A baffled silence followed. Luz stared at Hassan, momentarily uncertain, her chest rising and falling within the confines of her bodice. Her face softened. Fatima had never known anyone to succeed in hating Hassan, and thought for one desperate moment that his artlessness might save them after all.
“Execute her,” said Luz gently, her gaze opaque. “Take him back to his tent and bind him.”
Fatima screamed. She lunged for Hassan but was caught by the hair with a gloved hand and dragged back. Hassan was shrieking her name, his composure gone, straining against the arms that held him; for a moment Fatima brushed his fingers with hers, but they were slick with blood, and she was parted from him with only a red smear on her fingertips.
The man holding her yanked her head forward, forcing her to stare at the ground. She saw the hooves of horses dancing nervously in the mud and heard men muttering to one another and palming their weapons, but all was eclipsed by the awful sound of Hassan’s despair, a howl like the end of things, a sound that shattered Fatima’s nerves.
“Fatima.”
Her name came like a plea from somewhere behind her.
“Please—please just look at me.”
It was Gwennec’s voice. Fatima tilted her head as far as she could and caught sight of a black scapular.
“You,” she snarled. The fist in her hair tightened and pulled her head around before she had a chance to compose an insult. She was stumbling past Gwennec’s horse: she could see the monk’s foot clad in its modest leather sandal, his heel as rough and brown as what shod it, and cracked in several places. He drew it back, and for a moment, Fatima thought he was going to kick her in the face as a parting insult.
Then he did kick, but not at her: his foot landed beneath the jaw of the man who held her, slipping inside the gap between his helm and his breastplate as deftly as a letter knife parting a wax seal. The man gurgled in protest, released Fatima’s arm, and clawed at his throat.
“Run!” shrieked Gwennec, pulling at his horse’s head. He was holding the reins in an awkward, clawed way, and Fatima saw, belatedly, that his hands were bound together with twine.
“Run!” he repeated. Fatima pelted away. Her insides burned. She could feel every contraction of her muscles as she ran, a screaming, labored push-pull beneath her skin. There was cursing and shouting behind her and a hand reached for her borrowed cloak, but the general’s men, clad in armor that weighed half as much as Fatima herself, were slower than she was. Behind her, Gwennec’s horse was squealing. Fatima saw a blur of copper and green and realized Hassan was following her, or trying to. By instinct, she had run toward the cog, though it was only when her feet hit the gangplank that she realized how foolish this was: the three ships at the mouth of the harbor hadn’t moved. But she was propelled by sheer momentum now, tumbling onto the deck as Hassan collided with her, sending them both sprawling on their sides.
Over the rumbling of the tide and the clamor of horses and men, Fatima heard Gwennec cry out. There was a mechanical thud and a crack as an arquebus discharged: the tart smell of gunpowder filled the air. Fatima knew they should push off, tighten the sail, pull the tiller until it pointed away, but all she could see was a monk’s habit surrounded by steel.
“Gwennec,” she said, struggling to her feet.
“Leave him,” called Hassan. Fatima pretended not to hear. She stood at the edge of the gangplank, watching as a soldier reached toward the reins of Gwennec’s terrified gelding. Gwennec looked up and met Fatima’s gaze. The distance was too great; the soldiers were too many and too well armed. A terrible resignation settled over his face. The reins slid uselessly through his bound hands and into those of the soldier, who yanked the horse’s head down, dragging it to a halt.
Fatima unsheathed the dagger at her hip.
“What the hell are you doing?” screamed Hassan. Fatima breathed in and out, steadying her hand. On the third breath, she loosed the dagger. It flew end over end, glinting in the new sun like a fish leaping into the air, and clattered off the soldier’s breastplate into the mud.
Fatima howled in frustration.
“Give me yours,” she ordered Hassan.
“No!”
She reached for his sash.
“At least throw it properly this time,” pleaded Hassan, sitting down where he was. “Hold it by the blade, Fa, not the hilt—the blade, the blade.”
