The man was not the same sentry as last time. "This is General Reduan's pass but it is irregular. Our orders are now that only the Sultan may pass a man out of the city. Here, let's have a look at you." The soldier raised the lantern, and Francho knew the dark stain spreading along the neckline of his dark mantle would need explanation. Delay, fatal delay.
The lantern was grabbed from the conscientious guard by a higher-ranking companion, who used it to reexamine the pass and assert his own authority. "General Reduan's pass is good enough for me," he said. "What is the passphrase, traveler?"
"La Galib ile Allah," Francho muttered.
"He's all right. Let him out," the soldier ordered, and the thick iron bars were drawn back.
Suddenly Francho found himself outside the gates and free. Urging his horse with careless haste down the broad, stone-strewn hill, even though it didn't seem likely that God would abandon him at this late point, he would not feel safe until he reached Santa Fe's walls. What he had done seemed incredible. Muza Aben was forever silenced, and the next powerful commander of Granada's forces was a turncoat. Boabdil would surrender to save his people and his city. And Dolores was safe with Reduan. Dolores...
Granada was behind him, finished. The left side of his face, laid open deeply, was now giving him intense pain, but the cloth of his hood stuck to the wound and kept the cool night air from the raw gash. He strained his eyes into the darkness that held him close and did not turn his head to look back at the silhouetted minarets and domes of Granada, nor pause in his flight home to whisper a last farewell to Jamal ibn Ghulam, Head Musician to the Grand Sultan Abu Abdullah, or to the houri, Karima.
***
Sleepy-eyed, Azahra opened the door a crack in answer to the imperative pounding and found a mesh-shirted soldier standing there, scowling in the pale light of early morning filtering through the clustered rooftops.
"Jamal ibn Ghulam?" the man barked. She saw by his uniform he was not an ordinary palace guard but a cavalry officer of the army.
"Jamal?" she hesitated. "He... he is not here now. Perhaps tonight—"
"Good, then we shall be here to welcome him, the carrion!" He punched open the door, throwing her back, and four more sullen-faced men appeared behind him. Scimitars drawn, they strode swiftly through the two chambers of the house and the little littered court behind. Stunned, Azahara gasped and begged of the leader, "Wha... What are you doing? Jamal is not here. What do you want of him?" She could see the curious of the neighborhood beginning to congregate at the mouth of the alley, drawn by the noisy and precipitous arrival of this squad of grim soldiers.
"He will answer for the foul murder of the General Muza Aben," the officer snarled in response. He grabbed her by the arm and menaced her with his long, curved blade. "Look you, girl, the verminous cur you lay with is as good as dead, for we are combing the city to flush him out. Tell us where he is hiding or the worms will feast on your eyes too!"
A faint shouting and wailing seemed to rise on the breeze from down the hill, and more gawkers were crowding into the alley. Too bewildered to feel fright yet, Azahra cowered in the man's grasp and looked desperately from one soldier to another. "I don't know where he is, I—"
"You do know! You female jackal!" He shook her and shoved into her face his own bearded visage, now twisted into a mask of grief-driven rage. "Shield him and you are as much assassin as he. Speak up or I'll cut your throat open."
It was dawning terror for Jamal, not herself, that set Azahra's body trembling like a leaf, for she saw on the fury-dark faces of the soldiers a hatred that spelled out certain doom for the man they sought. She could not believe that what they said was true, that the gentle artist Jamal, the Sultan's Head Musician, had murdered Muza Aben Gazul, but she finally understood that these wild-eyed men would give Jamal no chance for his life if he left the Alhambra and rode here tonight.
Through the open door she spotted Ali returning from the fountain, carrying his water jug through the knot of spectators, a puzzled look on his face, the little ditty he always whistled dying on his lips. The soldiers had spotted him, too, were evidently aware he belonged to the household, and they flattened along the wall, scimitars at the ready. The man holding her swung her around to face the door and act as a lure. A frantic sense of now or never blotted out all considerations in Azahra's mind, all fear except for the terrible danger looming over her innocent benefactor. With a desperate wrench she lunged away from the officer's grasp and cried out, "Run, Ali, run away! Warn Jamal at the Alhambra, they want to kill him! Run, run—!"
