by Carla Kelly
Hanneke took Santiago’s bloody dagger from its sheath and pointed it at the servant, as Felipe gasped and took a step back, away from trouble, always away. “If you ever again speak ill of my husband, I will cut out your tongue. Do not think for a moment that I cannot.” She looked around the hall of dead men. “I have been learning from masters and I will cut out your tongue if you utter any more evil.”
“Bravo,” Antonio said. “Bravo.”
“Well?”
“I promise.”
Trust no one, she thought, and glanced at Santiago. The look on his face told her he was thinking exactly the same thing. She leaned close to him. “I trust you alone,” she whispered.
“And I, you.”
“Let us ride,” he said in a loud voice. “We haven’t long.”
He led her away from the others, his arm around her, then both arms, then she was as close to him as was humanly possible, fully clothed and standing in a drafty hall with dead people. “Whatever happens today, you can trust Antonio and Carlos.” He looked at Felipe, nearly out the door now with Engracia in his arms. “I would not ever be alone in the same room with him, were I you.”
“But you will be my great defender,” she reminded him. “Won’t you?” she added, when he was silent.
“Always,” he said, but not quickly enough to calm the fear rising in her heart.
“Santiago…”
“We’re wasting time.”
Arm in arm, they walked to the open door. Pablo still scurried about the room, blowing out lamps and candles. He paused to straighten one of the bodies, folding the arms, lining up the head.
“Making all tidy, Pablo?” Santiago asked.
“Si, señor. Who knows when we will return?”
“Who indeed,” Antonio said, joining them. He looked around the hall one last time. “We’ve drunk much wine and told innumerable lies in here, haven’t we, Santiago?”
“That we have.”
Crammed all day with people and livestock, the courtyard was empty, except for the few remaining soldiers. Santiago helped Carlos to his mount. Hanneke watched as he handed a folded piece of paper to the old soldier. “But I don’t read,” she heard, and Santiago’s answering, “Get it to Antonio later. Promise me.”
Santiago motioned Hanneke closer. “There wasn’t time to find the sidesaddle, so ride your mule astride,” he said, and started to lift her up.
She clung to him instead. “Kiss me,” she whispered.
“In front of all these people?” he teased, or maybe he wasn’t teasing. She knew how reserved Castilian men could be. As she stood in her husband’s arms, she knew she had learned great lessons since the boat docked at Santander, principle among them that it was possible to fall in love with someone doubtful.
He kissed her, and all doubts fled. He kissed her again, and a third time, as if his need was as great as hers. He stepped back, took a long look at her, which made her wonder if he was memorizing her face.
“Up you get,” he said, and lifted her into the saddle. “Ride beside Carlos, if you will. I’m worried about him.”
She nodded. “You’ll be at the head with Engracia?”
“Not this time. Antonio is leading the soldiers.” He looked south through the open gates. “I’ll make up the rear with a few choice men.”
“Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t.”
He tugged on her booted foot. “I will see you when we are through the pass, Señora Gonzalez! Someday we will have another daughter and name her Liria after my mother.”
He mounted his gray horse and made his way to Antonio, leaning close so as not to be heard. She watched Antonio’s head go back in surprise, and then glance at her. Santiago shook Antonio’s arm and demanded his attention. She couldn’t hear him, but she knew this was no ordinary conversation.
And she worried. After another long look at her, Antonio nodded, and turned toward the head of the little battered army. Santiago went back into the great hall and came out with Manolo’s body, which had been stitched into one of the Moorish battle flags. Engracia whimpered.
“I will not leave him for El Ghalib, sister,” he said. “He comes with me.”
He heaved the corpse onto the back of his horse and tied it down. Hanneke looked back to see Luis and Cook joining him in the rear, along with three of the new soldiers he had recruited through the length and breadth of the peninsula, promising them land to the south after victory.
There was no victory here. Luis asked if they should close the gates. “No!” Santiago shouted, loud enough for them all to hear. “I do not want El Ghalib to imagine for even one moment that he is getting something of value. It is a small measure of my contempt for him. Let us ride!”
Hanneke pulled the hood of her cloak tight around her face as the sleet bit into it. She wished she had remembered gloves, but there was no turning back to a fortress turned charnel house. Father Bendicio rode beside her, his black hood drawn so low over his face that he looked like a figure from a nightmare. She wondered how he was faring. She had not heard him speak for so long, except to hurry through Extreme Unction and then stand back as Santiago and Antonio murdered his parishioners out of kindness.
The army rode alone on the plain, traveling north toward the pass obscured by sleet. The villagers had fled with great speed, abandoning many of their possessions until the ground was littered with belongings that must have seemed indispensable only that morning. How little things really matter, Hanneke thought, as she passed barrels of clothing, broken goblets, bits of old armor, a mirror.
Animals were left behind in the headlong flight to the distant pass. Chickens roosted on discarded furniture, their heads tucked under their wings. A cat swung along steadily, a kitten dangling from her mouth. Pablo slid off his mule and picked up the pair, stuffing them in his doublet and flashing her a smile.
