by Carla Kelly
“Who checks a pig sty?” Señor Ferrar asked. “There is a small shed here with a surprise in it.” He looked back. “Let’s hurry. Those torches…”
They skirted the pig sty, Hanneke hanging on tight to Pablo. The potter stopped before a shed that looked no larger than a dog shelter. Hanneke’s heart dropped. There was no safety in such a place. She doubted the two of them could squeeze inside. “Señor Ferrar…” she began.
“Trust me.” He knelt down and opened the door. “Years ago, when things were really dangerous along the frontier” – Hanneke rolled her eyes at that, but was wise enough to remain silent – “my father built this.”
He disappeared inside. Pablo sidled closer to her. “Dama, is this a good idea?” he whispered.
“I am out of ideas,” she whispered back. “We must trust others.”
The potter reappeared, brushing off his cloak. “Just as I remember! Pablo, you go first. Crawl inside and feel for the hole. You’ll find the ladder. Hurry.”
He gave the boy a little shove. Hanneke listened to hear the creak of wood and then silence. “Excellent!” Señor Ferrar said. “Your turn, señora. Don’t be afraid.”
She crawled inside the tiny shed, past cobwebbed bottles and a rusty pail, feeling carefully until she found the open space. She patted around and felt the ladder. In a moment she sat beside Pablo in a small, well-timbered room.
“See there?” she heard Señor Ferrar say above them. “I will cover this just so. I think you will be here several days. We will bring food when we come to slop the hogs in the morning. No noise.”
“What will we do? Where will we go?” she asked, already dreading the moment when the potter left them alone. She heard the hogs nosing around the wall of the shed closest to the fence. The stench overwhelmed her, but she knew Señor Ferrar had done his best.
“I have something in mind,” he said, “something no one will think of. For now, huddle close. It will be a cold night. Don’t leave this hole, no matter what you hear. Adiós.”
Hanneke listened as the potter settled a board in place, then spread dirt around, some of which dropped through onto them. She leaned back against the earthen wall and closed her eyes.
“I’m afraid,” Pablo whispered.
“I am, too,” she replied. “What have they done to Carlos?”
She knew he was probably dead. She closed her eyes and prayed for his soul. Please, please, be far away, Antonio, she thought, adding him to her petition to Padre Celestial, who seemed so distant from a pig sty in Spain.
“Do you think we will die here, dama?”
Did she? Did it even matter what she thought? Her heart went out to the villagers who were putting themselves in terrible danger. “Not if our friends here can help us, Pablo,” she said. “Rest your head on my shoulder. It’s been a long and terrible day.”
He did as she said. “How will this make it better?” he asked, ever the practical one, her true knight.
“I don’t know, except that it will,” she said, and closed her eyes.
Did she sleep? She must have, because much later she heard the door open, and someone brush away the dirt, which meant more of it rained down through the cracks. She tensed, praying it was Señor Ferrar, and not Baltazar or Amador coming to stare down at them and do unspeakable things. She knew it would not be Felipe. He wasn’t a man to venture near a pig sty.
Señor Ferrar’s cheerful voice greeted them. “Buenos dias, my dears!” he said, but softly. “Reach up and hold out your hand.”
She did, and she closed her hand around soft bread and something that felt like sausage. Whatever it was, the hogs still clustered close to the back wall of the shed smelled it and started squealing in anticipation. Cannibals, she thought. This is your brethren, wretched beasts. She handed the food to Pablo, and held her hand up for a wineskin.
“I will try to return tonight,” he whispered. “Ration the food out for the entire day, in case I cannot.”
Hanneke reached up for a touch, just a touch of someone above ground, who could come and go and not stink of hogs. “What of Carlos?”
His reply was slow in coming, so she prepared herself for the loss of her other true knight, the man she knew would protect her until death. It must have come to that.
