The Hand of Fatima

by Ildefonso Falcones

  ‘What about the King’s gifts?’ he growled.

  As always when challenged by Brahim, Hernando hesitated. ‘I don’t need them for the journey,’ he said, pretending to check the mule’s harness. ‘I’m going to say farewell to my mother.’

  ‘We have to leave now,’ al-Hashum objected.

  Brahim hid a smile. ‘You have a mission to fulfil,’ he said firmly. ‘This is no time for a mother’s tears. I’ll tell her all about it.’

  Against his better judgement, Hernando agreed. He and al-Hashum mounted up, and Brahim watched them ride off. For once he was pleased at the confidence the King was showing in his stepson. He smiled to himself as he remembered Fátima’s voluptuous curves.

  14

  ‘IS THE earth flat?’

  In normal times, their journey would have taken between three and four days, but Hernando and his companion were forced to travel along impassable tracks and across fields, trying to avoid the many bands of Christian soldiers roaming the region. They were laying waste to villages, stealing, killing and raping the women, and then making slaves of them. Usually in groups of around twenty, with no captains or standard-bearers, they were greedy, violent men who abused the name of their Christian god and wreaked bloody vengeance on the Moriscos with the sole aim of enriching themselves.

  Hernando was pleased with their slow pace for one reason: it gave him plenty of time to find the herbs he could use to ease the pain in his groin.

  They were hiding in some thick bushes, stuck with the mule on a rocky pass, waiting for a gang of Christian thugs to finish their looting. They suddenly saw one of the soldiers split off from the group, dragging a girl no more than ten years old with him. She cried and kicked as he hauled her close to where the two men were crouching. They both dropped their hands to their weapons. Right in front of them, on the far side of the bushes, the soldier knocked the girl to the ground with a blow, and then began to undo his breeches, his blackened teeth showing in a hideous grin. Hernando unsheathed his scimitar, waiting for the man to expose the back of his neck as he bent over his victim, but suddenly felt al-Hashum’s hand on his arm. Turning towards him, he saw him shake his head. His face was wet with tears. Hernando obeyed, and slowly sheathed his sword, watching closely as the blade slid back into the scabbard. In order not to give themselves away, they had to stay where they were and witness the scene. The huge, battle-hardened al-Hashum could not look. He knelt and stared fixedly at the ground, sobbing in silence. Hernando found he could not close his eyes. He dug his fingers into the hilt of Hamid’s sacred scimitar, clasping it tighter and tighter as the girl’s protests diminished until they were little more than an inaudible sobbing.

  Her bitter cries merged with the memories of Fátima that had haunted him ever since he had left Aben Humeya’s camp. Coward! He accused himself over and over. She had said she had nobody, and he had replied that she could count on him. By now both Fátima and his mother must have heard from Brahim about the mission the King had entrusted him with, but even so . . . What if the Christians had been so determined they had climbed up to the pass and even now were raping Fátima?

  He finally relinquished his grip on the scimitar when al-Hashum, wiping the tears from his eyes with a sleeve, motioned with his other hand that they should move on. Hernando’s fingers ached.

  Al-Hashum seemed to know Adra well. They waited until nightfall out beyond the dry fields and sand dunes that stretched down to the sea. Hernando had discovered during their journey that the Morisco warrior was a man of few words, although he was not in any way rough or arrogant. In fact, he seemed to be kinder and more gentle than Hernando would have believed possible in someone who had lived for so long in the mountains as an outlaw. As they sat on a hill watching the colours of the sea change with the sunset, al-Hashum spoke more than he had done on all the previous days.

  ‘Adra is held by the Christians.’ Although he tried to whisper, his harsh, guttural voice made this almost impossible. ‘It was here that El Daud was betrayed at the start of the uprising, along with all the people from the Albaicín in Granada who wanted to cross to the Barbary coast to seek support. Just like us now, they needed a caravel, and eventually found one. But the Morisco who acted as go-between – God condemn him to hell! – drilled holes in the vessel, then used wax to block them up. The ship began to founder a short distance from the coast, so all the Christians had to do was wait for El Daud and his men on the beach and seize them.’

