by Peter Kerr
‘Hunting?’ Pedrito and Saleema chorused.
Farah giggled as she glanced down at her sole surviving foot. ‘All right, I admit I wouldn’t be much good at chasing wild goats these days. No, something a bit slower, a bit easier to catch would be my limit now. But luckily, there’s always been plenty of wild fennel growing along the bottom of the cliff here, and being country kids yourselves, I’m sure you know that there’s nothing snails like better than to climb up the stalks on a nice, damp night.’
‘Snails?’ Saleema squeaked. ‘Eat … snails?
Farah nodded, then drew attention to Saleema’s tattered slippers and lacerated toes. ‘Unless you fancy going on a wild goat chase up the mountain yourself, of course.’
Pedrito interrupted the ensuing silence by gallantly – though not too plausibly – claiming that he quite liked snails himself. ‘Yes,’ he said through a wooden smile, ‘I haven’t eaten them for years, of course – not too much wild fennel growing on a pirate galley – but when I was young, my mother –’ He stopped abruptly, the clumsiness of what he had just said hitting him like a slap in the face. He felt his cheeks flush.
Equally embarrassed, Farah lowered her eyes.
Saleema cleared her throat and followed suit.
‘Uhm-ah, what I was going to say,’ Pedrito eventually stammered, ‘was that snails – well, you really need some bread – you know, to uh …’
‘And we’ll have bread as well,’ said Farah, quickly retaking the initiative. She gave Pedrito a heartening smile. ‘Never fear, just as soon as I’ve rested a bit, I’ll go down to one of the farms by the village and scrounge some.’ She winked playfully. ‘Can’t fail. Won’t be every day they get a queen begging from them, eh?’ The tension broken, she laughed along with Pedrito and Saleema, then tossed her head in a pretend fit of pique. ‘Well, all right then, an ex-queen!’
With the sound of laughter ringing round the walls of the cave, Saleema sat down beside Farah and gave a her a hug. ‘You’re still a queen in my eyes,’ she said, then planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘And together we’ll make this a palace fit for a queen!’ Looking around, she moved her arm in a flamboyant sweep. ‘Who needs silken cushions, marble floors and tinkling fountains when we’ve got all this?’
As concerned as he still was about their welfare, Pedrito drew a welcome grain of relief from seeing this bond develop between the two women. Farah had already shown her indomitable character in every situation she’d encountered since Pedrito’s fortuitous meeting with her in that grim alleyway. Now Saleema, although still a relatively callow girl of seventeen, was starting to display a similar fortitude and wry sense of humour. And, Pedrito told himself as he weighed up her current situation, she was going to need plenty of both, and then some! He was perturbed, and it clearly showed.
‘Come on now, don’t worry about us,’ Farah told him with a commendable air of self-confidence. ‘We’ll be just fine, once we’ve gathered some food and made beds to sleep on. So, off you go and report to your Christian king. As you said, a promise is a promise.’
Pedrito hesitated before replying. His heart told him that he should be staying here to support these two brave but vulnerable women. Why should he put King Jaume’s interests before theirs? Even if he never went back to the Christian camp, he, Farah and Saleema could probably live indefinitely in these hills, no matter which side eventually won the war. But then his head told him that, while such a course of action might prove to be a way out of their predicament in the short term, it was likely to do precious little for their longer-term prospects. No, it was obvious that fulfilling his commitment to the young monarch would provide the best hope for the future that he had at present. But what if the Moors should be the eventual victors? How would they react if they found out he’d not only sided with the Christians but had gone out of his way to conceal two Muslim women in a cave? That, Pedrito told himself, was a bridge he would cross if he ever came to it. For now, he would have to make the best of matters as they stood.
‘The Christian king can wait a while yet,’ he said to Farah, then spoke to Saleema. ‘If you can make things as comfortable as you can in here, there’s something I have to go and do in the meantime. Give me an hour, two at the most, and I’ll be back, I promise.’
Saleema nodded, her look one of resigned confusion.
Farah gave her a consoling pat on the hand. ‘You can always trust a man to make himself scarce when there’s housework to be done, habib.’