“He was stabbed by Amador and left outside the walls of Las Claves,” Señor Ferrar said. Hanneke heard all the weariness and disgust in his few words. “Carlos is a hard man to kill. We have spirited him away. He might live.” She heard all the doubt. “Bad times have come to Las Claves. Perhaps it would have been better if we had left this place to El Ghalib.”
He had already done so much. Was it too much of her to ask about her future? “Señor, I…”
“Oh, there is one thing more. Who did Felipe Palacios find last night but the servant Juana,” he said, his voice almost cheerful this time. “She must have fallen out of Santiago’s window, although why she was there, I dare not surmise.”
“Juana?” Pablo asked.
“The very woman,” Señor Ferrar said. He spoke more quietly, as if he feared the hogs restless above them would tell tales. “Felipe and his thugs summoned all of us to the courtyard, to tell us the bad news and warn us to be careful.” He turned conspiratorial. “He knew we would be sad to know that Juana had died a most terrible death.” He chuckled. “He told us to hurry home.” Another laugh. “He thought we would be sad. We rejoiced that Santiago’s tormentor was gone – out of El Cobarde’s earshot, mind you.”
“She tried to follow me out the window and fell,” Hanneke said.
“Excellent!” Señor Ferrar said.
“I am putting you in such danger,” Hanneke said.
“Never fear, dama. We have not given up. As I stand here, we are expecting an answer to our petition to find a safer place for you.”
“Where? Who?”
“In good time, child.” He replaced the boards, moved dirt, and closed the door.
They were four days in the hole by the pig sty, days of cold and snow that left them itching and burning with chilblains. The rain was worse. Mud from the pig sty made its way into their hideout. The itching might have been fleas. At least they had gotten over the awkwardness of having to relieve themselves in a not-too-distant corner of their underground shelter. What was another fragrance at a pig sty? At least there wasn’t any danger of being betrayed by body odors. And lately, it seemed they were breathing the same air in and out, which made her lightheaded.
Each visit by Señor Ferrar assured them that Carlos still lived. “We have hidden him in an abandoned hut belonging to our late compadre Luis, who died with Santiago. Carlos asked about you, but we were vague. If he should be captured and start to rave in a delirium of fever, we wouldn’t want him to tell our secret.”
Finally, four days after she had run in terror, the game changed. By now, they sat mostly silent, because others had searched the area, someone even opening the door to the shed, sticking his head inside, and swearing at the stench. As small as she was, she could not stand upright in the tight space. An enemy with mischief on his mind would have to haul them out.
The day’s meal was skimpier than usual. Apology in his voice, Señor Ferrar had reminded her gently that January and February were the months of scarcity, never more than now, when El Ghalib’s army, while not destroying their houses, had made off with what precious little sustained them.
“This is when my wife starts to dream of March, when the grass returns, bringing with it dandelions,” Señor Ferrar told them. “She makes a wonderful soup.”
He returned after full dark, something he never did. She held hands with Pablo, praying it wasn’t Amador or Baltazar, hoping that Señor Ferrar had a little more food, wishing he would tell them that Antonio had received her hasty note and was safe.
Señor Ferrar didn’t hand down food. He held his hand out to her. “Take my
hand and let me help you up,” he said quietly. “We have found a safer place.”
She took his hand and tried not to cry out when she stood straight for the first time in days. But first, Carlos. “How is my champion?” she asked simply.
“He yet lives.” Señor Ferrar chuckled. “La Vieja swears it is hard to kill an ugly man.”
He opened the door to the shed and looked both ways, then ushered Hanneke and Pablo through. “Follow me.”
It was on her lips to beg to see Carlos, but she said nothing, trusting in this kind man who had risked so much. He led them to a man dressed like an Almohad, which made her draw back.
“Never fear, dama. Sometimes the safest thing is to travel in an unexpected direction. For all that he has lived among us for years, Mansour has connections that I know better than to question. He will take you to some people who move back and forth from the Arab world to the Christian world.”
