Court of Lions

by Jane Johnson

  A noise behind them made her turn, to find Omar pouring tea from a great height into the little glasses. The stream of tea sparkled golden in a shaft of sunlight. Dust motes danced in the air like something elemental—atoms at the beginning of the universe. Kate felt an otherworldly sensation shiver through her, as if she had stepped into another time. For an instant the scene spun and blurred: she thought she saw a figure in a ruby-red robe standing at the mirador, long braided hair falling down her back, as gold as the tea…

  “Here,” Omar said, offering her a glass.

  She blinked, and stepped forward to take it from him, brought sharply back to the moment.

  Fragrant vapour coiled up from the glass in an elegant helix. Kate took a sip. The tea was hot and sweet and quite delicious. She tried not to think about the huge bar of sugar she’d seen going into the pot.

  “They say this tower is where Sultan Moulay Hasan’s Christian wife lived,” Abdou said. “Her name was Isobel de Solis, and if it had not been for her, the kingdom of Granada would never have fallen.”

  “Dangerous creatures, Christian women!”

  She’d only meant it as a lighthearted remark, but Abdou’s expression changed and he said something to Omar that sounded harsh and angry. She caught the name Isobel, or was it Isabella? Oh no…When it came to “Christian women,” the worst in his eyes must surely be Isabella of Castile, who had instigated the Spanish Inquisition and purged the kingdom of Muslims and Jews with terrible determination and cruelty. Kate felt as if she had deliberately provoked him. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  He turned his dark gaze upon her and she realized he was not as young as she’d thought him. There were deep lines between his nose and the outer corners of his mouth, crow’s feet around his eyes.

  “What do you have to apologize for?”

  And suddenly he smiled and his whole face was transformed, as if filled with inner light, and she fell in love with such a ridiculous sensation of free fall that it was as if she were in a dream, plummeting to the ground.

  She realized she was staring. With terrible, conscious effort she tore her eyes from him. “I must go,” she said abruptly, panicking.

  “Sorry, sorry.”

  She thrust her half-empty glass back at Omar and fled.

  The bodega that night was heaving with customers, but Kate felt as though she flowed between the tables, the trays and glasses balanced in her hands as if she followed the steps of some ancient dance. She was precise, efficient, graceful throughout service, and the busier it got the better she moved, as if waitressing had that night been raised to a higher art, as if she were a priestess ministering to adherents of a faith that prized wine and tapas and loud joy above all things.

  Toward the end of her shift she sensed that someone was watching her, the gaze not hostile exactly, but not entirely friendly either. It was an uncanny sensation. She turned to find Jimena regarding her, head slightly tilted, black eyes glittering in the candlelight.

  “So,” her boss said as Kate made her way toward the kitchen with her collection of empty glasses and bottles, “what’s got into you, Anna? Or should I ask who’s got into you?”

  She gave Kate a nasty smile, but for once Kate did not feel intimidated. “I’ve had a good day.”

  Jimena did not blink. “Hmm,” she said. “Don’t enjoy yourself too much. Life’s about more than having fun.”

  “I meant work,” Kate said coolly, holding her stare. “It’s good to be busy.”

  At last it was Jimena who looked away. That was a first. “Well, you’re not finished yet,” she snapped. “You still have the outdoor tables to clear. One of the German scum vomited out there: you can clean that up.” She pivoted on her heel before Kate could point out the outdoor tables were not her responsibility, and had a cigarillo already lit before she even reached the door.

  Kate watched Jimena’s broad back disappear into the courtyard, her earlier satisfaction evaporating as fast as beer stains in the sun. How much longer could she do this? Working hand to mouth for someone who so despised both her employees and her customers? Perhaps she would think about looking for another waitressing job. Maybe do something else entirely. Maybe even move on…

  An image of Abdou came to her: his wary glance, the careful way he placed the fragments of tile as if each were infinitely precious, part of the jigsaw of life itself. The warm, floaty feeling she had experienced since surrendering to the geometric mysteries of the ceiling in the Hall of the Abencerrages overtook her again. A sort of shimmer of sensation, as if the world trembled with immanence, with hidden promise.