With black fury the officer's blade slashed out and caught her in the back. Azahra's breath gasped from her and she staggered, her eyes opening wide at the horrible blow. An immediate dizzying dark whirled down upon her. "Run to Jamal—warn him..." she croaked hoarsely with the last of her strength, and then she felt cold, dimly aware that some of the onlookers in the alley were screaming in shock. The world fell out from beneath her, but her last blurred sight was of Ali dropping his earthen pitcher and darting away.
The hand clamped over Dolores's mouth was almost suffocating her to forestall another scream as she stared in horror at the terrible blood-covered figure almost cut in two lying across the threshold of the grimy house. "Shut up, woman. Don't bring attention to us. We have arrived too late. Let's be away," ordered Reduan's servant-disguised guard.
Rigid with shock, nevertheless Dolores vehemently tore the hand from her veiled mouth. Her eyes bulged at the murdered girl collapsed on the doorstep, the small body trampled over by the boots of the soldiers giving hasty chase after a boy who must surely be Ali. And who had just scampered past her as she stood pressed against the alley wall.
People dodged aside to let the running soldiers through and then raced behind them to see what would happen. With a cry Dolores darted away from the servant-guard who was holding their donkeys, and ran too, blindly, propelled forward by the momentum of the onlookers now rushing to meet the shouts and yells coming up the hill. "Muza Aben is dead! Muza Aben is murdered!" and although the people from the alley had no idea what a neighborhood boy had to do with it, such terrible cries had them ravening for any blood to assuage their shock.
Dolores saw Ali race up the street leading to an open square, but a mounted soldier with drawn blade rode around the corner and blocked him. "Stop that boy, Ahmed, stop him!" the pursuing officer yelled out. For a second the boy skidded to a halt as the arriving soldier spurred up to meet him. Thin legs pumping, the boy feinted, making a dash to the left of the street, and suddenly, almost as the armed men on foot were upon him and joining the horseman, he veered right, dashing into a short, narrow passage between buildings. But the passage was a dead end, and he popped back out from between two other buildings.
Shrouded in the peculiarly bright purple mantle she had been furnished, Dolores was carried along pell-mell by the people pressing from behind and debouched in the square in time to see the small figure of the child skid to another eye-blink stop as a troop of cavalry entered the far end of the square followed by a rabble of shouting, grief-stricken mourners who jogged along behind them. The chasing foot soldiers yelled, "Stop that brat!" The boy turned back desperately, and Dolores caught a brief glimpse of his small face, white and terrified, eyes darting, mouth sucking air as he ducked a thrown javelin and darted sideways toward another narrow alley where horses would not fit. The crowd closed up in front of her. "Ali! Ali!" she screamed out in anguish, for the petrified child was Francho's Ali and here she stood, hemmed in, powerless to help him, and he couldn't even hear her....
Alas, the contest between dodging child and fast horses was unequal. Before he could make the alley the original zealous horseman caught up with him, leaned out from his saddle, and with a triumphant cry and a violent swipe of his long, curved scimitar spattered the street with the child's crimson blood, so furious to avenge his beloved general's murder he refused to hear his frantic officer's shout of, "Don't kill him! He knows where that offal is hiding!" T
hwarted, the angry officer and his men ran up, yelling, to where the mounted soldier gazed hawkishly at the boy's sprawled and twitching body, his mailed fist still brandishing the stained blade that had totally severed the eight-year-old head from the thin neck.
"Ay, Allah preserve us," wailed out an onlooker from the growing throng packing the small square. "Muza Aben leads us no more. We are defenseless, we are finished!" And a loud groan went up.
Dolores, darting desperately about the perimeter of the tightly packed backs of the mostly male crowd straining to see what had happened, tried to squeeze her way through, half-gasping, half-whimpering at what little she had seen.
A turbaned head poked from a neighboring window to goggle at the proceedings and yelled, "What? Was he murdered by a child, then, you donkeys?"
The scar-faced officer jabbed cruelly at the small corpse with the tip of his sword. "Not by this wretched sprat, graybeard, but by his stinking kin. He can thank the dog of an assassin ibn Ghulam for his execution." Brusquely shoving his underling off his horse, the officer mounted instead and raised his weapon to open a path for himself.