“I didn’t know anyone could do that,” Hanneke said, still unwilling to move a step closer to Mansour, with his Arabian headdress, wicked-looking scimitar and desert robes.
“Gypsies can,” Señor Ferrar said. “Go with God and Los Gitanos.”
Chapter Forty-two
Hanneke and Pablo traveled south for two days in silence with Mansour. They walked as he rode, eating nothing because they had nothing, and their silent guide was not inclined to share what little he had brought for himself. At least by the end of the second day he was at not spitting in their direction. As a woman with no expectations, Hanneke counted it good; she had no choice.
They traveled by night, struggling through a cold and barren land, and slept by day, curled up close to each other for warmth, while Mansour wrapped himself in his voluminous robe and snored. Hanneke thought about stabbing him with her little kitchen knife, but changed her mind. It was foolish notion to begin with, and she doubted the knife was sharp enough. At least Mansour seemed to know where he was going, wherever that was. She put her trust in the villagers who had appointed Mansour to ferret them to safety.
One incident gave her hope, during those days of walking and starving. Mansour at least did not begrudge them water. One evening, when she reached for the hide water bag he held out, he suddenly grasped her wrist. She knew better than to pull away. She knew better than to do anything.
She took a calming breath when Mansour fingered the chain bracelet, a copy of her necklace from Yussef el Ghalib. She saw something besides hostility in Mansour’s perusal; she saw recognition.
“El Ghalib?” he asked.
She nodded.
Mansour gave them something to eat that night. She curled up close to Pablo again, tired of walking, wishing and praying that Mansour would move in some other direction besides south, to the land of his own kind. To her further distress, she discovered she was praying and wishing with the same weariness.
She woke early on that third day because she was starving and her stomach seemed to bore through to her spine. She pulled her legs close and rested her chin on her knees. She thought of her home in Vlissingen, and buttery cookies, and even those scraps of herring that the fishmongers gave away to the poor folk who clustered around the dock. With a little fat, she could take those scraps and fry a delicious meal she would have scorned only a year ago.
I want this to end, she thought, and pressed her forehead against her knees. I don’t care how.
“Señora.”
Mansour never spoke to her. She looked into the early-morning darkness and saw Yussef el Ghalib. Her heart lifted for a moment, then sank back to the depths. She rested her forehead against her knees again. What possible good could come from even acknowledging his presence? “I wish you would go away,” she murmured. “I am miserable and so hungry.”
He didn’t say anything. She wanted him to leave, but she didn’t need to be rude to this enemy, this friend, this…what was he? “You have your necklace, Yussef,” she said. “I like the bracelet you left, but I don’t understand it. You allowed me what I asked for, with the necklace; even more. I can expect nothing else.”
“I know,” he said. “You have come so far and received so little.”
“All I want is for Antonio to be warned about Felipe Palacios.” She turned to him, keeping her voice low. “I don’t know what devil’s bargain you struck with that evil man, but it has ruined all of us, hasn’t it?”
“Not yet,” he said. “Antonio has been warned.”
“Good. That is all I wanted.”
“Nothing more for you?”
“No. I have no expectations. I suppose you wanted the dowry, too.” Might as well air that dirty linen. “Were you going to divide it with Felipe?”
“That was the initial idea – to steal you away and hold you for ransom, if somehow he did not marry you.”
Hanneke knew she had to give him at least grudging approval for honesty. “What changed?”
“I came to know you.” She could have sworn she head him chuckle.
“There is nothing funny about what is happening, Yussef.”
“No, there is not. Ana, has anyone ever asked you what you want? We greedy men want your dowry. We want land.” Another low laugh. “My side wants you Infidels to bow to the true religion. Your side says Christ this and Christ that.”
“No one ever asks a woman what she wants.”
“Think a moment, then. What do you want?”
Why not humor the man? Some small wisdom told her she had nothing to fear from Yussef el Ghalib. He might even be a friend.
“I wish…oh, you will laugh.”
