Court of Lions

by Jane Johnson

  I wasn’t listening to his merchant tally by now. My slow brain was working its way over and over those three little words. “He’s not dead?”

  Qasim sighed. “Come and see for yourself—he’s asking for you.”

  He led me up out of the cells. Very quickly it became clear that I had been in the safest place during the enemy bombardment. Dust and rubble and broken glass lay everywhere, smashed pottery, strewn tapestries, shards of wood, pools of blood out of which trailed dark streaks and a mess of footprints. A hole had been blown clean through one wall: a glance out of it into what was left of the town below stopped me in mid-stride. The outer wall lay in ruins, the stables had been flattened; the smithy, the barracks, the grain store, all were gone, reduced to piles of stone and kindling. And over it all presided an eerie silence, as the survivors carried hastily shrouded bodies away for burial. Up on the Albohacen, barely in view, the guns that had wrought this destruction lay quiet. Over it all hung clouds dark with impending rain, casting further gloom on the scene.

  “Blessings, you’re safe! I wouldn’t believe Qasim till I’d seen you with my own eyes.” Momo spoke with a slur, lying on a divan, half propped up by cushions, half slumped, looking more dead than alive. A huge bruise covered half his face and his nose had clearly been broken. Someone had roughly stitched up a wound that ran from temple to chin. His left arm was encased in bandages that disappeared under the loose brocade robe that had been thrown over him: he held a pen in his right hand.

  “I can read most of it, but some of the terms I’m not familiar with.” He beckoned me near to read the document he had been poring over.

  Surrender terms: and not just for Loja but for the whole of the northern region he had been vouchsafed by the council of elders. The people of the area were offered safe passage if they wished to leave; if they preferred to stay, they must swear allegiance to the Catholic monarchs and undertake to pay swingeing taxes. Ferdinand and his men would garrison the town; Momo would surrender his royal person and a select group of his nobles into the custody of the conqueror. With some effort Momo crafted the usual provisos: that the population who remained—be they Muslim or Jew—be allowed to continue to live according to their own beliefs, without fear of persecution or violent coercion or conversion, and that the Prophet’s laws remain in place. Then eight surviving noblemen, and Qasim and myself, accompanied the litter bearing Momo out to the tent of the enemy king, which was pitched in a clearing on the other side of the Genil River. My prince leaned heavily on me as we made our way inside the tent, where King Ferdinand and his generals awaited us, seated behind a long trestle table spread with a damask cloth strewn with maps and scrolls. Seeing us, Ferdinand cleared a large space with an impatient flourish that sent papers flying. A stool was brought for Momo, but at the last moment his legs failed him and he went sprawling on the rugs, his robe open to show the bandages, his turban askew, and some of the enemy nobles sniggered. I helped him onto the stool and straightened his attire. They knew he’d been wounded, but I could tell from the way he moved how little he wished them to know his weakness and impotence, how much he hated their sneering.

  There was a glint of satisfied amusement in the foreign king’s regard, but he treated us with courtesy, until it came time for the signing of the treaty. Casting an eye over the amendments, he said something I could not quite catch to the man beside him. This gentleman had an ascetic look to him, his fine-boned face solemn, his dark clothing austere. Maybe one of the crown’s inquisitors, I thought. He stroked his neat beard and sat back, and as he did so, I saw beneath his black cloak the shine of a breastplate.

  Beside me, Momo drew in his breath sharply. “That is the man who wounded me, I am sure of it.”

  “I thought he was a priest,” I whispered.

  “Their priests are forbidden from shedding blood. But this one shed plenty of mine.” He glared at the man in conversation with the king; watched as the latter energetically dunked his pen into the inkwell and made a great slashing line. The scoring of quill against paper rasped through the confines of the tent.

  “There will be no infidel law in operation in any region under my control,” Ferdinand declared with relish. “This proviso is rejected. You will sign here.” He spun the sheet toward Momo and thrust the pen at him.

