by Peter Kerr
After a while, the king emerged from the tent accompanied by En Nunyo Sans. They were carrying pitch torches, which they lit from the fire. They were going, the king said, to recover the bodies of En Guillen and En Remon de Muntcada from the battlefield, and a small party of able-bodied men from within the Muntcada ranks would be required to lend their assistance. The affection in which the two nobles had been held was evidenced by every one of the half dozen of their troops present standing up and volunteering their services.
Being a member of the king’s own company, Pedrito thought it proper to do likewise. The two horses he had been minding all day were tethered nearby, and he suggested to the king that they might finally be put to good use now.
The king laid a hand on his shoulder and said under his breath, ‘Much as I appreciate the gesture, Little Pedro, a porter has already been detailed to fetch a couple of mules from the stabling enclosure at the main camp. They’re more sure-footed than horses in the dark and will serve our purpose better.’
‘Well, at least I can lend a hand myself,’ Pedrito replied. ‘I’m well rested and well fed, so…’
‘Well fed, indeed,’ the king smiled. ‘Our Aragonese chireta may be simple fare, but there’s nothing better to fill the belly of a hungry man at the end of a battle.’ He patted his own stomach and said in Aragonese for everyone to hear, ‘Bé hem dinat! We have eaten well, lads, sí?’
‘Bendinat, Majestat!’ the men agreed with a nod and a wink at the cook. ‘Bendinat!’
‘Which,’ the king announced, ‘would be a fitting name for this spot once we have rescued the rest of the island from the Saracen interlopers. Bendinat, the place where your king celebrated a great victory for God and Christian Spain with a humble but wholesome dish from his own kingdom of Aragon.’
‘With a dish borrowed from Scotland,’ Robert St Clair de Roslin mumbled grumpily in the background.
Seemingly oblivious to this remark, the king lowered his voice as he turned to speak once more to Pedrito. ‘You’ve done well by me today, my friend, and I greatly appreciate that you’re willing to help bring back the bodies of my two noble compatriots. But – and I mean no offence – this is a task for the men of the Muntcada companies alone. They will see it not just as their duty, but as an act of honour.’
Pedrito canted his head. ‘Whatever you say, senyor, and no offence taken. I promised to do your bidding during this campaign, and I’ll be here to do just that when you return from the field later.’
‘I think not,’ said the king, frowning.
Pedrito was about to protest his sincerity when the king’s frown was replaced by a smile.
‘I think you’ve earned some time off to make that longed-for visit to see your family, no?’
Pedrito could hardly believe his ears. ‘Really? But when? You mean … now?’
‘Whenever you want,’ the king beamed. ‘You can even borrow the old hack to ride on, if it’ll make the journey easier.’ He then assumed a serious look. ‘But I trust you to return just as soon as you’ve spent a little time at home – two or three days at the most. Tomorrow, we start unloading the war engines from our ships at Porto Pi, and once the siege of the city has been laid, I’ll be depending on you to undertake a very special mission for me.’ Seeing Pedrito raise a confused eyebrow, he patted his shoulder again. ‘And don’t worry, Little Pedro – I won’t even ask you to bear arms, far less kill anyone.
14
‘GOING HOME’
EARLY THE FOLLOWING MORNING, 13th SEPTEMBER – ON THE ROAD TO ANDRATX, SOUTH-WEST MALLORCA…
Perhaps it was the proximity of the scene of slaughter which the king had dubbed ‘The Vale of the Battle’ that made Pedrito feel uneasy as he passed by in the night. Then again, no matter how hard he tried to tell himself it was just his imagination, he’d also had a strange feeling of being followed ever since leaving the sanctuary of En Oliver de Termens’ campfire at Bendinat in the early hours of the morning. Even the old hack he was riding seemed less ‘nice and docile’ than usual, occasionally taking it upon herself to come to an abrupt halt for no apparent reason other than to turn her head and peer wide-eyed into the darkness. And no amount of coaxing, tongue-clicking and rein-flicking on Pedrito’s part would make her move a hoof until she was satistfied it was safe, for the present at least, to proceed.
