The Hand of Fatima

by Falcones, Ildefonso

  Hernando leant against one side of the door. Isabel was sitting on a bench with a piece of embroidery on her lap. She was smiling at her children’s antics as they tried to escape their governess’s watchful care. A ray of sunshine filtered through the vines, illuminating her figure in the tunnel’s leafy shade. Hernando gazed at her. As usual, she was wearing a black dress: her straw-coloured hair, the same as had attracted his attention years earlier and saved her from slavery, emphasized her soft, lovely features: full lips, a long neck beneath tied-back hair, and ample breasts struggling against the rigid confines of the dress, a narrow waist and wide hips; the voluptuous body of a young mother of three children. When Isabel stretched out her hand to warn Gonzalico not to go so close to the pool, the sun glinted off it. Hernando followed the movement of that white and delicate hand and was entranced. Then he looked at the child, who was again running away from the governess, paying no heed to his mother. He turned to Isabel once more, as a strange tingling sensation ran down his spine: her brown eyes were fixed on him. His breathing quickened as he saw how Isabel’s breasts trembled beneath the corset binding them. What was going on? Troubled, he held her gaze for several moments longer, convinced she would soon turn her attention to the children or her embroidery, but she did not waver. Hernando began to feel the tingling descending to his groin, and abruptly abandoned the garden, looked for one of the servants and ordered him to saddle Volador.

  A week later Don Ponce and his wife organized a celebration in their guest’s honour. During those seven days Hernando spent the mornings working with his back to the doors, trying to concentrate on the report for the duke and ignore the laughter that seemed to call to him from the garden.

  Set up an annual duty-free fair for the people of the Alpujarra to be able to sell their wares . . . Give them access to a port . . . Plant mulberry trees and vines . . . Give the villagers the right to sell the lands awarded them . . . Organize justice in the area . . .

  Suppressing the instinct prompting him to turn towards the garden to see Isabel, he developed each and every one of the ideas that occurred to him for promoting trade in the area and helping increase the royal income. But the fact was he worked slowly; he felt tired. He did not sleep well. At night every noise he heard from Doña Isabel’s bedchamber echoed in his room. Without wanting to, without being able to prevent it, he found himself pricking up his ears, listening intently and holding his breath to hear the murmurs from the other side of the wall. He thought he heard the rustle of the sheets and the creaking of the canopied wooden bed whenever Isabel turned over. It had to be her; at no moment in his sleepless night could he believe that any of those sounds came from the judge. Sometimes he thought of Fátima and his stomach clenched, as it had the first time he had visited the brothel after her death, but he soon found himself concentrating on the adjoining room again. However, by daylight he did all he could to avoid Isabel, torn between embarrassment and discomfort.

  On the morning of the celebration Hernando managed to put the final touches to his report. In a separate letter he informed the duke of his stay in the house of Don Ponce de Hervás and his wife Isabel. As he did not have a seal, he asked the judge to seal it with his own. According to Don Ponce an expedition was about to leave for Madrid, so Hernando took advantage of this fact and despatched one of the servants with his assignment.

  The celebration was planned for that evening. The judge had paid for new outfits for Hernando and Don Sancho so that they would not look out of place in the lavish event he was planning. Standing as requested by Don Ponce at the villa’s entrance, the hidalgo and Hernando waited to be presented to the guests. Don Sancho could not hide his nervousness.

  ‘You should have learnt to dance,’ he told Hernando, admiring himself.

  ‘Campanela!’ Hernando mocked him, giving a little jump in the air.

  ‘The art of the dance—’ the hidalgo began to respond.

  Some restrained applause interrupted his words. ‘You know how to dance as well?’ he heard a woman’s voice say.

  Hernando spun round. Isabel stopped clapping and headed towards them, proud and erect. She walked slowly on shoes with a high cork sole adorned with silver inlays, which could be glimpsed beneath her skirt. Isabel had exchanged her habitual black for a dress of dark green satin, slit vertically to reveal underskirts in different shades of the same colour. The bodice, edged with a high lace collar that rose to her ears, was shaped like an inverted cone, whose point lay over the hooped skirt belling out from her waist. The cone concealed a corset that compressed her breasts perhaps more than usual, hiding the natural fullness Hernando had been aware of on other days. Her prominent cheekbones were coloured with rouge. Her eyes shone, outlined with a mixture of kohl dissolved in alcohol. A magnificent pearl necklace provided the finishing touch.

