The Crown of Valencia

by Catherine Friend

  “Rodrigo is a madman. He is no longer the leader I agreed to follow. He has changed more than you can imagine.”

  Confused, I waved a hand. “That doesn’t matter,” I sputtered. “It can’t matter. He still must wear Valencia’s crown.”

  “You have not come back to seek me out, to see if we might recapture what we once had. You have come back to play God with our lives.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t put it that way.”

  “I can think of no other way to say it.”

  Now my jaw was set as firmly as hers. “Rodrigo is not the only one who has changed.” This was not supposed to play out this way. I started to reach for her, then checked myself.

  “Kate, do you have any idea what Rodrigo intends to do should he take Valencia?” I shivered, shaking my head. “He no longer tolerates prisoners and has no patience for slaves. He just wants the city. When the gates open to Rodrigo, he has a bloodthirsty general named Tahir, a man who answers not to me, but only to Rodrigo. Tahir and his men will spare no one. Do you understand? They have convinced Rodrigo the entire city must pay for locking us out. The city holds thousands too weak to defend themselves, and once the slaughter begins, it will be impossible to stop.” She strapped on her sword, tucked her dagger into its sheath.

  “You are dressing as if you leave us.” When she didn’t answer I swallowed a few times, furious I was the one stuck supporting Rodrigo the Asshole. “Look, you’ve all done things in times of war that you aren’t proud of. I’m not saying that Rodrigo will be the best ruler of Valencia. I know, for a fact that he won’t be. But he must be the next one.”

  “Is that right, my time-traveling pearl?” Her use of the old endearment cut me to the bone. “I used to follow Rodrigo in hopes he would rid my country of the Moors. Now I can see what you wanted me to see, all those years ago. Rodrigo is an animal, a cruel, heartless man, and I can no longer follow him blindly. Rodrigo used to be motivated by money. I understood that; we are mercenaries, for God’s sake. But money no longer motivates him, only power and cruelty.” She tucked her hands behind her back and strolled to the door. She stopped, spun on one heel, and considered me with a remote, cool air. “The only way Rodrigo Díaz will take possession of Valencia is over my dead body.”

  “What?” I whispered.

  She smiled, almost amused. “Rodrigo does not know it yet, but he has come to the end of his power. When the moment is right, my men and I will destroy Tahir, capture Rodrigo, and put al-Rashid on the throne, or Ibn Jehaf. It makes no difference to us. But the Moors will rule the Moors, the Christians the Christians. We have no business here.”

  A vise clamped itself across my temples. Elena would not help me. Holy shit. She was against me. I traveled back in time. I found the one person who could help me ensure Rodrigo took Valencia, but she was on the wrong side. Thoughts collided in my head like bumper cars—violent, and not much fun. Elena plotted against Rodrigo. He would learn this, then attack and kill her. If she succeeded in stopping Rodrigo from taking Valencia, Arturo and I might cease to exist. If Rodrigo succeeded, Elena would be dead. Either way I lost. “Luis, it is wrong to alter what has already been laid down as the world’s history. No one has the right, or the wisdom, to play God with the past.”

  “No one, including you, has the right to play God with my present.” Her words turned my hands to ice. I had dreamed for years of seeing this woman again, and we now stood on either side of a huge chasm, just as impossible to cross as the centuries that had separated us for so long. She laughed softly, one of those chilling sounds empty of mirth, then shook her head. “Your talk of timelines means nothing to me. My future is my own to shape. I will not alter my path because you ordain it.”

  I clenched my fists so tightly my nails became needles piercing my palms. “But I…I need your help.”

  “I plan to betray Rodrigo. Nothing you can say will change that.”

  I crossed the room but didn’t dare take her hand. “Please, don’t go. We need to keep talking.”

  Elena shook her head and opened the door. “I return to Valencia.”

  “We will come with you. Maybe then—”

  “Kate, I do not regret last night. But I cannot bear to let you back into my life knowing you will leave it once again. Return to your time, for there is nothing you can do here.”

  She strode down the hallway and out the front door, without even a goodbye kiss for her child.

