Hart, Mallory Dorn

by Jasmine on the Wind

  Yet, a stubborn moaning from the very depth of her battered spirit insisted upon being heard. No, no, no, it cried, I see behind his eyes where he will not look, I see the confusion of loyalties he labors to ignore.

  With a groan she moved her dry lips. "O merciful Virgin, see my penance, O free me from these wishful illusions, from loving him," she whispered. Her heart lay like a dead, cold lump in her breast. She shuffled on, nor did the guard who opened the harem gate make any mention of her hanging head and abject condition.

  ***

  The slave boy Selim was relieved of most of his duties. Under the threat of the First Plaza stocks, it became Dolores's job to bring Jamal ibn Ghulam's meals, clean his chamber, remove his shoes and wash his feet, and scrub his shirts and linen. She was ordered to prostrate herself upon entering the chamber, to address him as "honored master," to speak only when spoken to in what Arabic she had, to comb his beard upon command and expect a sharp whack on the behind if she pulled too hard. She was expected to back from his presence with eyes cast down and head bowed. And every night, whether he was present in the apartment or not, she was to lie on his couch and humbly await his pleasure.

  Sometimes he dragged her to him with cruel hands, then barked out a laugh and shoved her away, but most often he stood above her as she lay supine and with a coarse epithet and sardonic eyes motioned with his thumb for her to get out. He never touched her in lust again.

  Sayeda Fawzia had been instructed to remove her from her comfortable little chamber and give her a pallet in the airless dormitory where the harem attendants were crowded together. Fawzia did this with no more than a shrug and a shake of her head in reproof. Reduction to ordinary slave was one of the lesser punishments meted out to concubines who no longer pleased. It was sometimes rescinded after a while, although often the miscreant was left to live out her life as a drudge.

  Silently Dolores did everything required of her, submissive to Jamal ibn Ghulam's every whim. Not once did she glare at him when he snapped at her for not getting something quite right, but kept her eyes lowered obediently; not once did she speak out without permission or curse at him, or show any revulsion with her servile position. The fact was, she had no will to do so. This was her penance to God for her sin against Azahra. It was also an abasement and humiliation she prayed would bring her to intensely despise him. There were times when she looked at her water-roughened hands, or rubbed a back aching from carrying the heavy food trays, or grimaced at the scratchy, coarse-woven tunic he made her wear as a domestic slave, and she hated him blackly. There were times when she wanted to rake the sharp teeth of his silver comb across his face. But it was obvious she had not prayed long and hard enough. She was still prisoner of a pride-conquering, unbreakable shackle. She loved him.

  The miserable weeks dragged on, one dawn promising nothing more than another, and one day she realized the first flush of his wrath had passed. His attitude was the same, his treatment of her as crude, his occasional comment as sharp and terse. But when she dared to lift her eyes and briefly meet his stare she saw that the frowning blue gaze held less fury. She thought there was a hint of discomfort accompanying his harsh manner. But she believed her imagination to be misleading her again and continued to go about her menial duties and lonely existence as apathetic as before.

  Chapter 25

  "Stubborn hyenas! Fools!" the onlooker muttered, royal fingers drumming impatiently on the cold stone of the balustrade. "Silence will avail them naught but pain. Why don't they speak?"

  The Marquis of Villena, following with vengeful joy the gory preparations being made below the landing upon which he stood, smiled mirthlessly. "They will speak, Majesty. Their false prophet will not sustain them much longer under our persuasion."

  Ferdinand's high, angry brow glistened; the vast, arched chamber was extremely hot. "It will make no difference whether they spit out the names of the other conspirators or not, our mind is decided. Each and every heathen will feel our wrath, innocent and guilty alike."

  "I do not believe they will betray their fellows," Don Iñigo de Mendoza murmured, gazing with detachment at the tortured wretches below. "To them this is the equivalent of the battlefield. If they die with honor their souls fly immediately to the warrior's Paradise, a deeply wished for fate."