"Will you leave the poor boy to rot in the street?" an aghast female voice demanded.
"Why not?" the officer snarled back. "Do you think his taint of treason will poison your cobbles?" As the crowd hastily parted to let him and his men through, Dolores got a clear glimpse of the tragic scene behind them—too clear a view of the splayed young body untouched except where the horrible, dripping arteries protruded from the headless neck. The ghastly, small head had rolled a few paces away with goggling, sightless eyes staring pitifully up at the sky.
Uncaring, unthinking what she was saying she wailed distractedly, "Ay, Madre de Dios, Jesu, Jesu," but fortunately it was against the babble of the crowd and muffled by her veiling. Concentrating on shoving past the backs before her, she began unwrapping her mantle to at least throw a cover over the mortal remains of the poor, executed child and hardly heard the commotion behind her. But suddenly, like the lightning outlash of a whip, an arm clamped about her waist and she felt herself lifted, kicking, her gasping body hoisted onto the edge of the saddle of a wheeling horse, and then she was being borne away by a member of a heavily armed squad in Reduan's orange-and-brown-striped colors, trotting away from the square in grim, tight formation in the opposite direction from Muza Aben's men.
"Sorry, sayeda," a deep voice growled in her ear as the tight grip holding her precariously to the saddle threatened to cut her in two. "The general does not wish you to come to bodily harm. Your purple mantle was easy to spot."
She hung limply in his support, not caring for the pain, feeling a burning sourness rise into her mouth. Her eyes squeezed shut against the vivid horror of the two brutal murders she had just witnessed, but no pressure of hot tears would wipe away the sight of the carnage that was indelibly stamped upon her eyelids. And Francho, Dios mío, Francho too—perhaps he too was lying somewhere on the cold stones, sprawled as grotesquely and irretrievably dead, blood congealed in his wounds, glazed blue eyes staring, eyes from which the soul of the man had forever fled.
In hysterical dread her constricted stomach heaved and she threw up, befouling her veil and mantle and part of the guard's mesh sleeve, but caring for nothing except that most of her heart may have died on this day too.
Chapter 30
Tendilla patted his horse's shining neck to quiet him as the animal reacted nervously to the unnatural silence of the mounted nobility spread in a glittering semi-circle before the deconsecrated little country mosque, renamed San Esteban, where the official surrender of Granada would take place. A cool January wind rattled the tree branches of a little patch of woods left unburned, and he heard from beyond it the usually muted flow of the Xenil River rushing louder than usual over its eroded rocks. The road, once a broad and lofty avenue of elms before the siege, had every eye fixed on it and on the gate of the red-walled city rising dreamlike against the white peaks of the sierras from which the Sultan's cortege would issue.
But Tendilla found his own attention more drawn by the packed masses of the Spanish forces standing along the road as far as the eye could see, ranged behind the stiff-backed, mounted figures of their monarchs and leaders. This was an army of gnarled and steadfast veterans of horse and foot and artillery standing proudly under their forests of lances and crosses and fluttering plumes and pennons, standing silently as if overawed by the imminence of the hoped for, prayed for, bloodily paid for end to their ten-year struggle.
The regal queen sat her richly caparisoned white jennet arrayed in warlike half-armor, yet the jeweled coif which formed a coronet around her head glowed no less than the pious glory shining from her face. Beside her a fully armored Ferdinand, whose helmet supported massive, blowing white plumes, could not fully master the triumphant gleam of power in his eyes, a power now evident to the world. Mounted on their right sat the younger Infanta, Caterina, the thin Infante, heir to the combined thrones, and the majestic, red-robed Cardinal Mendoza. On their left, along with Tendilla, waited the colorfully beplumed and steel-clad commanders whose valiant efforts had won this war, Cadiz, Medina-Sidonia, Cabra, Gonsalvo de Cordoba, and other honored leaders keeping their impatient, bedecked warhorses in line.
A murmur ran like a great, rustling wind across the ranks, and Tendilla turned his head and squinted toward the city. The gate had swung open, and a slow, sad cortege was starting on its way toward the bridge.
