‘It’s true,’ Hisham gabbled now. ‘I was there. He was trying to seduce her. Robert the Christian.’
The vizier was having trouble following this. ‘Who? Who was he trying to seduce?’
‘Moraima,’ Ghalib said bluntly.
The vizier howled, and lunged at Robert. Orm blocked his way. The vizier’s own attendants ran up, and tried to separate the men.
Amid this shouting and chaos, Ghalib cried out, and slumped forward in a faint.
XVI
‘I was lonely,’ Sihtric whispered. ‘In the end, it comes down to that, and my own weakness. And the result was a new life.’
‘Moraima,’ Robert said.
‘Yes.’ Sihtric smiled wistfully. ‘And now I will never be lonely again.’
‘I think,’ Orm said sternly, ‘that you had better tell us the whole truth, Sihtric. About you, Moraima, and the vizier.’
Robert, Sihtric and Orm had been escorted to a battered, fire-damaged room. Here the three of them sat, on worn floor coverings and baggy cushions. Bright daylight filtered through more of the charming archways that had so entranced Robert. But now massive soldiers stood in those arches, silhouetted.
Orm had growled at being put under armed guard. The nervous attendant who had brought them here assured them it wasn’t like that, they had been brought here for their own safety at a time of disturbance.
Sihtric had advised them just to put up with it. ‘They’ve done this before. I’ve seen it. Just freeze the situation for a few hours, while they get him sobered up. And I’ve seen some of the potions they use. Even tried some myself. Sometimes they will bleed you, or rub ground-up elephant tusk onto your teeth. So decadent were some of the caliphs that the task of making them sober enough to be seen in public inspired a whole library full of medicinal wisdom.’
Now Orm said, ‘Just tell us the truth, Sihtric.’
Sihtric eyed him. ‘What do you imagine that truth is?’
Robert blurted, ‘That they are lovers. Ibn Tufayl and Moraima. Or perhaps it’s worse than that. Perhaps that old goat of a vizier took her by force.’
Orm eyed the guards. ‘I assume our guardians do not speak any English. But I wouldn’t be prepared to bet my life on it. Think about your words, Robert.’
‘Lovers?’ Sihtric sighed. ‘If only it were that simple ...’
He said it all began with his own loneliness.
‘You must remember I came here as a scholar. My sketches of war machines intrigued the vizier, as I had hoped, and he gave me a small stipend. As I told you I had ways to make more bits of money independently, from selling Arabic translations of the Bible to Mozarabs, and from administering to their spiritual needs. And as I began to gain access to the libraries of the emir I developed my own interests, outside the narrow scope of Aethelmaer’s designs. Interests in the career of the Moors in Spain, for instance. And the secret history I discovered - well. That’s for another day, Orm, but we must speak of it, for it forms my whole purpose.
‘What I did not anticipate was that these small signs of independence on my part were troubling to a man like the vizier. These are fractured times in al-Andalus, a time of turmoil and threat. With enemies both within the taifa court and outside, the vizier needs to know whom he can trust. No, more than that: he can trust only those whose souls he owns entirely.’
‘And so,’ Orm said, ‘he set out to own you.’
‘Yes.’ Sihtric sighed again. ‘For he sees my weaknesses more clearly than I see them myself - you can ask my confessor, it’s true. I was alone, Orm. Nobody even cares about England here. To the Moors the civilised world stretches from Damascus to Cordoba, and Europe is a cold, dark place full of squabbling little statelets, far away and of no importance save as a source of slaves. And I am a man,’ he whispered, as if this were the worst confession of all. ‘A man alone, in an atmosphere of remarkable sensuality ...’
The rulers of Seville, like some of the caliphs that went before them, were extravagant, indulgent, given to gesture and spectacle and pleasure. Their hedonism was spoken of throughout al-Andalus - indeed throughout the Muslim world. ‘Let me give you one example. There was a prince whose wife, a Christian from the north, wept because she missed the snows of winter, which she would never see again. So he ordered a legion of gardeners to transplant a whole forest of almond trees, in blossom, and move them to the square beneath her bedroom window. They did this at night, and in silence. And when she woke up, her husband was able to say, “There, my beloved, I have brought you your snow!” I can’t imagine William the Bastard making such a gesture, can you?’