“No, I won’t,” he assured her.
“Well then, I wish that when Father Bendicio and that other priest arrived at my father’s house…I wish they had brought along Santiago.” She stopped. So much kindness to a woman really was laughable. “I told you it was foolish.” El Ghalib was silent. “Are you asleep?” she asked.
“No, Ana. I’m thinking about what you said. You would like to have met Santiago Gonzalez first?”
Since the whole business was preposterous, she relaxed and considered it. “I wish he had introduced himself, told me about his life in Spain, and maybe even his fears and worries. We would talk and I would tell him about myself.”
“After that, he would ask you to marry him?” To Hanneke’s ears, El Ghalib sounded genuinely interested.
“Yes, if he decided he wanted to.” Another thought struck her. “If he wanted to,” she repeated. “Yussef, I don’t think he had a choice, either. I had not considered that.” She looked at him. “Do you have choices?”
Silence.
Are we all pawns in a dangerous game? Hanneke asked herself. She looked toward the east, where the sun was rising, suddenly, deeply aware that there were two sides to this matter of choice. “He… he would ask me and I would say yes or no. If it was yes, I would follow him with my whole heart. If it was no, he would leave and we would both find others.” She laughed then, but softly. “I told you it was improbable, but that is all I want: a choice. I suppose I don’t care about money, or land, or even religion.” She crossed herself at that. “Maybe I do care about religion a little.” She smiled when he laughed. “I want to choose my husband, bear his children, be a good wife and mother and do kind things. That’s all. These are small and simple things, but I ask too much, don’t I?”
“It shouldn’t be too much,” el Ghalib said. “None of us live in a world that good, however.”
“I wish we did.” She reached across yawning chasm separating them and touched the hand of her husband’s enemy, noting in her heart that is wasn’t such a wide space.
The sun was nearly up. “I must leave,” Yussef said. “Thank you.”
“For what? For wasting your time?” she asked, in charity with this man.
“No. For sharing your whole heart,” he told her. He moved closer, closing that huge gap. �
��You did choose once. You handed me the necklace and you chose to stay with your husband as he lay dying. You didn’t know what I would do to you. You could have chosen your own safety, but you didn’t.”
“Don’t remind me,” she said as tears came.
She was in his arms then, his comforting arms, as she struggled with fresh sorrow. “He wanted me to choose safety. Begged me. You were there. You heard him.”
“I remember. You chose love, instead,” he said, caressing her cheek with his. “He was a man most fortunate. You chose then.”
“I would choose the same.”
She closed her eyes when he kissed one cheek, then the other. “Don’t give up, habiba,” he said. “I wished I dared help you more, but you see my position. Santiago was my enemy. I have pledged my allegiance to Caliph Muhammad al-Nasir.”
“I understand, Yussef. I truly do. Thank you for what you have done for me right here, right now.”
Then he was gone. She heard a horse’s harness jingle, hoofbeats and silence. Perhaps she had imagined the whole thing. Hunger could do that to a body.
Santiago had called her habiba once, after a moment of tenderness in bed before armies beckoned. “It means beloved,” he had told her. “Be careful, Yussef,” she said softly, even as Pablo sat up and stretched.
Mansour’s food ran out that afternoon as they arrived at the camp of Nito and Florinda. Pablo and Hanneke’s breakfast had been more water. She didn’t tell Pablo or Mansour about her early-morning visitor, knowing the danger El Ghalib had put himself in. She and Pablo stayed back in the clearing, letting Mansour go first.
She realized she had not imagined El Ghalib’s early visit when an older fellow, shabby in a cloak chewed by moths, ignored Mansour and came toward her, holding out his arms. “Señora Gonzalez?” he asked, making an elaborate bow. “I was told this morning by our mutual friend that you would be arriving today. Welcome to the caravan of Nito and Florinda! I am Nito, un gitano muy fuerzo.” He pounded his chest with pride.