Court of Lions

by Jane Johnson

  “I’ve heard you hold the sultan of Granada prisoner here,” I said as evenly as I could manage.

  “Did you come to rescue him, all alone?” he asked lightly.

  I lifted my chin. “Hardly. I’m told he is guarded by the queen’s bravest soldier.”

  He gave a short laugh. “My instructions are to prevent his escape at all costs, even of his life, so it would be a foolish man who’d attempt to spring him from his prison.”

  “He’s not much use to your queen dead.”

  “Not many dead men are useful.”

  “But then again, he’s not much use to her alive and in this place.” That halted him in his stride. We had reached the top of a stair giving onto a broad thoroughfare along which castle servants bustled, carrying jugs and trays of food. The smell of fresh-roasted meat drifted to my nostrils and suddenly my stomach grumbled like a riled dog and I remembered I’d eaten nothing for two days. It was all I could do not to leap upon the next passing tray and wolf down the contents of every dish upon it.

  Gonzalo gave me his yellow stare. “What do you mean?”

  “His subjects will rally to the cause of Sultan Abu Abdullah—”

  “Do call him Boabdil: it’s so much easier. Or El Rey Chico.”

  The Boy King: was that what they were calling him? Poor Momo. “Boabdil, then,” I said, mangling the Arabic as the Great Captain had done. “If you hold Boabdil, it leaves the door open for far worse men to seize the throne. And then you will have a far worse problem. Men like al-Zaghal. Even now he’s mustering his forces and support.”

  He looked thoughtful. “Perhaps you’d prefer a different scenario to be played out?”

  “Perhaps I would.”

  “Might you share it with me?”

  I paused. “I might.”

  His smile was catlike.

  “But not until I’ve seen the sultan and had a chance to talk to him.”

  “I don’t have the authority to allow you to do that,” he said levelly.

  Now that we were standing still, with the busy folk of the castle flowing around us, he really did look like a caged beast, this Great Captain: a man completely out of place, unfitted to such surroundings. “I can’t imagine you relish spending long months—even years—stuck here in Porcuna,” I hazarded, remembering his mention of “dull duty.”

  “I can’t imagine any of us much want that,” the Great Captain said.

  “So take me to the sultan.”

  He gave me a long, considering look. “How do I know you’re not an assassin sent to remove him from the chessboard?”

  I appeared stricken. “What, with my bare hands? They’ve taken all else from me.”

  He glanced down. “You might brain him with that.”

  He really was very observant. “What, I could hop at him with my false leg as my only weapon? That’s certainly a picture to conjure with.” We both laughed.

  “All right,” he said. “Stand still. I’m sure they’ve done their job perfectly well, but I’ve learned never to take anything for granted.”

  I stood there while his hands moved expertly about my body, checking all those places in which a trained assassin might secrete the smallest weapon. But while others had been prurient, he was briskly professional. Even so, my heart beat out a hard tattoo.

  At last he stood back, his expression unreadable. “I’ll take you to see the count.”

  Up through the castle we went, past flickering sconces and walls hung with tapestries showing scenes of men at war or hunting. At various points guards leapt to attention, shouldering their halberds. I saw respect and admiration for the man who led me, even though he was young enough to be a son to many of them. He had clearly earned the name by which they knew him. But the Count of Cabra might be a different man entirely, one who might yet consign me to the Inquisition. I began to sweat again.

  I need not have worried. We found the Count of Cabra in his cups, even though it was barely past midday. He sprawled on a couch with a great mass of papers strewn over the floor before him, his big hand wrapped around the stem of a sturdy silver goblet. The Great Captain explained my presence, saying I was a young nobleman of African extraction, that I was an accredited translator, had served time in the Granadan court and would be helpful in persuading the captive to speak more freely than he had thus far. He would like to take me on as his aide, he said, while he further questioned the young sultan. With my help, he hoped he might find a way through the political web surrounding the sultan and his ties to his kingdom that might serve Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand well, and thus, reflecting his contribution in this difficult process, bring gratitude and acclaim to the count himself.