  ‘Do you . . . do you know anyone you can trust?’ asked Hernando.

  ‘I think so.’

  The waters of the sea were turning black in the growing darkness.

  ‘I see you are walking more freely,’ al-Hashum suddenly remarked. ‘Your potions seemed to have cured your problem.’

  Even in the dusk, Hernando had to turn his reddening face away. But the other man persisted: he knew what must have happened to cause the rawness in the lad’s groin. He went on to talk about his own wife and children. He had left them in Juviles but, like everyone else, was not sure if they had been inside the church or out in the square.

  ‘Dead or enslaved,’ al-Hashum said, his voice by now a true whisper. ‘Which is worse?’

  They went on talking as night fell. Hernando told him about Fátima and his mother.

  They hid in a house belonging to an old couple who had been unable to escape to the mountains when the revolt began, and who looked after a vegetable garden and an orchard on the outskirts of the town. Zahir – that was the man’s name – insisted they bring the mule inside the house.

  ‘We don’t keep animals,’ he said. ‘A mule outside would make people suspicious.’

  Zahir’s wife kept the house spotless, but agreed with her husband, and so they tied the mule up in what, they were told with pride, was the bedroom of their young sons who had gone off to fight for the one true God.

  They stayed in the house for several days without ever once going out. Zahir made discreet enquiries about a ship for them. Hernando and al-Hashum knew at once they could trust their hosts, but could they also trust the men Zahir was dealing with?

  ‘Yes,’ Zahir declared without hesitation. ‘They are Muslims! They pray with me, and although they have not taken up arms, they collaborate however they can with our young men. And they are all well aware of how important it is to get our gold to Barbary. The news we hear from the Alpujarra is not encouraging. We need help from our Turkish and Berber brothers!’

  News! Every night, as they shared the frugal meals the old couple could offer them, they listened anxiously to what Zahir had learnt about the war.

  ‘Village after village has surrendered,’ the old man told them one night. ‘They say that Ibn Umayya is wandering in the mountains without weapons or food, and accompanied by only a hundred of his closest supporters.’

  Just thinking of Fátima and Aisha lost in the ravines of the Sierra Nevada without anyone to protect them made Hernando tremble. Al-Hashum looked grim when he saw how troubled the lad was.

  ‘Why do they surrender?’ he growled.

  Zahir shook his head helplessly. ‘Out of fear,’ he said. ‘Ibn Umayya has no one with him any more, but the other rebels in the Alpujarra are being decimated. The Marquis of los Vélez has just fought a battle with our brothers at Ohánez. He killed more than a thousand men, and captured two thousand women and children.’

  ‘But Mondéjar pardons everyone,’ mused Hernando, imagining what might happen if Fátima became a slave.

  ‘Yes. The two noblemen are behaving very differently. Mondéjar maintains that the “earth is flat”. He has written as much to the Marquis of los Vélez, urging him to cease his attacks on the Moriscos and to offer pardon to all those who lay down their arms . . .’

  ‘And so?’ Al-Hashum wanted to know.

  ‘The Marquis of los Vélez has sworn to hunt down, kill, or enslave all our people. The letter apparently only reached him after the battle of Ohánez. When he returned to the village he found the heads of
twenty recently decapitated Christian women lined up on the top step of the stairway to the church. They say his calls for vengeance could be heard on the mountaintops.’

  The three men sitting on the floor fell silent for a long moment. So too did Zahir’s wife, who was standing nearby.

  ‘You have to take the gold to Barbary!’ Hernando exclaimed finally.

  Hernando learnt that Aben Humeya was in Mecina Bombáron. The King had secretly descended from the mountains to Válor, his home town and fief, in search of food, respite and comfort. That night, however, he was expected in Mecina Bombáron for a Muslim wedding. Mecina was one of the many locations that had surrendered to the Marquis of Mondéjar. When the killings had begun, all the town’s Christians had fled, and so for the time being at least everything was quiet. Always someone willing to enjoy himself, however bad the situation, Aben Humeya did not want to miss this feast.

