the original subject.
Abul ran the tips of his fingers over his lips, frowning. There were things he should do, people he should see. He had not yet received the daily report from the officer in charge of Aicha’s guard. But then, what would the man have to say that was different from any other day? He reviewed the list of tasks he would normally have dealt with during the afternoon and shrugged. There was really nothing that could not wait until tomorrow … not when compared with the beguiling pastimes offered in the enchanted seclusion of this glowing grotto.
“No, I have no business outside this chamber,” he said. “But much within it.”
“And many hours before morning in which to accomplish much,” she replied, her eyes alive with sensual promise.
“I doubt it will be long enough to mend the manners of an impudent sparrow,” he said with a mock sigh. “But a man can only try.”
She extended he
r arms to him. “Come here. I will show you how it is to be done.”
Her eyes drew him across the room, moon to his tide as always, and as he followed their pull he wondered for an uneasy second whether there was some truth in the rumor of a man who seemed to count the world well lost for love.
Chapter Eighteen
The following night was moonless with heavy clouds obscuring the stars and only the glimmer of snow on the mountain peaks showing some contrast with the darkness beyond the walls of the Alhambra. Within the walls, sconced torches in the porticos flared under gusts of wind, and windows and doors were all shuttered tight against an unfriendly night.
It was not unfriendly, however, to the two in the tower of the cadi. The lights within were all extinguished, and Aicha stood at the window in the upper chamber overlooking the palace compound, straining eyes and ears into the darkness to catch a hint of movement that would alert her to the approach of Nafissa with the great iron key that would unlock the prison door.
Boabdil was silent, dressed in boots and cloak against the cold, his eyes wide and scared. He knew they were leaving tonight and that the journey would be hard, through dark passages, and he must make no sound lest they be discovered and his father’s wrath descend upon them with terrifying consequences. His mother had not underestimated those consequences, painting such a picture of pain and deprivation that the boy trembled, cowering in a corner of the tower, biting his tongue as he practiced absolute silence.
A flicker of shadow appeared immediately below the window. As Aicha went to the narrow staircase, she touched a finger to her lips in admonition to the cowering Boabdil and sped stealthily to the court below. The key turned sweetly in the lock, and the door opened a crack. Nafissa, cloaked and veiled, slipped within, and the door closed as if it had never been opened.
“It is time, my lady,” the handmaid whispered. “The watchman awaits on the path. He will direct us to the opening of the passage.”
“He is to be trusted?” Aicha had asked the question of herself many times but had had no chance to ask it of Nafissa.
“He has been paid well, lady,” the other woman said with a touch of dryness. “Where is the child?”
“Boabdil,” Aicha called softly up the stairs. “Come down now. It is time to leave.”
The boy appeared with dragging step at the head of the stairs, his white face gleaming as he stared down fearfully. “I do not wish to go, Mamma.”
“Do not be such a baby,” Aicha snapped. “Come down at once.”
Boabdil’s lip trembled, but he obeyed his mother and came slowly downstairs. “But if we should be discovered …” he whimpered.
“We will not be if you keep silent and do only as you are bid,” Aicha said, trying to soften her voice as she saw tears in his eyes, threatening a noisy and immoderate storm of weeping. “We are going to your grandfather’s palace. You will like it there, Boabdil. Just be a brave boy, and then everything will be all right.”
Nafissa had already gone back to the door and now stood impatiently with her hand on the latch. “Make haste, lady. We must be away before the watchman on this part of the ramparts returns.”
Aicha seized her son’s hand and went to the door. They opened it only as far as necessary to admit their sideways sidling bodies, and then they were outside, hugging the shadow of a hedge of oleanders beside the path. A man in soldier’s garb stood there, and Boabdil gave a moan of terror. Aicha hushed him with a slapping hand, and he fell into weeping silence.
The man said nothing but began to move swiftly down the path toward the track leading upward to the Generalife, the trio behind him trying to match his pace. Halfway up the track he moved sideways into the bushes lining the path. The three followed, the bushes tugging at them like unseen hands. The mountainside rose bare above them, uncultivated in stark contrast to the lush gardens below. They struggled upward until the watchman stopped at an outcrop of rock. He said something to Nafissa, who had kept up with him, covering the ground on her sturdy peasant legs as if it were as flat as the deserts of Spain. She nodded, and the man turned and sped past the still struggling Aicha and Boabdil, then vanished, lost in the blackness of the night.
“It is here,” Nafissa whispered, pointing to a shadow against the mountainside. The shadow was an opening, a mere slit leading into impenetrable blackness. “I have flint and tinder,” she said. “Within, we will find a lamp. We are to leave it at the other end.”
