The Apprentice's Masterpiece

by Melanie Little

I translate with ease.

  Isabella’s man thanks me and says, “You may go.”

  I don’t know what I expected.

  That he’d lay his broad sword on my shoulder

  and knight me right there?

  Well, maybe.

  Still, I’m not disappointed.

  Rather, I must chide myself

  for feeling apart and—I’ll admit it—

  aglow.

  Miracle

  The story is legend as soon as it happens.

  I’ll try to recount it as best I can.

  The man is brought to the tent

  of the King and Queen.

  But Fernando is napping. Even in wartime,

  his siesta’s supreme. Isabella defers

  till her husband should wake.

  The Muslim is put in a neighboring tent

  while everyone waits. Unknown to the guards,

  a lady is there with the Portuguese prince.

  Who’s to say what they’re doing?

  The Moor comes across them.

  He understands nothing they say.

  But he sees their rich clothing. He believes

  they’re the monarchs. Those whom he seeks.

  He pulls from his mantle a dagger

  and stabs the young prince in the head.

  Next, he goes for the lady.

  But her screams bring the guards

  and their swords. He is quickly dead.

  When the Queen hears of this

  too-close brush with her end

  she falls to her knees.

  A miracle is declared.

  God saves the lives

  of his rulers on Earth yet again.

  In this way the Queen

  tells herself that her deeds

  please God’s eyes.

  Even those, like the autos-da-fé, that are so pitiless

  hardened men look away.

  Commerce

  Miracle or no, the treacherous try

  sours the mood in the camp.

  The King’s catapult, a dragon of wood,

  volleys the corpse of the trickster

  right over the wall.

  It showers fresh blood as it goes.

  The Malagans are quick

  to return the grim gift.

  A prisoner from inside—a Christian—

  is sent out on a mule. His throat has been cut.

  He hangs like a flower long dead

  from the beast’s back.

  I thought, as a slave,

  I knew how it felt

  to be traded about

  like a slab of cold meat.

  But clearly some commerce

  is worse.

  I must make myself scarce.

  What if they think I

  was part of that trick?

  What, though, is my life really worth? Even to me?

  My fear tells the truth:

  it’s worth something.

  And my heart hammers this:

  I might want to live.

  Gunpowder

  It was Muslims, they say,

  who first brought it to al-Andalus.

  This is how they are thanked.

  An explosion is sprung near a tower.

  A key to their stronghold is breached.

  Such is the wisdom

  of murderous gifts.

  Hail the Moor-slayer

  The men in the camp rally so suddenly

  you’d think they’d been stalled there

  a day, not three months.

  Raised on the ramparts, the proud ensign

  of Santiago. Saint Iago, renowned slayer of Moors.

  Ramon has a doll in his form.

  A voice cries, “By Santiago!”

  “Santiago!” the men in the camp answer as one.

  The name vibrates through me

  as though I myself have shouted it out.

  Terms

  The wait is not over.

  Delegations come out

  from the vanquished city

  to talk out the terms of surrender.

  None of us knows what is said.

  But each time the Malagans emerge

  from the royal tent, their faces have lengthened.

  They look afraid.

  Three times they come.

  Three times they go back.

  I suppose they’re among the city’s elite.

  But their clothes hang like rags.

  Are my uncles, as merchants of silk,

  among these brave men?

  I must find my moment.

  But daren’t approach.

  No matter.

  The moment finds me.

  No

  A voice barks, “You there.”

  I don’t move. “You there! Boy!”

  Why do I know it means me?

  I should ignore it.

  But, like a falcon,

  I’m trained all too well.

  I look up.

  “You are that translator, no?”

  It’s the Queen’s man.

  “Come, ride with me.

  Our sovereigns can use you.”

  And the man sweeps me onto

  the back of his horse before

  I can agree with him:

  No.

  Sight

  I wish I didn’t have eyes,

  to see such things.

  Bodies—my people—litter the streets.

  And animals, dead and rotting, everywhere.

  I pass by a horse with its side torn for food.

  A woman lies sobbing, crunched in a heap.

  When I approach her, she jolts to her feet.

  Flees like she thinks I’ll cut off her head.

  And the sound. It’s strange, a high hum,

  as from a guitar with only one string.

  But it’s nothing like music.

  I can’t stop my eyes.

  They look to the bodies.

  The sound’s made by flies.

  To think I once cringed at the thought

  of soldiers—alive ones—

  who don’t favor baths.

  The Fortress of Gibralfaro

  A much different sound from the hilltop,

  last holdout of the Malagan Moors.