Orm didn’t smile. ‘And so, in this atmosphere of indulgence, your soul softened.’
‘I was seduced,’ Sihtric said. ‘The first to come to me was a boy, slim, dark, with eyes like a deer’s. He was a student. As we worked he sat close to me, he brought me presents - flowers in glass bowls, that sort of thing. I didn’t really notice, to tell the truth; the work was everything. Then one night he slid into my bed. I was half asleep - I thought it was a woman, or a succubus perhaps, sent by the devil to tempt me. Well, I had a devil of a shock when I slid my hand down that oil-smooth belly and found six inches of stiff cock. I nearly yelled the place down.’
Robert laughed.
But Orm said grimly, ‘So the vizier, having determined that your inclination was not towards boys, sent you a woman.’
‘She was a copyist at the library. She was called Muzna. But she said that was a corruption of Maria. Once her family had been Christians, become muwallad long ago. The combination of that dark beauty, and the chink of Christian light that might still lodge in her soul, compelled me. When she stayed when the others had gone, when she laughed at my foolish jokes and brought me gifts—’
‘When she came to your bed,’ Orm said. ‘You never could get to the point, could you, priest?’
‘She was an addiction, a drug. The smoothness of her skin, the scent of her hair - I had known nothing like it. I would have given my immortal soul for her; indeed, perhaps I have done just that. I was happy, Orm. I was as happy as I have ever been - happy with her, happy to be alive and breathing, and my head not addled as usual with dreams of power and gain. You of all people know me well enough to understand that. But then three calamities happened, in quick succession.’
‘Go on.’
‘First I was called into the vizier’s presence. He had Muzna at his side. She was crying. She stood with him.’
Robert saw it. ‘She was his daughter - the vizier’s.’
‘Yes. He had manipulated her; he had had her seduce me; he used his own daughter to unlock my weakness. I protested that love between a Christian and a Muslim was not unknown. Indeed there was some such love in Muzna’s mother’s ancestry. But times are changing. As the Christian armies roll down the peninsula like a great smothering carpet, in some taifas the seduction of a Muslim woman by a Christian can be punishable by death - an execution by stoning.’ He shuddered. ‘And besides, as the vizier pointed out, I am a priest. He could ruin my ecclesiastical career with a word. I could even be excommunicated.’
‘But this was all kept just between the three of you,’ Orm said.
‘Yes. For, of course, the vizier’s purpose was not to destroy me but to own me. That was why he used his own daughter. And it worked.
‘After that he insisted I showed him all my work. He even asked for a tithe, a share of the income I made from my Arabic Bibles!’ He grinned. ‘I survived. It just made it harder to conceal my other projects from him. But of course I was never allowed to be alone with Muzna again. Our love had served its purpose, for him.’
‘So,’ Orm said, ‘the first of your three calamities was to learn that Muzna was the vizier’s daughter. And the second?’
‘To learn she was pregnant.’
It was an accident. The Moorish doctors were as expert in contraception as in so many other fields of medicine, but no method was foolproof.
Sihtric’s eyes were bright n
ow. ‘Of course she could have got rid of it. Her father’s doctors could have helped her with that too. But she wouldn’t allow it. She hid away, until the baby was born.’
Robert said, ‘Why would she do that?’
‘I can only guess. We were never allowed to talk. I believe she wanted the baby as something of her own. She was a good woman, and intelligent. She was sickened at being used by her father. It wasn’t much of a plan, but at the very least the baby would make her less useful as a pawn in a marital alliance of lineages - or, worse, a whore.’
Robert said, ‘She may have loved you. She may have wanted to keep the baby because it was yours.’
Sihtric bowed his head. ‘I can never allow myself to believe that.’
Orm said grimly, ‘And your third calamity?’
‘She died in childbirth. The baby survived. Not my Muzna.’ He said bitterly, ‘Again we were let down by the glories of Moorish medicine. The doctors can save a fool of a boy who throws himself at a waterwheel, but not my Muzna!’
Robert said, ‘And the child?’