  Momo refused to take it. “I will not sign unless I know the people will be left to live their lives in peace.”

  “Oh, I can assure you of that,” Ferdinand said smoothly. “But surely you are aware that this little charade”—he waved his hand around the tent—“is a face-saving exercise. You are in no position to put up any further opposition. I’ll admit you gave us something of a fight. Very chivalric, with your banners flying and your cavalry charging heroically at our guns. A pointless gesture: flesh and blood can’t withstand missiles. Still, I’m grateful to you for granting me the opportunity to test our excellent lombards, which I think you’ll agree are most effective.” He showed his sharp little teeth in a wolfish half-smile. “My lord Boabdil, please pay attention to my words.” Ferdinand enunciated carefully and looked to me as I translated. “I mean to take this entire kingdom back into the embrace of Holy Mother Church, with the help of my general, Don Rodrigo Ponce de León, Marquis of Cádiz.” The austere man gave us an austere nod. “And I’ll brook no further resistance. I’m offering you and your retinue the gift of your lives, but never again shall you take up arms against me. And you’re to keep well out of my way while I deal with your troublesome uncle. Agreed?”

  He sat back, rocking his great wooden chair on its hind legs, and swung his feet up onto the table, presenting us with the worn soles of his boots. Was he aware of how churlish a gesture this was? How insulting to any Muslim, let alone to another king? He gave no indication of it if so.

  “I will not sign.”

  Momo’s face had gone white, his scar in livid relief. I could feel the fury boiling off him.

  “Tell him he can behead me, string me up, strap me across one of his damned lombards, but I will not sign.”

  Qasim leaned in, one hand on Momo’s shoulder. “Sire, you must sign: what else can you do? We should have surrendered Loja days ago, while it was still intact. Now it lies smashed to ruin, its population decimated, and for what? A little pride? I understand how hard it is for anyone, let alone a sultan, to be humiliated like this: but even a king’s pride is too large a price for his people to pay.” He left a pause, then added, “And remember: young Ahmed lies in the foreign queen’s hands.”

  Momo fixed him with a murderous glare. “Do you think I forget that fact for even an instant?” He waited until Qasim gazed aside, then he turned to me. “Tell him I’ll sign, Blessings.” He might have looked wounded before: now he looked truly defeated.

  That evening we rode out of the ruins of the once-defiant town of Loja, leaving behind us a fortress that had become a tomb to its defenders and was now home to its enemies.

  29

  Vélez-Blanco

  Once more we were being taken into exile, this time into the sharqiyyah, the far east of the ever-decreasing kingdom of Granada.

  “It’s the back of beyond,” I complained as we passed yet another ruined, unmanned watchtower. “It’s like the land that time forgot.”

  Qasim shifted uncomfortably on his saddle. We were ten days out of Loja, and all our arses were raw from the long ride. “It’s not so bad—you’ll see.”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “Then how do you know? There could be dragons and manticores living in those caves.” I gestured toward the pitted hills. “These woods could be full of monsters, hungry for human blood. They’re all around us—monsters—or so I’ve heard.”

  He winced at the bitterness of my tone. “I’m sorry I called you that, Blessings.”

  I knew he was not: he just wanted to placate me. I turned my face from him. Something had changed in our dealings since I had discovered his part in bringing me to the
palace. My feelings had hardened, and there had been a subtle but significant change in the balance of power, as if this new piece of information had weighed heavily on my side of the scales. Qasim might have saved me from the merchant in Fez who had so ill-used me, but he had employed me unmercifully as a spy, a manipulator, a child-thief. What I knew could bring death upon him, and he realized this. Until now I believe he had thought I valued my own life too greatly to risk Momo’s wrath in revealing our plottings; but now he had seen me at my most extreme, seen the urge to self-destruction that lay within me: I was a more fragile vessel for his secrets than he’d thought, and it prompted him to handle me with greater care.