  Huzzah!

  The fortress itself has surrendered.

  The crescent-moon banner is torn from the ramparts

  and impaled on the blade of a sword.

  In its place goes a flag with the sign of the cross.

  I hear strains of the Christian Te Deum,

  their triumphal hymn.

  My rider dismounts and he kneels at the sight.

  I kneel too—for a minute:

  then use the chance of bowed heads

  as the wings for my flight.

  Doors

  Heralds move through the city,

  proclaiming.

  Malaga is now

  a part of Castile.

  They charge everyone

  to stay in their houses.

  By the good offices

  of the merciful Queen,

  food and drink will be brought

  to the door of each family.

  Stray from your homes,

  and you’ll miss your chance.

  And what of us vagabonds

  without even a door?

  The Torment of Bells

  It’s true once again—

  the Queen trails decorum behind her

  the way ships leave a wake

  in the water.

  All kneel as she passes.

  Her long, fur-trimmed mantle

  drags Allah knows what

  through the still-gory streets.

  The monarchs make speeches

  from the high balconies

  of the alcazaba.

  The Queen’s theme is constant:

  the war is but one more great hymn

  to the glory of God.

  Her confessor, the Friar Torquemada,

  sit
s at her side like a purring cat.

  He is now Chief Inquisitor—

  and the most pitiless man,

  many say, in the land.

  Small wonder blood flows like water

  when the Queen has advisers like that!

  King Fernando is much more concerned with the present.

  His attention is turned to “God’s foes.”

  Some of the conquered Muslims

  have accepted baptism. They’ve become “Moriscos.”

  But more resist it.

  The King calls for all minarets—the towers of mosques—

  to be turned into belfries. The cry

  of the muezzin shall be replaced with bells.

  “Let the sounds of their ringing be torment,” he shouts,

  “to those infidels who refuse to take Christ.

  Let the bells peal through Malaga the rest of its days.”

  Bells

  I think how Ramon would smirk at this speech.

  At last, his equation of torture and church bells confirmed!

  And by no less a source than our King himself.

  Mercy

  The Christians are famous for mercy, you know.

  Their prophet, like ours, preached about that.

  But I see few signs of mercy so far.

  Never mind the words of Fernando,

  ringing, along with the bells, in my ears.

  Infidels. Torment.

  Compared to their actions,

  those words are a kiss.

  One bright day, a Christian, a traitor,

  is killed in the plaza.

  Men take turns poking him

  with long, steel-tipped sticks,

  much the way picadors torture bulls in the ring.

  They keep on with it even after he dies.

  But you’d be surprised.

  Death sometimes takes

  a very long time.

  The Cabbage

  I walk through what’s left of Malaga, seeking my uncles.

  I’m losing all hope. The few people

  I meet who will talk to me

  have not heard of them. And they look at me

  as if I am mad. Why search for life

  amidst so much death?

  When business dried up in our Cordoba shop,

  food was all we could think of.

  I once wrote pastry when I meant to write paltry,

  marring a till-then clean page of script.

  During that time I brought home a cabbage.

  It was given to me by a woman whose stall

  in the market we’d shopped at—when we could shop.

  On this day, I offered some lines

  of a poem as a trade.

  “All right,” said the woman, “but put me in your verse.”

  So I wrote a few lines in praise of Consuela, and her beauty

  (not true), and prayed that the cabbage would prove

  to be worth it.

  (That, by the way, was my first go at a poem!

  No wonder I find them so hard. Perhaps

  I’ve been cursed by the muse for that use!)

  The outside of the cabbage was wilted—nothing new there.

  But each leaf, pulled back, uncovered more rot.

  I peeled it in private, not wanting the others

  to see how I’d failed.

  Its center was black with decay.

  So goes today’s journey. I keep expecting

  the horror to end, but it won’t.

  No matter how deep in the city

  I go, the alleys all stink with dead things.

  I push to the outskirts.

  Night is falling.

  At last I find a cave in a hill.

  Just as I’m falling asleep

  light shines in my eye.

  Discovered, so soon?

  Am I ready to die?

  Hunger

  What I see is the smallest of hands.

  It barely fits round the butt of the torch.

  I lift up my gaze.

  A girl, no older than six, peers into my face.

  When our eyes meet, she smiles.

  She speaks Arabic! But not the sort that belongs

  to books and discussions. This Arabic is

  the sound of the streets, and the shops,

  and the caves. The sound of my mother.

