by Jane Johnson
“Yes, it is, isn’t it? Everything is going to be just fine,” James said fiercely. “Because we’re going to make it that way, aren’t we? For God’s sake, indeed.”
Letting go of Luke’s head for a moment, he moved aside his scarf (a scarf, Kate thought, in this heat?), reached into his jacket and held something up. She blinked at it. A large iron key?
“This will be a special treat. We’re going into the Capilla Real. There’s something there you need to see, something Luke needs to learn: and a future for us to make together.”
Behind them, the life of Granada went on—people out walking, doing chores, taking a shortcut; workmen in overalls, a priest in dark robes, tourists lining up their digital cameras on the Lonja de Mercaderes, the picturesque old merchants’ meeting house, with its arched doorways and Solomonic pillars. Some of them stared curiously at this living tableau of a fractured family, enacting some eternal drama of their own in this monumental place. Kate felt their scrutiny as both discomfort and reassurance. The social embarrassment was excruciating, but at least it meant there were people around if she needed them. Despite all evidence to the contrary, she chose to believe that people were essentially good-natured and wanted to help others. You had to believe that, or where did it leave you? Desolate and in fear. Even so, she really didn’t want to go into the mausoleum.
“Can’t we go somewhere else?” she asked. “There’s a nice park not far from here. I’m sure Luke would prefer that.”
“Luke must learn that what he wants to do doesn’t count when there are adults around, mustn’t he—eh, Luke? If Daddy tells you to do something, you do it, don’t you?” He gave the boy a small shake and Luke looked up at him uncertainly, lip wobbling. “Now then, Luke, what did I say about crying?”
“Mustn’t,” Luke said, barely audible.
“That’s right. You’re my little man now and men don’t cry.” This situation satisfactorily dealt with, he turned his attention to Kate. “Now, we’re going into the royal chapel, and no arguing. It’s a special place. A very special place indeed.”
He reached out to take Kate by the hand, but she jerked it out of the way. His fingers closed around her elbow and she had to grit her teeth not to cry out or jab him hard in the gut. Actually, she thought, perhaps that was exactly what she should do. Hit him as hard and low as she could, grab Luke and run away with him…
But as if he knew her thoughts, James placed himself in front of the boy. “No, you don’t,” he said.
“I’m not going in there with you,” she said firmly.
“Well, Luke and I are going in, aren’t we, Luke?” And when Luke hesitated, he made the boy nod by the pressure of the hand he had spread across the child’s head. “You see? Now, you can either come in with us. Or you can go to hell.”
How could she leave her son alone with this monster? She glanced around, hoping that Abdou had indeed followed her, but found no one. Damn James. She would humour him for now: she had to talk to him if she wanted him to relinquish Luke. “All right,” she said grimly.
Through the big arched double door they went, James ushering his wife and child in before him, then closing the door behind them.
Inside, the royal chapel was chilly with marble: huge pillars rose to vaulted fans that spread across the ceiling much as James’s fingers splayed across Luke’s head. Everything forced your eye to the silent stone figures lying on massive stone beds behind their cage of iron—to keep the living out, or the dead in? Kate wondered. Dead Queen Isabella and dead King Ferdinand and their dead daughter Juana the Mad, beside her dead husband, Philip the Fair.
James approached the grille and genuflected, as if at a saint’s tomb. He beamed down at his son. “See here, Luke? This is where the finest woman in all history is buried: Isabella of Castile, who devoted her entire life, body and soul, to reunifying her country, to driving out the unbelievers and bringing the people back to the True Faith. She raised up Mother Church from the squalor of oppression by the infidel; she razed their vile temples, turned their minarets into bell towers and encouraged those who had strayed from the true path to see the error of their ways. She was driven by vision and faith that spread across oceans and brought undiscovered continents into the embrace of the Catholic Church. This—” he made a grand gesture toward the statue of dead queen “—this is the woman who financed the voyages of Christopher Columbus to sail to the New World, who channelled their wealth into the hands of Mother Church, who restored her dignity and pride and returned her to her rightful place, in control of the civilized world.”