  The Catholic monarch glanced irritably at his most able of commanders, who had sent messengers from Alcala to reach him in the field and inform him of the projected calumny. Tendilla wore his burnished cuirass over a doublet of black brocade; a black velvet rolled-brimmed hat shadowed his somber features. In the ruddy light from the open fire below he appeared the very incarnation of evil intent— were it not that his saturnine face reflected small interest in the bloody proceedings. "A plague of vermin on their false Paradise!" Ferdinand growled. "If those scum die my inquisitors will answer for it. We want them with enough breath left in their scurvy bodies so that they may be a living warning to any other Moslems who may think to embarrass our leniency."

  "Yet we have their cache of weapons, the gold they collected to pay for arms and troops, and the main leaders. If any of the rest have escaped us they can do naught but starve in their holes. Their plan is already spiked," Tendilla pointed out quietly, knowing the King was entertaining a disastrous idea in his fury, and endeavoring by subtle maneuver to divert Ferdinand from his revenge.

  "Do not plead the Moorish cause, my good lord. Baza has been the great example of what mercy and justice a Christian ruler could show to heathens who pledged loyalty and vassalage. Now it shall be a further example of the boundless suffering in store for any who dare to conspire against us and the Holy Church." Scowling, Ferdinand turned abruptly on his heel and strode out of the chamber. Tendilla, suppressing his distress with the stubbornness of his liege, who was about to perpetrate a terrible uprooting of innocent people with all its attendant economic repercussions, followed him out, face as unmoved as ever.

  But the Marquis of Villena, eaten by the memory of his brother's dishonored and headless body flung like garbage on ripped Pacheco banners, remained on the landing of the stone stair overlooking the cavernous torture chamber and licked his dry lips in anticipation of the final degradation of the traitors.

  Inferno heat rose from the great open furnace, where a stone crucible rested on a grate in the midst of sullen red coals, a white-hot liquid bubbling sluggishly in its depth. A flushed and sweating torturer, hairy body naked to the waist, knelt and worked a bellows through a hole low in the brick side of the furnace, urging up the temperature inside. Several of his fellows tied wet kerchiefs about their faces and worked over the four fainting captives who had been the ringleaders of the plot to wrest Baza and Gaudix from the hands of the hated infidel and open their gates to Boabdil's armies. Many of their subordinates had been rounded up too, and this very room had echoed to the creak of the rack and the terrible screams of the racked; and the floor was sticky where rivers of blood drawn by the iron-tipped knout had not been properly sluiced away.

  But those inferior plotters could tell little beyond what Ferdinand had already discovered, and after punishing agony they were garrotted. These leaders, whose names the underlings had screamed out, would not name any others in high places who may have been involved. Their feet crushed and dangling, their shoulders pulled out of joint, their fingers bleeding and nailless, they had been brought back time and again from the point of oblivion by the clever timing and experience of the Chief Torturer.

  Glancing up, this black-hooded personage was now disappointed that his royal audience had left the scene, especially since he had added to the next indignity, the blinding of the heinous traitors, the irony of using the Moors' own method of passing seething liquid copper before the face to burn out the eyes. The hot pokers he usually employed were quicker and less trouble. But at least the Marquis was still watching and he would carry a report to the King of a job not only accomplished but most artfully done as well.

  ***

  Above, in one of the sun
ny chambers of the governor's residence in Baza, Tendilla still tried to turn Ferdinand from his course. Toying with his jeweled dagger he leaned against a slender, carved pillar and watched Ferdinand mount the two low steps to a window bay to peer out over the city through the gilded grill. The Catholic King stood with his fists resting firmly on his hips, a posture which the Count recognized as his stance of definite decision. Shrugging, the Count hazarded one more point.

  "Sire, Baza has been a rich center of commerce and a good source of taxes. To depopulate the city would in the end deprive the Royal Treasury of much revenue. Economically speaking, can we afford to wipe out such a potential supplier of gold for our coffers and products for our markets?" Not to mention, Tendilla added to himself sadly, the doctors, lawyers, skilled artists, and craftsmen who would be forever lost to the fabric of society.

