"I do not treat with your kind, Zatar. I am taking this girl to my house. If you dare come anywhere near her again I will see the Sultan's torturers dip you in boiling oil before my eyes," Francho snapped.
Zatar scuttled to where Azahra stood weaving and propelled her forward. "See," he exhibited, "she is in good condition; I did not whip her very hard and her face will soon heal and look well enough under a veil. After all, what is a poor man to do when an expensive slave, his only dancer, escapes? Punishment is for their own good, is it not?"
"Leave hold of her, carrion." Zatar released the sinking Azahra, and Francho easily scooped her up in his arms, concerned about the amount of blood that still ran from her mouth and nose. But there was one more thing he had to know. "Who told you where to find this girl? Speak the truth or I'll see that your throat is slit!"
"Certainly, certainly, the truth, sayed. The truth is, I do not know. A boy brought me a note telling the location of a house sheltering my escaped slave. Fortunately I was standing by the door so I immediately ran outside and I saw, across the little square where the boy was pointing, a royal litter departing. It... it could have been one of the Sultan's own women. I thought it was strange, sayed."
Aching to kick the false subservience off Zatar's porcine face, Francho carried Azahra down the corridor, past two startled lodgers just entering, and out into the night. She leaned her head against his shoulder and moaned. When he reached his alley he kicked at the door of a neighboring hovel tenanted by an old crone who was skilled at midwifery and healing. "Come across the alley, old mother," he called to her when she hobbled to open up and see who was banging, "and bring your herbs and balms. There is a silver dirham for your services. Hurry!"
Ali was not there when he shoved open his own portal and it was just as well. The boy would have cried to see Azahra's beaten state as Francho laid her on his own pallet. She was barely conscious. Both of her eyes were blackened and swollen almost shut, her nose was surely broken, and he thought some teeth were knocked out. Her tunic and pantaloons were torn and stuck to the bloody welts left by the lash. With a wet cloth he wiped some of the blood from her face and neck. Very gently he cut away the tattered garments to expose her bruises and wounds, and a muscle in his jaw jumped. Had he not been so concerned for Azahra at the moment Zatar would have found himself facing the dagger again, with no mercy shown.
Mumbling toothlessly the old crone entered the house with her wooden box of jars and pungent herbs. She bent over Azahra, clucked. She glanced a question with rheumy eyes at Francho, who shook his head in denial and motioned her to get on with her task.
First she stopped the bleeding from the mouth by applying a salve to the torn gums and forcing the groggy Azahra to clench her jaws on a small block of wood. Then the healer rattled through her medications and extracted several jars, croaking out what they were as lovingly as if each were her own child. She chose a vile-smelling ointment of theriac, which she rubbed into Azahra's raw welts, paying no mind to the girl's misery as her clawlike hands worked with determined energy. In a basin that Francho supplied her she formed a rag-wrapped poultice of wet thistle leaves, mint, chamomile flowers, and mustard seeds and then placed it on the girl's eyes to draw out the pain and take down the swelling.
The crone gingerly wiggled the puffed, broken nose, and Francho's heart hurt at Azahra's screech of agony, subsiding to weeping as the old woman, chomping her jaws and holding her patient's head still with one hand, used the other to plaster the nose with a white salve which would harden and hold the cartilage in place.
When she had finished her work and carefully looked the young girl over to see no other cuts or bruises had escaped her ministrations, Francho put a coin into her extended hand. "Let her rest as long as she likes," the hag advised. "If a fever comes on give her this. It is an emulsion of cowslip flowers and powdered dung to cool the brain." She handed him a vial of cloudy liquid. Seeing his concerned expression she cackled, "Don't trouble yourself, raiss, she'll fully recover. She'll not be a beauty with her crooked nose, but you look rich enough to buy many like her. Eh?" The healer shuffled out, still chewing her gums.
A faint cry came from the pallet. "Jamal, Jamal, he has made me ugly and now you will want me no longer." Azahra wept. "I want to die."
Francho took her hot hand and stroked it, all the while assuring her she would not be ugly, that her spirit was beautiful and so was her form, and her face would mirror her grace and gentleness; and that he would always care for her. In a while she lapsed into an exhausted sleep. He stood looking down at the young girl's pain-drawn, swollen face, and a terrible fury filled him. But not for Zatar.