Fatima took the blade of the dagger between three fingers, trying hard not to cut herself. The impact of her first attempt had prompted the soldier to turn and look at her: his helm was tilted back, and she could see his lightly bearded face, his disjointed nose, broken in undiscoverable circumstances. He had a home; he had come from somewhere; someone had loved him. For a moment, she was moved: if not for all of this, all of the steel and the quartered arms, the borders drawn and redrawn on maps, they might be something else to one another. Perhaps not friends, but at least not enemies.
The soldier twitched. Fatima didn’t realize she’d thrown Hassan’s knife until she saw it lodged between his brows. He twitched again, grimacing reflexively, and collapsed into the mud.
Gwennec stared at her in disbelief. Then his gelding bolted and he lurched forward, clinging to its mane as it thundered away from the throng of soldiers. A second arquebus discharged, a third, a fourth. The railing closest to Fatima exploded into splinters. She skittered away, giddy and horrified, as Gwennec grabbed at the gelding’s reins with both hands and forced it up the gangplank, which bounced and dipped under its weight. The horse leaped the last stride onto the deck. The force of its hooves dislodged the gangplank entirely and sent the narrow beam into the churning water below like a body thrown overboard. Free at last, the cog began to spin, sail flapping, the tiller rotating in half circles under pressure from the eager tide.
Fatima heard high, disbelieving laughter. Gwennec slid off the gelding’s saddle and looped his bound wrists over her head, pulling her into a clumsy embrace. He kissed her forehead, her eyelids, the pulse at her temple. Fatima felt points of heat where his lips had been that lingered after he withdrew them. Then he was gone: Hassan was tearing the twine from his reddened wrists, and he was running, throwing himself over the prow with his legs hooked around the bowsprit, reaching down over his head to unfurl a second sail, a spritsail, which Fatima had never noticed.
“Speed!” he shouted back at them. “Get on the damned tiller, it’s flapping like a drunkard!”
Fatima left Hassan to placate the hysterical gelding and sprinted up to the stern castle. She threw her weight against the tiller, ignoring the surge of fire in her middle. Wind snapped into the mainsail and the cog jerked forward as if stung by a whip.
“Point us between those two big carracks,” called Gwennec, hurrying back toward Fatima along the deck. “It’s our best chance. They’ll not be able to turn as quick as the little caravel off our right flank over there.”
Fatima heaved the tiller to the left. The cog tilted and veered, sending the horse into a frenzy: it reared, dragging Hassan with it. Fatima watched the animal’s panic unfold in silence. The sound of the prow cutting through the surf muted everything else. Fatima could see figures hurrying across the deck of the nearest carrack, sunburned men, some armed and in hauberks, others in sailors’ caps; they swarmed toward the rail and into the rigging as if caught by surprise. She narrowed her eyes at the gap between the two ships, through which the open sea was visible: it was wide enough to admit the cog, but only just, and they were closing in on it very fast.
“Make your peace with God,” called Gwennec, sounding almost merry. A volley of noise cut through the roar of the surf: a dozen arquebuses, two dozen, half a hundred perhaps, fired at the cog from both sides. Shattered wood flew up from prow and railing and hull, sending a rain of splinters down on their heads. Fatima flinched, sheltering beneath the tiller.
“We’re still too slow.” Gwennec leaned over an uninjured portion of the railing to assess the damage. His hair was damp with salt spray and curled ac
ross his brow, making him look younger, almost like a boy. “If we don’t get out of range of their guns, they’ll put a hole in the hull and sink us right here. We’ve got to lose something.”
“Not the horse!” shouted Hassan, who was standing with the poor animal’s face pressed into the front of his robe.
“Then throw yourself overboard, you bony heathen! Christ Jesus!” Gwennec was gone again, shimmying up the mast until he reached the very top, where the boom of the mainsail met the mast and made a cross.
Fatima went cold. “What are you doing?” she called, convinced he was about to martyr himself. Gwennec didn’t answer. Beside him, the Castilian flag flew stiff and proud, yard after yard of expensively dyed canvas and rampant lions pulling at the rope that secured it. Gwennec reached out and loosed one knot, then another. With a roar, he flung the colors away. The lessening of the drag against the mainsail was slight, but sufficient: the cog slipped between the two larger ships like a well-oiled bolt.
“Reload!” Fatima could hear someone overhead shouting in Castilian. “Reload!”