  *

  I was nearly frantic with fear. How could I do this myself? I gave Arturo the bad news, but he shook his head. “Don’t be dumb, Mom. We can do this. Yeah, it would have been easier with Elena’s help, but it’s you and me. We can do anything.”

  His infectious smile and absolute confidence in his mom picked me up long enough that I could pack our gear and formulate a plan. We would follow Elena, catch up to her, and wear her down until she agreed to help.

  Before Arturo and I left, Solana hugged me and planted a sloppy kiss on my cheek. “Pretty lady, my mama had to leave. But if you see her, tell her I don’t want her to get hurted.”

  I smoothed back her wild, unruly curls. “Don’t worry, Solana. Your mama’s very strong and brave.”

  “I know.” She clutched the Lion King hidden beneath her dress, then giggled when Arturo kissed her pudgy cheek.

  Solana’s nanny gave us directions for the nearest pass south through the mountains. From there we’d find the Río Jalón, follow that south to Calatayud where it joined the Río Jiloca, then head upstream along the Jiloca toward Valencia. “Go with God,” Father Ruiz murmured.

  “Bye, pretty lady! Bye, Turito!”

  I waved to the little sweetie as I urged my horse forward, anxious to put miles on our horses. I knew two inexperienced riders had no chance of catching up with Elena, but that didn’t matter since I knew where she was headed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  We rode hard all day, and that night we set up camp in a rocky enclave off the road. Arturo fed the fire while I filled our water bladders from a stream. Crickets chirped incessantly. People who thought the countryside was quiet had never spent much time there. When we started to eat, Arturo cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about Elena.”

  I handed him a chunk of bread smeared with herbed goat cheese, then shrugged. I’d known I wasn’t staying here permanently, so why waste time being disappointed about my romantic life? Elena’s refusal to help galled me, but I wasn’t going to give up. There had to be some chink in her armor I could exploit, some reason why helping me would benefit her as well.

  “Mom?” I looked up as I bit a date in half. “Not to change the subject, but how come one minute I feel like an adult, then like a kid, then like an adult?”

  I chuckled. “Because you’re both. Adolescence is a messy time.” I finished my date and tossed one to Arturo.

  “In this century fourteen-year-olds are considered men. Grimaldi called me a man. When I took out Rafael, I felt like one. When I ran from Anna and the horses, I felt like a little kid. All I wanted to do was...was find you.” I blinked hard at his honesty. “Then when I pulled you and Solana from the stream I felt like a man again. When will I know I’m a man? Do I have to turn eighteen first?”

  I struggled for an answer that made sense. Just because I’d lived through my own adolescence didn’t mean I understood it, but it felt good to be talking this way again with Arturo. Maybe the best way to communicate with stubborn teens was to take them over nine centuries back in time. “Arturo, one of the joys of being a child is that you aren’t held totally responsible for your actions. Maybe we become adults when we take responsibility for our actions.”

  Arturo chewed thoughtfully, shadows from the fire dancing across his chest. “So if I do something that affects another person, I’m a child if I say it wasn’t my fault, and an adult if I admit I’m responsible?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure. I think being an adult has less to do with sexual maturity and everything to do with emotional maturity. I think respo
nsibility is a huge part of that.”

  Arturo licked his lips, then held my gaze across the fire. “When you left Elena to come back and raise me, you were being responsible.”

  I shook my head, reaching down to stir the fire. “It was more than that, honey. I wanted to be your mom.”

  “I really, really like her,” he said quietly.

  “Me, too,” I replied, letting a little sigh escape.

  He accepted that with a nod, and we stared into the fire for awhile. “Mom?”

  I lifted my gaze from the embers.

  “You were right.” A faint blush rose up Arturo’s cheeks. “This whole time travel thing, while pretty exciting, has been harder than I thought it’d be.”

  “You miss our time?”

  “I miss my friends. I miss Max, my MP3 player, movies, Mountain Dew.”

  “It’s May 29, honey. A bit more than two weeks, then it’ll be over.” All I wanted to do that very moment was pack up and head us straight for the cave at Santillana, our ticket home.