An anxious Ali returned with word that the blind man had delivered the letter and had finally returned to his hovel with a missive for Jamal ibn Ghulam from the musician's lady in Malaga (so Ali believed). Viewing his sleeping sister with grief, the boy begged Francho to stay the night, but at Francho's solemn word that Zatar would never come for Azahra again and that she was now free and her bond paper destroyed, the boy felt easier. Instructing Ali to call in the crone in the morning to change Azahra's dressings, Francho swung onto his horse and left.
Riding back toward the Alhambra through the night-quiet streets he blackly considered several dire methods of
retribution, but in view of the only motive he could perceive behind this tragedy there was just one seemed fitting enough.
Arriving at the palace he threw his reins to a groom and stalked through the Second Plaza, reflexively nodding and touching a polite finger to forehead and chest as several late-leaving gentlemen he knew passed him. Incorrectly thinking he was out of earshot, one of them, a small man with a large black pearl nestled in his white turban, remarked, "The minstrel hurries like an advancing thundercloud. What storm is raging in the Sultan's chamber, I wonder, that he rushes in haste to halt?"
"Ahhh!" One of his companions shrugged. "The Sultan probably has a bellyache."
But the storm that was to break headed instead for his own apartment, where its victim surely waited. And she was there, amusing herself by picking the strings of his lute inexpertly, a new, wide gold circlet with green jasper and quartz stones shining on her arm. She had let loose her smoldering mane of hair, and it flowed back from her warm-skinned forehead, reflecting a burnished glow from the lamplight behind her. Her black-lashed, tilted gray eyes were long and languid, her moist lips parted. She lounged innocently on the divan, one white-pantalooned leg crooked under her. Smilingly she looked up to welcome him.
"Well! I was becoming lonely. I thought perhaps you were staying in the city again. Shall I send Selim to the kitchens for your supper, or do you want to rest and have wine first?"
He did not answer, only stared at her, the bare, pretty feet, the rounded hips, the pointed breasts that thrust up her tiny jacket; his gaze slid over her satin skin and slim nose and the bewitching silvery eyes, luminous and deep. And hiding guilt. Her languorous appeal was great, and that was her aim. But Francho carried in his ears the pitiful sound of Azahra's shrieks as the old crone manipulated her misshapen nose, and he had to clench his fists hard on the impulse to twist the slender, adorned neck before him until its owner screamed with a comparable pain. It was her mean spirit, however, not her neck that needed breaking.
Dolores laughed uneasily. "What ails you, Don Francisco?"
Why did she call him by that name, which they had agreed never to use? To remind him of his real identity? Did she want him to shrug off Azahra as a human being only Jamal ibn Ghulam cared about?
"Have you seen a demon outside the door?" she asked. "Or a Moslem djinn?" Trying to appear casual she put aside the lute as he walked toward her. But now she could smell as well as see his fury, and she swiftly sat up, poised for flight.
"Shall I tell you what Azahra has suffered, Dolores?" he gritted through clenched teeth. "Shall I describe to you her welted thighs, her wounded face and split lips, her smashed nose? Or better still, shall I demonstrate to you the result
s of your evil on a timid young girl whose life was of no consequence to you?" He lunged and grabbed her wrist before she could move, jerking her to her feet.
"It wasn't I!" she cried in growing panic, fighting to be free from his grasp. "I didn't tell Zatar..." She gasped at her slip.
"Then how do you know what happened, female viper?" His fingers dug into her flesh.
Dolores understood lying was useless. She had thought her venture performed very discreetly, but that cursed proprietor must have glimpsed the litter, for all her speed in leaving. Even as she had watched the boy run off with the note to Zatar she had been suddenly rocked with the stupidity of her action and flooded with remorse. She had dispatched one of her bearers to bring the messenger back, but too late.
Now her eyes filled with tears of fright. "Oh Francho, listen to me, I... I didn't mean for any harm to come to Azahra. I didn't think he would— She was a dancer after all, an entertainer who made money for him. I just wanted her removed, taken away so that you would not scorn my company for hers, so that she could not beguile you into ignoring me. I just wanted her out of the way."
