The Hand of Fatima

by Ildefonso Falcones

  ‘A Christian will always be a Christian,’ she replied, in a tone very different from the one she had used throughout the night, suspicious of his insistence that the only religion in the stables was horses. ‘Damn them! Don’t trust them, my love: with horses or without them, they hate us and always will.’

  Then Fátima reached once more for her husband’s body.

  Hernando worked from dawn to dusk. Twice a day he had to exercise the colts in the yard. The horses were lunged at the end of a long rope, a flexible stick coated with honey in their mouth. The thickness of the stick was gradually increased until it reached that of a lance, so that the horses became accustomed to the iron bit they would one day have to use. Sacks of sand were laid across their backs, to get them used to the weight of a rider. In the stables they groomed the horses, rubbing a cloth all over their bodies and cleaning heads, eyes, ears and feet. They scraped their hoofs in readiness for the moment when they would be shod. Saeta was the first to accept the work in the yard with a sack of sand on his back and a thick stick in his mouth. On top of all this, one of the riders often asked Hernando to accompany him travelling around the city, as he had done with Rodrigo.

  Hernando loved his work and the colts were the picture of health and good behaviour. He surprised the grooms with suggestions for some foodstuffs to complement the hay and oats the colts usually ate. The spirited Saeta should eat a paste of boiled broad beans or chickpeas with bran and a handful of salt during the night; a timid colt should complement its food with wheat or rye, also boiled the previous night until it formed a paste to which bran, salt, and in this case oil should also be added. Although the grooms were at first very sceptical about these recommendations, Don Diego decided that as they could in no way harm the colts he would follow the Morisco’s advice. The results were obvious and immediate. Without losing his spirit, Saeta quietened down, and the timid colts became contented and more courageous. Riders, stable lads, blacksmiths, and harness-makers began to respect Hernando. Even the administrator quickly granted him everything he asked for, such as the request that Aisha assist in the silk spinning.

  That 8 December of 1573, day of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the inquisitors had plans to celebrate an auto-da-fé in Córdoba cathedral. Hernando and Fátima watched anxiously how the news was welcomed by the inhabitants of the city, including the grooms at the stables. The same had happened for two years now, as the auto-da-fé was celebrated on the same date. The celebration the previous year had reached the heights of popular fervour and morbid curiosity. After a lengthy trial that had included the use of torture, sentence was passed on seven witches, among them the famous sorceress of Montilla, Leonor Rodríguez, known as ‘La Camacha’. After publicly renouncing her crimes, she was sentenced to receive one hundred lashes in Córdoba and another hundred in Montilla. She was also banished from Montilla for ten years. For the first two of these she would be forced to work in a hospital in Córdoba. On the days before the auto-da-fé it seemed as though even the animals in the street were gripped by religious fervour, so the Moriscos tried to go about their neighbourhoods unnoticed. La Camacha confessed to having learnt her black arts from a Morisco woman of Granada!

  This year neither Hernando nor Fátima was able to stay out of the way of the Inquisition. The previous night, Abbas had paid them a visit.

  ‘Tomorrow we should go to the mosque to attend the auto-da-fé,’ he announced brusquely after greeting them.

  Hernando and Fátima exchanged glances.

  ‘You think so?’ asked Hernando. ‘Why on earth . . .?’

  ‘Several Moriscos have been condemned.’

  In spite of his African origin, Abbas got on well with the inquisitors. He himself followed the instructions he had given Hernando, so that he appeared to his ruthless neighbours in the fortress as more Christian than the Christians, and it was not unusual for him to be held up as an example of the conversion of someone born into the sect of Muhammad. In the same way, his trade allowed him to win the trust and gratitude of the miserly inquisitors and members of the Holy Office. The ironwork on an unhinged door, an iron railing that had given way, a broken ornament, even the bars on the tiny dungeon windows: all these little repairs were entrusted to the skilful blacksmith, who said he did them out of piety, and wanted no other reward.

  ‘Even so,’ Hernando insisted, ‘what reason could there be for us to witness the auto-da-fé?’