  She speaks it so matter-of-factly I almost believe,

  for a moment, I have heard

  no other tongue in my life.

  “Good evening, my brother.

  Have you brought us some food?”

  I sit up. Now I see, in the dim light of the flame,

  what I hadn’t before.

  A whole family is here, huddled and mute,

  more like some jag of rock in the cave

  than people. They’re that silent and still.

  And their faces—

  so shrunken with hunger

  their eyes dwarf their cheeks.

  I open my bag. In the morning I stowed there

  my ration of food, as has been my practice in camp.

  One never knows what the day ahead holds.

  I tear it in five. Such pure joy from crumbs!

  The children are grinning so wide

  I can very near watch as each measly morsel

  tumbles down their throats.

  The youngest keeps chewing even when nothing

  is left in his mouth but a few budding teeth.

  The Next Morning

  The children beam at me,

  clearly expecting more magical food.

  I cast down my eyes.

  Feel like the rotten core of that cabbage

  as I shuffle my way from their lives.

  A man near the docks pulls pages from books.

  He tears these to strips. He will boil them in water,

  he tells me, until they have softened to rags.

  He can wear them that way. The nights are cold here.

  A sign on his cart reads, “Books and Letters.”

  It’s in Arabic.

  I take a breath, then offer

  myself as a scribe.

  He laughs in my face.

  “Do you have nothing else but your skinny self?”

  My heart flops.

  I tell him.

  “A book!” he scoffs. “You can see what use

  I’ve for those things right now.

  In Arabic too, I’ll just bet.

  Tell me, young clown, who in this place would

  buy it from me? Have you no sword

  made of feathers you’d like to sell me instead?

  That would be more practical!”

  But I show him which book. He actually gasps.

  For one fleeting moment his eye’s candle’s not out.

  Now he’s eager to lose me.

  “Take it,” he says. Shoves a single maravedi in my hand.

  “Good fortune to you finding something to buy.”

  The Cup You Hold

  Of course I opened Hafiz one last time.

  One line to divine the whole rest of my life.

  Do I really believe in such nonsense?

  Of course not.

  Of course.

  Here’s what he said:

  Respect the cup you hold. The clay it’s made from

  was the skulls of buried kings.

  I liked that. It made sense, especially

  for thinking of the past.

  But what did it tell of my future?

  I’ll admit it. I cheated.

  I opened the book once again.

  How can you blame me? I was giving him up.

  But Hafiz had the last laugh.

  Don’t be surprised at Fortune’s twists and turns.

  That wheel has spun a thousand times before.

  If I ever have a home of my own,

  perhaps I’ll nail that to my door.

  Cattle Call

  Seven days since the capture.

  Finally,
the call comes.

  All must repair to the great courtyard

  of the alcazaba. Ten thousand Malagans—

  children among them—swarm to the castle.

  Soldiers preside from the ramparts.

  We are framed on all sides.

  Stubborn hope in the courtyard.

  For hundreds of years

  Muslims, Christians, and Jews

  have shared the peninsula

  upon which Spain rests.

  What’s more, this new jewel of Castile

  needs people to fill it. If we promise

  to live like good subjects, what should we fear?

  The woman beside me is not so convinced.

  Might they not just be stockpiling

  fuel for their fires?

  Gifts

  We are, every one, to be slaves.

  The Malagans have earned, says the King,

  this dreadful sentence

  with their stubborn hearts.

  What some call stubborn,

  others call brave.

  This is their home, after all!

  Or, it was.

  One-third of the captives,

  the luckiest, will go to Africa.

  In exchange, Christian slaves

  will be freed and returned.

  Another third will be kept by the Crown.

  This is payment, you see, for the high cost of war.

  The remainder will go to the crusaders.

  Each noble soldier who mounted this siege

  will get one as a gift.

  I look at the footmen who stand

  on the walls. Noble?

  I wonder.

  They laugh at our gaunt,

  stricken faces.

  What kind of master

  will I serve this time round?

  Only Money!

  Even cramped like cattle

  into this square, many of us

  still perform prayers.

  Have they now been answered?

  Fernando has given

  a dribble of hope.

  If the Malagans can raise—as a group—

  half a million maravedis,

  they may buy back their freedom.

  We’re given nine months.

  Every man, woman, and child

  must give to the Crown

  a full accounting of all that they own.

  Then the Crown will inform us

  if it is enough.

  No one sleeps.

  One man stands on the shoulders

  of a friend to be heard.

  Rich and poor—we shall pool

  our resources. How can our goods

  be divided when our fates are one?