"Why?" he demanded coldly.
Dolores took a deep breath. The only thing that might melt his wrath now was the truth of the matter. Gathering her courage she looked straight into his furious blue eyes and told him. "Because I love you. So simple is it. And so puissant. Because ever since you took my maidenhead from me, ever since I gave it, I have loved only you. I held your memory in my heart for all those years I thought you might be dead. Francho..."
She started to reach out her hand to him, but his sharp laugh stopped her.
"Love me, vixen? You love only yourself, your perfumed, pampered, grasping self. Even a tender young girl stood in the way of your vanity. All men bow down before your beauty, do they, Dolores? And when I did not do that you struck out wantonly at an innocent child to preserve your self-esteem."
Dolores shrunk back from his intensity. "No, no, you... that is all wrong. I do love you. I merely never thought—"
"Well, let me give you something to think about, she-devil! I could easier love a sea serpent than you, you cruel bitch." The sensitive mouth under his black beard was set in a straight, grim line. His sun-darkened face held a black scowl.
But it was the frigid eyes that impaled her with their terrible portent, the eyes of a stranger, which scared her more than his words. He wouldn't, he couldn't clap her naked into the punishment yoke to suffer the torments of the palace loiterers! Or maybe have her whipped? No, not possible. In spite of the hate that consumed him now it was not in him to hurt her. She was his little sister. Alarmed nevertheless, she appealed to him.
"Oh Francho, believe me, I had no thought to really harm your friend. I am very sorry. Won't you understand that it was only because I love you, because you dallied with her so many nights and spoke of her so solicitously.... I was jealous, envious, deranged, call it what you will—I don't know why I did it. I thought Zatar would be grateful to have his entertainer back. I can't believe he beat her so hard." Half-hysterical she broke off, one hand trying to calm the heaving of her bosom.
He jerked her close up to him and held her there with cruel strength so that his icy gaze stabbed straight down into hers. "You besmirch the state of love every time you claim it, strumpet, mistress of Medina-Sidonia. Do not profess to love me, Dolores, for soon your lie will curdle in your mouth. You will grovel in humiliation for Azahra's pain. You wish to call yourself a lady? You are a concubine!" Deliberately he grasped the neck of the flimsy blouse she was wearing and pulled; the fragile fabric ripped apart down the front while Dolores stood rooted before him, her eyes huge with shock. He swung her around roughly and whipped the little velvet jacket from her back and with it the torn remains of the blouse.
"Oh no!" she cried out, clutching her arms about her. "Oh please, no. Not this way—" Her throat threatening to close on her, she tried to run past him to the door, but he caught her about the waist. He yanked at the fastening of her sash, then hauled so she was forced to turn with it until it came away.
"Why don't you scream, Dolores?" he taunted. "Where is your conceit now? Go ahead and scream rape, my baroness of the alleyways, but don't imagine I will have any qualms about locking you in the yoke, where your cries will have more of an audience. It would be easier for me than this. I debase myself by touching you. Scream, I say!"
Dolores cringed, whimpering her shock and heartbreak at the sneer in that glance which she had dreamed would one day fall on her lovingly. His eyes raked along her half-naked body as if she were some dirty peasant woman to be thrown on the ground and used casually, churlishly. She tried to struggle away from him, but her violent movements to escape merely helped him partially rip off the pantaloons from her hips.
She gasped. The sharp, tearing sound pierced through her like a sword blade, a heartless, unjust, and cruel blade—in fact, a scurrilous one. The last thought acted like a flame to dry straw. Her temper flared, cutting through her mortification and loosing her tongue. She rounded on him like a snarling animal, eyes narrowed and flashing her anger and spat out, "Pig! Coward! Must you use your fury as an excuse to take me? Will that assuage your pious conscience and your duty to the simpering Leonora? Well, I shall not allow you that escape, gusano, that the noble Francisco de Mendoza could actually prefer a common-born woman to his aristocratic lady. I will not allow you to soothe your conflict of mind so easily, so righteously—"
His eyes remained hard, frozen with contempt. "You will not allow me! Medina-Sidonia's whore?" he lashed back. "You are laughable. You are pathetic. You are evil. You vent your spite on a defenseless child."