Hanneke looked back. There was no moon, but she fancied she could see an army moving toward Las Claves. She told herself she was imaging things, even as she watched Santiago drop back with his little force. They dismounted and waited there in the snow, walking around to keep warm, but always facing south.
She could barely see Antonio ahead, leading the remaining troops. She wanted to ride closer, but here were Father Bendicio and Pablo.
“Father?” she called, “Father?”
No answer. We’re all so tired, she thought. So tired. Behind her Santiago grew smaller and smaller as she rode north to the pass she had entered in the height of summer, eager to see her new home, hopeful it would be the welcome end to a frightening journey. She touched her belly. Fermina had been inside her last summer, growing without her knowledge. “Santiago, we will name our next daughter Liria,” she said, looking south for the last time. “Just as you wish.”
Chapter Thirty-two
She must have fallen asleep, her chin touching her chest. She woke to find that her mule had decided, in that way of stubborn creatures, to head back to Las Claves and well-remembered hay. She looked around, disoriented and dismayed to see Antonio riding toward her. She tugged her mule back to the trail of the fleeing villagers, even as her eyes wanted to close again.
He had never spoken harshly to her before, but she knew she had earned a scold and waited for it. To her relief, she saw only concern, and something else – a certain unexpected shyness from the friend who had not left her during her miscarriage, comforting her through the blood and tears.
“Ana?”
She heard all the uncertainty in that one word – why could no one in this entire peninsula pronounce Hanneke? – and tried to make a joke. “Who else is the plague of your life?” she asked.
“You’re no plague,” he said. “I would do anything for you, but you must stay awake.” He handed back the reins. “Santiago charged me with leading this retreat, and I cannot watch you as I usually do.”
�
��I know. I’m sorry,” she said, though, and rose up slightly in her saddle. “Call for Pablo.”
“I will.” He looked ahead to the retreating villagers. “We’ll be at the pass soon. Santiago does not think they will follow us through the pass.”
She heard more uncertainty. “What do you think?”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t have thought so, but then, I did not think they would attack this late in winter.”
Maybe it was wishful thinking, but as she watched him gallop back to the head of the army, she thought she saw the pass. She clucked to her mule and urged some action, but the distance seemed not to shrink. Only by looking behind her and seeing Santiago and his little group of defenders turn into specks could she tell she had moved at all.
In the deepening gloom she thought Pablo waited for her. The mule gave her a reproachful look when she dug in with her heels, and stopped.
“This is no time for reluctance,” she said, and slapped the reins against the beast’s hide. “Blame King Alfonso for making you a gift to me.”
The mule refused to budge. With growing panic, Hanneke realized how far behind Pablo she was. She dismounted and tried to tug the mule forward. Nothing. “Stay here then,” she said and dropped the reins. “If you change your mind, you can catch up with me.” She started walking toward Pablo.
To her further irritation, and then her terror, the mule shot past her, eating up the distance to the pass. She tried to run after her, but the snow was a hindrance, since it was only a layer covering mud underneath.
She looked back toward Santiago, hoping he hadn’t been witness to her utter stupidity, and stopped. Was it her imagination, or were those distance figures growing larger? What trick was the snow playing on her exhausted mind? Antonio had commanded her to stay awake, but she was so tired.
Now Pablo seemed to be shouting at her and pointing. She even thought she heard Santiago calling her name. She shook her head to clear it, thinking for one moment that she could turn over in bed and curl up against her husband.
Her eyes half-closed, Hanneke watched the soldiers ride toward her. She looked to the south and east, and there they were, too. Were there that many men in Santiago’s rear guard?
“Oh God, I am fortune’s fool,” she said out loud, when she realized the soldiers riding toward her were El Ghalib’s men. Terrified, she saw Pablo coming in her direction now, but slowly, as if she dreamed him. Father Bendicio came no closer on his horse; in fact, the disgraceful man fled. She stood there, not knowing where to turn. As she felt the thunder of many horses under her feet, she touched her neck, knowing that before this night ended, her head would be on a pike at Las Claves.
There it came, that warbling war cry of the Almohades. She knew enough Arabic now to discern, “Allahu Akbar.” She pulled her cloak tighter around her as she remembered the used and discarded women at the threshing floor. She would be lucky if all that happened was her head on a pike. In fact, it would be a blessing.
She stared in horror as Santiago and his read guard, mounted again, veered toward the Almohades, who must have circled Las Claves and kept going, determined to stop the headlong flight of the Christians.
“No,” she said softly. “No.” She started running toward Santiago, struggling through the snow and mud, even as Pablo behind her screamed her name. He was alone on the plain. Father Bendicio was a dot in the distance, riding away, abandoning her and Pablo. Who could blame him?
Soon she was close enough to see El Ghalib’s warriors distinctly. Santiago lay on the ground, the Almohades standing over him until she attracted their attention by waving her arms and shouting. They whirled toward her, scimitars raised.
Frightened, overwhelmed, still she came, slower now because her side pained her. The soldiers were in no hurry and waited as she approached. She passed Luis, sprawled out and dead. Cook moaned as she passed by, her eyes on Santiago. El Ghalib’s soldiers parted for her, some of them grinning at her, others reaching out to touch her cloak and tug on it, saying things to her that made Santiago swear. She shuddered and kept walking.