  Qasim grinned now, a forced expression that looked ghastly upon him. “The tales you come up with.”

  The tales I came up with were not mine at all: I had been reading to Momo as he rode in his palanquin, still too weak to sit a horse. I read to him from Arab scholars’ translations of Pliny and Herodotus, about dog-headed men, people with the bodies of horses; about prophets who turned from men into women and back again; about tribes of women who lived as men, and men with their feet on back to front. I chose readings as far-fetched as possible to distract him from his gloom, and sometimes I made him laugh. “Such monsters in the world!” he would declare. “I wonder if we will ever come upon any of them.”

  “I wonder.”

  I fell back now to the palanquin and stuck my head through the curtains. “Would you like me to read to you?”

  Momo lay there, propped on one elbow, staring into space, an open book in his lap. I recognized it.

  “Hello, Blessings.”

  He beckoned me to join him, so I gave my mule into the charge of one of the soldiers and climbed in beside him.

  “I’ve been thinking about the Trojan prince Hector,” he mused. “How, despite being the best man he could be—a good husband, a father, a great and fair prince—he was made a martyr to his loyalties, trapped by his position in his family, worn down by his destiny. He was a wise man, Homer. Even if he was a heathen: like you, Blessings.”

  “He was just a storyteller.”

  “The ancients believed a man’s life was dictated by three Fates—Lotho, the spinner; Lachesis, the measurer; and Atropos, the cutter—who controlled the thread of life of every mortal from their birth to their death. Just as we believe that Allah has written the path of our fate in his Book. Strange, isn’t it, how over the centuries different peoples have come to the same conclusion, despite their differing beliefs? Surely the wisdom of the ages must mean something, and the prophecy made at my birth must be true. That I would be the last king of this kingdom, that I was destined to lose it.” His fingers ran back and forth over the scar on his face, as if he reminded himself of his own mortality.

  With a little shiver I remembered my own strange prophecy then, made as I touched his blood, on the statue at the fountain’s edge in the Court of Lions: “He will lose everything he loves.” He had lost the Alhambra, his beloved home; and his two sons—Ahmed to the Castilian queen, and his unnamed babe too. Mariam still lived; and his mother, for whom his love had become a twisted thing. Could it be true, that fate had us in its grip? Before I could help myself, I asked, “Do you love me?”

  He stared at me then, shocked out of his melancholy reverie. “What do you mean?” He sounded agitated, a little angry, as if my question was a stupidity. “Of course I love you, Blessings. You’re my friend, my Special Guardian.”

  That should have made me glad, but all I could think was if there was such a thing as fate and true prophecy, then I too would die. The idea was unimaginable. “I don’t believe in fate,” I said fiercely. “Life is what we make of it: it’s not written in the stars, or in some wretched Book.”

  He clutched my arm. “Do you really believe that, Blessings? Can I truly rewrite what has been written and save my kingdom?” His eyes burned into me. “But if I allow myself to believe that Allah is not almighty, then surely I am apostate? The Christians burn their heretics for less.”

  “They are a wicked people: cruel, treacherous and wicked. You are a king. If you can’t make your fate your own, who can?”

  After years in which towers had ruled our lives, now it was messages.

  The lookout was a boy of barely fifteen, sweaty from running from the western watchtower in the hot sun. “There are horsemen approaching, sire! They wear the insignia of your uncle!”

  Momo was on his feet instantly. “My sword and lance, bring them at once!”

  Qasim stayed him with a hand on his shoulder. “Calm yourself, Majesty: they’re just messengers, I believe. They are armed, but only as you’d expect for dealing with bandits on the way. I’ll send out the royal guard to intercept them.” His spies were everywhere: I wondered why he had not informed us ahead of the official lookout.

  The royal guard consisted of a couple of dozen local men who till recently had been more familiar with plowshares than swords. “I’ll go with them, sire.”

  Momo looked panicked. “I can’t lose you, Blessings.”