‘Was Moraima. My daughter. And the granddaughter of the vizier.’
Robert sat back, shocked.
‘So that’s why the vizier cares so much about her,’ said Orm. ‘And why he reacted so strongly when a young Christian buck like Robert came sniffing around.’
Sihtric said, ‘And I, I who had found love and comfort, had it snatched away from me. Oh, God is cruel if He is defied!’
Robert, on impulse, touched his shoulder. ‘To despair of God is a sin.’
Sihtric looked up, his face full of anguish. ‘Yes. But the trouble is, I think He has despaired of me. Well. Now you know it all.’
‘Not quite all.’ The vizier walked into the room, making the guard step aside.
Robert saw that Moraima waited outside, a flower in the sunlight. Her face was blotchy, as if she had been crying. But she saw him, and smiled weakly.
The vizier walked steadily, apparently sober, but he was pale, drained. ‘You haven’t told the whole truth, Sihtric,’ he said in Latin. ‘I know enough English by now to understand that. Isn’t a lie by omission still a lie?’
Orm said, ‘What whole truth?’
The vizier faced Sihtric. ‘The truth of how he took his revenge.’
XVII
They were brought out of their battered cell, and returned to an audience room with the vizier. Ibn Tufayl sat on a couch, and sipped a steaming potion. Orm and his party were offered no refreshment.
Moraima stood beside her father, her slim beauty somehow highlighted by the cool abstraction of the patterns on the tiled wall behind her. Robert couldn’t take his eyes off her.
‘So,’ Orm said. ‘Let us speak of revenge.’
The vizier glanced around the room, at attendants and soldiers, a doctor who fussed at his elbow. He dismissed them all with a gesture. The soldiers left reluctantly, and Robert saw they took station just outside the room. Ibn Tufayl said, ‘Tell them, Sihtric. It’s the story of your cunning, after all. And it worked so well!’
So Sihtric, reluctantly, began. He said that after Muzna’s death, the two men were locked together in grief and in blood, through Moraima, daughter of one, granddaughter of the other.
‘He sent Moraima off to an aunt in Seville,’ Sihtric said. ‘He promised me he intended nothing but the best for her, but that wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted Moraima in my life - she was my daughter, a child for a man who had never expected such a blessing. She was all I had left of Muzna. And besides I didn’t trust him. Moraima inherited her mother’s beauty - you can testify to that, Robert! I didn’t like the idea that in twelve or fifteen or twenty years Ibn Tufayl might use her as he once used her mother.’
The vizier said languidly, ‘Don’t pretend it was for Moraima or Muzna. It was all for you. Is revenge-taking a sin in your church? It should be.’
‘Tell us what you did,’ said Orm.
With Muzna dead and Moraima gone, the two men continued to work on their shared project, Aethelmaer’s designs.
‘I used the opportunity of my time alone with the vizier,’ Sihtric said. ‘I interested him in the work. I tried to become his friend. And I began to bring him gifts.’
‘What gifts?’
‘Wine,’ said the vizier bluntly.
Wine, forbidden under Muslim custom and law but manufactured in the Christian monasteries still permitted within al-Andalus, and smuggled into Madinat az-Zahra by Sihtric.
‘I was a Muslim savouring communion wine - the blood of your Christ! Ironic, isn’t it? But it was more than a taste that Sihtric cultivated in me. You are a good judge of men, priest. If I saw a weakness in you, you saw one in me, one I didn’t know I possessed.’
‘You became a drunk,’ Orm said.
‘The priest was the only route through which I could obtain the wine I needed. Thus I gave him power over me.’
‘But,’ Robert said, ‘what did you want, Sihtric?’
‘Moraima,’ Sihtric said.
The two men struck a deal. Moraima would be brought back to Cordoba and raised as Sihtric’s daughter. She would be a good Muslim, though: the vizier would not tolerate his granddaughter being raised a Christian.
‘The girl would be known as my daughter,’ Sihtric said. ‘But her descent from the vizier was to be kept a secret. Ibn Tufayl let my reputation suffer rather than his. The Christian community was scandalised.’