All in all, then, the journey had added up to a fairly uncomfortable few hours for Pedrito – until, that is, he reached Es Coll d’Andritxol, a narrow pass between the mountains of Biniorella and Garrafa at the top of a long and tortuous track from the fishing hamlet of Camp de Mar. The horse, by now somewhat ironically named Tranquilla by Pedrito, was clearly relieved to have reached the end of the climb, and the first glow of dawn spilling over the high ridges of Garrafa seemed to dispel the edginess she’d been plagued by during the night.
The overwhelming sensation now felt by Pedrito, however, was the sheer joy of homecoming that the view from the pass engendered. Down there in the valley was Andratx, a cluster of honey-coloured and whitewashed houses clinging to the lower slopes of Abidala mountain on the southern reaches of the mighty Tramuntana chain, and appearing from this distance more like a scatter of little trinket boxes than a real village.
Early though it was, he could see that people were already up and about and making ready for the day ahead. Village-dwelling farmers were setting off to work on their little fincas, some of which, like his father’s, occupied the gently rolling terrain that stretched the two miles or so down to the cove of Port d’Andratx, while others were in the form of narrow strips of land stepping all the way up the mountainsides to where the only signs of vegetation were gravity-defying pines sprouting from clefts in the craggy rock face. These terraces, or bancales, on which the soil was retained by beautifully crafted drystone walls, were the work of the Moors, who, over the centuries, had skilfully and tirelessly carved them from the previously barren slopes of the island’s mountains.
A creaking sound and the splashing of water then drew Pedrito’s attention to another Moorish innovation which had helped turn Mallorca into the fertile Garden of Eden now so avidly coveted by King Jaume and his Christian followers. Just a few paces from the side of the track, an elderly man in scruffy peasant garb was drawing water from a well, using a mule harnessed by a long pole to the shaft of a water wheel, called a noría. By a simple though ingenious system of cogs, the vertical wheel turned as the mule trudged round and round, while a succession of earthenware jugs attached to a rope looped over the wheel scooped up water from the depths and decanted it into an adjacent adobe holding tank, or cisterna. Stone-lined channels then led the water down into the valley, where it would be used to irrigate the patchwork of little fruit- and vegetable-growing hortas that surrounded the village.
Tranquilla the horse neither had to be led to the water nor made to drink. The seventeen miles from En Oliver’s encampment had been taken at a relaxed enough pace, but this was the first refreshment she’d had all night, and the noise of her slurping the cool, sweet water was proof enough of her thirst and her gratification. Pedrito was no less relieved to wash the dust of the journey from his face and splash the drowsiness from his eyes. Nevertheless, what he saw when he opened them again took him completely by surprise, though with yet another wave of relief.
‘Nedi!’ he called to the ragamuffin black shape lapping up water at his side. ‘So, it was you following us all night!’ Grinning delightedly, he ruffled the tousled head. ‘You nearly scared the wits out of me. Sí, and I think old Tranquilla here almost had heart failure a few times as well, eh!’
‘Your dog, amic?’ the well minder asked with a scowl.
Pedrito was about to divulge that it was actually King Jaume’s, but thought better of it. Even if the man had believed him, which was highly unlikely, there was no knowing whether his allegiance lay with the Christian or Moorish sides now vying for occupation of the island. ‘Sí,’ he said instead. ‘My dog, amic.’
The man squinted
at him. ‘You look a bit like a Moor, but no Moor would let a dog drink from the same place as himself.’
Pedrito knew there was no denying that. ‘Which must mean I’m not a Moor, no?’
The man cast him a cautioning look. ‘Well then, you’d better watch out for your dog if you meet any Moors on your travels. You know what Muslims think of dogs – fit only for killing, unless you use them for hunting food or guarding your property.’
Pedrito shrugged. ‘No problema. I’d just say Nedi’s both a hunter and a guard dog.’
The man released a little snort of derision, generated, Pedrito guessed, by the apparently gormless smile on Nedi’s face and the water-dripping tongue dangling from the side of his mouth. ‘Doesn’t look much like either to me!’ the man grunted. ‘Anyway, whatever he isn’t, he is black, and a black dog is the living Devil himself in a Muslim’s eye.’ He drew a forefinger across his throat. ‘Meet a Moor and you’ll have a dead dog on your hands.’
Having been brought up in a predominantly Christian community, Pedrito had heard such rumours about Muslims and black dogs before, but he’d never had personal experience of the allegations and, frankly, found them hard to believe. By the same token, he’d also heard it said that Muslims didn’t drink alchohol, yet he knew that some of the best wine produced anywhere was made from grapes grown on a wonderful amphitheatre of steep bancales that rose from the sea on the mountainous north-west coast of Mallorca at Banyalfubar, which tellingly meant ‘little vineyard by the sea’ in Arabic.
‘Thanks for the advice about the dog,’ he smiled at the well keeper. ‘But don’t worry – I’ll take good care of him.’
‘Better keep good control of him as well,’ the man came back. ‘We’ve got sheep and goats grazing on these mountains, and no one wants his livestock savaged by a crazy dog.’
‘That won’t happen,’ Pedrito assured him. ‘He’s a well-trained animal.’
Right on cue, Nedi let out a loud bark, pricked up his ears, focused on something in the undergrowth on the other side of the track, then took off like a black streak up the wooded hillside.
The water man responded to Pedrito’s unheeded yelling of Nedi’s name with a sardonic smile. ‘Answers well, doesn’t he?’
Pedrito returned the sardonic smile with a sheepish one. ‘Probably saw a rabbit or something. Anyway, I’ve got to go. He found his way here, so he’ll just have to find his way back home again.’
‘And who pays for any livestock he savages?’ the man called after Pedrito as he trotted off.
‘King Jaume of Aragon-Catalonia,’ Pedrito shouted over his shoulder, caring little now whether the man was sympathetic to the Reconquista or not. ‘Just send the bill to the king!’
He couldn’t make out what the man barked in reply, but he assumed it wasn’t, ‘Have a pleasant day.’
But a pleasant day it was anyway – or promised to be. The elation Pedrito felt at being just a few minutes from home after five years of enslaved exile was immense. His chest was almost bursting with the anticipation of seeing his family again. And all around, there were the sounds of nature that had been so ominously absent immediately before the recent battles: the chatter of sparrows in the pines, the muted tinkling of sheep bells, the sough of a morning breeze rippling the stillness of the forest. The sounds of life. It was difficult to imagine, while passing through of this unsullied idyll, that so much death and desruction lay only a few hours’ ride away on the approaches to the city.
A dog barked somewhere up the mountainside, and Pedrito’s thoughts were brought abruptly back to Nedi. He whistled and shouted his name a few more times, but still to no effect. And the urgency to reach home that was gnawing at Pedrito far outweighed any obligation he might normally have felt to retrieve a runaway dog. Not that he didn’t care about Nedi’s wellbeing. He did, deeply, for he had grown fond of the big mutt during the couple of occasions they’d met so far. But, much as he was concerned about Nedi’s current situation, he felt sure he could take care of himself. He might not be the sharpest arrow in the quiver, but, like all dogs, he was a survivor, and a resourceful one at that. Yes, Pedrito told himself, Nedi would be all right. He would find his way back to the Christian camp whenever his rabbit-chasing adventure was over.
Skirting the fringes of Andratx village, Pedrito followed the winding course seaward of the little Torrent de Saluet – paradoxically not really a torrent at all, except following a storm, yet sustaining lush breaks of cane in hollows where the merest trickle of water would linger, even in the parching heat of summer. Over on his left rose what Andratx folks called Turtle Mountain – in reality no more a mountain than the Torrent was a torrent, but it was shaped a bit like a turtle and, to the local kids at least, it was bigger than just a hill.