“They timed that last volley all wrong,” said Gwennec gleefully. “They’ll pay for it now. We’ll be well past them by the time they’ve reloaded those great clanking things.”
A canyon of interlocking pine planks enclosed them. The hulls of the two carracks sat many feet higher in the water than the little cog, and loomed overhead, echoing with the thwarted cries of soldiers. The sound of rushing water quieted. A bluish gloom fell over the deck of the smaller ship as the shadows of the carracks enveloped it.
“They’ll crush us,” came Hassan’s voice, sounding thin and metallic.
“They won’t,” said Gwennec from his perch in the rigging. “They can’t turn fast enough. Just wait.”
Fatima waited. One lonely arquebus discharged from overhead, then another, but they were too late: as Fatima turned, she saw the railing of the stern castle clear the larger ships, releasing the little cog from their long shadows and into open water. Gwennec, invisible behind the mainsail, gave a wild yelp, and even the gelding seemed to understand its good fortune, for it threw up its shaggy head and whinnied.
A flutter of red caught Fatima’s eye. The Castilian flag was still aloft in the air behind them, as if it had run after the cog to say farewell. As she watched, the wind folded it upon itself and cast it into the sea. The flag puckered, sinking under its own weight, until finally it was gone, and there was only water, green and wild, spilling toward the edge of the earth.
Chapter 17
“We can’t feed it, blev’ruz. Surely even someone as daft as you can see that. The thing’ll need pounds and pounds of—”
“There are carrots and apples in one of those barrels down below. We can spare some for the poor beast. We’ve got lemons and so forth for ourselves, when it comes to that.”
“Lovely. Lovely! Do you have any idea how much a horse eats? And shits? We’ll all starve together, the three of us and this damned nag as well. Who’s to say you get to decide, anyhow? It was Fa’s ring that bought the supplies.”
“Hush, you’ll wake her.”
Fatima inhaled sharply and opened her eyes. Overhead, she saw the swaying ribs of the hull as they curved up to meet the deck. The sunlight that gilded the bottom of the stairs across the floor from her bunk was richly tinted. Sitting up, she was rewarded by a surge of nausea. The Middle Sea, so placid where it touched the eastward shores of Spain, had grown rougher as they approached the Strait. She felt, or thought she felt, the ship gather its strength, preparing itself for hostile, unknown water.
Fatima put her feet on the pitch-stained floor and shook her head to clear it. Hooves pawed at the deck overhead. Bracing herself against the ribs of the hull, Fatima made her way toward the stairs and up into what remained of the sunlight.
“There, see?” Hassan, his hair stiff with sweat and sea mist, stroked the gelding’s dun-colored nose to soothe it. “You did wake her.”
“You should have woken me hours ago,” said Fatima, yawning. The sea came into focus around her: it had turned a milky green, thick with the sediment of rivers. Land reached out to encircle them on both sides. To her left, in the far distance, Fatima could see a range of blue-green mountains beneath a veil of cloud; to her right, much closer, an uneven row of arid cliffs, bone-white and barren of vegetation. Only the way forward was open. The Strait of Jebel Tareq led into the setting sun, between the parted hands of Europe and Africa. At its narrowest point, a mountain crowned with lights rose straight out of the sea, its appearance so solid and abrupt that it seemed conscious of itself, like a sentry lifting his lamp over the threshold of the world.
“What is that?” murmured Fatima.
“Jebel Tareq himself,” said Hassan, coming to stand beside her. The gelding followed him anxiously. “Gibraltar, as the Christians call him.”
“And he’ll be watching,” said Gwennec. “From that peak, the Spaniards can see anything that comes and goes in this waterway. There’s a fortress up there where you see the lights, with walls ten feet thick and a ring of watchtowers. Always under guard, day and night.”
Fatima leaned over the railing to get a better look. Behind her, the gelding snuffled at the pocket of Hassan’s robe, hoping for an apple. It was an ugly beast, its fetlocks untrimmed, its coat a muddy roan: a packhorse, more than likely, before the Castilians had set Gwennec atop its back. Fatima craned her neck to study the monk. He was rubbing his wrists absently: the red marks had deepened to purple and blue.
