A Divided Inheritance

by Deborah Swift

  ‘Why? What have they done?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She looked at her scathingly. ‘Just be alive, that’s all. But there’s trouble. They say they’ll get guns and fight.’

  ‘What about trade ships?’ Elspet said.

  ‘I tell you. Nothing’s going out. Not till they’ve gone.’

  Part Four

  May the rain sprinkle you as it showers,

  Oh, my time of love in Andalusia:

  Our time together was just a sleeper’s dream,

  Or a secretly grasped moment.

  Traditional seventeenth-century

  Morisco song

  Chapter 44

  January 10th 1610

  ‘Fetch your father.’ Mama swung the basket down from her head but did not even unload it on to the kitchen table. Luisa could see by her face there was something the matter.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Don’t just stand there, go and find him.’

  Luisa was about to go to work at the pottery, so she considered arguing back, but Mama was distracted, her eyes shifting around the room as if they could find no place to rest.

  Luisa made to comfort her, but she ignored her. She went straight out the back door to their sleeping chamber, and Luisa followed.

  ‘Go, can’t you!’ she shouted.

  Luisa ran. As she hurried out of the door she glanced back to see Mama had sunk on to a cushion; she was swaying back and forth making little panting noises like a woman grieving.

  She ran shouting into the small backyard where Papa usually taught Husain his Greek and Latin. Sure enough, there was Papa, sitting on a wooden stool with Husain chanting a catechism back to him.

  He looked up at the intrusion and frowned. ‘Mama says you’ve to come,’ Luisa said. ‘Quick! Something’s the matter.’

  Mama never interrupted Husain’s lessons, for the time for his study was precious. Few hours remained when they were not all engaged in eking out a living with work or chores. So Papa frowned and came straight away, Husain holding his arm to guide him, still carrying his scratching-board and point with him.

  Papa went to her. She poured out a rapid discourse in Arabic. Luisa could only catch a few words, she was so upset.

  ‘What? What is it?’ Luisa cried.

  Mama’s fingers clawed at Papa’s back as she tried to get out broken words between gulping sobs. When she paused for breath her father pulled her to him and they held each other tight.

  Husain looked frightened and began to cry.

  ‘Papa, what’s the matter?’ she asked, bending to scoop up Husain. ‘What’s so terrible?’

  Mama spoke in Spanish at last. ‘They are deporting us. All of us. All of Moorish descent.’ She stifled another sob. ‘We have twenty days to sell everything, gather what we can carry and report to the authorities.’ Papa did not look at her. Mama pulled back her manto to reveal her stricken face. She signalled for Luisa to pass over Husain, and she gathered him into the folds of her djellaba where he buried his head in the fabric.

  ‘I don’t believe you. It’s a mistake. That can’t be right. You’ve got it wrong, you must have misunderstood them. She must have, mustn’t she, Papa?’

  Luisa’s question seemed to have brought Mama back to her usual self. She was angry now. ‘No. When I came out of the market into the square I had just missed the reading of the expulsion decree. There was uproar. I had to throw down my basket and run. Men were throwing stones and grabbing anything to serve as a weapon, but the King’s mercenaries were there. Hundreds of men in full plate armour. The city’s surrounded. They’ve cut off all the passes out of Seville.’

  ‘It’s not possible. There are too many people, we can fight them. We’ll fight back, or we will hide you somewhere.’

  ‘You don’t understand. It’s not just us they are sending,’ she said, ‘you too, though you were born here. Because you have not Christian parents. All of us. Even baptized Christians. They have a harbour full of ships waiting to carry us to North Africa. If we remain there is a law to say they can kill us. They’ve started building gibbets at the roadsides.’

  Husain began to howl.

  ‘Be quiet,’ Luisa snapped at him. ‘They can’t send us to Africa. I’m Spanish. I don’t know anything about Africa.’

  ‘Then you must learn,’ Papa said sadly.

  She did not answer. She ran blindly out of the room. She knew one thing. She was not going.