SEVERAL HOUS LATER – BACK IN THE CAVE ABOVE GÉNOVA…
The sun was sinking low in the afternoon sky by the time Pedrito eventually returned.
‘It took a bit longer than I thought,’ he said, somewhat sheepishly.
Farah and Saleema looked up from where they were sitting on either side of a good-going fire that had been built with chunks of dead olive wood. They were clearly pleased to see him, though perhaps even more pleased to see what he was carrying.
For his part, Pedrito was pleasantly surprised to see the ‘home comforts’ that had been created in the cave. As well as gathering wood for the fire, which both provided much-needed warmth to the dank air and cast a comforting glow around the rugged stone walls, Saleema had managed to collect sufficient material to make beds for herself and Farah. Well, perhaps calling them ‘beds’ would have been a bit of an exaggeration, Pedrito admitted to himself on closer inspection. But at least the makeshift mattresses that had been put together from springy layers of dwarf palm fronds, dry heather, brushwood and moss would provide a modicum of cushioning on top of the stony floor. Hardly the feather pillows that Saleema had been accustomed to until yesterday, but amounting to considerably more comfort than the cave had offered just a few hours earalier. Saleema had done well, and Pedrito told her so.
But Saleema, like Farah, seemed more interested in what Pedrito was carrying than in what he was saying.
‘Two pigeons?’ she gasped.
‘And three rabbits?’ Farah marvelled.
Pedrito raised an apologetic shoulder. ‘Well, I’ve seen the day when downing a few more pigeons in flight wouldn’t have been a problem, but I’m a bit out of practice. There wasn’t much chance to keep my skills honed during those years I spent pulling an oar for my sins.’
‘Skills at what?’ Saleema queried.
Farah smiled one of her knowing smiles, but said nothing.
Pedrito pulled his sling from a fold in his robe. ‘At using this,’ he told Saleema. ‘You get a bit rusty if you don’t keep practising.’ He smiled sheepishly again. ‘And, well, that’s why I’ve been so long.’
‘The pigeons were too quick for you?’ Saleema teased.
‘Yes, and the rabbits weren’t far behind them, believe me!’
‘I used to be a bit of an expert with one of those myself when I was a kid,’ Farah proudly announced.
Pedrito lowered his brows. ‘With a sling? A girl an expert with a sling?’ He gave Farah a doubting look. ‘You’re joking … aren’t you?’
‘No, I’m serious! I was a match for any of the boys – outside in the field there, knocking stones off the branches of the trees. Yes, and from quite a distance too.’ Farah was getting on her high horse. ‘And I don’t mind telling you that I once hit a pigeon in flight myself. Yes, I remember it as if it was yesterday. Oh yes indeed, we spit-roasted it over a fire right here where I’m sitting now.’
Pedrito held up his hands. ‘All right, all right, I believe you, I believe you. Honestly, I didn’t mean to –’
‘Insult me?’ Farah laughed. ‘Don’t worry, it takes more than that, believe me.’ She became pensive for a moment, then said haltingly. ‘You, uhm – you wouldn’t happen to have a spare one, would you? I mean, it could come in handy for hunting – you know, if we ever get tired of eating snails.’
Without thinking, Pedrito looked at Farah’s one and only foot.
‘I know what’s going through your mind,’ she immediately came back. ‘And, yes, you’re right – I’d fall flat
on my face if I tried to swing a sling round my head now.’ She glanced hopefully at Saleema. ‘But with our little lady holding me upright…’
‘I’d be delighted to,’ Saleema chirped, ‘especially if you could teach me how to use it as well.’
With mischief dancing in her eyes, Farah twitched her head in Pedrito’s direction. ‘I think you’d enjoy it more, habib, if you were given lessons by the young master here. It takes someone steady to stand behind you and guide you through the arm movements, you see.’
Saleema blushed and stared at nothing in particular on the floor.
Pedrito faked a cough. ‘You’re, uh – you’re more than welcome to this one,’ he blurted out, handing Farah his sling. ‘I, uhm – I can make myself another one easily enough.’
