by Jane Feather
The cold was in the marrow of her bones now, and she began to shake inside. “Why would you wish to keep me? I have done what I came here to do.”
“Oh, come now, that is a little naive,” he said gently, taking a date from the bowl before him, holding it in front of his mouth, and seeming to contemplate it, as if to decide whether it was worthy of being introduced between the hard, straight line of his lips. “I must think on what you have said. I must take counsel, and I may wish to question you further before I decide what action to take.” The date disappeared into his mouth and he chewed, smiling affably.
“But you will consider withdrawing your opposition to the caliph?” She had to press the point, had to try to gather some hope, some sense that her recklessness had not been in vain.
“I will reflect, and I will take counsel,” the emir repeated. “You, meanwhile, will accept my hospitality, such as it is. Not as extravagant as that offered in the Alhambra, I fear, but we do our best.”
Sarita said nothing. There was nothing to be said. She had walked into the lion’s den, and if he chose to rend her, she had no defense.
He rang a handbell, and her same guard appeared before the first jangle had died down. “Confine the woman in the alcazaba,” he said. “Aboveground and without restraints. A locked door and guard should be sufficient.” He smiled and took another date. “She is rather too insubstantial to pose any threat.”
They took her away, and the emir, all vestiges of lassitude vanished, rose energetically from his ottoman as soon as the door closed. He paced the room, the hard gray eyes clear. He didn’t doubt the truth of what the woman had said. The Mocarabes were more than capable of using a women’s quarrel to advance their own cause. If Aicha had indeed attempted to murder her rival, then the caliph had acted justifiably and the Mocarabes had no rightful argument. If the Christian left the Alhambra, there was no legitimate excuse for insurrection against the caliph … and no legitimate excuse for inviting the participation of the Spanish in the overthrow. The emir was well aware of the risks involved in that uneasy coalition.
But the woman had with dangerous innocence seen the issue as black and white: if the Abencerrajes understood the truth, then they would return to being loyal subjects of the caliph. There was much more to it than that. In the short term, the Abencerrajes did not have as much to gain as the Mocarabes from the ascent of the child Boabdil to the caliphate, but in the long term …
In the long term, an ambitious family could benefit greatly from such an event. Even with the support of the Mocarabes, a child and a woman on the throne of Granada would provide many opportunities for advancement, many more than could ever be offered under the strong, wise, clearheaded rulership of Muley Abul Hassan. A kingdom in chaos was a hotbed of opportunity for those who would be at the center to mold the new regime. The Spaniards would need payment for their participation, of course, but the emir did not doubt that they could be satisfied with the token submission of the boy king and some monetary reward.
If, on the other hand, he went over to the caliph’s side, swore undying allegiance, and broke up the alliance with the Mocarabes, what would he gain? The caliph’s gratitude, certainly, maybe advancement for some members of the Abencerrajes family. But no real access to the seat of power. Muley Abul Hassan kept too strong a grip on the reins.
No, the emir decided, he had made his choice. It was time the long ascendancy of the Nasrid dynasty was broken, and he would take what he could in the subsequent scramble over the spoils.
But what of the woman … what of the caliph’s houri? He could have her put to death in the cell in the alcazaba, and no one need be any the wiser. But perhaps she could be put to good use. A possible lever on Muley Abul Hassan? Then again, how would the lady Aicha react to the capture of her arch rival? She might well be disposed to gratitude. And obligations stored up for redemption in the future were always worth having.
The emir smiled to himself and rang the bell again, summoning his vizier. “Send a message immediately to the emir of the Mocarabes. The messenger is to travel without respite. I will expect an answer in my hands within two days.”
Two hours later, a messenger set off at a gallop toward the road to Montilla.
It was soon after siesta when Aicha received the summons to attend her father in his council chamber. It was not an unusual summons. The emir of the Mocarabes frequently consulted his daughter’s opinions on the course of the insurrection, aware of her knowledge, both intuitive and real, of the politics of the Alhambra.