“Tell me what happened,” said Fatima in a quiet voice.
Gwennec flushed and looked away.
“I didn’t—” His voice caught, and he made silent shapes with his mouth, as if trying to remember an unfamiliar word. “I think you ought to know that I tried to turn you in,” he continued evenly, his eyes fixed on nothing. Fatima went hot and cold by turns. She could still feel the points of heat on her face where Gwennec had kissed her, but a chilly knot in her chest told her hostis, hostis, and she reminded herself that he had drawn a line between them.
“You said you’d go to the monastery,” was all she offered, matching his tone.
“I never made it as far as the monastery. There were guards posted everywhere. But I never had a chance to give you up, because they already knew well enough where to expect you, as if they’d been here on this ship, listening at your elbow. They asked me who I was and where I’d been and it seemed foolish to lie. But I wouldn’t tell them your plan. Where you were headed, the map, all of that. Didn’t seem relevant, as you were sitting there in the harbor, nor was it my right to say anyhow. They didn’t like that. They took me to a public house somewhere up the main road, where the general and the lady were waiting.”
“The lady?” A chill rippled down Fatima’s arms. “Do you mean Luz?”
“Who else? So kind, she seemed at first—I’d met her before, of course, aboard this very cog on the way down the coast, but she took no notice of me then. This time, though—” Gwennec shifted on his feet and flushed again, turning crimson from neck to scalp. “She knew all sorts of things about me. Asked after my father, my three sisters, wanted to know whether the youngest was married yet. Spoke about this year’s catch, which was paltry compared with years past, and asked whether I thought the cod mightn’t be thinning out along the Breton seabeds. Fishermen’s talk. It was the oddest thing. She knew my father’d been furious when I told him I wanted to join the brothers at Saint Padarn’s. Said she’d pray for me and for him, that his heart might soften and come to accept my vocation.” Gwennec licked his chapped lips. “I asked her what she wanted. And what she wanted, apparently, was for me to tell her I’d seen our blev’ruz using his powers to commune with the Devil.”
Hassan spat out a laugh, startling the horse.
“I told her I’d seen no such thing. I told her the truth—that Hassan seemed ordinary enough, a bit delicate maybe, but as smart as they make ’em, and as good-hearted. And as for Fatima here—” He smiled
at her lopsidedly. “I told her that if ever there was anyone as could put the Devil in his place, it was Fatima.”
Fatima could imagine it: she could see Luz sitting across from the baffled monk, smiling in her sympathetic way, her wintery eyes opaque, disguising whatever fury or fervor she might feel.
“Did you see it?” Fatima pressed. “The speck in her eye—her left eye.”
“A speck?” Gwennec looked puzzled. “I can’t say I remember any speck. Her eyes seemed regular enough to me. It’s what comes out of her mouth that’s so terrifying. Not even that—it’s the fact that people listen to her. That’s the most terrifying thing of all.”
Fatima pressed her hands against her sides to warm them. When she blinked, she could see the speck struggling and wriggling in its bed of flesh, and she turned toward the sun to blot it out. It unnerved her that Gwennec couldn’t see what she had seen. She thought for a moment that she might be mistaken, that in her terror she had imagined the parasite. Perhaps it had been only a fleck of ash or dirt after all. Yet Hassan had seen it too, and Hassan saw more than anyone else. Fatima wondered whether Gwennec simply hadn’t noticed the speck, or had disregarded it, or whether something else yet more unsettling was at play. He had risked much to help them, but some part of him, the largest part, still belonged to the world Luz inhabited: perhaps he could see only what he had been taught to see.
“Something’s wrong with her, anyway,” said Fatima, half to herself. “Something awful.”
Gwennec grunted in agreement, rubbing his wrists.
“But what happened then?” prompted Hassan.
“She bound me with her own little hands,” said Gwennec, and laughed strangely, as though to mask pain. “I didn’t move or protest. The general and the guards, none of ’em said anything. It was as if we were all transfixed. She said my faith was lacking and that I wasn’t to be trusted. Said she was taking me under guard for my own good. Then the general ordered his men to ready themselves and mount, and they threw me onto the back of this nag here. The rest you already know.”
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