‘Excellent!’ Farah beamed. ‘Thank you very much indeed.’ She adopted her mock-regal mien again. ‘Now then, young sir, allow us to repay your generosity by inviting you to dine with us.’ She snapped her fingers at Saleema. ‘If you would be so good as to pluck a pigeon, my dear, I shall deal with one of the rabbits.’ Smiling a queenly smile, she said to Pedrito, ‘A banquet fit for such a grand palace as this, no?’
‘No doubt about it, madam,’ Pedrito replied. ‘And if I may be permitted…’ He paused to step back outside, returning a moment later holding a small sack. ‘I’ve brought a little surprise to add to the sumptuous bill of fare.’
‘Just tell me it isn’t snails!’ Saleema pleaded.
Pedrito shook his head. He dipped his hand into the sack, then held up a white-coated finger. ‘Found it in an abandoned barn back down near Génova.’ He licked his fingertip. ‘Flour – fresh as the day the miller ground it.’
‘See!’ Farah said triumphantly. ‘I told you we’d have bread as well, didn’t I?’ She rolled her eyes heavenward. ‘Somebody up there likes us, and at this moment in time, I couldn’t care less whether he’s Muslim or Christian, black, white, green or blue!’
‘My sentiments entirely,’ Pedrito concurred. ‘Now, if you’ll permit me, madam, I’ll skin that rabbit for you.’
*
Nothing of much consequence had been said during the meal – just snippets of small talk between bites of much-needed food. For, despite the jocular banter that had taken place after Pedrito’s return from his foraging expedition, a slightly awkward atmosphere still persisted between himself and Farah. He felt a genuine affection for her, and he was sure the feeling was mutual, but it was going to take time to forge the cherished mother-and-son relationship that had existed between himself and, until yesterday, the only mother he had known and whose loss he hadn’t yet had time to properly mourn. To her credit, Saleema, young as she was, had been aware of this and had tried to ease the tension by injecting little lighthearted topics of conversation into proceedings whenever there was a lull. She had even managed to tell a story about her childhood which explained why eating snails was so abohorrent to her now. Pedrito doubted that it was true, but it didn’t matter. What counted was that Saleema was showing a genuine sensitivity towards the feelings of others. This mirorred the quality he so admired in his mother – the real mother who was sitting with them here – and he felt good about that.
Lucky the donkey was already snoring on his feet on the other side of the little cave when Pedrito finally stood up.
‘It’s getting dark,’ he said. ‘Much as I’d rather stay here, I’ll have to make my way down the mountain and over to El Real.’ He hunched his shoulders. ‘The Christian king – a promise is a promise.’
Saleema nodded her understanding, though with downcast eyes.
Pedrito looked at Farah. She was nodding too, but more due to the irresistible onset of sleep than in response to what he had just said. She looked drained and exhausted, older than her years, a frail little creature kept going by nothing more than a dogged determination to survive. Her eyes fluttered shut and she sank sideways onto her crude mattress, cushioning her head childlike on her forearm. Pedrito wondered what, in contrast, the man who had done this to her would be reclining on now. And that man was his father, whose blood coursed through his own veins. The mere thought of it made him shudder.
‘I’ll be back,’ he whispered to Saleema, who was trying, albeit none too successfully, to stop her lip from trembling again. He placed a finger under her chin and raised it gently, the pleading look in those huge, dark eyes making it all the more difficult for him to do what he knew he must. Without saying another word, he turned and strode towards the cave’s entrance, his heart heavy, the uncertainty of what lay ahead, not just for himself, but more agonisingly for Saleema and Farah, filling him with an awful sense of misgiving. His intentions were beyond reproach, but their potential success, or failure, would now lie largely in hands other than his own.
21
‘VICTORY OR DEATH’
THE FOLLOWING MORNING – THE CHRISTIAN CAMP OF ‘EL REAL’…
The fenced-off royal compound was an oasis of relative calm in the midst of a huge military settlement alive with activity. The hubbub of shouted commands, whinnying horses, the clanking of hammers on anvils, the thumping and rasping of mallets and saws reminded Pedrito of the chaos that had prevailed during the initial mass landings at Santa Ponça, except that there, an atmosphere bubbling with the anticipation of adventure prevailed, whereas here, chaos had been replaced by order and the air was charged with the pulse-quickening inevitability of a final fight to glory – or oblivion.