She found him alone, and after she made her reverence, he beckoned her over to sit beside him. “A messenger has arrived from the Abencerrajes, daughter. His import I believe you will find of interest.”
Smiling, he handed her the rolled parchment. Aicha read it. “Naive little fool,” she said with a softness that could not disguise her venomous triumph. “To imagine she could interfere in such a manner.”
Her father shook a warning finger. “Be not so scornful, daughter. The tale she took to the Abencerrajes could well have been believed. Indeed, I suspect it has been believed. Her very naïveté in putting herself in such danger would add great validity to her tale. In different circumstances, with the Abencerrajes in a different mood, she could well have succeeded in her interference.”
Aicha accepted the reproof in silence, but her lips compressed, her eyes hardened.
“That said,” her father continued, “she has not succeeded, and it is for us to decide her fate. The emir says he has her safe and will dispose of her as we—or rather, you—choose.”
“A slow death,” Aicha said.
“Oh, come, let us be a little more subtle,” the emir chided. “How can we use her to advance our cause? What would your husband give to ensure her safety?”
Aicha remembered Abul’s face the moment before he had condemned her to the torture chamber. It had been the face of a desperate man. “A kingdom,” she heard herself say, almost before the thought had formed in her head. “I believe he would yield the Alhambra in exchange for the unbeliever’s life.”
Her father caressed the smooth, polished arms of his chair. “That is a large claim, daughter.”
“It can be put to the test,” Aicha replied. “And I know how it can be done most neatly.”
Her father smiled. “Explain yourself, child.”
“Why, by using her own people to bring about her downfall,” Aicha said. “She has sworn to the Abencerrajes that she will leave Granada, renounce Abul, return to her own country. Why do we not assist her to do so? Their most Catholic Majesties have a passionate commitment to saving the erring souls of their people. They know of this one, know of the dissension she has caused in our land. Why do we not give her to them … an erring soul who has abandoned her own religion to embrace the life and beliefs of a heretic?”
The emir laughed. “What a wonderfully devious mind you have, my daughter. And the lord Abul?”
“We will arrange for him to receive the information. If the messenger we send to the Abencerrajes with these instructions is told to be indiscreet on the journey … if his tongue is loose at his halts and with fellow travelers … the news will reach Muley Abul Hassan the way all such news travels. He will have his spies everywhere.”
Her father nodded. “He will hear of it.”
“And he will attempt to negotiate her release from Cordova. But I do not believe he will succeed,” Aicha declared. “The religious arm is most tenacious when it has laid hands upon a sinner in need of redemption, but I believe he will lose interest in all else.”
“And the woman will suffer a slow death nevertheless,” the emir pronounced. “At the hands of her own people.”
“At the next public burning in Cordova,” Aicha said with quiet satisfaction. “After extended inquisition.”
Sarita’s prison was bare, dirty, cold, and windowless. She had a narrow plank to serve as a bed, a pail as a commode. They brought her a jug of water every day, and after the first day she u
nderstood it was to serve all her needs, both washing and drinking. They fed her on dates, olives, dry bread … enough to keep up her strength but not to satisfy the perpetual nagging hunger. When she asked for a blanket to keep at bay the fetid cold of the ancient stone against which her flimsy robe provided little protection, they brought her a moth-eaten cloak. But it was better than nothing.
She slept most of the time, huddled in the cloak on the hard bed, withdrawing from boredom, loneliness, and trepidation, seeking the world of the Alhambra in her dreams—the scents, the sounds, the richness of its chambers and porticos. And always in her dreams she sought Abul. His face would hang in the air above her, his mouth curved in laughter, his bright black eyes full of wisdom and humor … or his mouth would be a bow of sensual promise, his eyes heavy with passion. Sometimes, when her dreams were particularly vivid, she would feel his hands upon her, and her skin would tingle in anticipation, her body shift on the narrow plank with burgeoning arousal. And then she would awaken to the cold, to the desolation of her prison, and to the ever-present fear.