  “You won’t!” I was already halfway across the chamber, my false leg rattling on the bare stone floor.

  There were just four horsemen, and they certainly gave the appearance of messengers: they wore no armour, and bore two bags of jewels as a gift from al-Zaghal to his nephew and a rolled scroll fastened with his seal. When I demanded to see inside the bags, they smiled and nodded with seeming friendliness. “But of course, young lord. It’s only right and proper that you should be concerned to protect your prince.”

  Their “young lord” did not fool me. I reached for the bag, but the man’s gloved fingers closed over it. I suppose that had circumstances been reversed, I would have held on to it too: who was to say I would not grab it and gallop away, my fortune made? Who could you trust nowadays, with the kingdom divided and beset by enemies? People were out for themselves, making whatever they could however they could to have enough money to get their families to Morocco if all came crashing down.

  The man eased the neck of the first of the velvet bags open to my gaze. Inside I could see the glint of gemstones and pearls.

  “Very nice. And the other one?”

  Gold and silver—doblas and maravedis. The man carrying that bag shook it so that the contents shifted enough that I could see there was nothing more menacing within—no venomous snake or giant scorpion, or whatever threat I had been seeking, but still it seemed odd to me that the man who had tried to kill Momo in Almería and had in a fury of frustration lopped off the head of his little brother, Rachid, should now be offering him jewels and avuncular wishes.

  I nodded at last to the head of the guard. “All right, let’s take them in.”

  Inside the palace I watched them looking around, their scorn for our poorly furnished quarters barely disguised. They’d come from the most beautiful palace on the face of the earth, to this crumbling kasbah on the mountainside of the Sierra del Mahimón…It made a mockery of the greetings they offered, calling Momo “the lord of al-Andalus,” “the flower of the Nasrids,” “rose of the Alhambra,” “defender of the glorious faith of Islam,” “true heir of the blessed Hasan,” “scion of the greatest of dynasties”…The praise rolled on and on. But as the head man offered the scroll on the palm of his gloved hand to Momo, I smelled, just for a fleeting moment, something acrid. In defiance of all royal protocol, I stepped between king and messenger.

  “Don’t touch the letter,” I whispered urgently.

  Momo stared at me in bewilderment. “It’s just a letter,” he chided. “What can you hide in a letter but words?”

  “Use your eyes, my lord.”

  Momo scanned the visitors. They appeared nervous, maybe, but not afraid. His gaze returned to me. “Are you feeling quite well, Blessings? Perhaps you’re sunstruck. You rode to meet them without a hat, no?”

  I had. “You’ve answered your own riddle. Look again.” And when I knew he’d understood me, I stepped aside.

  Momo smi
led at the messenger. “Be so good as to read the missive to me.”

  The man hesitated. “I was instructed to deliver it only into your hands, sire. Your uncle told me so himself.”

  “Even so.” Momo reclined in his throne, watching, watching.

  I saw a bead of perspiration appear on the messenger’s forehead and begin to run down his nose. Unconsciously, he lifted a hand to wipe it away and the sweat darkened the leather of his glove. With a sigh he broke the seal, unrolled the scroll and read it aloud:

  Desirous as I am to forget the origins of our contentions for the kingdom, and conscious that you alone are the lawful king, by virtue of my brother’s last will and testament, in which he appoints you his heir, I wish to surrender the government into your hands as rightful king and master, requesting only for myself to be able to spend my days in some small part of this abode, to live content and to owe you due allegiance. This I require for Allah’s and Mohammed’s sake, that the kingdom not be destroyed by its internecine quarrels.

  At this point the paper, which had been tightly rolled for many days, sprang out of his grip and obstinately refurled itself. The messenger struggled, and failed, to unroll it again, and through it all Momo just sat there, watching him through slitted eyes.

  “Keep reading,” he said sweetly.

  The messenger wrestled manfully with the scroll until at last he mastered it. “It’s fine, I’ve got it.” He read on, stumbling here and there in his haste: