‘I’m here for you. No man will ever see me the way you see me now.’
Hernando kissed her on the lips, at first gently, and then was carried away with a passion he had not felt for many months. Rafaela drew him to her, as if she wanted to keep him there for ever.
After they had made love, they remained entwined until dawn. Neither of them could sleep.
The sound of shouting in the street and banging on their front door made the whole family fall silent. They had just finished breakfast and were all gathered in the kitchen. Piled in the corner were the bundles of those who had to leave. Hernando had chosen to take very little for such a long journey, Rafaela thought to herself when she surveyed the small trunk and the cloth bundles. She was determined not to burst into tears again. Before she could turn her attention back to the family, Amin and Laila had thrown themselves on her, clinging to her waist as if they would not allow anyone to part them.
Choking with emotion, words and tears came tumbling out. Then they heard fresh banging at the door.
‘Open in the name of the King!’
Little Muqla was the only one who seemed unaffected: his blue eyes stared at his father’s face while the two smallest children also burst into tears. Rafaela succumbed once more, and wept as well, clutching her children to her.
‘We have to go,’ said Hernando after clearing his throat and lowering his gaze to avoid Muqla’s insistent stare. Nobody paid him any attention. ‘Come on,’ he insisted, trying to pull the two eldest from their mother’s side.
He only succeeded when Rafaela pushed them away. Hernando lifted the trunk and one of the bundles on to his back; Amin and Laila took the others. The narrow passageway outside the house offered a desolate spectacle: the Córdoban militias had spread out through each of the parishes according to the instructions of the church officials, and were going from house to house rounding up all the named Moriscos. Outside the house, behind Gil Ulloa and his soldiers, stood a long line of deportees weighed down by all they were carrying. They crowded round, waiting for Hernando and his children to join the column before it set off for the next dwelling.
‘Hernando Ruiz, a new Christian from Juviles, and his children Juan and Rosa, who are older than six.’
These words were spoken by a clerk who accompanied Gil and his soldiers with the parish census in his hands. The Santa Maria priest stood beside him.
Hernando acknowledged the call, checking that his children were not trying to rush back into their mother’s arms. Rafaela was standing in the doorway, but Amin and Laila could not take their eyes off the column of Moriscos being deported. They stood silently in a submissive, humiliated line behind the soldiers.
‘Go and join the others!’ Gil ordered them.
Hernando turned back towards Rafaela. After their last night together they had nothing more to say. He embraced the three little ones who were staying with her. My children! he thought as he kissed them over and over with aching heart.
‘Get moving!’ insisted the official.
His eyes red with tears, Hernando clenched his teeth: there were no words with which he could say goodbye to his family. He was about to obey the order when Rafaela leapt on him, flung her arms round his neck and kissed him on the mouth. The chest and bundle he was carrying fell to the ground. Her kiss was so passionate it infuriated her brother Gil. The soldiers looked on: some of them shook their heads, feeling sorry for their captain: to see his sister, a true Christian, kissing a Moor that avidly. And in public too!
Gil Ulloa went up to the couple and tried in vain to push them apart. Several of the soldiers rushed to help him and started to rain blows on Hernando. He tried to turn to face them, but the blows only fell more heavily still. Rafaela collapsed wailing to the floor. Amin went to his father’s aid and kicked one of the soldiers.
Overpowered and bleeding from the nose, Hernando was pushed in front of Gil Ulloa for him to strike the final blow. Amin also had a bloody lip.
‘Moorish dog!’ Gil growled, punching him as hard as he could in the face.
Rafaela was back on her feet by now. She rushed to defend her husband, but Gil pushed her away.
‘Requisition that house in the King’s name!’ he ordered the scribe.
Still dazed, Hernando attempted to protest, but the soldiers struck him again, then dragged him away to join the group of Moriscos who had witnessed the scene. Amin and Laila were forced to follow him. Gil gave the order to move off, and the deportees started on their way again. Hernando and his children picked up their things as the Moriscos, escorted by the squad of soldiers, passed in front of them.
‘My God! No!’ shrieked Rafaela as her husband walked away. ‘I love you, Hernando!’
In the midst of the other Muslim faithful, Hernando tried to reply, but the crush of people bore him away before he could say a thing. It was impossible for him even to turn round. Father and children were swept away by the crowd.