  During all this, the count did not appear to be paying much attention but instead applied himself to the contents of the goblet, which he refilled twice from a gigantic engraved flask set on the table in front of him. He was in his middle years, of solid build, shorter than me, with a curling brown beard and a meaty arm that showed no strain when he lifted the jug. A soldier run to fat, drinking himself half to death while others did his work for him, I judged. Thus, I was taken by surprise when he leaned forward and his brown eyes bored into me, and they were as sharp as an eagle’s. “So, Don Baraka,” he said. “You know the workings of the Granadan court well, do you?”

  I bowed in the Castilian style. “As well as any, sir.”

  “Are the rumours that Moulay Hasan has the falling sickness true?”

  Did the enemy have spies in Granada? “He does lose consciousness on occasion, sir, and fall twitching to the ground.”

  “I’ve heard he’s gone blind.”

  “His eyesight has been failing gradually for the past year. The doctors have examined him for the signs of cataracts, which they can cure with delicate surgery, but cataracts don’t appear to be the cause of Moulay Hasan’s affliction.”

  The count banged the goblet down on the table, so that the liquid within dashed over the edge onto the decorated surface, and I saw that it was water. “I knew it! So with Moulay Hasan incapacitated and his son in our hands, the infidel must be in some degree of disarray.” His eyes gleamed.

  “That would certainly be the case, sir, if it were not for the emir of Málaga.”

  “Al-Zaghal,” Don Gonzalo said grimly.

  “Yes, al-Zaghal. Moulay Hasan proved himself a great warrior over the years—indeed he killed thirty-odd men singlehandedly—”

  The Count of Cabra interrupted me. “That was by treachery and within the walls of his own palace, though, no?”

  So word of the Banu Serraj massacre had reached far and wide. “True, my lord; but in his prime he was also a great warrior on the battlefield. But al-Zaghal is more formidable by far. If you keep Sultan Abu Abdullah—or as you call him, Boabdil—here as your prisoner, rather than falling into disarray the Granadans will rally behind al-Zaghal, and he’ll seize the throne. He won’t sit peaceably within Granada’s borders. He’ll use the imprisonment of the young sultan as a rallying point for all good Muslims and carry holy war to you.”

  The count and captain exchanged glances. Neither looked entirely surprised. I plowed on. “But if you’re thinking to battle him with superior numbers, you should know you’ll have no open battles if al-Zaghal is the commander. He’ll use the ground and the people against you, and he’ll use them mercilessly. Once he has the whole army at his disposal he’ll devote himself to the fight and demand reinforcements from across the Muslim world. From across the sea in Morocco and the desert. From the Orient too: thousands of Turks fuelled by the zeal of their faith and all the money the Ottomans can put behind them. Rather than bringing the last remaining Islamic kingdom of Granada under her control, your queen will be fighting for her life.”

  I’d heard such declarations voiced many times within the walls of the Alhambra and had dismissed them first as dull and second as fantasy. But now I marshalled them authoritatively, and by the way the two men listened, they believed me.

  “Al-Z
aghal is wily and dangerous, a clever soldier,” I went on. “He is fanatical, and in the pursuit of his fanaticism he is ruthless and cruel. All he cares about is war: he loves it more than other men love their wives and children. Indeed, he has no interest in women, or in men either. When he’s not fighting, he’s praying; when he’s not praying, he’s fighting.”

  “He sounds a monster,” the Count of Cabra said. “And what about our captive, Boabdil?”

  “He is quite different to his uncle. There is nothing Abu Abdullah Mohammed loves more than his wife and child—apart maybe from the Alhambra itself, for he loves beauty above all things. Beauty and harmony and peace. I think if you were to allow me to talk with him, I could explain the benefits of paying tribute to your crown as his grandfather and ancestors once did.” You see, Momo, I was listening during those interminable lessons! “Then your army can devote its efforts to the business of dealing with his uncle.”

  This was treason, and I knew it. But I gave not a fig for religion, for strategy or holy war; for Granada’s independence or the furtherance of the Muslim cause. It might mean that Momo would be king in name only, but it would stop him going to war, remove his uncle as a threat and leave his mother with no grounds for argument. I would make him safe at all costs and return with him to the Alhambra, to live out our days in peace and sunshine.