  Alone, leading the mule, and alive to the slightest suspicious sound, Hernando set off for Mecina to inform the King of the results of his mission. He had left Adra as soon as the caravel Zahir had found vanished into the dark waters of the night, and he had seen there were no Christian ships pursuing it, or any obvious signs of holes being patched up with wax. Together with the old man and a couple of fishermen, he prayed on the beach. They beseeched their God to see al-Hashum’s mission to a safe conclusion. Then, against Zahir’s advice, Hernando set off under a moonlit sky. He was in a hurry to get back; he wanted to see Fátima and his mother as soon as possible.

  He hid from everyone and everything on the way, nibbling now and then at the unleavened bread and meat stew Zahir’s wife had given him. He could not stop thinking of Fátima, his mother and the army that was to come and set them free from beyond the coasts of Granada.

  What Hernando, Aben Humeya or al-Hashum during his night crossing could not have imagined was that both Uluch Ali, the beylerbey of Algiers, and the Sultan of the Sublime Porte had their own plans. As soon as he had heard the news of the uprising in the Alpujarra, the beylerbey had called on his followers to gather in defence of the Andalusian Moriscos. But when he saw how many men arrived, eager to fight, he decided it would be better to employ them for his own ends, and so embarked on the conquest of Tunis, then being held by Muley Hamida. In compensation, he issued a decree authorizing anyone who so wished to travel to Spain and fight. In addition, he pardoned all those criminals who enlisted for the war in al-Andalus. He also set aside a mosque for the collection of those weapons – and they were numerous – that the brothers in faith of the Moriscos wished to give to the struggle, although at the last minute he decided to sell rather than donate them. Something similar happened with the Sultan in Constantinople. The revolt in the Alpujarra meant that the King of Spain had to fight on another front, and this cleared the way for the Sultan to try to conquer Cyprus. He set about making preparations for this, meanwhile getting in touch with his governor in Algiers and telling him that as a goodwill gesture he should send two hundred Turkish janissaries to Granada.

  Approaching Mecina, Hernando could hear the music of lutes and dulzainas. As in most of the Alpujarra villages, the clusters of houses clinging to the Sierra Nevada seemed to be built one on top of the other. There were also a few larger houses, including that of Aben Humeya’s cousin Aben Aboo, where the King usually sought refuge. By the time Hernando tied up the mule and entered Mecina, night had fallen. The joyful sounds of the music guided his footsteps. He could not help thinking that he would soon be seeing Fátima again. She must still be up in the King’s mountain camp: but what could he say to her? What excuses could he give?

  He arrived just in time to see the bride, tattooed with henna and dressed in a long shift, being transported to the groom’s house seated on the joined hands of two of her relatives. She had her eyes closed, and her feet were kept off the ground all the way. Hernando joined the happy procession. The women were still shouting the chants and ululations reserved for weddings, according to the Muslim law stating that all marriages should be public and open. No one in Mecina could dispute the fact that, after all the stipulated exhortations to the betrothed, this had not been a public, transparent union. Surrounded by a throng of rejoicing people, the bride reached the small front door of her husband’s two-storey house. Someone gave her a mallet and a nail, which she hammered into the wood. Then, to cries of joy from everyone around her, she stepped with her right foot into her new home.

  After this the bride, accompanied by all the women who could fit into the small house, was taken up to the nuptial bed on the first floor. There she lay down motionless under a white sheet, waiting silently with eyes closed while the women offered her gifts. All of them knew that with the defeat of the Moriscos they would soon see the return of the Christian priests and with them the renewal of the banning of their traditional costumes and rites, and so for one last time they followed their age-old customs, entering the house with their faces covered and only revealing them in the intimacy of the bridal chamber, where no men were allowed.

  There were so many people trying to get into the downstairs room with the bridegroom that Hernando had difficulty even reaching the front door.

  ‘I have to see the King,’ he said to the back of an old man who was trying to stop him going in.

  The man turned and gave him a piercing look with tired eyes. Then he glanced down at the scimitar hanging from his belt. Nobody was armed in Mecina.

  ‘There’s no king here,’ he scolded him. Despite this, he allowed Hernando in, and told the others in front of him to do the same. ‘Remember,’ he said, as Hernando pushed past him, ‘there is no king here.’

  It was as if the old man’s message had been passed down the line of waiting men. Hernando was allowed all the way through from the street to the tiny room where the male wedding guests were crowding round the groom. At first, he could not find Aben Humeya. The person he did see was Brahim, who was eating sweetmeats as he laughed and talked to some of the outlaw leaders Hernando knew from the camp. Brahim seemed pleased with himself, he thought when their eyes met. He turned aside and met the gaze of Aben Humeya, who recognized him at once. The monarch was dressed simply, like all the men of Mecina. Hernando went up to him.

  ‘Peace be with you,’ the King greeted him. ‘What news do you bring me?’

  Hernando told him of his journey.

  ‘I’m glad,’ Aben Humeya said, cutting him short with a gesture after the lad had confirmed that, God willing, al-Hashum should by then have already disembarked in Barbary. ‘Despite your age, you are a loyal servant. You had already demonstrated that. Once again I am in your debt, and will give you your reward. But for now let us enjoy the feast. Come with me.’

  The men were all heading for the upper floor, where the women were waiting for them with covered faces. Most of the guests had brought gifts: food, silver coins, kitchenware, lengths of cloth. They gave these to the women who had taken charge of the ceremony, positioned at either side of the wedding bed. Hernando had nothing to offer. Only close relatives could demand to see the bride, still lying supine under the white sheet. The King was also allowed that prerogative, and when he rewarded the bride with a gold coin, the women lifted the sheet for him.

  ‘Now let us eat!’ cried Aben Humeya, once the honours had been done.

  Because of the restricted space in the newlyweds’ home, the celebration was held in the village streets and neighbouring houses. Once the giving of gifts had finished, the bride and groom shut themselves in for the eight days prescribed by law during which their families would take them food. Aben Humeya and Hernando headed for Aben Aboo’s house, where a whole lamb was being roasted to the sound of lutes and drums. This was a rich house, with furniture and tapestries, full of the scent of perfume and with many servants. Brahim was among the retinue of trusted followers who went with them.

  Before the women retired to another room, Hernando searched for his mother. He did not know whether she had come down to the village with his stepfather,
but was anxious to see her again. All the women had their faces covered, however, and many of them were similar in build to Aisha. Brahim was still laughing and talking to a group of men beneath a huge mulberry tree in a corner of the garden. His handsome weather-beaten face seemed to have grown younger over the past few days. Hernando had never seen him looking so contented. He decided to join the group.

  ‘Peace,’ he said to them. They were all head and shoulders taller than him, so he hesitated before continuing. Finally he asked: ‘Brahim, where is my mother?’

  His stepfather stared at him, as if amazed to see him there. ‘She’s in the mountains,’ he replied, making as if to turn back to his conversation. ‘Looking after your brothers and Fátima’s baby,’ he added casually.

  Hernando started: had something happened to Fátima? ‘Fátima’s baby? Why . . .?’ he stammered.

  Brahim did not even bother to answer, but one of his companions did so for him.

  ‘The baby who’ll soon be your brother,’ he said, bursting out laughing and clapping the muleteer on the back.

  ‘Wha . . . what?’ the lad managed to stammer. He was trembling so badly it seemed to affect even his voice.

  Brahim turned towards him again. Hernando could see a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes.

  ‘Your stepfather’, another of the men explained, ‘has asked the King for the girl’s hand.’

  Hernando could not believe his ears. He must have looked so incredulous that the man felt almost obliged to say more. ‘It’s been confirmed that her husband died at Félix, and since she has no relatives to look after her, your father came to see the King on her behalf. You should be pleased, boy! You’re going to have a new mother.’

  Hernando’s mouth filled with bitter bile. He began to retch uncontrollably, and ran to the far end of the garden, barging into several men standing waiting for the lamb to finish cooking on its spit. He did not manage to be sick, but kept on retching so violently it felt as if someone had kicked him in the stomach. Fátima! His Fátima married to Brahim?