By the end of the morning, some ten thousand Córdoban Moriscos had been rounded up on the outskirts of the city in the Campo de la Verdad on the far side of the Roman bridge. The local militias kept a close watch on them. Miguel was there too, his mule and horses weighed down with the Moriscos’ possessions. He wanted to oversee the arrangements he had made for the horses: he would be coming back from Seville with the animals and the money.
‘Why not?’ Fátima allowed herself to ask the question out loud in mid-air. She was alone in the hall. ‘Why not?’ she mused again, a delicious shiver running down her spine. Ephraim had left the palace some time earlier after giving her the latest news from Córdoba. When the first Moriscos from Valencia started to arrive in Barbary, she had urged him to find out what would happen to Ibn Hamid, and the Jew moved quickly to enquire among commercial networks that cared nothing for religion.
He had returned with the news she had been anxious to hear: that the Moriscos of Córdoba were also to be expelled, and Hernando would soon be deported from the port of Seville. There was nothing Hernando could do to prevent it. Ephraim had learnt that Hernando Ruiz had made many enemies among the most prominent people in Córdoba and in Granada, where his petition to become a noble had failed. His Christian wife was to stay in Spain with the children under six.
It was when the Jew left the room that the idea occurred to Fátima. She looked round the ample hall. The inlaid furniture, the cushions and pillows, the columns, marble floor and carpets spread over it, the lamps . . . it all appeared to her in a new light, and reinforced her determination. For some time now, she had been drowning in all this wealth: Abdul and Shamir had been captured by a Spanish fleet, which had set a trap for them as they tried to board a merchant ship that had been deliberately put there as bait. How could they have fallen for such a trick? Perhaps they had become overconfident? The sailors from a pinnace that had managed to escape brought confused and contradictory versions of what had happened. Some said the two men were dead, others that they had been captured; one even claimed he had seen them dive into the sea. Then yet another person claimed they had been sent to the galleys, but no one could prove this with any certainty. Fátima shed tears over her sons’ fate, although she had to admit that their relationship had suffered after what had happened in Toga between the corsairs and Ibn Hamid.
Shamir’s widow and children had lost no time in laying claim to the substantial inheritance he had left behind. The judges showed no hesitation in backing up their claims.
Fátima’s links with Shamir’s family were very distant. She was nothing more than the wife of their Christian half-brother. Shamir’s parents-in-law soon gave her notice to quit the palace. What would she do after that? Live on the charity of Abdul’s wife or that of one of her daughters?
There was another possibility. She had talked it over with Ephraim, who had first suggested it when he saw the predicament she was in. Without his help, Shamir’s family would never know the extent of the investments he had made in the corsair’s name throughout the Mediterranean. Fátima
could use the money for her own purposes. The Jew himself had no wish to lose the control and the profits from all those businesses, of which he was sure that Shamir’s relatives would want to deprive him. So Fátima could still be rich, although not in Tetuan, where nobody would believe her story of how she had come by such wealth.
Fátima walked round the room, lightly stroking the pieces of furniture with her fingertips. Without Abdul and Shamir she was alone, but at last she was completely free. There was nothing to keep her in Tetuan. Why not leave there for ever? Ibn Hamid was going to be expelled from Spain, and his insipid Christian wife would have to stay behind. Who but God himself could have sent her such a clear signal?
She went out into the courtyard and stood staring at the water in the fountain. She would soon be seeing it for the last time. Constantinople! That was where she would live! For once, she allowed herself to think of Ibn Hamid, something she had tried to avoid for many years now. He must be fifty-six years old by now, a year older than she was. What could he look like? How would the years have treated him? All at once her doubts vanished. Yes! She had to see him! Destiny, which had so cruelly separated them, was now offering her another chance. And that was something which Fátima, a woman who had suffered and killed, loved and hated, had no intention of letting pass her by.
‘Call Ephraim!’ she shouted to her slaves, her mind made up.
The Jew had told her the Moriscos would be deported from Seville. She had to get there before they were unloaded somewhere where they might fall into the hands of the Berbers. She had heard how the deportees from Valencia had been massacred. Those who managed to reach the port of Tetuan were not well received either: many people saw them as Christians who had been obliged to come to Barbary, and killed them. She had to reach Seville before he was put on board a ship! She needed a vessel that could then take them on to Constantinople. She needed papers to be able to search for him in the Spanish city. First though she had to settle her affairs. She would have to win over many people. Ephraim would look after everything. He always did. He always got what he wanted . . . however much gold it cost.
‘Where is Ephraim?’ she howled.
Rafaela and the younger children were allowed to stay in the house until the magistrate Gil Ulloa returned from Seville and decided what to do with them. Throughout the following day, Rafaela watched as a clerk and a bailiff made a detailed list of all the objects and possessions left in their home.
‘The edict . . .’ Rafaela stammered when she saw the clerk rummaging in the chest where she kept her clothes. ’The edict states that only the property is to be handed over to the King. All the other things are mine.’
‘The edict’, the other man replied harshly, while the bailiff raised a white embroidered petticoat to the light with a lascivious gesture, ‘gave the Moriscos the opportunity to take their belongings with them. Your husband did not do so, and therefore—’
‘But those are my clothes!’ Fátima protested.
‘As I understand it, you came to your marriage without a dowry. Isn’t that so?’ the clerk asked, without turning towards Rafaela as he noted the petticoat on his list. The bailiff threw it on to the bed and bent to pick up the next item. ‘You have no possessions,’ he added. ‘The city council or a magistrate will have to decide whom all this belongs to.’
‘They are mine,’ Rafaela insisted, but her voice was faint. She felt exhausted, overwhelmed by all that had happened.
At that moment the bailiff held aloft a delicate bodice, spreading his arms out wide in Rafaela’s direction as though he were trying it on her breasts for size from the far side of the room.
Rafaela rushed out. The bailiff’s cackle pursued her down the stairs and into the courtyard where her children were gathered.
‘How could Our Lord allow these things to happen?’ Rafaela asked herself time and again that night as she lay in bed staring up at the ceiling, her three children curled up on top of her. None of them had wanted to sleep in their own beds, and she had let them into hers. The hours went by as she stroked their backs and heads, twisting their hair around her fingers. That afternoon she had heard from a soldier who came to talk to the bailiff that the column of deportees had set off for Seville, hastened on their way by the jeers and insults of the people of Córdoba. She imagined Hernando, Amin and Laila among them, weighed down by their bundles. Perhaps the children could get a ride on a mule with Miguel; she knew that all the horses had been taken by other Moriscos. Her children! Her husband! What would become of them? On her lips she could still feel the passion of the last kiss she had given Hernando. Oblivious to her brother, the soldiers, and the dozens of Moriscos looking on, Rafaela had quivered like a young girl, her whole body trembling with despairing love until her brother had tugged her away. Where was the pity she had so often heard in the mouths of priests and pious Christians? Where was the forgiveness and compassion they preached all the time?
Little Salma, who was lying across her legs, stirred in her sleep and almost fell on to the floor. Struggling to an upright position, Rafaela lifted her up to her stomach and settled her between her two brothers.
What did the future hold for the poor little thing? The convent, which she herself had managed to avoid? A servant for some well-to-do family? A bawdy house? What about Muqla and Musa? She recalled the lewd look on the bailiff’s face as he handled her clothes: that was the treatment she could look forward to. She was nothing more than the abandoned wife of a Morisco, and her children were the sons and daughters of a heretic. The whole of Córdoba was aware of it!
And yet in spite of everything she, Rafaela Ulloa, had decided to remain in these Christian lands, jealous of her faith and her beliefs. Now after less than a day her world was tumbling down around her. Where was the rest of her family? Her horses would be taken from her just as they planned to do with her clothes and furniture. How would they live then? She could not expect any help from her brothers and sisters: she had besmirched the family’s honour. Would any Christian come to her aid?
She sobbed and held her children even more tightly. Muqla opened his blue eyes, and even though he was still half asleep, gazed up at her tenderly.
‘Go back to sleep, my little one,’ she whispered, relaxing the pressure and gently rocking him in her arms.
Gradually his breathing became steady once more. As she so often did, Rafaela sought consolation in prayer, but the prayers would not come. Pray to the Virgin, she had been told. Hernando believed in Mary. She had heard him talking to the children about the Virgin, explaining that Mary was the one thing that unified two religions at war with each other. Respect for her immaculate conception had survived the centuries undiminished among both Christians and Muslims.