  Realizing his scrutiny transgressed the bounds of politeness, Don Sancho scolded himself and looked away from her. He rested his hand on Hernando’s forearm, trying gently to warn him, but did not even succeed in getting him to close his mouth. Hernando just stood gaping in wonder at the woman walking towards them.

  ‘Do you know how to dance?’ repeated Isabel, by now at his side.

  ‘No . . .’ he stammered, enveloped in the waft of perfume accompanying that dazzling figure.

  ‘He didn’t want to learn,’ the hidalgo said quickly, trying to break the spell, conscious of the sidelong glances of some of the liveried servants awaiting the other guests.

  Isabel answered Don Sancho with a slight nod of her head and a faint smile. Her face was only inches away from Hernando’s.

  ‘It is a shame,’ whispered the woman. ‘I am certain many ladies would be pleased to have you dance with them tonight.’

  There was a heavy, almost palpable silence, which Don Sancho suddenly broke.

  ‘Don Ponce!’ exclaimed the hidalgo. A flustered Isabel turned round. ‘I thought I had seen him,’ Don Sancho apologized, in response to the questioning look she thew him when she could not see her husband anywhere.

  ‘Please excuse me,’ said Isabel, hiding her embarrassment by speaking quite sharply. ‘I still have matters to attend to before the guests arrive.’

  ‘What are you doing looking at a lady in that way?’ Don Sancho reprimanded Hernando in a whisper when Isabel had moved away from them. ‘She is the judge’s wife!’

  Hernando could do no more than spread his hands wide. What was he doing? he asked himself. He had no idea. He only knew that for the first time in years he had felt bewitched.

  Hernando and Don Sancho, together with the judge and Isabel, endured the hand-kissing and introductions to nearly a hundred people, all of them delighted to accept the invitation of the rich and important Granada judge: colleagues of Don Ponce, cathedral canons, inquisitors, priests and friars, the governor of Granada and several city councillors, knights of a variety of orders, nobles, hidalgos and scribes. Hernando received as many congratulations and displays of gratitude as there were people passing by him. Don Sancho stayed at his side, trying in vain to participate in the conversations, until the Morisco, conscious of his desperation, tried to give him an opportunity: ‘I present to you Don Sancho de Córdoba, cousin of the Duke of Monterreal,’ he said to the person who’d just been announced to him as the parish priest of the church of San José.

  The priest greeted the noble with a nod of his head, and there ended his interest in him. ‘I consider myself fortunate’, he declared, speaking to Hernando, ‘to meet the man who saved Doña Isabel from martyrdom at the hands of the heretics. I know of your heroic feat with Don Alfonso de Córdoba and many other Christians.’ Hernando tried to hide his surprise. Since his arrival in Granada rumours had been circulating about many exploits beyond the only two acts that could legitimately be attributed to him. ‘Doña Isabel’, continued the priest, waving discreetly at her, ‘is one of my most pious parishioners – it could be said the most pious of all – and we are truly grateful that you saved her soul for the Lord.’


  Hernando looked across at his hostess, who accepted the compliment modestly.

  ‘I have spoken with some of the cathedral canons,’ the priest went on, ‘and there is a certain matter we would like to propose to you. I am sure the dean, who I believe will be sharing your table, will speak to you of it.’

  These words preoccupied Hernando as he greeted the rest of the eminent individuals entering the house. What ‘matter’ was he referring to? What could the members of the cathedral chapter possibly want with him?