The prospect of light emboldened Aicha, whose courage had faltered at the prospect of an interminable, pitchy journey through the mountainside with no certainty that they would ever emerge. But Nafissa was willing to make the attempt, and that in itself encouraged Aicha. Nafissa was motivated by the prospect of reward, not by love for her mistress, and Aicha doubted she would take a risk she considered unacceptable. If the handmaid trusted the watchman, then she must have good and sufficient reason.
Nafissa slid into the opening while the other two stayed outside, Boabdil keening his terror. His mother drew him roughly against her skirts, muffling the sound rather than imparting comfort or reassurance, but she had little of either to give at the present. A light flickered from within the mountain, and with grim resolution Aicha slipped into the slitted opening, hauling the child after her. It was dank and bitterly cold, dense darkness stretching ahead of the tiny patch of feeble light in which they stood.
“We had best make haste,” Nafissa said. “The wick is low on the lamp. The watchman assured me the lamps are kept tended by those who use the passages, but this is one that is rarely used, and the lamp has been neglected.”
She set off ahead of them, holding the lantern high, its dim illumination sending weird shadows writhing on the twisted rock walls of the narrow passage, quarried so long ago through the rock and clay of the mountain.
Boabdil began to sob, stumbling in his mother’s wake, clinging to her skirts. Aicha ignored him. His noise would not now be heard by anyone, and she had too much of her own trepidation about the failing lantern for compassionate whisperings to a frightened child.
They went on and on, the passageway narrowing sometimes to such a degree that they had to creep sideways, the moisture-laden rock dampening their backs; the ceiling was so low at times that they went bent double. Aicha’s consuming prayer was that the lantern would hold. Why had Nafissa not thought to bring candles? But she kept the complaint to herself, all too aware of the fact that it was Nafissa who held the lantern, Nafissa who knew which twists and turns to take when another slit of a passage crossed their own.
The lantern finally guttered, plunging them into a blackness more profound than could be imagined. Boabdil screamed. Aicha swallowed her own cry and stood quaking. How much farther did they have to go? Then a light flickered, became the steady flame of a candle. Nafissa had not come unprepared after all. Why had she not said? Aicha thought with a wave of irrational anger. If she had said she carried a candle, Aicha would have been spared the preceding agonies of apprehension. But again she bit her tongue. Nafissa could not yet be safely antagonized.
It was an hour or so before dawn when they emerged into the freshness of the aboveground world. The River Darro flowed swiftly at the base of the hillside, where two horses waited, their bridles held by a robed and turbaned man sitting on the riverbank beside them.
“My brother,” Nafissa said matter-of-factly, gesturing to the shadowy figure. She seemed not a whit disturbed by the hours of subterranean journeying. “He will provide escort, but he must be paid.”
“My father will pay him,” Aicha said.
Nafissa shook her head. “He must be paid now, lady. The journey is risky, and there is no surety that the emir will reward him.”
Aicha paled with anger, but there was nothing she could do. The sun would rise all too soon, and she and Boabdil could not be standing here on the banks of the river in the full glare of daylight.
“I have nothing with which to pay him,” she said tautly. “What do you suggest?” She kne
w Nafissa would have an idea.
“I took the liberty, lady.” Nafissa pushed a hand into the deep pocket of her robe and drew out a strand of pearls. The finest strand in Aicha’s jewel casket.
“He will be well rewarded with but three of these.” Her wheedling smile carried the absolute assurance of one who held the upper hand. She held the strand out to Aicha, who took it without expression.
The man tending the horses had been observing in watchful silence during this exchange. Now he rose and crossed the scrub of the riverbank to come up to them. Wordlessly, he handed Aicha a small knife.
She cut three of the pearls from the strand and dropped them into his open palm. Again there was no verbal response, not even a mock obeisance, a feigned gesture of gratitude, and Aicha seethed with a wild resentment that she should be subjected to such indignity at the hands of peasants. But she would revenge herself for the insults once she ruled the caliphate through the whining, sniveling child at her feet.
She looked down to where Boabdil crouched on the grass, scrabbling at her hem. “Get up!” She dragged him to his feet, turning on the man holding the pearls. “You have been paid to provide escort. Do so.”
The icy instruction had an effect. Nafissa’s brother fetched the horses. He lifted Boabdil onto one and assisted Aicha to mount behind him. Then he put his sister onto the second horse and swung up behind her. With a click of his tongue, he started the small procession, and they moved along the riverbank in the gray light of predawn.
If they were not apprehended, they should be within her father’s protection by noon, Aicha thought.
“My lord caliph!” The summons was repeated several times before it penetrated Abul’s sleep. The voice came from the outer chamber, discreetly so because the guard was well aware that the lord Abul was abed with his houri.