Although most of the vast expanse of tented accommodation was now almost complete, relays of men and beasts were still busy hauling newly-felled timber from the surrounding countryside to finish off the palisade that would soon encircle the entire encampment. Immediately beyond that, other squads were working frantically to dig a ring-ditch as yet another line of defence. Throughout it all, however, the ‘swoosh’ and ‘thwack’ of missiles being hurled by the opposing armies served as a reminder that destruction was the ultimate object of the exercise, no matter how well constructed the defences.
Standing outside his tent, King Jaume listened while Pedrito recounted details of his fact-finding foray into the city. Pedrito had already seen for himself some of the damage that had been done to the Christian enclave by projectiles propelled into it by the Moors’ mighty algarrada war engine. The proof of its power was manifested in the terrible carnage inflicted on those men and horses unfortunate enough to have been in the wrong place when the rocks battered into the camp. Yet the king seemed surprisingly disinterested in what Pedrito told him about where, according to information gleaned at the inn, the most effective of the algarradas were located.
‘We’ve already found that out the hard way,’ the king said with a rueful shrug. ‘It was easy to see where the missiles were coming from, and doubtless the Saracens thought their engines were beyond the range of ours. They know better now, though.’ He gestured towards the southern perimeter of the camp, where rising above the roofs of the tents were the twin stanchions of the mighty trebuchet the Marseilles sailors had built from the timbers of their own ships. ‘The Moors have no match for the distance that beast can hurl whatever we load into its sling. So, the best of their algarradas have been obliterated, and anything they’ve aimed at us since has landed short of here.’
Pedrito then stressed that he’d been told there was ample material within the city to build replacements for the most powerful machines. Again, King Jaume appeared only mildly interested.
‘That’s the way of any siege, Little Pedro, and eventually the side with the best artillery equipment gains the upper hand. At the moment, that side is us, and it’s up to us to keep it that way.’ He then assumed a more urgent manner. ‘But what of the Moors’ reinforcements from Africa – those the turncoat Ali tolds us about? Their arrival will be a much greater threat to us than the building of a few more war engines. Did you find out the size of the fleet and when it’s likely to reach here?’
King Jaume greeted with a bellow of delight Pedrito’s revelation that it
appeared to be common knowledge, even among the rank and file of the Medîna Mayûrqa garrison, that, because of an act of treachery by the Moorish king’s own uncle, no such seaborne reinforcements had ultimately been summoned.
‘Well now, that puts an entirely different compexion on things,’ the king beamed. ‘We’ll continue to post a few sentry ships out beyond the bay, just in case. But we can now remove most of the contingency troops from our vessels at Porto Pi and put them to work here. Yes,’ he grinned, ‘and your news is all the sweeter because of the “treachery” factor.’ He slapped Pedrito’s shoulder. ‘It warms my heart to learn that elements of my own kith and kin have their counterparts within the Moorish aristocracy. Seems that back-stabbing parasites have a taste for blue blood, whether it’s Muslim or Christian, no?’
‘Except that, in your favour, senyor, family disloyalties are now a thing of the past,’ Pedrito diplomatically proposed, noting the approach across the enclosure of a glum-looking En Nunyo Sans, the king’s senior general, but also a cousin, who had once been guilty of plotting against him with their mutual kinsman, En Guillen de Muntcada. Both of these nobles had eventually come round to renouncing their breach of royal trust, though not before the king had paid them handsome ‘sweeteners’. And to add to the irony, En Guillen and his own cousin, En Remon de Muntcada, had ultimately died the death of heroes while fighting for their king here on Mallorca only a few days earlier.
King Jaume chose not to respond to Pederito’s potentially contentious observation about family disloyalties, electing instead to greet En Nunyo with the cheering news that the feared fleet of Moorish reinforcements didn’t actually exist after all.
Despite this, the scowl En Nunyo had been wearing scarcely lifted. ‘Good news indeed,’ he said with the thinnest of smiles, ‘but I have news, Majestat, that may turn out to be even more worrisome than yours is heartening.’