Luke pulled away from his father, uncomfortable in his grip.
“Stop, James,” Kate said quietly. “Please stop. He’s much too young for all this talk of faith and power.”
“Nonsense: there’s no such thing as being ‘too young’ to begin an education.” He hoisted Luke up so that he could see the stone figure, lying there prone and silent. “See how Isabella’s head rests deeper in the stone than her husband’s. It’s because she wore the weightier crown. Women are made for sacrifice and duty, whether they are queens or just mothers. Isabella loved her husband with the flame of passion sanctified by holy matrimony, and bore him sons and was true to him all her life. A mother, a wife, a queen, and a true servant of God. She was nominated a saint in 1972, when I was just a few years older than you. And see here—” He put Luke down and walked him to where they had a better view of the massive gold altarpiece. He pulled his son close and angled his head. “This scene carved on the lower bench is of the heathen king Boabdil handing over the keys to this city to Queen Isabella and her husband, King Ferdinand. And then they drove the wicked Muslims and Jews out of their country forever, and made sure those who remained accepted Christ by baptism. See there—”
Kate could bear it no longer. “Stop poisoning his mind! He’s far too young to understand any of this—he’s just a baby. But I understand. I understand all too well. These people—these Catholic Monarchs you respect so much—were monsters: cruel, fundamentalist monsters who caused untold terror and misery and countless deaths. It’s no wonder you idolize these people: you’re just like them! I can’t believe you abducted and tortured my sister to find out where I was so you could come here and deliver this…this lecture on your weird, twisted morality!”
She’d expected fury from him, but all he did was to smile indulgently, and that was when she knew he was truly mad. James lifted the child down from his shoulders and set him on his feet. Luke promptly sat down on the stone floor and started tracing the patterns on the tiles. “But don’t you see, Kate, that this is how it was meant to be? Even though you broke my heart, even though you fell from the true path and abandoned your family? You came here—to the city this magnificent woman chose to make her own. To the place where the pagan Middle Ages gave way to the modern era: this was where the dark tides were turned back and enlightenment began. This is where she chose to lie forever: she even designed her own marvellous resting place, this perfect architectural combination of pure Gothic with gorgeous Baroque. As soon as your sister said where you were, I knew we lay in the hand of divine destiny. ‘God moves in mysterious ways,’ isn’t that what they say? It’s an old cliché, but it’s true. For some reason God’s design brought you here, and brought Luke and me to be reunited with you in this sanctified place.” His eyes were lit with fanatical zeal as he gazed at her. “Just look at our boy. Look at this miracle of life we made together. And now it’s time to reunite our family, and give Luke the best gift a boy could have. A brother.”
Kate’s mind, for a long moment, was a white blank of shock. Then she thought she must have misunderstood, and waited for him to laugh, to make some sort of joke of it. When he just looked at her with a look she recognized too well, a look that had haunted her nightmares, she said, “You must be out of your mind.”
“What could be more perfect? Here, where the blessed Isabella watches over us, where Luke’s namesake sits with the disciples—see, carved right there, his parents both named
for great saints: me for Santiago Matamoros, Saint James the Moorslayer; you for the blessed virgin Catherine, condemned to be broken on the vast spiked wheel.”
His words echoed around the marble vaults and it was only now that Kate realized they were alone, utterly alone, apart from the dead. No one else had entered with them. This was strange, in a city stuffed with tourists who had come all the way across the country to this place with no international airport, to see sights just like this one. She stared toward the great wooden doors. Had he…? Were they…?
As if he saw the cogs in her mind turn, James said mildly, “Yes, it’s just us, in this beautiful chapel. Safely locked in.” He patted his pocket. “For two whole hours. They always shut the chapel at lunchtime, but I had to be very persuasive to get the key. I made them a generous donation. A very generous donation—from the sale of your flat, in fact. You see what I mean about the divine plan? Everything happens according to God’s will. We have this magnificent place to ourselves. No tourists snapping away at the blessed Isabella with their shitty little cameras. No gawkers. No witnesses. Today in this holy place we will make a new life together and call him—well, I had originally thought Matthew, but then I remembered that was the name of your drunken boyfriend—so maybe Mark, or John?”