  The Count of Cabra said something in rapid Castilian of which I could make out only a word here and there. At last the Great Captain turned to me. “Come, Baraka. We’ll go to see your little king.”

  21

  It had been months since I’d seen Momo, knocked unconscious by the giant enemy knight and led away on his captured warhorse. He was sitting by the tiny window, his nose practically pressed to the mullioned panes as if he yearned with every drop of blood to be out among those olive grove–scattered hills, under the wide blue bowl of the sky. He turned, and for a moment his face was in shadow, and it seemed to me that there was just the shell of a man sitting there: that the robes—more gorgeous than any I had seen him wear even in his own home—contained nothing but a dark phantom; that the Christians had stolen away his soul.

  Then he stood and came toward me, showing no sign of shackles or wound, and with no care for the presence of the foreign captain wrapped his arms around me and kissed me over and over—on the cheek, the forehead, the eyelids, the neck. In a sort of terrified rapture I accepted his embrace, trembling with the effort not to reciprocate with even greater passion, while at the same time trying to consign each touch of his lips to memory so that I might replay each over and over in times of need.

  At last he broke contact and we stood apart, gazing at each other. “I’ve never been so happy to see anyone in my life,” he said, just as I said, “You look well, my lord,” trying to set our meeting back on a less intimate path. But I could see from the expression on the Great Captain’s face that he had missed none of the signs of affection and was carefully noting every word and gesture we exchanged.

  “I’ve come to act as Don Gonzalo’s aide,” I told him, holding his gaze so that he knew to listen to me carefully. “To be a translator between the two of you and to help in the negotiation of your release.”

  Momo seemed surprised. “My release?” He looked to the Great Captain, who said in passable Arabic, “We not there yet, sidi. But hope, God willing, with help Don Baraka, we find way.”

  “Don Baraka.” Momo tipped his head toward me and gave me, out of the Great Captain’s sight, the minutest wink. “It will be my pleasure.”

  The chamber was comfortable and well-appointed. Thick Turkish carpets lay over the flagged floor, and the walls had been lined with falls of tabby silk from the markets of Persia. Upon the tables and in the angles of the tower stood tall silver candlesticks topped by fat yellow candles of good quality beeswax, by whose light Momo might read the handsome leather-bound Quran that lay open on a page upon which the calligrapher had been liberal with the inking of gold medallions. Someone had gone to inordinate effort to make Momo feel at home. All he lacked was his throne, his palace, with its gardens and pools, the loving arms of his wife and his little boy. And his freedom.

  Well, I would do my best to restore as many of them as possible to him.

  The trouble was, I could come up with no permutation by which he could have them all.

  The ride between Porcuna and Granada was long and hard and beset with danger. The Great Captain offered two guards to accompany me, but I refused them. The business I was on could see me killed by all manner of folk with differing vested interests in the deal I was trying to broker. Some on both sides would prefer to see Momo dead, including his father and those Christian zealots for whom the only good Muslim was a dead Muslim. “I’d rather not draw attention to myself,” I told him, and went to arrange my disguises: as a Catholic priest for the first part of the journey and as a travelling wisewoman in the emirate. Superstition can play a handy role when you’re travelling alone: no one wants to risk their immortal soul or draw djinn down on themselves. And it’s remarkable how many people will offer confession in return for indulgences or charms. A black robe did for both, with the visual additions of a Bible and a crucifix for the first, and kohl, earrings and plant stains on the lips and hands for the second. A bag of rat bones, some coloured pebbles and some dried bees I took with me for my wisewoman act: the plants I would pass off as my remedies I could gather along the route. This play-acting would have been fun had it not been in deadly earnest. I carried a sword beneath the robe, and a dagger in the top of my false limb.

  Moulay Hasan had offered a significant ransom for the return of his son. “The queen is considering it,” Don Gonzalo told me. “It’s a handsome offer.”