On the seventh day, the door was opened and she was brusquely ordered into the passage. She blinked at the brightness of daylight after the candlelit dimness of her prison. She pulled the cloak tightly around her, suddenly conscious of how she must appear: dirty, her hair no longer a lively fire but lank and subdued, dust and dirt clinging to the hem of her tawdry robe, her feet ingrained with the floor grime of her cell. The mental image did nothing for her self-confidence.
The emir sat on a raised chair at the end of what Sarita assumed was his equivalent of the Alhambra’s Hall of the Ambassadors. He was alone and signaled to her escort to fall back.
“So, Sarita of the tribe of Raphael, I hope you have not found our hospitality too lacking in refinement,” he said, mockery in his voice as he took in her appearance. Sarita said nothing, concentrating every fiber of her being on the need to appear fearless and unconcerned, when in reality she was filled with a black wave of dread, of absolute knowledge that this man meant her harm. She was not going to be permitted to leave the stronghold of the Abencerrajes unmolested. And Abul … Obviously she had failed there too. He would have to fight his battle without her help, and she would never see him again …
“I must apologize for the long delay,” the emir went on smoothly. “There were other people to be consulted, arrangements to be made.”
She pulled herself back from the wasteland, swallowing her tears. She was going to die. Weeping over the loss of Abul seemed silly when faced with that fact. And she would not die a coward. She raised her head and faced him.
“It seems we are in a position to assist you in leaving the kingdom of Granada,” the emir continued, his eyes skimming her white face, missing none of her struggle for composure. He turned his head to a curtained doorway behind him, and as if on cue, the curtain was moved aside. Three figures glided into the chamber. Three figures in gray cowls, the scourges of self-flagellation at the braided ropes around their waists, the burning eyes of the fanatic leaping threefold at Sarita as they raised their hooded heads.
Sarita screamed.
“Your people claim you, Sarita of the tribe of Raphael,” the emir said when the echo of her terror had faded in the silent chamber. “Thus will you do as you wished and free Muley Abul Hassan to hold his throne.”
Even had she believed that to be true, she would have found no strength therein to bolster her courage in the face of this terror. She was going to die—oh, yes, there was no question of that—but only after suffering the most excruciating torments man could devise in his hell upon earth. She took a step backward, shaking her head incoherently, trying to find some words of denial, her hands pushing at the air in front of her as if she could dispel the three cowled figures, reduce them to the insubstantial specters of nightmare.
“My daughter, your immortal soul is in grave danger.” The monk’s voice was almost kindly as he stepped inexorably toward her. “We have it in our power to save your soul, to bring you back to the true faith. You have embraced heresy, daughter, but we will show you the error of your ways.”
His hands reached out to her. The flesh was white with spreading brown spots. The bony fingers were claws, curving to seize her in the grip of true cruelty. Foreshortened, the hands seemed to assume huge proportions, coming closer to her face. She opened her mouth to scream again, but the scream was lost in the black wave of unendurable terror.
It was the middle of the night when Yusuf returned to the Alhambra. But time no longer meant anything to him, and, heedless of the hour, he staggered to the caliph’s private apartments. Abul was not asleep. His dreams were nightmares, and he preferred to be wakeful.
“Well?” he demanded, finding no compassion within him for Yusuf’s exhaustion.
“My lord caliph, the emir of the Abencerrajes has sent to Cordova to the Inquisition. The woman is to be taken by them as a heretic.”
Ice enclosed Abul, but his mind was as clear as the rarefied air on the mountaintops. “How do you know this?”
“A messenger came from the Mocarabes, bearing such instructions from the emir to the Abencerrajes. Within a few hours, another messenger left the Abencerrajes and took the Cordova road. I assumed he went to the religious authorities there, lord, and I came to you with all speed.”
“How did you discover the Mocarabes’ instructions, Yusuf?”
“The man wore the livery of the Mocarabes, lord, so I waylaid him on the road and offered to share my flask since he looked fatigued. We drank. He was garrulous.”
