by Peter Kerr
Pedrito at once felt a modicum of admiration for the man he had been preparing to despise. For the first time, he stole a glance at his father’s face, and was favourably struck by the determined look in his eyes and the defiant set of his jaw. But this positive reaction was to be disappointingly short-lived.
King Jaume took obvious delight in letting the Sheikh know that he had no intention of taking his life. That would be an easy way out for such a great fighting man who had suffered defeat at the hands of someone whose very existence he had previously declined to acknowledge. No, he stressed, if King Abû wanted to avoid the shame of being paraded in shackles through the streets of every city in Christian Europe, he would have to pay homage to Jesus Christ in a way that would be seen by the world and would be remembered for time without end. ‘So then,’ he said, ‘will the Sheikh accept my invitation to be baptised, or will he choose public disgrace?’
Once more, a palpably awkward silence descended on the room, King Abû’s steadfastly proud demeanour dissolving by the second into a look of total abjection.
‘The Christian king claims that he is sensitive to the feeling of others,’ he said at length, his eyes downcast, his shoulders sagging. ‘If he will not grant me the means to go into honourable exile in Africa, can he, then, at least allow me to see out my days here in Mallorca, living in circumstances that befit my station, and in an appropriately secure location?’
King Jaume gave a little snort of derision. ‘And what of the homage to Christ that I have already said will be a precondition of any act of clemency on my part?’
‘Absolutely, Majestat,’ En Nunyo Sans swiftly put in. ‘What this Moor asks is tantamount to a reward for having been overthrown by the forces of our Lord and Saviour. He must show due respect to the one true Faith, or suffer the consequences.’
Again, King Jaume ignored the provocative suggestions of his cousin, instead instructing Pedrito to repeat his last question to King Abû.
‘Allahu akbar,’ was the Sheikh’s grunted reply. ‘Allah is the greatest, and I will never renounce Him.’ He raised his eyes to meet King Jaume’s. ‘I repeat, I would rather die.’
This time, Pedrito translated the statement about Allah word for word. What was the point, he thought, of trying to make either man’s religious principles sound any less immovable than they really were?
‘So, he would still rather die,’ King Jaume muttered. With a nod of acknowledgement to the Sheikh, he held out the dagger which had been surrendered to him earlier. ‘I would not deny you the honour of proving the fortitude of your beliefs – even if you go to hell for committing the blasphemy of saying there is a greater power than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.’
All eyes were on the Sheik as he tentatively moved a hand towards the proffered weapon.
‘Why do you hesitate?’ King Jaume demanded. ‘Don’t you believe what your prophet Mohammed promised – everlasting life as a reward for a glorious death?’ He took time to smirk at his attendant knights before adding, ‘Especially when it’s supposed to come with an endless supply of full-breasted virgins?’
With beads of sweat glistening on his brow, King Abû withdrew his hand as if it had been scalded. ‘To take my own life would be an act of cowardice, and no coward shall pass through the gates of paradise.’
‘So what?’ King Jaume retorted. ‘You’ll already be heading in the other direction for insulting the one true God and his Son, Jesus Christ.’
A ripple of muted laughter ran through the Christian group.
Pedrito felt a twinge of disapproval at the way King Jaume was now baiting his deafeated foe, even if it was more for the entertainment of his company than his own satisfaction. In any case, any temptation Pedrito might have had to feel sorry for his father was about to be negated by the man himself.
With his chin on his chest, he pleaded in a barely audible voice to be allowed to live on in Mallorca. He now readily conceded that the location and nature of his residence would be the prerogative of the Christian king to decide.
His residence, King Jaume promptly informed him, would be a prison – a prison worthy of a king, but a prison nonethless. He would be treated with due respect, but without being afforded any of the trappings of his former life in the Almudaina.
When King Abû meekly bowed his acceptance, Pedrito started to feel a measure of shame creeping into his feelings. And there was worse to come.
King Jaume pointed out that a condition of the Sheikh being allowed to continue living on the island would still be his paying homage to Christ in a manner that would declare his subjugation to the world. And if he refused to convert to Christianity, King Jaume asked, how else could such a declaration be made?