The Sultan himself was in the lead, riding alone on a black charger before an honor guard of his Nubians, a somber mantle dimming the brilliance of the embroidered tunic beneath it but a superb crown of gold and jewels set atop the folds of his turban. Behind, in open litters, were borne the Royal Household, and as they came closer Tendilla could see that the Dowager Ayaxa sat rigid, stonily, in coarse robes of mourning dabbed with ashes, while Morayama, looking bewildered, hugged one of her little daughters to her breast; and Yusef Comixa swayed, ill and old, in his litter. Beyond came in a long, cheerless procession squads of palace guards, the royal concubines in their gay carts, some aristocratic families who felt it safer to go into exile, slaves, servants, syncophants, and long wagons in which, Tendilla was sure, had been packed as many royal treasures as possible, gold vessels set with pearls, precious hangings stripped from inlaid walls, robes and rugs and scarves of gold and silver thread woven on Persian looms, and unknown, unimagined accumulated rich objects hidden for centuries behind the harem walls.
Viewing the lumpy mountains of goods hidden under the lashed coverings of the wagons, Tendilla mused that the Sultan would at least not live rudely in his banishment to a remote castle in the far Alpuxarras Mountains, although, interestingly, the baggage train was not as long as he expected. He was certain many priceless, rich, and historical objects must still remain in the Alhambra and Generalife palaces, abandoned or overlooked because of haste, of distracted grief. If only they could be protected from looting and dispersement.
Abruptly he turned his gaze away from the mournful column approaching them and tried to glimpse Francisco, who was somewhere in the ranks of specially honored caballeros fanning out behind him, his now clean-shaven features shielded by his helmet and the herb-plaster bandage tied to one side of his face. The man had returned several weeks ago from his unique and risky mission in Granada covered with glory, and yet his mouth seldom stretched into the insouciant grin of several years ago, and his stride, although firm, had lost the careless swagger of the cocky. Someone else might ascribe the knight's somberness simply to maturity, but Tendilla was too sensitive for that. There was much that weighed on the heart of his erstwhile protege and spy, and while he could guess at some of it, there seemed to be other distresses, unspoken and maybe even unrecognized, that robbed the startling cerulean eyes of their remembered clear and open brilliance.
Accompanied to within speaking distance of Los Reyes Católicos only by his Nubian honor guard, Boabdil the Unlucky reined in his horse face to face with his conquerors,
the grief of seven centuries of fierce ancestors written in the grooves of his young-old face and in his beaten, tragic eyes. Fingers to forehead, fingers to chest, he bowed his head in a humble salaam. Nothing sounded or moved in the heavy silence except the snuffle of horses and the whipping rainbow of plumes and insignia.
At that moment the Infante Juan, delicate, small-boned, encased in embossed armor almost engulfing him, led forward on a white mule a dark-eyed, handsome youth in a rich Spanish doublet and a cloth-of-silver turban. A wan smile spread over the Sultan's haggard face as the slim young man rode up to him with shining eyes, and even the unemotional Tendilla surprised himself by lowering his gaze for a moment, for so fierce and unspeakably sad was the embrace between the Great Sultan and the son whom he had given up for hostage as a little boy that only the most hardened could have watched unmoved.
Recovering himself, Boabdil rode forward, withdrew from his golden sash two large keys, and for a moment weighed them in his hand. Those in the forefront could see Morayama in her litter softly weeping, although the dowager Sultana Ayaxa and Grand Vizier Comixa stared silently straight ahead. But Abu Abdullah had been born a Sultan, and his dignity did not desert him. His voice was not loud, but it was unwavering as he spoke out. "We greet you, O conquering monarchs of Castile and Aragon. In surrender we greet you, and to you we offer our fealty. We give unto your hands, herewith, the keys to our beloved Granada and to the Royal Palace of the Alhambra. They are yours. Take them, and may Allah grant you the greatness to be as merciful and just to his people in peace as you have shown yourself to be strong in war. In this you will have the blessings of Heaven and the gratitude of your servant, Abu Abdullah." Only at the last did grief quaver the timbre slightly.
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