  ‘In the first place, our devotion and respect for the Holy Inquisition,’ replied the blacksmith with a wry grimace. ‘They should see us there. Secondly, I want you to meet someone; and thirdly, and most importantly, to learn the exact reasons why our brothers are being tried, and what penalties are imposed on them. We should inform Algiers of how the Muslims in Spain are treated by the Inquisition.’

  Fátima and Hernando reacted sharply.

  ‘Why is that?’ asked Hernando.

  Abbas signalled to him to listen closely. ‘For every Morisco punished here, the Turks will punish the Christians held captive in the ancient bathhouses of Algiers. That’s how it is,’ he insisted, when he saw Hernando’s surprised reaction, ‘and the Christians know it. Not that the Inquisition stops punishing what they consider heresy, but it is a good way of applying pressure that perhaps can influence them when they decide how severe a sentence should be. I know. I have heard them talk about it. The news comes and goes. We send it to Algiers and from there it returns in the mouths of the rescued Christians or the Mercedarian monks when they come back from ransoming captives. That has always been the way. Before the time of the Catholic monarchs, corsairs captured in Spain were stoned to death or hanged. There would be an immediate response on the other side of the strait: the corsairs would execute a Christian in reprisal. Eventually the two groups came to a tacit agreement: a life sentence in the galleys for both sides. A similar thing happens with the Inquisition. Before the arrival of the deported Moriscos from Granada, there were none of us here in Córdoba. Now it is up to us to organize a system they have been employing for many years in the other kingdoms.’

  ‘How do we get this information to Algiers?’

  ‘More than four thousand Morisco muleteers cross Spain every day! Believers are constantly embarking for Barbary. Despite the fact that the Moriscos are prohibited from going near the coast, it is not hard to do so: the Christians aren’t very vigilant. Through the muleteers, news about the Inquisition’s sentences reaches the outlaws in the mountains and the slaves and escapees who meet up with them to flee to Barbary. They then pass it on.’

  ‘Is Ubaid with them?’ Hernando blurted out, recalling his mother’s account of what had happened in the mountains.

  Abbas frowned. ‘You mean the one-handed muleteer?’

  ‘Yes. That man has sworn to kill me.’

  Taken aback, Fátima shot her husband a questioning look. Hernando had not wanted to tell her about the events on the Camino de Las Ventas. He and his mother had only said that Brahim had fled and that Aisha had managed to escape.

  Hernando took Fátima’s hand and nodded.

  ‘What is Ubaid doing in Córdoba? When did you hear about him?’ she insisted, knowing full well the dangerous threat that man represented.

  ‘The outlaws are very useful to us,’ Abbas interrupted her, ‘but we are even more useful to them. Without the help they get from the Moriscos in the countryside and the places where they have to hide, they wouldn’t be able to survive. Why has he sworn to kill you?’

  Hernando told him the story, including the threats the muleteer from Narila had made against Brahim and himself. However, he kept quiet about the fact that he had hidden the silver crucifix that led to Ubaid losing his hand.

  ‘Now I understand!’ Abbas said. ‘That’s why he chopped off your stepfather’s hand. We could not understand why he had reacted so violently towards a brother in faith. I also understand Hamid’s mistrust of El Sobahet and Ubaid.’

  Fátima took all this in, and fixed her black
eyes accusingly on Hernando’s face.

  ‘We thought it better for you not to know,’ he admitted, squeezing his wife’s hand more tightly. ‘But how do you know all this?’ he added, turning to the blacksmith.

  ‘I’ve already told you we are in permanent contact.’ Abbas lifted his hand to his chin and rubbed it repeatedly. ‘I will try to sort this matter out. We will demand that he leaves you alone. I promise.’

  ‘If you know so much about the outlaws,’ Fátima interrupted him, concern showing on her face, ‘what has become of Brahim?’

  ‘He has recovered,’ Abbas replied. ‘I heard he joined a group of men hoping to cross to Barbary.’