Kate stared at him in disbelief. “For God’s sake, James, this is crazy! You can’t just rape me again, here, in front of a little boy.”
“Rape? We’re still married. Or had you forgotten?” He thrust his face at her, his aggression naked, and the scarf he had been wearing slipped, revealing a set of scabbing gouge marks.
Jess must have made those, Kate realized with a sudden horrible fascination. Before James had tied her into a chair and tortured her with a lit cigarette. The memory of what he had done to her sister shook her resolve. She bent to be on a level with her son. “Luke, come with me.” He stared up at her, stuck his thumb in his mouth. Then, uncertainly, he offered her his other hand.
James blocked their way. She took a step back, then another, towing Luke with her, till the iron grille stopped her, the Catholic Monarchs at her back, mocking.
“You’re my wife. Mine, remember? So I can do whatever the hell I like to you. Anything. And I will, believe me, I will. I’ve been thinking about it every day, every night since you left. I’ve imagined everything. I bet you’ve been over here fucking the brains out of every Arab who took your fancy, haven’t you? Spreading your legs for them in dank alleys, or perhaps just dropping your jeans and bending over: I hear they like that, like boys, the filthy bastards. You whore, I can smell it on you, their stink—” He moved toward her.
Kate stepped in front of her son. “Don’t you dare!” She would fight him; she would not submit to him. She would rather die than have him touch her, have him inside her again.
Spurred on by her defiance, James came on at a run, his fist raised to strike. And that was when a dark shape flew into view, arms spread like the wings of a great bat, and fell upon James, bowling him away. There was a cry, a scuffle, a whirl of movement and shouting, on the ground, then upright once more; then both shapes vanished from Kate’s sight. Noises continued, muffled, distanced; thuds descending.
Then there was nothing to be heard but someone breathing heavily, a long way away, the sound amplified and distorted by the confines of a small space. At last came the unmistakable noise of feet on stone steps, drawing closer, closer…
31
Blessings
GRANADA
1491
It was a clear day, so clear that the air seemed to have been spread over the plain like a blanket of light, deceiving the eye, making distant things appear close, close things seem hazed and indistinct. The young sultan of Granada leaned on the battlements of the Alcazaba and gazed morosely out across the vega toward the enemy encampment, the hood of his white djellaba up over his head to keep off the worst of the sun. I had been looking for him for over an hour.
“So this is where you are.”
He said nothing, didn’t even turn at the sound of my voice. I tried again. “A messenger has arrived. Everyone is waiting for you in the ambassadors’ hall.”
“I know what the answer will be,” he said wearily. “It’s always the same: everyone has an excuse. Tlemcen has made a trade agreement with the foreign monarchs so is sorry to say it cannot send us troops for fear of upsetting their merchants, because money means more than principle. The sultan of Egypt sends his apologies, but he is too occupied with the advances of the Ottoman Turks: the Turks beg my pardon, but they are too preoccupied with their conquests elsewhere to be bothered about what happens here. Or words to that effect. I saw the messenger riding in. He was in no hurry, his head was down and his mount wasn’t in a sweat, and that tells me there will be no reinforcements from Morocco, or anywhere else. For whatever reason Mohammed al-Shaykh may have—from the lameness of his favourite horse to some tribal wedding complication three steps removed from the crown.”
He turned to me at last. His amber eyes were dull and hooded: he looked ill, and I told him so.
“Well, I can’t help that,” he said. “I’m sick to my soul of this war, sick and exhausted. No wonder my uncle packed his bags and sold his lands and fled to North Africa. If even he—the most warlike of all of us—has had enough, how can I, who hates war with every bone in my body, be expected to continue to take the fight to these indefatigable zealots?”
“You’re using long words again,” I warned him with an attempt at humour, but he didn’t smile.