  Mama’s voice echoed after her, ‘Lalla! Lalla!’ but she did not stop. She had to think. She fled down the street to the Church of Santa Dominica and hurled herself in through the open side door. But the quiet solitude she craved was not to be. She was not the only woman with this idea – twenty or so other Morisco women were gathered just inside the door. Nobody had ventured into the stalls or near to the front of the church, as if already the church had ceased to belong to them. Christ’s head was bowed on the cross. Even he did not want to look at them, his eyes turned aside to salute the light from the east window. One of the women turned and made a grim smile of greeting.

  ‘So you’ve heard,’ said Maymona, one of the other workers from the pottery.

  ‘Is it true?’ Luisa begged.

  ‘Well, I for one will be singing my way to the ships,’ announced an older woman. ‘Baptized my children right here, I did.’ She spat at the font. Her spittle dribbled down the coarse pale stone in a dark line. ‘Bastards. Doesn’t matter how much we salaam to them, or dance attendance to their ways, we’ve never been welcome here, just couldn’t afford to go home. I’ll be glad. They say they’ll provide us with food for the journey.’

  ‘That’s what they say,’ Maymona said. ‘But never believe anything they say. My husband says it’s a plot and they’ll kill us all once we’re on the ships. Loot our gold and throw us overboard. He’s organizing a resistance. They’re meeting by the Saladin Gate.’

  ‘They won’t kill us, don’t be stupid.’ Another girl, even younger than Luisa, holding her small sister by the hand, looked terrified. ‘They wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘My mother says they won’t let us stay, so where’s the choice?’ Luisa said.

  ‘We’re going to try and get out of Seville, the whole family – go to Toledo. We have Christian friends there who will vouch for us.’ Another young woman spoke calmly.

  ‘Don’t you believe it. No one will hide us,’ said the older woman with finality. ‘Your Christian friends will change their minds when they find out the penalty is six years’ galley service.’

  No one spoke for a moment as they took this in.

  The silence was short-lived. The door swung open again and more worried women crushed in off the street. ‘Is it true?’ Some did not even bother to kneel and cross themselves, but launched straight into the conversation. Luisa felt faint. She was trapped in the middle of the crowd. It went round again, people repeating the news, talking of the rumours, of the decree, of past atrocities, like vultures picking over a corpse. No one had an answer. The air crackled with the babble of women talking, shouting over one another for their point to be heard. Just when she thought she would suffocate with all their talk, the priest appeared, flanked by two armed mercenaries.

  ‘What are you doing? Leave this building at once.’

  They looked to each other before a spokeswoman appeared; the older woman. ‘We are good Christians, we have only come to pray. We worship here every day, Father, you know we do.’ The priest looked uncomfortable. ‘We came to pray, to ask God why this is happening to us.’

  There was a general murmur of assent. The women were meek now, a meekness of habit, cowed not only by the authority of the Church, but by the two men with muskets at his side.

  ‘This is not the place for this sort of gathering,’ the priest said, ‘only for individual contemplation and confession. Now go on home.’

  ‘Or wait till you get to your own country,’ said one of the mercenaries under his breath. The other laughed.

  ‘This is my country!’ Luisa f
lashed back at him, and several women behind cheered.

  The priest held up his arms as if to herd them out of the church. ‘Time to move on now, ladies. There will be no noon office today.’

  But the mercenaries had already moved round behind the group, prodding at their backs with their muskets as if they were cattle in a pen. One of them shoved his musket into the back of the older woman. She turned by instinct and her hand shot out to push it to one side, as if she did not quite realize what it was. Luisa saw her mouth open as the man crashed the musket hard down on her head. She dropped like a stone. She caught a glimpse of the priest’s horrified face.

  A frozen moment of inaction before mayhem broke loose.

  The women leapt upon the mercenaries like Furies, and the soldiers flailed and swiped out wildly with their weapons, before one had the presence of mind to pull back a trigger and let loose a deafening blast.