  It was not long before he found out. Hernando was indeed invited to occupy a place of honour at the large top table placed in one of the main garden’s vine-covered colonnades. He was seated between Don Ponce and the city governor. Opposite him were Juan de Fonseca, dean of the cathedral, and two titled councillors of Granada, a marquis and a count. The rest of the guests were seated in order of precedence. There was an identical table in the colonnade on the other side of the pool, where Hernando could distinguish Don Sancho talking animatedly with his fellow diners. As well as these two tables there were many more set out across the terraced gardens and vegetable plots that spread down the hillside. Some were for the men, most of them dressed strictly in black according to Tridentine norms. At others were the women, vying with each other in ostentation and beauty. In the arbour at the end of the main garden was a group of musicians playing a sackbut, a cornet and an oboe, two flutes, a tambour and a vihuela; the music enlivening the cool, clear and starry night.

  While they were enjoying the first course of stuffed partridges and capons, Hernando had to satisfy the curiosity of Don Ponce’s guests. He was bombarded with questions about the captivity and escape of Don Alfonso de Córdoba, and one or two of a more cautious, polite nature about the judge’s wife.

  ‘I gather’, intervened one of the councillors as he nibbled on a partridge wing, ‘that besides the duke and Doña Isabel you helped many more Christians.’

  The question hung in the air just as the vihuela struck up a song, and one of the musicians began to sing. Hernando listened to the instrument’s melancholic strum, so similar to that of the lutes played at Morisco celebrations.

  ‘Do you remember who they were?’ asked the governor, turning towards him.

  ‘Yes, but not in every case,’ he lied. He had prepared the answer when he heard the rumours about his supposed help of more Christians.

  The councillor stopped picking at the wing, and there was an uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Who?’ the cathedral dean pressed him.

  ‘I would prefer not to say.’ At that, even Don Ponce stopped munching on a capon breast and looked at him. Why not? his eyes seemed to ask. Hernando cleared his throat before explaining: ‘Some of them had to leave family and friends behind. I saw them weep as they fled; love and terror clashing in their consciences as they fought to survive. There was one who, when he was free and safe in hiding, chose instead to return and be executed alongside his children.’ Several of the listening diners nodded solemnly, their lips pursed, some with their eyes closed. ‘I ought not to reveal their identities,’ Hernando insisted. ‘It would serve no purpose now. Wars . . . wars cause men to forget their principles and act according to their instincts.’

  His words gave rise to more nods of agreement and a silence that allowed them to hear the vihuela’s final lament, lingering in the night until the diners recovered their spirits.

  ‘You do well to say nothing,’ Dean Fonseca agreed. ‘Humility is a great virtue in people, and the fear of death or torture pardonable in those who yielded. However, I trust your silence does not extend to the heretics who shed so much Christian blood and committed so many acts of sacrilege and desecration.’ Hernando fixed his blue eyes on the dean. ‘The Archbishop of Granada is carrying out an investigation into the martyrs of the Alpujarra. We have information and declarations from the thousands of widows who lost husbands and children in the slaughter. However, we believe the knowledge of someone like you, a good Christian who experienced the tragedy from the position of the Moriscos, as one of them, could be an invaluable source of information. We need you to help us in the study of the martyrs. What happened? When? Where? How? Who ordered it and who carried it out?’

  ‘But . . .’ Hernando stammered.

  ‘Granada has to verify these martyrs with Rome,’ the governor interrupted him. ‘We have spent almost a hundred years, from the very moment the city was reconquered by the Catholic monarchs, searching for the remains of its patron Saint Caecilius, but all efforts have been in vain. This city needs to be on the same footing as the other Christian centres in the Spanish realms: Santiago, Toledo, Tarragona . . . Granada was the last city seized from the Moors. It lacks Christian antecedents, like the apostle Saint James or Saint Ildefonsus. It is precisely those valiant Christians who make their cities great. Without saints, without martyrs, without Christian history, a city is nothing.’

  ‘You know I live in Córdoba,’ was the only excuse Hernando could think of when he found the eyes of all the other diners upon him.

  ‘That is no problem whatsoever,’ the dean was quick to point out, as if by so doing he was closing the door on any other objection. ‘You will be able to continue doing so. The archbishop will provide you with documents and sufficient money for your trips.’