  "Bah! The monarchs of Spain could not afford anything they have accomplished in the past three centuries, and yet their feats have brought us to this triumphant present." Ferdinand turned and glowered at Tendilla; an old wound in his leg ached with the coming of rain and he felt suddenly tired. "You make too much of the value of these heathens to our well-being, my lord, although I subscribe it to your cautious instinct rather than any conscious sympathy for these benighted Moslems. Many of our northern people would happily remove south to Baza, I do not worry that the reins of commerce will be left slack. But I will teach El Rey Chico in Granada that his fomenting of conspiracies in my territories will only bring grief to his people and avail him nothing."

  Smoothly Tendilla changed his tune; the situation could not be saved and he did not want to jeopardize his hopes of governing Granada by creating the impression he would be too mild in his treatment of the enemy. Idly he fingered his little pointed black beard where some glints of silver now shone, considering for a moment. Then he nodded his head. "Your Majesty, I bow before your great perspicacity. In the long run defanging the adder speeds our triumph and cuts our losses; I can see persnickity economics has no place here."

  "Well, of course, my lord," Ferdinand grumbled, mollified by Tendilla's about-face. He valued Iñigo de Mendoza both in spite of, and for, his insightful and firm opinions, and seldom had the pleasure of seeing the man back down. To smooth what might be underlying ruffled feathers he said more heartily, "Good sir, I need not repeat how meritorious we consider your service to the Crown. But now I charge you reserve a purse of gold as extra reward for your agent in Granada. His informations have been timely and valuable and we want to keep him happy. The Devil knows how far that scabrous plot to assassinate my governor and storm Baza's walls from the inside might have got had it not been for his warning to you. How you manage to smell out these turncoats in the bosom of the Alhambra I cannot fathom, but pay the man whatever he requires to ensure his continuing dispatches."

  "Indeed, by all means, Majesty," Tendilla concurred, concealing any sarcasm. The Catholic monarchs contributed not one penny to the cost of maintaining his spies; in fact, the frugal Isabella, realizing how much more efficient were Tendilla's informers, had dismissed as wasteful most of the Crown's own paid agents. But what chagrin the Count felt at how generously the fund-pinched Ferdinand allocated other people's gold was mitigated by the King's spontaneous praise for his excellent agent in Granada. Please God, in whose hands lay the future, it would cost the rulers of Castile and Aragon much more than just a purse of gold to eventually show their gratitude to him and to the luck-blessed, talented lute player in the Alhambra.

  Tendilla quickly cut off the flush of optimism that threatened to rise within him. He was not yet in the Governor's Palace in Granada, Francisco could not yet own to the name of Venegas, and not yet could easily be never, so slippery were the building blocks of fortune he was endeavoring to pile one upon the other.

  Ferdinand rang a bell on the table. "Call together the lords who have attended me here in Baza, at once," he ordered the lackey who entered, "and summon a scribe to attend me as well."

  In the presence of his officers Ferdinand dictated to the secretary his punitive and harsh command to the Moorish populace of Baza: convert immediately to the Christian faith or be exiled to Africa.

  For the majority of the Moslems this represented no choice and Ferdinand knew it. He was, in effect, ordering transplanted forty thousand men, women, and children whose families had dwelled in this city for centuries and to whom any other place would be alien. Warming to his work Ferdinand continued by dictating a letter to the Inquisitor Torquemada, bidding that cleric send a representative of the Holy Office in haste to Baza or come himself if he were able. Those Moslems who thought to feign conversion in order to escape banishment would think twice about insincere kissing of the Cross while the image of the tonsured saint painted on the dread yellow banner of the Inquisition fluttered above them.

  Chapter 26

  The dawn cry of the muezzin on a nearby mosque tower— "Allah akbar... echoed en la ila ella Allah... there is no God but Allah... prayers are better than sleep... come to the best of work"—awakened Jamal ibn Ghulam and set him to sniffing the pleasant smells of the breakfast Azahra was preparing. He dressed, then sat in his accustomed place by the hearth and ate quickly, wanting to return early to the Alhambra; but not forgetting to praise the chewy, flat bread which the girl had baked herself and for which she stood by anxiously and hopefully to hear his opinion.