Abul nodded. Such wayside meetings were common enough. Yusuf stood now with his head bowed like a blown horse, his body sagging, and Abul remembered the injunction he had put upon him. “Go to your rest,” he said. “And break your fast.”
Yusuf left the chamber, and the caliph went out to the court. Sarita had always loved this court. The fountain plashed in the moonshine. The green finches were silent in their cage. They would take her to Cordova before they would begin their dreadful work.
Would his bloodless abdication be sufficient to buy her back from the religious fanaticism of their Catholic Majesties, Ferdinand and Isabella? With his abdication came a weak Granada and the eventual certainty of its total capitulation to Spanish rule. They would not easily pass up the opportunity to acquire that with a minimum of force and expense. They could amuse themselves with the Mocarabes’ claim, with a child on the throne, and make their serious move to dislodge the boy caliph when they chose. If Abul remained firm, there would be long fighting with no absolute certainty of victory. He believed he could hold the Alhambra indefinitely, so long as he was not killed during an attack. It was only for fear of the latter that he had sent Sarita away. The kingdom would be weakened by internal attacks upon the Alhambra, but the Spaniards would still have to deal with Muley Abul Hassan, rather than malleable and inexperienced newcomers in the persons of his son, his wife, and her father’s family.
How best to make this diplomatic approach? Covertly, alone, a single suppliant? Or with all the pageantry and majestic authority of the Nasrid? Of one who knows himself to be the equal of any Spanish monarch, and one who knows the offer he brings to be irresistible.
Abul paced the court until dawn, tossing the alternatives back and forth until convinced he had made the right choice. On the following morning, a glittering, ceremonial procession left the Alhambra, taking the mountain passes to Cordova and the court of their most Christian Majesties, Ferdinand and Isabella.
The man who rode at the head of the procession did not look back to the rose-red walls of the place that was so much more than his home … that was the symbol of the Nasrid’s long rule in this Morisco-Spanish corner of the peninsula. He was never to see it again.
None of those accompanying him, neither soldier nor courtier, knew that he accompanied the caliph on the last mission of his caliphate. None wondered why a riderless, dappled gray palfrey cavorted on a leading rein at the rear of the procession. None inquire
d as to the contents of the packs laden upon the train of mules. None knew of the casks of gold, of silver, of gems, that Muley Abul Hassan had strewn with such care among those packs: the fortune and the future that was all he took from his ancestral home on this warm day in late April.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sarita traveled to Cordova on a swaybacked mare of uneasy gait, led by an armed retainer in the livery of Castile. Her hands were bound to the pommel, making it difficult for her to shift with the horse’s uneven stride, so that she was wretchedly uncomfortable most of the time. But she barely heeded the discomfort, so locked was she in the hideous contemplation of her immediate future.
She had come round from her swoon in her familiar cell and for a few minutes had thought she had woken from the grip of a nightmare. But sharp-etched memory had asserted itself all too soon. And hard on the heels of memory had come the three monks. They had stood around her plank bed and spoken to her of the sin of heresy, of the redemption that would not be denied the truly repentant. They had demanded that she confess her heresy and earn peace for her immortal soul.
She had said nothing, all too aware of the trap. There was no pardon on this earth for a confessed heretic. She would be burned for heresy and her repentant, departed soul rejoiced over as it ascended to the bosom of God in heaven. But if she denied her heresy, they would compel the confession from her sooner or later. No ordinary mortal could endure steadfast the methods that would be used to extort confession.
But here in the fortress of the Abencerrajes, no threats were used. Indeed, they spoke gently to her, begging her to save her soul, to see the error of her ways. Finally, emboldened by their gentleness, she had tried to explain that she had not lost sight of her faith during the time she had spent in the infidel’s palace. The gentleness had vanished. They had accused her of immorality, of committing mortal sin, of turning her back on the true faith. They had thundered at her, reducing her to a quivering essence of terrified flesh, cowering on her plank bed.