  Luisa dived for cover under a bench, as the sharp crack of shot hitting a window showered glass needles over the crowd. The commotion brought men in off the street. She did not dare move. From her low viewpoint she recognized the legs and feet of Abdul the cobbler, saw his hand drag his leather-cutting knife from its hanging sheath and swing it past his hip.

  She knew the fish-seller by his blood-stained apron and hatchet as he passed, and the feet of many more men scrambled to get into the action. The mercenaries were outnumbered and the second one fell next to her. His helmet clanged against the flag floor, his hands clawed to find a support to lift himself up but too late, he was bludgeoned by the rampaging mob until she could see no more glint of his breastplate, just the backs of men.

  When they left him he had no face, the only thing she could recognize was his armour, greasy with blood. She covered her head with her hands, rocked back and forth.

  She had to get out. She searched the legs of the crowd vainly. There was no sign of the robes and sandals of the priest. If he was not dead he would have gone for the authorities. She crawled out just in time to see two women run for the altar table and heave it over. Another two tore at the altar cloth, shouting ‘For Allah!’

  She staggered from behind the pile of armour and towards the door. The other mercenary lay in her path. Some fool had left his dagger embedded in the man’s neck. His armour was split open like a chestnut showing pale bones beneath the oozing flesh.

  As she stumbled panting towards the side door, her feet skidded in a slick of blood. At the threshold she fell outside into the fresh air to see a large force of black-clad men approaching from the other end of the street.

  ‘Get out!’ she yelled back through the door, in a panic for her friends inside. ‘They’re coming!’ she shouted again in Arabic, her mouth spitting out the half-remembered words.

  But no one paused in what they were doing. Her heart seemed to jump in her chest like a small creature trying to get out. The splinters flew from the altar, the men intent on destruction, unable to hear anything beyond the thud of metal and the splitting of wood. The church reeked with the smoke of votive candles overturned, flaring in pools of wax.

  ‘Run! The King’s army!’ she tried again. The wax crept towards the motionless figures on the floor. Abdul the cobbler smashed at the windows in a frenzy with a large gilt candlestick. And above it, just before she ran, she saw the figure of Christ, his head still turned away to the side as if he was ashamed.

  Zachary had an instinct something was afoot, before he knew exactly what. An unruly crowd had tumbled past his door in the middle of the night shouting, ‘Moros!’ Bells started ringing raucously from the minarets but suddenly died mid-clang. Several times he heard unearthly, tuneless wailing. It was a while before his sleep-befuddled brain identified the sound as a muezzin’s call to prayer in Arabic, and it was answered by many more ghostly voices until a volley of shot put an end to it. He went out on to the balcony but could see nothing. Only a few plumes of smoke from over by the harbour. Nevertheless, he slept with his sword within reach.

  Next morning, when he set off for the school, he soon saw that the streets were in ferment, the main thoroughfares clogged with armed men and handcarts of terrified Moriscos trying to flee the city. The word was, the Crown had put out a decree saying all Moriscos must be ready to depart in twenty days, but already the city was on the move. Zachary began to run.

  He met a road block of armed men and was turned back from his usual route, so he grabbed a man passing by. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Murdering bastards! They’ve looted the Santa Dominica. The priest’s dead, and all the windows smashed. They’re going to get them off the streets.’

  Zachary was already running towards Señor Alvarez’s house.

  The yard was totally silent. No sign of Señor Alvarez or anyone else. He battered his fists on the kitchen door but Ayamena did not answer. He pushed his shoulder against it but it was locked. He hurried round the back to their yard but saw no sign of life. With growing alarm he wondered if they had already gone.

  The first person to appear was Elspet, hurrying in with her eyebrows knit into a frown.

  ‘Bad news. No ships are sailing,’ she said. ‘There is a mass exodus of people planned and we cannot leave for England for another three weeks.’

  He did not answer her; returning to England was the last thing on his mind. He pounded on the door to the training hall, but that too was locked.

  Elspet called out, ‘The Moriscos have been—’

  He shouted back before she could finish, ‘I know. Have you seen Ayamena? Or Nicolao?’