  The passage of six weeks had healed Azahra's body and faded the bruises on her face, but her nose had a definite swing to the side and she was left gap-toothed. She had taken to wearing an opaque yashmak even about the house, to hide her ugliness, she insisted, and her spirit, always timid, had become even more shy. But besides the visits of her benefactor, to dance was her greatest pleasure, a way she could express herself, and as soon as she had recovered she heeded to Francho's urging and continued to dance to his guembri accompaniment in the ancient, sinuous, suggestive Eastern mode she had been taught. She danced for him as much as for herself, bashfully trying to entice him, but her tender fourteen years had totally erased his original prurient interest, and all that remained was his genuine appreciation of her talent.

  Now he counted out his usual weekly allowance of money for her and Ali and hastily departed, for the foiling of the Sultan's ambition to retake Baza and Gaudix had left Boabdil in a funk, erratic and demanding. The Sultan seldom rose early, but it was better to be available.

  He found Dolores sitting cross-legged outside his chamber as she did every morning, awaiting his summons. She followed him into the room, her eyes on the floor as became an obedient slave. He tore off his turban and unbuttoned the frogged closings of his tunic, shrugging the garment off.

  "Sayed?"

  "Well?"

  "Late last night the Sultan sent a guard to request your presence in his bedchamber."

  "Did you say I was visiting my house in the city?"

  "Yes."

  "I had no callers." Evidently Boabdil's recently reacquired headaches or nightmares or insomnia had not been so dire that he bothered to send someone to the Albayzin to fetch his minstrel.

  Dolores stood patiently waiting for his orders, her head covered with a shawl. She wore a coarse, unbelted tunic loose over her pantaloons and no jewelry, no cosmetics. She was wanly beautiful, even though she appeared to his searching eyes to be drawn and very spiritless. He was still puzzled at her utter collapse in the face of his wrath; he had expected tantrums, curses. What had become of the Dolores who had scrapped with him over trinkets in Ciudad Real and pulled him up short in Toledo?

  He had thought he would enjoy breaking the vanity of this pseudo-baroness. And he had, for a short while, when Azahra's misery was still fresh in his ears and the image of the whip-wielding Zatar standing over the bleeding young girl smote him. But as Azahra recovered with the resilience of youth, the first fury of his vengeful retaliation had drained away, leaving his mind open to an irrational shame through which whispered the distressing words, "...must you use your anger as an excuse
to take me?... to assuage your pious conscience to Leonora... your mind and your heart conflict..." The heavy pressure of guilt galled him so much that he stubbornly would not consider relenting, at least not soon.

  But Dolores was like some proud, wild mare who had been broken to a plow beast. Her uncomplaining subservience was disconcerting. Was she that much afraid of the punishment yoke, or was she truly repentant that she had not stopped to understand the harm that would come to Azahra? Had his cold brutality shocked her beyond recovery? Was she acting?

  A fresh shirt dangling from his hand, he cleared his throat brusquely. "Dolores—I—"

  At his gentled tone she looked up with dull, empty gray eyes. He dropped his gaze quickly, irked by both his pity and worry. Hadn't she deserved everything he had meted out? "Because I love you" came the recollection of her voice. Said to divert his wrath, of course....

  He muttered, "Go fetch some kavah to me, and be quick. And tell Selim to attend me in the baths, I shall steal a few minutes more from the Sultan."

  Without a glance at him standing gruff and bare-chested and curiously nonplussed, she slid from the room.

  ***

  Francho bent his head over the guembri, concentrating on the new and intricate melody he was picking out accompanied by fellow musicians on the harp and flute who listened closely to follow him. Suddenly the calm of the Sultan's noon repast was shattered by the frantic blasts of the alarm horns on the ramparts, staying the food-filled fingers of his guests halfway to their mouths. A panting captain of the palace guards rushed into the saloon and with a sketchy salaam informed his ruler that a Christian army was debouching into the vega, a vastly greater array than the motley troops who had been marauding all spring and summer in the valley, burning the fields and seizing the herds, filling the air with smoke and blackening the once green leagues about Granada. Startled, worried eyes met and locked, and then the members of the council who had been eating with the Sultan dropped their napkins and rose.