The messenger had indeed brought bad news. The Moroccan sultan informed us that although he had tried to help, there was no safe port into which he could deliver reinforcements, as the whole coast was under blockade. The poor courier shook as Momo read this missive silently, then in quiet fury hurled it to the floor.
“There’s more, sire,” Qasim said. He gestured to the messenger.
The courier hesitated until the young sultan waved a hand at him impatiently. “Speak up, and hold nothing back. Things can hardly get worse.”
But they could.
The messenger bowed his head as if waiting for a blow to fall. “They’re building a city,” he said indistinctly.
“What?” Momo said sharply. “I said speak up, didn’t I? Does no one listen to me anymore?”
“I…uh…passed twenty or more carters bringing timber and stone across the vega, more of them the closer to Granada I came, and wherever I went the orchards that had existed had been reduced to stumps. The last time I rode past the enemy camp, Majesty, on my way to Fez, it was just tents and firepits and trenches—the usual…uh…ramshackle arrangement you’d expect. But now they’re building…something. They the unbelievers of Aragón and Castile, I mean. It looks as if they’re building a city, sire…”
A wave of murmurs washed the hall, gathering in echoes among the cedarwood stars of the ceiling. “Quiet!” cried the vizier. “Go on, lad—tell us the rest.”
The messenger dared a look up through his long dark hair at Momo, who sat glowering into space. “I was skirting the camp at a distance, Majesty, when two men rode out toward me. I drew my sword, swearing I wouldn’t give up the message to them: I’d see it destroyed before they killed me…But they were strangely friendly, and though they were armed, they didn’t draw their weapons. Instead, they offered me water and sustenance. Of course I refused them for fear of poison; but the men pressed me to accompany them—not as a prisoner but so I could ‘bear witness,’ they said.” He paused again, wiping a drop of sweat from his face. This time he darted a look not at Momo but at the vizier, who nodded brusquely.
“They took me into the camp. I rode right through it. It went on and on and on. So many men. They’re building a walled city, Majesty, with gates at every midway mark. A city with houses and streets. Proper ones, designed to last. What was timber and canvas is now timber and stone and mortar, and they’re painting it all white—there are vats of lime wash bubbling all over the place, giving off noxious fumes. Al
l except the main streets, and they’re all red because of the colour of the earth here.” He licked his lips, as if his mouth had suddenly run dry.
Qasim motioned to a page, who presented the courier with a cup of water, which the young man downed gratefully in three gulps.
“Streets, yes. There are four big streets, with an enormous weapons store at the centre. They’re arrayed in each of the cardinal directions, sire, with each street named for the city it points to, with Granada the one to the south. So, uh, the city, is in the form of a cross. A great white city with a red cross running right through it, to make the symbol of their religion. And that’s what they’re calling it, Majesty: the city of Santa Fe, the city of the Holy Faith. They told me that. Then they waved me on my way. It’s like they wanted me to see it all, and to come here and tell you what I’d seen.”
“Of course they did,” Momo sighed. He thanked and dismissed the courier, instructed the pages to show the lad to the bathhouse and to massage him with scented oils, “to remove the stink of the enemy.” Then he sat back in his throne and gazed fiercely up into the intricately carved rendition of the seven heavens, where the inscription read: Oh, God, fighter of the devil, please help me.
But no divine aid was immediately forthcoming. When he looked down again, I thought I had never seen him appear so fragile, not even when he was wounded at Loja; not even when I’d told him the enemy would take his son hostage.
“It’s a message to us: a huge great message in stone and mortar, and it says: ‘We’re determined to drive you from your home, to be rid of you forever. Look!’ it says. ‘We’re going nowhere: in fact, we’re digging in and are going to stay the whole winter, then the spring and summer, until you surrender.’”
“Damn them,” growled Musa, the words hardly making it through the thicket of his beard. “We’ll never surrender. We will fight them to extinction, even our own. We will fight them in the streets and on the plains. We will fight them on the bridges and at the gates, in the fields and in the gardens. We will never give up. Fetch my horse!” he shouted to a slave at the door. “I’ll ride out against them again, right now!”