Without lifting his gaze from the floor, King Abû then said that he was prepared to pass his favourite son, a fourteen-year-old, into the care of the Christian king, the boy’s conversion to Christianity being an accepted condition of the bargain. Better a child of the new generation being paraded as a convert, he said, than someone of his own mature years.
While King Jaume grinned in undisguised delight, Pedrito cringed. He stood with his thoughts racing as King Jaume recounted, for the benefit of his entourage, that he himself had been given into the ‘care’ of an adversary of his own father’s when only three years of age. A betrothal had been arranged at the time – to the potential benefit of both parental parties – and although the marriage had not materialised in his own case, he saw no reason to believe that a simlar arrangement should not be successfully employed here.
Why, he could visualise it already. He would have the Moorish prince baptised in his own name, Jaume, and he would have him married off to someone like the lovely Eva, the daughter of his friend, En Martin Roldan, the head of one of Aragon’s most eminent lineages and an unstinting contributor to the cost of this crusade. ‘Yes, I would then cede estates to the boy,’ the king continued purposefully. ‘Those around Illueca and Gotor near my own city of Zaragoza would be ideal, and I could give him a suitably prestigious rank. Hmm, Baron Jaume of Illueca and Gotor would sound good, I think.’
‘Yes indeed,’ En Nunyo Sans gushed, ‘such a gesture would be the perfect manifestation of your new title of El Conquistador, the great Conqueror of the Muslim scourge of Spain – while also showing our people that you are a compassionate and generous monarch.’
While sycophantic mutterings were exchanged around him, King Jaume asked Pedrito to tell the Sheikh that his proposition was accepted. Arrangements should be made immediately for the handing over of his son to the Bishop of Barcelona, while the Sheikh himself should prepare himself for incarceration.
Pedrito did his bidding in a sort of trance, the words leaving his mouth almost of their own volition, preoccupied as he had become with the rapid descent into undignified self-preservation by the once-revered Moorish warrior standing slumped in front of him. Suddenly, his mind was filled with thoughts of the awful life his mother had been condemned to by this man’s actions, and of how Saleema would eventually have been obliged to submit to his carnal whims.
He stared at his blood father, trying to work out if he could see anything of himself in him. But no, the undeniable reality was that the humble fisherman who had cared for him as a helpless foundling had more real merit in one calloused finger of his work-worn hands than this strutting peacock had in the whole of his silk-clad, perfumed body.
All at once, the pent-up frustrations and bridled anger that Perito had lived with for so long came surging to the surface like boiling lava. The presence of the two kings posturing in the name of their respective gods meant even less to him now than it had ever done. He would have his say, no matter what.
He stepped forward and glared angrily into the eyes of father. The three Moorish guards, anticipating a threat to their master, made to intervene, only to be stopped by King Jaume drawing his sword and ordering his knights to do likewise.
‘It appears, Master Blànes,’ he said coolly, ‘that you have a personal p
oint to make with my Saracen adversary. Please feel free to proceed.’
All thoughts of acting as a translator had now gone from Pedrito’s head. The gist of what he had to say in Arabic would either be understood by King Jaume in the light of what he already knew of his background or it wouldn’t. Either way, Pedrito could not have cared less. His past life, his mother’s life and death and any possibility of a future life with Saleema were bizarrely and inextricably tied up in what was now about to erupt.
‘So, you sacrifice another son to suit your own ends!’ he snarled into King Abû’s face. ‘You won’t renounce Allah, but you’re prepared to make your son commit what you regard as a sin in order to protect your own integrity in Allah’s eyes.’
King Abû instantly drew himself up to his full height. ‘Another son? I have many sons and I am a staunch protector of them all. How dare you speak to me like that, you Christian dog!’
‘Ah, but I have every right to speak to you like that,’ Pedrito replied, willing himself to be calm. ‘And when it comes to that, I’m only a Christian because of you!’
‘A Christian because of me? Pah, you speak in riddles, and I’ve no time for them!’
Pedrito allowed himself a wry smile. ‘That’s at least one thing you have in common with the Christian King. And talking of dogs, I have more regard for his – a black one – than I do for you!’
King Abû gathered his brows into a menacing frown, his deep-set eyes glinting like little black beads. ‘You dare compare me to a black dog – the very embodiment of the devil himself?’
‘Yes! And with good reason!’
King Abû reached instinctively for his dagger, but found only its empty scabbard. ‘Damn your eyes! If I had a blade I would cut your worthless throat!’
Pedrito gave a scornful laugh. ‘If you have to rely on a flunky doing your murderous work when it’s a baby you take a dislike to, why should anyone believe you have the courage to tackle someone your own size – with or without a blade?’
The colour drained from King Abû’s lips. ‘Courage?’ he hissed ‘You doubt my courage?’ He lunged at Pedrito. ‘I need no knife – I’ll kill you with my bare hands, you insolent peasant bastard!’
As Pedrito side-stepped, King Abû stumbled clumsily into the arms of Robert St Clair de Roslin, who took obvious delight in pushing him back into the middle of the floor, where Pedrito stopped him abruptly by extending an arm and putting a hand to his throat. King Abû immediately grabbed Pedrito’s wrist in both hands and tried to pull himself away.
Pedrito duly increased his grip. ‘A few years spent heaving an oar as a galley slave instead of a lifetime of cavorting between silk sheets with young girls might have given you the strength, old man,’ he grinned, ‘but as things stand, whether or not you draw another breath would appear to depend on me – a Christian dog and peasant bastard.’ He glared directly into King Abû’s eyes. ‘How the tables have turned, eh?’
‘Riddles,’ King Abû wheezed, the veins at his temples bulging like bloated worms. ‘You’re still talking in riddles.’
Pedrito looked to one side and pulled his hair away to expose the cross-shaped birthmark behind his ear. ‘Perhaps this will make things clearer for you!’ he said, while simultaneously releasing his hold on the Sheikh’s throat.
‘The devil’s mark!’ he gasped, recoiling as if from a striking snake.
Pedrito stole a quick glance at King Jaume, whose nod of acknowledgement was all that was needed to confirm his comprehension of the relationship between his young helmsman and the defeated Saracen King.
‘So, you remember me?’ Pedrito said to his father.
King Abû’s swarthy skin had now turned a sickly grey. ‘The devil child,’ he muttered. ‘But – but, you were – you were –’
‘Killed at birth by one of your flunkies?’
‘No – I – no, I thought…’
‘I had been left for dead somewhere down on the quay – or flung into the harbour to drown – or eaten by rats?’ He stared unblinking at King Abû for several moments, both relishing his disquiet and pitying his state of utter dejection. ‘Solving the riddles now, are you?’ he eventually asked.
King Abû opened his mouth, but no words emerged.
‘Then let me help you,’ Pedrito went on. ‘I did indeed become a Christian and a peasant, but only because those were the simple but benevolent ways of the people who saved my life after it had been rejected by you. And you called me a bastard.’ Pedrito wagged an censuring finger in his father’s face. ‘That’s a slight against my mother – your once-favourite wife, Farah – and I won’t have her memory debased by anyone, least of all you!’
‘I – I only knew she bore me a child with the mark of the devil and –’
‘She bore you me!’ Pedrito cut in. ‘An innocent baby, your first-born son, who would have grown up to return all the love you cared to give me – and with interest – just as I did with the only parents I ever knew.’ He looked his father up and down with patent disdain. ‘And you call yourself a staunch protector of all your sons? Yes, just as you’ve protected yourself by giving one away to your enemies today! Life is clearly cheap for someone whose god encourages him to breed like a common rabbit while allowing him to assume the power of the god himself, no?’
‘No! I would never act in such a way! Allahu akbar. Allah is the most great, and no man can assume his power.’
‘Yet, in his name, you had my mother publicly crippled – a beautiful young woman, her life condemned to scratching a living in the squalid alleyways of the kasbah, just because her baby, a child you fathered, happened to be born with a small blemish behind his ear.’
The Sheikh stood in silence, his resentment simmering, as Pedrito turned to King Jaume and said, ‘I apologise for speaking for so long in Arabic, senyor, but I hope you may have gathered from this’ – he pointed to his birthmark – ‘that certain things had to be said between myself and … my father.’
‘I think I may well have got the gist of it, Master Blànes,’ the king replied, a tad contritely. ‘And, ehm, I don’t suppose I’ll ever meet another galley slave who might have been – but for the vagaries of fate – a king like myself.’
Pedrito dipped his head and smiled benignly. ‘As I’ve said to you more than once before, Majestat, perhaps I was actually more fortunate to be raised as a humble peasant.’
‘Sí,’ King Jaume agreed, with a wink that Pedrito hoped was loaded more with irony than arrogance, ‘for at least it meant that you ended up on the winning side.’
30
‘WHERE THERE’S LOVE THERE’S HOPE’
LATER THE SAME EVENING…
‘I suppose you’ll be going off to meet your little harem plaything over by Andratx now,’ King Jaume said to Pedrito in the courtyard of scribe’s house. And there was no mistaking the meaning of his accompanying wink this time.
‘No, no,’ Pedrito protested with a forbearing smile, ‘she’s no plaything in my eyes. No, I was brought up to believe that I should show a woman as much respect as any man – more, in the case of his soulmate.’
‘Oh, soulmate now, is it?’ The king raised a mischievous eyebrow. ‘Well, well, it seems we’re going to have yet another convert to Christianity joining my court, eh? Sí, and you can count on me to lay on a lavish banquet in celebration of your marriage … and her baptism.’
‘Ah, but you’re jumping to too many conclusions,’ Pedrito replied, his expression a little less tolerant than before. He thought for a moment, then gave a little laugh. ‘Yes, and if you knew Saleema, you’d realise soon enough that she’s her own person, and I respect her all the more for that.’
King Jaume cast him a cautioning look. ‘I have to tell you, Little Pedro, that I am giving custody of the region of Mallorca which includes the territory of Andratx to Berenguer de Palou, the Bishop of Balcelona. It is to be part of his promised share of the spoils.’
Pedrito hunched shoulders. ‘Fine. I can pay rent for our little farm ju
st as easily to him as my parents did to the Moorish wali of the area.’
‘Aha, but now it’s you who’s jumping to conclusions, my friend. The Bishop of Barcelona will hold those territories for me in fief and will be entitled to his proportion of related revenues, even in his absence. So, naturally, the lands will require an overseer, a governor.’
‘I follow all of that, senyor, but as long as I have tenancy of the finca, I won’t mind who’s collecting the rent.’
‘But you won’t be paying rent to anyone.’
Pedrito looked confused. ‘Now it’s you who’s talking in riddles.’
The king smiled leniently. ‘You may have been born a prince, Master Blànes, but you’re still thinking like a peasant.’
‘No harm in that,’ Pedrito retorted, ‘if my natural father’s way of thinking tonight was anything to go by.’
‘And I can understand why you say that,’ the king conceded, then adopted a more admonishing manner. ‘But perhaps you shouldn’t think quite so badly of him.’
Pedrito now looked even more confused.
‘Believe me,’ the king went on, ‘I have seen many more selfish, even cowardly, reactions from men who have been defeated in battle. And don’t forget that I fought this war for Christendom, and the Sheikh’s handing over of his son to Christ will do much to enhance the significance of my victory in the eyes of the world.’
‘No doubt about that,’ Pedrito acknowledged, realising too late that he should have injected more enthusiasm into his delivery.
Fortunately, King Jaume appeared not to have noticed. ‘You will recall, I’m sure,’ he said brightly, ‘that I promised Ali, the young turncoat Moor, a just reward for being brave enough to swim out from Sa Palomera to the islet of Es Pantaleu to inform me of his soothsayer mother’s prediction of my triumph here.’
‘Yes, and before you’d even set foot on Mallorca,’ Pedrito nodded.