This was the countryside of Pedrito’s childhood, and he could hardly contain his absolute delight at being back in these cherished surroundings. Impatient as he was to see his family, he reined in old Tranquilla to allow himself a few moments to savour it all. His gaze wandered down the valley to the little bridge that led eventually to his father’s finca, which was situated on gently rising ground shielded from the chill, northerly Tramuntana winds of winter by the southernmost folds of the eponymous mountain range. From each one of the farm’s four little stone-walled fields there were views of the sea at nearby Port d’Andratx, a wide, horseshoe cove enclosed by the arms of steep, pine-cloaked hills. There, his father, like the handful of other small farmers in the vicinty, had a tiny waterside shack, where he kept his boat and fishing tackle, and where Pedrito and his young friends had spent many an endlessly sunny summer’s day swimming or playing pirates on rafts made from bits of driftwood. For, as Pedrito now knew from first-hand experience, the natural attributes of Port d’Andratx had long made it as much an occasional haunt of real pirates as it was a permanent haven for honest local fishermen.
But awful as those five years as a galley slave had been, he had resolved to banish all thoughts of them from his mind should he ever be granted the chance to see his home again. That craved-for opportunity had come at last, and he was going to make the most of every precious moment of it.
Crossing over the dry bed of the stream, he caught his first glimpse of the tall palms that guarded the gateway to the family farm; the same palm trees he had looked at so longingly when passing the cape of Sa Mola at the mouth of Andratx inlet on the reconnoitering mission to Santa Ponça just a few days earlier. The palm trees and all they represented had been tantalisingly out of reach then, but now they were a mere slingshot away. With tears welling in his eyes and his heart beating wildly, he urged old Tranquilla on.
And then, as he rounded a bend in the path, he saw him – his father, his back stooped in typical fashion as he worked away with his short-handled hoe in the horta by the house. With tears running down his cheeks, Pedrito giggled like a child as he was struck by the thought that his father was probably preparing to plant beans, a chore that had been such a bane of his own boyhood during this ‘Season of Winter Spring’. Now, he couldn’t wait to plop the hard, wrinkled seeds into the drills between the fruit trees. Or, better still, to take the hoe from his father and do the real work for a change.
He was about to shout a greeting, but then thought that, perhaps, this would spoil the surprise. On the other hand, if he walked up behind his father and laid a hand on his back, the shock of seeing his long-lost son when he turned round might do his heart more harm than good. It was a dilemma solved a moment or two later by Tranquilla, who decided to whinny loudly when she caught sight of a mule pulling a plough between ranks of almond trees a little farther down the valley. Instinctively, Pedrito’s father looked over his shoulder and waved a hand at the approaching horseman.
It was only then that Pedrito, to his dismay, realised that the man wasn’t his father after all, but old Baltazar Ensenyat, another small farmer, whose finca was located just a short distance away on the other side of the Torrent. His initial concern for the wellbeing of his f
ather was quickly allayed, however, when he realised that Baltazar would only have come over to lend a hand, as neighbours herabouts often did. Pedrito breathed easily again, secure in the knowledge that his father would more than likely be out on his boat doing a bit of early-morning fishing. It was a common enough practice of his, particularly on beautifully calm mornings like this.
‘Hola, Baltazar!’ Pedrito called out. ‘Bon dia!’
The old fellow returned the salutation, but Pedrito could see from his puzzled expression that he didn’t know who he was actually greeting. He’d always been a bit short-sighted, as Pedrito recalled, so he waited until he was only a couple of horse lengths away before announcing with a grin, ‘It’s me, Baltazar – Pedrito! Don’t you recognise me?’
Baltazar’s jaw dropped. Then he mouthed Pedrito’s name, but without a sound passing his lips.
‘Getting ready to sow beans, eh? Hoping to steal my favourite job, were you?’ Pedrito joked as he dismounted and strode, arms spread, towards the old man.
Baltazar’s chin began to quiver and his eyes glazed over. ‘Little Pedro,’ he whispered, his whole body trembling while Pedrito gave him a manly hug. ‘Little Pedro,’ he repeated, pulling back from the embrace and staring at Pedrito in patent disbelief. ‘Jesucrist! Just look at you! I – I sometimes thought I’d never see the day when…’ Choking on the words, he began to sob. He covered his eyes with one work-gnarled hand and steadied himself against Pedrito’s arm with the other. ‘Un desastre!’ he whimpered. ‘Un desastre terrible!’
Pedrito took him by the shoulders and gave him a gentle shake. ‘Well, that’s a fine way to welcome me back from my travels, I must say. Come on, Baltazar, it can’t be that bad to see me again, surely.’