  And so it had been. What nobody knew, not even the men whom Brahim had joined up with in his escape, was that the agony of his severed limb seemed to disappear when Brahim took a last look at the lands of Córdoba spread out at the feet of the Sierra Morena. The constant, tremendous stabs of pain he felt in his arm faded in face of the rage engulfing him at that moment. He was giving up the only thing in his wretched life among the Christians that he wanted: Fátima. From the distance, he imagined the wife the elders had robbed him of in the arms of the Nazarene, giving herself to him, offering her body to him. Perhaps she already had the bastard’s seed in her belly . . . ‘I swear I will return for you!’ muttered Brahim, looking down on the plain.

  It was a little after three on a cold but bright day. Hernando hesitated as he was about to go through the Perdón gate of the Córdoba mosque. Fátima noticed at once, but Abbas was a couple of steps ahead. Soon though the crowd behind pushed them inside, as the bells rang out from the ancient Muslim minaret, transformed into a bell tower.

  Hernando had been living in Córdoba for three years and had passed by the mosque dozens of times. Sometimes all he did was keep his eyes on the ground, at others he looked out of the corner of his eye at the fortress-like walls surrounding the place of prayer of the caliphs of the West and of the thousands of faithful who made Córdoba the beacon radiating the true faith to the Christian world. He had never dared to go inside. In the cathedral there were more than two hundred priests, even excluding the members of the chapter, who officiated at the more than thirty daily masses held in the many chapels.

  Abbas returned to join them once they got past the domed vestibule that opened out behind the great pointed arch of the door. Hernando and Fátima were spat out by the throng of people flooding into the orchard garden of the great cloister in front of the cathedral, planted with orange trees, cypresses, palms and olives. The blacksmith seemed to read the young man’s thoughts, pursed his lips and gestured encouragingly for him to continue. Dressed in the white shawl she had worn on her wedding day, Fátima clutched his arm.

  The cloister garden took the form of a wide enclosed rectangle, surrounded on three sides by rows of columned arches, whose proportions coincided with the northern façade of the cathedral. In spite of the cool of the trees and the fountains, the three Moriscos shrank from the sight of the hundreds of penitential garments hanging from the cloister walls, a clear and permanent warning that the Inquisition kept watch and punished heresy. In Muslim times, the faithful purified themselves and performed their ablutions in four washrooms, two for women and two for men, that the Caliph al-Hakam had built outside the mosque in front of the east and west façades. They would then enter the prayer room through the nineteen doors that opened into it, which the Christians had bricked up. For this reason they were now obliged to go in through the doorway of the Bendiciones arch, where, in days gone by, the banners of the troops who went to fight against the Muslims had been blessed. Once inside, they waited for their eyes to adjust to the light from the lamps that hung from the ceiling, only nine yards high. Even though he had often seen it, Abbas could not help but share the awe that brought Fátima and Hernando to a standstill in the midst of the torrent of people, some of whom dodged around them while others shoved past. In front of them, calling them to prayer, they saw a forest of close to a thousand columns in rows, joined by double arches one on top of another, with red brickwork alternating with ochre stone.

  For a few moments the two of them stood still, breathing in the strong smell of incense. Hernando was absorbed in the contemplation of the variety of Visigoth or Roman capitals where the columns joined the arches. Fátima was in the middle of the two men.

  ‘There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God,’ she whispered as if impelled by some magical external force.

  ‘Are you mad?’ Abbas rebuked her, looking round to see if anyone might have heard her.

  ‘Yes,’ Fátima replied out loud, as she advanced, intoxicated, towards the inside of the mosque, stroking her prominent belly.

  Abbas glanced at Hernando, imploring him to stop his wife doing anything stupid.

  ‘Please be quiet, for our son’s sake,’ he begged her, catching up with her and putting his hand on her swelling stomach. Fátima seemed to come out of her trance. ‘I once swore to you that one day I would lay the Christians at your feet. Today I swear to you that one day we will pray to the one God in this sacred place.’ She half closed her eyes. That commitment did not seem to be enough. ‘I swear it before Allah,’ added Hernando, in a low voice.

  ‘Ibn Hamid,’ she answered, still without thinking. People continued flowing past them, chatting excitedly about the auto-da-fé they were going to watch. ‘Always remember the oath you have just sworn, and keep it, come what may.’