She forgot them all as she fell to her knees in the red snow beside Santiago. She could not see a wound, but when she put her arm under his back to raise him, her arm felt warm and wet.
He watched her, his expression oddly inscrutable for someone in so precarious a state. He did not seem to be in pain and this puzzled her. Perhaps the blood pouring over her arm and settling in her lap was in her imagination. She looked closer and sighed to see that his arms lay at odd angles, and his legs, too, as if all feeling was gone, as if they had already died and only his eyes lived.
“Santiago…” She didn’t know what to say.
“Chiquita, didn’t anyone ever tell you to ride away from danger and not toward it?”
It was a gentle reproach, almost a fond one, which broke her heart as nothing else could have. “But you were here,” she whispered and pulled him closer.
She looked up at the soldiers of El Ghalib, wondering for one fanciful moment if they would help her. It seemed unlikely, so she decided not to give them another thought. Still, maybe they could be a little kind.
“Sirs, please back up a little,” she asked them. “I’m already frightened enough, and I am certainly not going anywhere.”
They looked at each other as if they couldn’t believe someone would say something like that, but did as she said. They moved even farther back when Pablo rode toward them, his face white, his eyes huge.
“Pablo, you really should turn around,” she said as kindly as she could. “Maybe they will let you go.”
“Never,” he told her. “A true knight would never do that, would he, Señor Gonzalez?”
“Certainly not. Besides, two sillies are better than one.”
How can this man sound so conversational, so matter-of-fact? Hanneke asked herself. She removed his helmet and kissed his forehead. “That’s better,” she told him, although nothing was better or ever would be.
To her surprise and relief, the Almohades backed away, mounted their horses and rode off. “I didn’t expect that,” she said.
“They will be back. They will bring El Ghalib and he will have fun with us,” Santiago said, the hard edge back in his voice. His rancor played out quickly. “Ah well. I will lie here with my head in your lap and think of better times we might have had.”
He could have said anything but that. She bowed her head over her husband’s ruined body. “This is my fault,” she whispered.
“Hardly. They came on faster than I believed possible. I have a theory…”
He paused and smiled. “But I don’t want to waste my time on theories. Ana, this dowry arrangement, signed and documented by lawyers and priests, was for one purpose only.”
“I know,” she said and kissed his forehead.
“Don’t waste those,” he said. “Kiss my mouth.”
She kissed his mouth and he kissed her back with enough energy to almost fool her that if they could somehow get away from the Almohades, all would be right again.
“Something happened though,” he continued, when her lips were still as close as a kiss away. “I fell in love with you.” The frustration returned. “Damn me, but I had to raise an army! All I wanted to do was stay close to you.”
She kissed him again, then stopped when she heard horses and men returning, many of them this time.
“Ana, Ana…”
She tried to swallow her fear and looked down. “Can I do anything for you?”
“No. Yes, you can. Pull away my chain mail – it’s sliced through up the back – and just rest your head just below my neck. I can still feel that.”
She swallowed and did as he said, then opened the front of his doublet and rested her head against him. She craved his warmth.
“That does feel good. Ana, you told me my cousin Alfonso spoke to you of this enterprise. He s
aid that some of us would be winnowed out, before victory.” He sighed. “I did not think it would be me. What a proud and foolish man you married.”
She kissed his chest, which was wet with her tears. “I had no doubt that I would be winnowed, Santiago.”
She felt his chuckle. “Don’t be so certain of that. I…”
He must have heard the horses, too. Pablo pressed closer to her as they were now entirely surrounded by El Ghalib’s army. She tightened her arms around her husband. “I hope they do not make that war cry. It scares me.”
“You’re probably afraid of thunder, too, aren’t you, even though it is lightning that kills?” he asked, amused. He contemplated her. “There is so much about you I never knew.”
“My love, you knew enough,” she said, and rubbed her cheek against his neck.
“Pablo? Where are you?” he asked, staring directly at Pablo.
“Señor, I am right here. You are looking at me.”
“Am I? Watch Ana for me, until you can get her to Antonio.”
“Señor, I will do it.”
There was so much she wanted to say. “Santiago, I …”
“Let me talk, my love,” he told her. “Please. Somehow, some way, you will get to Antonio…”
“And the others?”
“I don’t care about the others,” he said, with a touch of his usual impatience. “I have told Antonio what he must do. Do not argue with him. Do what I have told him to do. It might keep you safe against…”
He looked up at the circle of horsemen. “…against El Ghalib, or perhaps Felipe,” he finished. “Promise me, Ana. Do what Antonio says.”
“I promise.” It was an easy promise. She knew she was not going to leave this circle of death alive.
“Kiss me once more.”
She kissed him and sat back, not releasing her husband, but ready to bargain now with Yussef el Ghalib. Her hand went to her necklace. She had grown used to it around her neck. She would miss it. She lifted it over her head.
“Pablo. Take this to El Ghalib. I am certain he is near.”