  “You can’t let them give Momo up to his father—he’ll kill him!” The way Moulay Hasan had phrased the offer—on his feet or on his back, it makes no odds to me—told me the whole tale. He would prefer his inconvenient son to be dead: all he wanted was to remain sultan within the walls of the Alhambra in the arms of the witch Zoraya, safe from attack from the enemy and from any insurrection of the people, who had no love for him. His power was waning as fast as his health, and he knew it.

  “You had best persuade the Lady Aysha to come up with a better proposal, then,” he said solemnly, helping me onto my mule.

  Of course I did not go directly to Aysha on my arrival at the city gates of Granada. Instead I found a ragged boy and paid him a silver dirham to fetch Qasim Abdelmalik to meet me down by the river near the city gate at the bottom of the hill.

  I sat with my one good foot cooling in the chilly waters of the Darro, wishing I could as easily quell the angry buzzing-bee sensation in the other, missing, limb.

  “Las bes, lalla.” Good day, lady. Keeping a respectful distance, the vizier sat down beside me. “I see your funds are running low, Blessings. Is that why you’re back?” His eyes were on my gold-denuded false leg as it protruded from the hiked-up robe.

  “Times are hard,” I said. Then I told him of my errand, and of what I had learned in snippets from listening at the Count of Cabra’s door and from talking to people on my way south. It appeared that many councillors at the royal court in Córdoba argued that releasing Momo—a virile young king—back into Granada would be foolish while Hasan sat the throne, given that the old sultan was too ill to ride to war; but others argued that his release would be “like a fire eating away the entrails of the enemy” and that they could take advantage of any civil war that might erupt among the Muslims.

  Qasim nodded to all this, as if my words accorded with his own reports from Córdoba. I was sure I was not his only ears and eyes in the royal court, but he said nothing, as if salting it all away. He knew, of course, exactly how much Hasan had offered. “We can’t match it.”

  “But we have to!”

  “Hasan holds the keys to the palace treasury. The infidels need gold for their wars, to fulfill their promises to the pope in Rome. We don’t have any leverage.” He sucked his teeth. “I
suppose we could let Hasan make the deal and then bribe their guards to release Momo into the hands of our men, not his. We’re all just Moors to them—it would be relatively easy to sow confusion. Then the Castilians get their gold and we get the prince.”

  “The sultan,” I corrected him angrily. “Anyway, that won’t work: they are very punctilious.” And I can’t risk losing him. “Perhaps the sultana could call upon the people of Loja: it is a rich town.”

  “Sultana?” He laughed. “Momo is no longer sultan, so Mariam is no sultana. And I don’t think Loja will offer a tin piece for young Mohammed’s release, not after losing their beloved pasha. Old Ali Attar, his head split down to the neck, died a martyr to the cause in the battle at Lucena.” He watched as I took this in. “Poor Mariam. She’s come apart, losing her father, her husband and her home at a stroke. I would like to see the poor girl smile again, but I can’t see a way through this puzzle. Our coffers are empty.”

  I didn’t believe him. “Let’s see what Aysha says,” I told him, meaning: If you don’t come up with a way to save him, I will tell her everything. We locked eyes and he held my gaze coolly, but I could almost hear his thoughts buzzing as furiously as the phantom bees in my missing leg.

  “There may be another weight we can add to the scales,” he said at last. “Though it may be more than anyone involved in the bargain wishes to pay.”

  When he told me, I could hardly take the words in for shock. “She won’t agree to that.”

  “She must. Besides, Aysha is the ultimate pragmatist when it comes to getting her way. She means to wreak vengeance on her husband, which means freeing Momo to spearhead her war against him—on whatever terms that takes.”

  “Momo will never agree to it.”

  “Ah, Blessings, that is where you come in.”

  With her husband and his whore re-established behind the high red walls of the Alhambra, Lalla Aysha had moved her retinue, including Mariam and little Ahmed, across the River Darro into a fortified house on the top of the Albayzín that had a tower from which there was a clear view across to the Nasrid palaces, so that she could send curses winging their way to her reviled husband. She agreed to the proposal after only a brief explosion.