  “And you can forget about tomorrow as a day off. I need Juan to come with me to the suppliers.”

  Jimena’s voice broke so sharply into her reverie that Kate dropped the glass she had been about to set down. It shattered on the floor between them, a perfect symbol for the joyous moment Jimena had just destroyed. While the Spanish woman poured invective upon her, Kate bent to gather the shards, reminded with almost hallucinatory force of that night she had argued with James, and broken the crystal wineglass.

  James did this to me, she thought. He made me terrified of everything and everyone. And especially of myself. He made me into a coward.

  He had sensed her weakness and turned it upon her, as bullies always will. Suddenly she felt rage bubble up inside her. How dared he treat her like some medieval woman? He had tried—no, he had succeeded—in terrorizing her: first by little manipulations, by criticism and manoeuvres to cut her off from others, and from everything she had always prized about herself—her rationality, her intelligence, her independence. He had terrorized her into following the narrow path he laid down for her, enforcing his will upon her as effectively as any religious inquisitor. Changed her hair, her clothes, her entire way of life. Made her learn the catechism, go through the whole Rite of Christian Initiation, promise to raise their children as Catholics, take vows she didn’t believe in; and worse, far worse. The realization of all he had done, and all he had stolen from her, made her hotly furious.

  But the nagging question remained: How had he found Jess? The two had barely spoken, and she knew he did not have her sister’s address: Kate had invited her and Evan to the wedding by phone—they were her only guests, the few others being James’s customers or in some way linked to him. So what had caused Jess—usually so steadfast—to flee to Cornwall in the middle of the night with a toddler? And then, another realization: Jess must have been protecting her by being so evasive, sure that Kate was not strong enough to cope with the truth. Well, she would have to be strong enough: it was time to grow up. She would not have Jess protect her anymore, would not have her carry the burden that was rightfully her own. She had to get the full story out of her sister one way or another. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, she would call her and demand to know.

  And after that I will go back up to the Alhambra, she told herself fiercely, and find Abdou and talk to him, make this weird feeling I have about him go away. He’s just a man, after all. And perhaps I’ll have a coffee with Khadija, too.

  Points of connection. Little anchors to catch her from drifting into a tide of despair. As she climbed the alleys of the Albayzín back to her apartment, she smiled. Today Granada felt a little more like home, and she felt more like the woman she had once been.

  Of course it could not last.

  13

  Blessings

  Towers. All that year and the next my life revolved about towers. I grew to hate the very sight of them, looming ugly and arrogant over the landscape, marking men’s doomed attempts to possess the world. There were times when I yearned for the desert, dreamed of it, over and over. The great empty expanses under a hot bowl of blue sky. Endless and eternal and untouched by the hand of man. No one built towers there, or if they tried, the towers soon fell.

  But of course I couldn’t leave Momo. I was bound to him more tightly than the false foot was bound to my poor stump.

  When at last I emerged from my poison fever, it
was to a world gone mad. Momo had been locked in the Tower of the Moon by his own father. Word in the palace corridors was that Moulay Hasan would declare his son guilty of treason and have him beheaded: Zoraya was determined to have her own sons declared his official heirs. Soon Aysha and her women had joined the prince as captives in the tower. But even Moulay Hasan would not slay a woman: it was Momo I was worried about.

  “Can’t you save him?” I beseeched Qasim, and he sucked his lip.