  Abbas breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Fátima take hold of her husband’s arm again.

  They could not get much further into the mosque. Thousands of people were already surrounding the area where they were building the new Renaissance cathedral. This was in the form of a cross, supported on great pillars and Gothic buttresses, constructed in the heart of the Muslim place of prayer: the central nave that led to the mihrab. The new cathedral rose through the centre of the mosque’s roof to emerge imposingly above it, and so reach the proportions the Christians insisted on for their temples. This magnificent building, begun many years earlier and still ongoing, was destined to replace the small, primitive church also built inside the mosque, on the site of the kiblah, in the extension made by Abderraman II. The erection of the new chancel had been rejected by the Córdoba council, some of whose members feared that its construction would overshadow their own chapels and altars. Against the wishes of the cathedral chapter, the councillors and judiciary of Córdoba passed an ordinance by which any worker volunteering to work on the building would be sentenced to death. The Emperor Charles V put an end to the argument by authorizing the construction of the new cathedral.

  They had to wait for the arrival of all the faithful, many of whom had to be content with staying in the cloister’s garden, as well as of the tribunal of the Holy Office, the members of the church and municipal councils, and above all that of the accused, who were led in to murmurs, laughter and comments from the spectators. This gave Hernando time to examine the interior of the great building, which could accommodate thousands of people. Independent of the garden, the floor plan of the mosque was almost quadrangular. In the centre were the beginnings of the new cathedral, which was still surrounded by hundreds of double arches of red and ochre columns. The remaining space between the last line of columns and the walls of the mosque contained numerous chapels, placed there by the nobles and the Christian prebends and dedicated to their saints and martyrs. Altars, statues of Christ, paintings and religious images, like those found across the length and breadth of the streets of the whole city, were displayed to popular fervour as a sign of the power of the noble houses that had paid for them and endowed them with bequests and legacies. Hernando could make out the coats of arms and heraldic symbols of the nobles, knights and princes of the church. They were sculpted out of the stonework itself, on walls, arches and columns; carved into the wrought iron of a great many of the railings that enclosed the chapels of the perimeter; on the gravestones, almost all at floor level; on the altarp
ieces and paintings of the chapels and anywhere else that could be found: locks, lamps, door handles, chests, chairs . . . They also appeared on the shields and helmets of the Spanish, German, Polish or Bohemian knights that hung all around in thanks for the victories won in the name of Christianity.

  Muslim among Christians, thought Hernando, as he heard the sound of the organ music and the canticles of the choir heralding the arrival of the bishop, the Inquisitor of Córdoba and the chief magistrate. They came in followed by their respective entourages, and then the accused. Like this building, he added to himself, stroking one of the columns. The Christian faith was evident in all the chapels clustered all around the temple yet the space opening out from these chapels, with its thousand columns and red and ochre arches, was a song of praise to the magnificence of Allah; then in the centre, Christian once more, rose the new chancel and the choir.

  Hernando raised his eyes to the roof of the cathedral. The Christians tried to get closer to God in their buildings, raising them as high as their technical resources allowed; with solid foundations and slender heights. At the same time, the mosque of Córdoba was a miracle of Muslim architecture, the result of a daring exercise in construction, the power of God descending over his believers. The higher of the two arches resting on the columns was twice as thick as the arch beneath. Contrary to the Christian construction, in the mosque the solid foundation, the weight, was supported by the slender columns, in evident and public defiance of the laws of gravity. The power of God was placed on high, the weakness of the believers who prayed in the mosque, at the bottom.

  Why had the Christians not destroyed all traces of that religion they hated so much, as they had with the rest of the city’s mosques? Hernando wondered, his eyes still on the double arches over the columns. The chapter of Córdoba cathedral, together with its nobles, was among the richest in Spain and did not lack the piety to undertake such a project. They could have planned the construction of a great cathedral like those of Granada or Seville, and yet they had allowed the Muslim memory to remain in those columns, in the low ceilings, in the layout of the aisles . . . in the spirit of the mosque! The magical union that, regardless of who is here, you feel inside this building, sighed Hernando.