  He frowned, suddenly looking more vulnerable than since we’d come back in time. “It’s more than just missing stuff. I was thinking about this last night as I was trying to fall asleep, and started to get how dangerous this whole thing really is.” He stirred the fire with a stick. “Remember that TV show you used to make me watch with you, the one with the android?”

  “Star Trek…The Next Generation.”

  “Yeah, whatever. The coolest part of that show was the holodeck, where they could recreate any place or time and just go there. But whenever they were in danger or wanted to leave, all they had to do was say something, and this door would appear.”

  “I think they said, ‘Exit program.’”

  “Yeah. Well, yesterday, when Elena was galloping straight for me and I didn’t know who she—or he was, and that kid was screaming like I was killing her or something, all I wanted to do was say ‘Exit program’ and have that door appear so I could get away.”

  I swallowed hard, feeling for my son’s dawning realization that this was more than a really intense video game, and I doubled my resolve to get him home safely. “I’m afraid our ‘exit program’ door is well over a hundred miles away.”

  Arturo nodded, his face in shadow, appearing half determined, half frightened. “I know, and we’re going to do this, Mom, so don’t think I’m wimping out or anything.”

  “Never.”

  “It’s just…I think I’ll be ready to go home when it’s time.”

  “You willing to put on some ruby slippers, click your heels three times, and say ‘There’s no place like home?’”

  “Jeesh, Mom, no ruby slippers.”

  When the cool air settled above us, I fed the fire a few more twigs, then we each reached inside our saddlebags for a little bedtime reading. “Oh no, you don’t,” I said as I pulled Arturo’s new dagger out of my saddlebag. “You’re supposed to be carrying this.”

  “No weapons, Mom. Master Kim taught me that.”

  Disgusted, I stuffed the dagger into the bottom of my bag and pulled out the book I sought. I couldn’t force him to arm himself.

  “We shouldn’t have brought back books, you know.” I tried to sound severe, but took such great comfort holding this irrefutable evidence of my future, that I came off sounding as pleased as if I’d snuck contraband chocolate through customs.

  Arturo had two books, one on Islam, the other a biography of al-Rashid. I had handwritten notes of the events as they should happen, as detailed by Professor Kalleberg. The books, of course, no longer told the history any of us had been taught, but spoke of the alternate history, the one working its way through the centuries toward Kalleberg and the entire twenty-first century.

  Arturo read a section out loud that described how al-Rashid set up universities in every major European city and insisted that all children be educated. He spread the Moors’ knowledge of medicine and science throughout the continent. “Hey, he’s one of those who translated Aristotle and those other guys.”

  I finally held up my hand. “Enough. I know. There are many great parts to the Moorish culture, but we can’t think about that.”

  “What’s your book?” Arturo asked, pointing to the thin yellow book in my hands.

  “A book of poems that Christian generations passed on to one another through word of mouth, sort of like an underground resistance. When I get too enamored of the Moors and their civilized culture, mostly from reading books like yours, these poems remind me life under Moorish rule wasn’t a picnic for everyone.”

  “Meaning?”

  I opened the book to a marked page. “Here’s one example. It’s a song about how the idea of harems swept across Europe and Africa, and even non-Muslim countries began adopting them until even the poorest city official soon had a harem. Women were packed ten to a house, beaten, treated as slaves.”

  Arturo had the good grace to wince, given his earlier excitement about harems.

  “In 1109, only fifteen years from now, a young woman in a Zaragozan harem organized a rebellion. Six hundred women revolted and followed her into the streets. The song tells of S. Pidal’s great courage and leadership, and how the Zaragozan army surrounded the unarmed women and slaughtered them.”

  “Jesus.” Arturo passed a hand across his eyes. “Is history always going to be ugly, no matter who rules?”

  “I’m afraid so. It’s never—”

  “Mom, don’t move,” Arturo breathed. I froze, still bent over the fire, as a sharp silence sent goose bumps crawling down my arms. “Jesus, Mom, do not move.” Arturo’s whisper was tight with terror. “Oh my god, oh my god,” he chanted softly.