‘So,’ Orm said. ‘You, Sihtric, armed with your control of the vizier through his drunkenness. And the vizier knowing that you fathered a child by a Muslim girl. The two of you locked together in your weakness, mutually dependent, mutually loathing. I should have known I would find you in a situation like this, priest. It’s just the sort of mess which always gathers around you.’
‘It’s almost a work of art, isn’t it?’ Sihtric said bitterly.
‘I don’t want to hear any more of this.’ Moraima stepped forward, anger bringing colour to her cheeks. ‘I don’t want to be discussed as if I were just another barrel of wine, a business deal between two weak old men.’
The vizier said, ‘Now, Moraima—’
‘Oh, let her go,’ Sihtric said. ‘Why should she hear this painful old rubbish hashed over once again? Go, child; find yourself something more pleasant to do.’
‘And me,’ Robert said impulsively. ‘Let me walk with her.’
Ibn Tufayl studied him. ‘You must be even more stupid than you look.’
Robert blurted, thinking as he spoke, ‘I can never have Moraima, and she can’t have me. How we feel doesn’t matter. It’s over - indeed, it never was. Just let us walk together for an hour. Let us say goodbye.’
Orm said, ‘Vizier, I take it you’ve no plans to punish the boy over Ghalib.’
‘For what? He behaved nobly enough.’ Ibn Tufayl’s raging temper had vanished with his intoxication. ‘Besides, the fault is ours, mine and Sihtric’s, for allowing such situations to develop. That is what we must discuss. For as Moraima grows older—’
‘Yes,’ Sihtric said. ‘We need to work out a way to manage her heart.’
‘But for now,’ Orm said, ‘let them go.’
Ibn Tufayl clapped his hands to summon in his guards. ‘Very well. Go, you two. Be aware you will be watched, every step of the way.’
Robert, hugely relieved to be getting away from Sihtric and the vizier and all their murky compromises, followed Moraima to the door.
But as he passed his father, Orm whispered, ‘Just be careful.’
XVIII
Outside the light of the low afternoon sun seemed dazzling bright. The guard stood just a pace away, his arms folded, glaring.
Robert faced the girl. ‘Moraima, I—’
‘Hush. Don’t talk. Not here.’
They walked across the palace compound. They soon reached ruins, for only a fraction of Madinat az-Zahra had been restored to habitability by the vizier’s workmen. But Moraima knew the way, and led Robert further. Following rubble
-strewn paths they came to a complex of high walls and fallen roofs, where tiles and broken stucco littered a weed-cracked floor. ‘Once a harem,’ Moraima whispered. ‘Complicated place. Easy to get lost. Come on.’ She took his hand, and they ran, turning left then right and doubled back, hurrying between high walls and across empty, broken floors. Robert soon became lost himself, even though the afternoon sun hung as a constant beacon in the sky.
And before long the vizier’s guard had been completely left behind.
She brought him to a ruined patio. Weeds clogged ponds long since stagnant, wiry little bushes pushed through cracks in the paving stones, and palms had outgrown the gardeners’ neat configurations and gone wild. The walls of the rooms here were burned out and open to the sky. But some of the arches still stood, still serving as doorways to this secret garden.
For Robert, walking into this place with Moraima at his side was a fulfilment of the overheated, fragmentary fantasies he had had since he first arrived in Cordoba.
They found a stone bench and sat. A small bird fluttered away, disturbed. Somewhere a guitar played, and a thin voice sang a plaintive song.
‘I like it here,’ Moraima said. ‘Even though nobody has touched it for fifty years. I like the idea that a place can be beautiful even when the people have vanished, that things will go on when all our fussing and fighting is over. If this is all we leave behind when we’ve gone, a pretty place where the birds can nest, perhaps that’s enough.’
He took her hand. In fact it felt like a bird in his palm, the bones thin, fragile, the flesh warm. ‘That’s a melancholy thought.’
She smiled, enigmatic. ‘But you’ve seen how I live. They say they love me, the two of them.’
‘Sihtric and Ibn Tufayl.’
‘Father and grandfather. I sometimes think that all they do is use me to hurt each other. And sometimes, it’s awful, sometimes I think they don’t love me at all. That they blame me for killing my mother, who they both loved more than they love me.’
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