  “I’ve tried to speak for him, but the sultan’s in a dangerous mood. He thinks there all sorts of conspiracies to bring him down. The more his eyesight fails, the more time he spends with her. He keeps talking about the prophecy, says if he removes the prince’s head, Momo will be unable to take the throne, let alone lose the kingdom, and that’ll destroy the astrologers’ prophecies. He’s obsessed with the Christian monarchs, convinced that they’re planning to kill us all—Moor and Jew, every unbeliever—in their fires. They’ve already burned seven conversos in Seville. And that’s only the start, he says. I think he’s right. We’ll soon be at war.”

  I had already heard that the foreign king and queen had set up an inquisition, putting Jews, Muslims and those who had in name converted to their religion to the question to test whether they were guilty of heresy, but I had been too taken up with the matters of my own heart to be much concerned about the affairs of others far away. Yet Seville was not far away. Seville was only three days’ ride from Granada.

  “Perhaps he is right,” I said. “But surely if we go to war, Granada will need all its warriors. Prince Mohammed is a fine swordsman, better than his father and his uncle.” I had watched him showing off to Rachid, even though his brother—a boy who could not hold a sword without cutting himself, who would, given the choice, rather sit in the shadows with the women, sewing dainties—had no interest in his battle skills. I had seen Momo dance across the practice yard in the Alcazaba, his blade flashing in the sun, laying one opponent after another on his backside. I had revelled in his thrilling beauty, for it was just a game. But war was not a game.

  Qasim sighed. “When did our people ever put aside their differences to fight a common foe?”

  Your people are not my people, I thought. My people were always fighting one another, tribe against tribe. We had no common foe, just neighbours we hated. Perhaps, it struck me then, people of all kinds were more alike than unalike.

  So Qasim, who had been my best hope, would do nothing. I would have to do something myself.

  That night I crept into the Hall of the Ambassadors, that great audience room where the sultan held court. Moonlight muted the colours in the stained-glass windows high up under the cupola. The sconces burned low; the braziers had been extinguished: it was almost dark in there and the darkness weighed upon me. Above, I could feel the massive rectangular tower rising into the night sky, and below it the dark emptiness of the Darro gorge. I would have been in there too, I thought, if Zoraya’s poison hadn’t laid me low.

  Every alcove I passed I felt sure the sultan was hiding in it. I ran into the corridor on the other side of the hall, my heart thumping, and nearly dropped my tray. The guard barely glanced at me—veil, robe, earrings, tray and all—but waved me through. Aziza, one of the sultana’s maids, took the tray from me.

  “I must speak to the prince,” I whispered urgently.

  She opened her mouth to castigate me, then narrowed her eyes. “Is that you, Blessings?” I nodded and she grinned. “I will fetch him.”

  “I can’t.” He looked aghast.

  “You made me do it.”

  “That’s different.”

  I didn’t press him on that. “But what does it matter in what manner you escape?”

  “If I am caught dressed as a woman, I’ll never live it down.”

  “But you will live.”

  “I can’t do it. Not like that.”

  “You’ll just meekly go to your slaughter, like a sheep at Eid?” I was angry now.

  “And what will he do to you if he finds you here in my place? He dislikes you greatly, says you’re a bad influence.”

  He does? This was news to me. “I don’t care about me: I care about you. He’ll have you beheaded. Even Qasim says so.”

  I saw his eyes go hooded as he considered. “Even so,” he said at last, “this is not how I would wish to be remembered.”

  By now I was almost crying with frustration. I was starting to take off my veil, when the guard shouted, “Hurry up in there!”

  Momo pushed me toward the door. “Go.”

  Two nights later I was back with a different idea.

  This time he listened to me.

  I waited, shivering, near the top of the gorge. Above me, the Tower of the Moon rose massive and malignant. I couldn’t even see all of it from where I stood, pressed awkwardly against the cold, jagged rock on a narrow ledge. My mule whickered and I glared at it. It ignored me. Farther down in the valley the horse I had brought for the prince shuffled its feet, pulling against the picket post. I stared up again, waiting for the candle to show in the window.