  ‘I knew you would not fail such a just and holy cause,’ Don Ponce declared, patting Hernando on the shoulder. ‘As soon as I discovered the church in Granada was interested in your participation, I wrote to the Duke of Monterreal asking his permission, but I knew it would not be necessary.’

  Someone raised a glass of wine, and immediately the guests closest to Hernando drank a toast to him.

  The dinner ended and the musicians moved inside the mansion to the main hall, which had been cleared of all furniture. Some of the guests dispersed in groups around the garden or the large terrace that extended out from the hall, rising above the bed of the river Darro. The Alhambra was opposite them and the Albaicín at their feet. Other guests prepared for the dance. Hernando saw Don Sancho lingering in the hall waiting for the music to start, and envied his happiness and lack of cares. That assignment from the archbishopric was all he needed! Even his mother had turned her back on him, and now he had to work for the Church . . . denouncing his brothers!

  He listened to the music and watched how men and women danced, in circles or in rows, in pairs or in groups, drawing near to one another, smiling, flirting even, everyone leaping at the same moment; as the hidalgo had done in Don Alfonso’s palace. He recognized Isabel in her green dress and high cork-soled shoes, which glittered when her skirt lifted off the floor. The height of her shoes did not prevent her from dancing elegantly. On several occasions he thought he caught her glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

  As the dance wore on, Hernando found himself obliged to greet the many guests who approached him and to answer their questions, although his mind was elsewhere.

  His entire life had been the same, he thought, whilst a woman dressed in blue talked to him; he let her words flow over him without paying attention. He had spent his whole life caught between Christians and Muslims. The son of a priest who had raped a Morisco girl, as a child they had wanted to kill him in Juviles church for being Christian; later Aben Humeya had honoured him as the saviour of their brothers’ treasure, yet he had ended up falling into slavery accused of being a Christian, a time when he had to refuse to renounce a religion that was not his own so as not to become one of Barrax’s ‘sons’. In the cathedral of Córdoba itself, he had worked as a Christian for the cathedral chapter, copying the revealed word a thousand and one times. At the same time, the Inquisition had forced him to witness, as a good Christian who collaborated with the Holy Office, the torture and death of Karim. And now, just as he had just found the strange, surprising gospel of Barnabas, the Church had reappeared yet again, imposing a new collaboration on him. And yet he knew who his God was, the one, the merciful . . . What would the good Hamid think of him
if he could see him now?

  ‘I am sorry, I do not know how to dance,’ he blurted out in response to the questioning gaze of the lady in blue, who was still at his side and seemed to be waiting for an answer.

  He had not heard her question. Perhaps that was not the appropriate response, he concluded when he saw the woman’s offended expression. She turned her back on him without bidding him farewell.

  The dance continued until well into the night. Don Sancho reappeared sweating on the terrace when at Don Ponce’s insistence the music stopped. The dance was over.

  ‘As a finale to the celebrations,’ shouted the judge from the small platform where the musicians had been playing, ‘I invite you all to witness the firework display we have prepared in honour of our guest. Please would you all move to the terraces and gardens.’

  Don Ponce looked for his wife and then went to Hernando. ‘Please join us,’ he requested.

  They were in the front row, next to the balustrade that enclosed the terrace of the main hall. Isabel was behind Hernando and Dean Fonseca. At a signal from someone in the gardens, part of the Alhambra walls erupted in an intense yellow flame. The people crowded behind them gasped in delight as balls of fire shot up into the starry sky, and they all pressed closer to the balustrade to get a better view of the display. Streaks of light shot across the night sky, as Hernando felt the warmth of Isabel’s body. The thunderous explosions of gunpowder and Isabel’s warm, rapid breathing in his ear mingled inside his head. Isabel did not move or seek to avoid the contact. The guests were absorbed in the fireworks; nobody noticed the gesture but Hernando felt a hand brush against his own. He turned his head. Isabel gave him the hint of a shy smile. He gently squeezed her hand. Amidst the tumultuous throng of guests on the terrace, their fingers stroked and intertwined. They pressed their bodies up against one another, until a string of firecrackers brought the firework display to an end and everyone broke out into cheers and applause.