She felt herself scooped up and in spite of her clawing and kicking dumped onto the couch. Practically sitting on her, ignoring her writhing and the lunges of her head as she tried to bite his arm, he calmly ripped the pantaloons from her hips entirely and then, by throwing a heavy leg over her, managed to squirm off his own tunic. His straight, Persian-style trousers had an easily opened front pouch.
Francho saw from Dolores's very panic that his instinct had been right: there was no punishment so bitter to this proud woman as treating her like abject flesh, the object of empty lust, a passionless rape, a callous violation. The accusations she had made against him only made him more determined to crush her conceit. He was acting as impersonally as the whip that had scourged Azahra, he told himself. Impatient with her wild writhings he dealt her a stinging slap to the face. She subsided suddenly, her body limp in his hands like a jointed puppet, her eyelids still and shut as if she had fled away somewhere.
He ran his hand over her smooth flesh, now as chilly as marble. He cupped a pointed, pear-shaped breast and felt the nipple rise under his thumb in spite of her limpness, rise hard and responsive and he laughed at her harshly. He clamped onto her inert lips with a hard mouth and took pleasure at the taste of tears there. He planted kisses on her luscious breasts and over the soft rise of her belly, and the anxiety he had felt that he would not be able to perform his will turned out to be baseless.
Dolores made only weak resistance as he forced apart her legs and relentlessly mounted her. She would not give him the triumph of vain protests and crying out against the pain. But although she lay motionless under his hard hands and let a whimper escape her only when he forced her limbs to his design, tears leaked silent and bitter from her eyes. Let him believe she wept from shame, from the vengeance of this joyless assault upon her body, from the humiliation of the methodical rape. But the tears that were flowing from the crack in her heart were for her fatal stupidity in believing that he might love her, no matter what he protested. Now he was proving he did not, nor ever would, and she could not bear to look at him, she could not endure to feel the heavy pounding of his heart against her like any ardent lover while she knew his eyes held the bitter truth: contempt and brute lust. Oh, sweet merciful Mother of God, not like this—not like this—
He deliberately squeezed her jaw painfully between thum
b and forefinger, forcing her eyes to fly open, and although the lamp behind him threw his expression in shadow she nevertheless saw a mask of raw male power. Her swaggering, handsome knight, her solemn Moor, and the deep cerulean eyes that had glowed at her in her dreams now stared mercilessly, as cold as winter's ice.
She had turned numb against the hurt of his thrusting inside of her, which now grew fast and urgent. Finally he jerked, the arms on either side of her that supported most of his weight trembled slightly; and then quickly, silently, with only a single, muffled grunt and a small flicker of the eyelids to show any feeling, he pumped himself into her.
When he was through he squeezed closed his eyes and, chest heaving, rolled off of her, for a brief moment lying stiffly side by side with her. And a strange notion crept into her stupefied mind that he was feeling as violated as she. But then, with a rough push that almost tumbled her from the couch he growled, "Go. Get out."
Wincing, red-eyed, she awkwardly gathered up her torn raiment, donned what she could, and covered the rest of herself as best she could in her long, silk shawl. He lay on his back starkly, his big body rigid, staring at the decorated ceiling. "Since I purchased you as a slave, Karima, I wish you to return after dawn and I will instruct you in your other duties," he commanded her tonelessly. Wordless, Dolores barely nodded and slipped out the door.
She shuffled down the deserted gallery as if in a trance, staring at but not seeing the gaily colored mosaic falling away beneath her feet. She waited to seethe with hate for him. But there was nothing. No hate, no rancor, no shame surging up to fill the limitless void inside her. What does it matter, her thoughts echoed hollowly in her head, let him mete out his punishment, what does anything matter now? A commoner, a courtesan by rumor, willing the gilded knight to live by the girlish romance she had conjured? How stupid. How pathetic. She had listened to too many troubadours' ballads. And did she even know or want the man who had so miserably and crudely taken her in the guise of punishment?
Hart, Mallory Dorn Page 61