  Even though the dungeon windows were the lowest in the tower, they still seemed an impossibly long way above me. No one had ever bothered to bar those windows: what need when the fall would be fatal? I hoped I had left enough cloth. The guards had checked through the laundry I brought, but, finding nothing except women’s robes and veils, had let me through.

  At last a light! The darkness of the tower made the candlelit face glow as if it were floating. I whistled—shrill and piercing: the call of a bat—and it returned to me from above. I saw the first section of knotted cloth come down and down, bobbing against the rock walls. Not long enough. Two shrill calls. The rope jerked back.

  The minutes stretched. I clutched the cold rock, trying to master my fear. If I fell from here, it would not be at the loss of a foot or even a limb. I swayed, and felt the leather belt tighten. Having inched out here, I had fastened it about my waist, looped a scarf around a sapling and back through the belt; but still my situation felt precarious.

  Down the rope came again, knot by knot, closer and closer, hanging farther and farther out from the cliff. I worried I would not be able to get hold of it, but the wind was kind. I caught the lowest knot. Then I gave the signal: three bat calls.

  I imagined Momo squirming through that tiny window. What if he got stuck? Worse, what if he missed the rope? My heart squeezed at the awful possibilities. He would fall and die and I would lose him! Worst of all, it would be my own fault. He had entrusted his life to me. That thought had warmed me yesterday: it chilled me now.

  The rope in my hands began to jerk. He was out of the window, all his weight on the knotted cloth. Fervently, I hugged the end. I must anchor it to stop him plummeting to his death. Again I felt the pull of the dark space below me, hungry for a fall, full of djinn. He is strong, I told myself, to push the demons away. He is fit and young. His sword training has given him hard muscle. He will not fall.

  But if he does? the wind whispered.

  If he does, he falls in an attempt to escape his father: he will not die in some gruesome spectacle over which Zoraya can gloat. His blood will not stain the Court of Lions but will seep down into the River Darro and run through the kingdom of Granada. People will wash their faces and their clothes in the water and think of him…

  The jerking grew stronger, threatening to tumble me off my perch. When I looked up, I could see the soles of his feet, pale against the dark cloth, as flexible as a monkey’s, gripping the rope. The rope twirled and I saw him shoot a foot out and push away from a jut of rock. Then he disappeared into shadow and I could not see him at all.

  I looked across to the Albayzín. Were there watchers on their roofs, straining their eyes against the darkness, their attention caught by a flicker of movement where usually there was none?

  “Blessings!”

  Momo’s urgent whisper brought me back to myself. The rope jerked like a living thing, and then he was, b
y necessity, in my arms. The smell of him—sweat and incense—filled my senses. We stood there on that small ledge for a long moment, bound not only by relief and excitement but also by the rope. His amber eyes were full of night as he gazed at me. “Thank you, my friend. You really are my Special Guardian.”

  A tremor of intent ran through me, my body knowing before my mind did that I was about to reach to kiss him, but as my lips grazed his, he turned his head aside and without a word let go of the veils that linked us and made his way carefully along the ledge toward the tethered animals.

  My hands were shaking so much I could hardly undo my knots. He had broken away from my kiss. Was he angry with me? I wished I had done nothing at all, just played the faithful servant, kept my distance, behaved with decorum. Perhaps he would be cold with me now. He was, after all, a married man, and a prince: and I—I was…

  I did not know what I was. I occupied an indefinable space in the world, in his life. More than a friend, less than a man. A Special Guardian: but a cripple.

  The missing limb released a jolt of pain to remind me of my foolishness. It weighed as heavy as lead as I trudged along the ledges after him. My heart beat inside my rib cage. If I opened my mouth, it would emerge, flapping away like a small leathery bat.

  We made for Guadix, a long night’s ride to the east, where Momo’s mother had assured us we would be welcomed. Set in a desert of jagged limestone, bare earth and scrub below the Sierra Nevada, it was not a welcoming place, but I had rarely been so happy as when we entered that dour fortress.