  ‘No, I’ve only just got here. The streets are in chaos. I passed a crowd kneeling in the middle of the street. They are saying if nobody believes they are Christian they might as well be Moors, they’ll get expelled anyway. There were children there too, looking completely bewildered. It’s terrible, we are turning them back to their heathen ways, not away from them.’

  He jumped back down the steps. ‘Is that what you think they are? Ayamena and Nicolao? Heathens?’

  ‘They have not embraced the Church of Rome,’ she said stiffly. ‘And I believe in the Holy Roman Church.’

  Anger boiled up in his chest. ‘So you don’t think it unjust, that they should be torn from their homes and shipped somewhere else on a whim?’

  ‘There must be good reason—’ she began.

  ‘What good reason?’ he yelled, incensed. ‘I’m not even going to argue with you. Have you seen Luisa?’

  She had the grace to be abashed. ‘No. She’s not here. And of course I feel sorry for them. Nobody should be treated this way. This would never happen in England, would it?’

  He stared at her, with her hair tied up so neatly in its kerchief. ‘Oh, so you think we’re so civilized? We, who force our priests to hide in the back of fireplaces, who call people heathens without knowing anything about them, and who dismiss Spain as somehow inferior to England. We are so damned cultured, aren’t we? Well, at least Spain has passion! Not like England, with its damp courtesies and cold heart!’

  He did not have to look on her shocked face long, for the gate opened then and Señor Alvarez and Nicolao rushed in. Señor Alvarez was supporting Nicolao by the arm.

  ‘Have you seen Luisa?’ Nicolao asked, his eyes straining around the yard before he was even properly inside.

  ‘No, I was wondering where everyone was,’ Elspet said. ‘I was worried that you—’

  ‘You have not seen her?’ Señor Alvarez seemed to bring sanity back to the yard.

  ‘I haven’t seen anyone,’ Elspet said, her face still red as a plum from their altercation.

  Nicolao let out a small moan of frustration. ‘I hoped she’d come here. Señor Alvarez is going to help us get away to France, to avoid the conscript. But there’s been trouble at the Santa Dominica church, and a girl came to tell us they’d seen Luisa there early this morning. They don’t know anything else, except there was a fight and many killed – the army were there. We can’t find out what’s happening and nobody has seen her since.�
��

  ‘You’re saying Luisa was there?’ Zachary heard his own urgent voice.

  ‘I’m sure she’s safe,’ Elspet said, but they all ignored her.

  Zachary took a deep breath to try to order his thoughts. ‘Did you go to the church?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Señor Alvarez, ‘I did. The King’s militia have been and boarded it up. You can tell something has gone on – broken glass from the windows is all over the street.’

  ‘I can’t think where she would go,’ said Nicolao, his voice rising. ‘Why hasn’t she come home? We went to the hospital where they take people like us. One of the women was in there with a gash to the head. She said Luisa had been with them, but then she just disappeared. Ayamena’s taken Husain. They’re going door to door asking at all our friends’ houses, but so many people are moving we’re worried we won’t find her or . . .’ He couldn’t finish, but none of them wanted to contemplate the other possibility, that she had been arrested by the King’s men.

  ‘Let us keep busy until Ayamena returns.’ Señor Alvarez placed a comforting hand on Nicolao’s shoulder. ‘Come, we’ll prepare. We will need to move your family today if you are to leave Seville. It will be harder once they start to round people up from the villages to take them to the embarkation points.’

  Zachary took this in. They were going to round people up. A shiver ran through him. He must find Luisa.

  ‘You know we can’t go without her.’ Nicolao sounded desperate.

  The old building. It was worth a try. Zachary spoke loud, to get their attention: ‘I know a place she might have gone.’

  They looked at him doubtfully.

  ‘Where?’ Señor Alvarez asked.

  ‘It’ll be quicker if I go,’ he said. ‘Please, just wait here in case she comes back.’ He set off at a run.

  ‘Let me come with you,’ said Nicolao.