‘Mary,’ Rafaela murmured in the night. ‘God save and protect you . . .’
It was while she was whispering the prayer that her heart showed her the way: it was a decision as sudden as it was decisive. For the first time in days her lips widened in a smile and her eyes gave way to sleep.
Dawn the next day found Rafaela, with Salma in her arms and Musa and Muqla trotting beside her, walking across the Roman bridge with all those who went out each day to work in the fields. All she was taking with her was a basket with food and the money Miguel had given her, which she had managed to hide from the greedy clerk.
‘Where are we going, Mother?’ Muqla asked after they had been walking a good while.
‘To find your father,’ she replied, staring straight in front of her at the long road stretching ahead of them.
Mary would unite her family again, just as Hernando always said she did for the two religions, Rafaela decided.
The Arenal in Seville was a large stretch of land between the river Guadalquivir and the magnificent walls surrounding the city. At one end it stretched as far as the Gold tower on the riverbank. This was where all the work was done to maintain the city’s important river port, the point of departure and arrival for the fleets to the Indies, the ships that brought all
the riches the conquistadores had plundered back to the kingdom of Castile. Caulkers, carpenters, stevedores, boatmen, soldiers . . . normally, hundreds of men worked in the port or repaired and fitted out ships. But in February 1610, the Arenal was heavily guarded by soldiers stationed at each end and at the gates leading into the city, and had been turned into a prison for thousands of Morisco families waiting with all their possessions to be deported to Barbary. Some of them were rich, because no exceptions had been made either in Córdoba or in Seville when the royal edict had been executed. In their luxurious attire, these families did all they could to keep as far away as possible from the thousands of poor Moriscos. Hundreds of children aged under six had been left behind, in the hands of a Church obsessed with the idea of achieving something they had not succeeded in doing with their parents: converting them to Christianity. Bailiffs and soldiers prowled among the dejected crowds of people, searching for any hidden gold or coins the deportees might be carrying. They searched men, women, children, old people and the sick, rummaging among their clothes and possessions. They even unpicked the ropes the Moriscos were carrying to make sure there were no necklaces or jewels hidden among the strands.
Galleys, caravels, carracks and myriad other smaller vessels lay at anchor on the river, ready to take on board the close to twenty thousand Moriscos who had to leave Seville. Some of the ships were from the royal fleet, but most had been specially commissioned for this one-way trip. Unlike the Moriscos from Valencia, the ones from al-Andalus had to pay for their own deportation, and the ship owners smelt an opportunity in this gruesome affair: they charged more than double the normal rates.
On board one of these ships – a Catalan caravel with a square mainsail – which was anchored at some distance from the shore, Fátima stood by the gunwale and observed the crowds on the Arenal. How was she to find Hernando among so many people? She had heard that the deportees from Córdoba had arrived and were mixed in with those from Seville. The previous night she herself had seen the endless column snaking round the city walls down to the Arenal. Since first light, barges had begun to transport people, goods and possessions from the shore to the boats on the river. Fátima surveyed the grief-stricken faces of the Moriscos they were carrying: some of them seemed to be still wet with tears. Mothers whose children had been stolen from them; men forced to abandon dreams and years of effort to sustain homes and families; sick old men who had to be helped into the barges and then again into the larger ships. Others, though, appeared happy, as if they saw this as a liberation. Fátima did not recognize her husband among these first passengers, but she knew it was too soon for anyone from Córdoba to be boarding. During the voyage to Seville she had allowed her imagination to run riot. She saw Ibn Hamid rushing into her arms, swearing he had never forgotten her, declaring his eternal love. Then she checked herself: nigh on thirty years had gone by. She was no longer young, even though she knew she was still beautiful. Had she not earned the right to be happy? Fátima was lulled by a vision that filled her with hope: she and Ibn Hamid, together in Constantinople until the end of their days. Was that madness? Perhaps, but never had madness seemed to her so alluring. Now that she had reached her destination, she felt increasingly anxious. She had to find Hernando among this throng of desperate men and women who had lost everything and were facing an uncertain future.
The Hand of Fatima Page 91