  Painfully slowly, my hands exposed and held away from my body, I raised my face to Arturo’s. Eyes dark with fear, he stared at something over my left shoulder, then over my right. I straightened my spine and understood. Red-caped warriors ringed the campsite on the rocks above with twenty arrows pointed directly at us.

  “Oh, god,” I whispered. Al-Saffah. No one moved. No one spoke. “Put your hands up,” I whispered. As we both inched our hands over our heads, I prayed to all the gods and goddesses, Allah even, that raised hands was a sign of submission to the Almoravides, not aggression.

  The tallest Almoravide, face barely visible under a red hood lined with white, snapped a command and all but two of the archers slid their arrows back into quivers strapped across their backs. The two remaining arrows remained pointed at Arturo and me. The men jumped or slid down the rocks and surrounded us, then two stepped forward and patted us down roughly, finding my dagger strapped to my calf. Chortling happily, the caped archer lifted his own loose pant leg and strapped the dagger Elena had given me onto his own shapely calf. Very shapely calf. I listened to the timbre of the voices now chattering softly around us. Wait a minute.

  When the tallest warrior standing before me pulled back the hood to reveal a woman’s face, the rest of them tossed off their hoods and laughed at my open mouth, at Arturo’s wide eyes. Every one was a black woman, an Almoravide from northern Africa, and bald as a baby’s butt except for a shock of hair on the very tops of their heads. The top knot of the fierce woman before me flopped back in a tangle of dreadlocks. Other women had swinging braids or thick ponytails, while others had shaved their top knots to short, black bristles.

  “Wow,” Arturo murmured, and as the shortest woman moved toward us, I understood why al-Saffah was here, now, in this place. Black eyes shining in the firelight, the young woman from the market who had been so enamored of my son strode forward and stopped in front of Arturo. Of course: reversible capes—white to be anonymous in town, red as al-Saffah warriors, incomparable archers who rained death on anyone who dared approach.

  “Busaybah,” the young woman murmured, touching Arturo’s chest.

  “Rabi’a.” Arturo swallowed hard, apparently stupefied by her beauty, while I tried to figure out how he knew her name.

  The older woman before me glared at Arturo, nodded, then spoke to me
in broken Spanish. “I am Nugaymath. I lead al-Saffah. My daughter want your man.”

  “My son,” I corrected as one of Nugaymath’s pencil-thin eyebrows lifted. “He is but a boy. She may not have him.” I pulled Arturo behind me.

  The young Rabi’a snarled something at me, which in any Arabic dialect meant ‘dried up old camel.’ Nugaymath, black as pitch, clenched her wide jaw. “He is for my Rabi’a. He bed her, so now he is hers.”

  “He bed her?” I whirled to face my madly-blushing son. “What?”

  “Mom, I’m sorry. I didn’t know she was al-Saffah. But...I was back in this time, and...I...”

  I could have shaken my son to death at that moment. “You came back here to get laid?”

  “No! Of course not. Well, maybe. No. But Hazm helped me find her again. And I’m fourteen, Mom. Hazm lost...his, you know, when he was twelve. It’s embarrassing.”

  I turned back to the woman, my arms rigid at my sides. “No.”

  “He is for Rabi’a.”

  “No.”

  I refused to flinch as Nugaymath reached casually over her shoulder for an arrow, notched it, and drew back the long bow, pointing the arrow at my heart. “He is for Rabi’a.”

  Arturo clutched at my arm. “Mom, don’t do this. I—”

  “Quiet,” I snapped in English. Blood pounded in my ears as I glared back at her. “No.” We locked eyes over the arrow, and even in the dim firelight I could see grudging admiration bloom on her face. She lowered the bow.

  “You are the prisoners of al-Saffah. For tonight, I will let you live.”

  They kicked out our fire and dragged us to our horses. After a five minute ride, we crested a small hill to find dozens of small white tents and a handful of campfires. Arturo and I must have had over one hundred women following us all the way to Valvanera, and we’d had no clue. They’d waited patiently for us to leave the monastery before jumping us. They hadn’t bothered Elena because they weren’t interested in her. They wanted Arturo.