Blood Red Sea

7

It must have been half an hour later that the heavy curtain was drawn back and a man stepped lightly into the chamber. He wore a long robe in the Moorish style, and there was a dagger on a thin gold belt round his waist. They stood.

‘Please,’ he said, and indicated the divan again. ‘You are my guests.’

They sat, warily. A boy brought in a beaten copper tray bearing two more candles, and three tiny cups of steaming coffee. They took theirs and held them until the man took the first sip from his own. He smiled. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Drink without fear in your hearts that you will be poisoned.’

The coffee was very hot and sweet. Hot as hell, sweet as love, and black as the devil, as the saying had it.

‘So,’ said the man. ‘How is your homeland?’

It was important to show nothing, give nothing away. They were in a very peculiar situation, irony piled upon irony. Threatened by Catholic pikemen, they had now been rescued, it seemed, by Spanish Moors.

‘She flourishes,’ said Nicholas.

‘Alhamdulillah, God be praised.’ The Moor smiled. ‘You would like to know of our progress? Assuming the. . gifts are to be shipped soon?’

Nicholas thought rapidly. They were mistaken for someone else. He said, ‘Tell me of the fugitives first. Out there. Why are you not among them?’

He sighed. ‘Cadiz has not yet been. . cleansed. These that you see, the family that you so gallantly and foolishly fought for — and risked all our plans for, I might add — these are fugitives driven down from the Alpujarras.’

‘Where the atrocities have taken place?’

‘What have you heard?’

‘Of churches burned, whole families massacred. Christian priests murdered.’

‘And you too are a Christian. I understand that.’ The man was thoughtful. ‘It is a civil war, and nothing that the worst criminals among my people do has my support. Aben Farax in particular is driven more by hatred of the enemy than by any love of the Prophet. There are men like this in your world too. Yes? Driven more by hatred of the Moor, the Turk and the Saracen than by any love of your Christ?’

Nicholas nodded. ‘We worship different gods. But the devil is always the same, and men commit the same atrocities the world over.’

‘Then let me tell you how it has been for my people in Cadiz. And this has been by no means the worst. In Granada it is worse.

‘Three years ago we were told that we must become true subjects of King Philip, no longer stand apart. We must abandon speaking Arabic, and learn to speak only Castilian Spanish. The language of the Prophet, the language of the Book, was to be proscribed. As if a filthy thing.’

‘What did you do?’

‘We did what any oppressed people does. We smiled, and bowed our heads humbly, and agreed. And in secret we did differently, speaking Arabic with ever more love and relish. So that we soon increased our reputation for dishonesty and treachery.’

‘But this is hardly an atrocity.’

‘Listen longer, English friend. We were then ordered to hand over all books in Arabic to Pedro Deza in thirty days, including the Koran. You know of Pedro Deza?’

They shook their heads.

‘Doubtless you will. Why do you still harbour copies of the Koran? they said. You are Christian now. Of course, of course, we said. We believed the books were to be burned. We were then forbidden to wear any Moorish garments. Women must go in public with their faces uncovered, in case they posed a danger, or they were really Moorish men in disguise, intent on assassinating Catholic princes and cardinals. Our private family ceremonies, such as betrothals and marriages, must take place with the doors of our houses open on to the street, so that nothing nefarious could take place. What did the Christians take us for? So they could watch us — and the lesser ones, the peasants, jeer at us and even spit at us over our threshold as we gave our daughters away in marriage.

‘Moorish names and surnames were banned. A father could no longer name his son Mohammed, he must call him Jacobo, or Rodolfo. Our bathhouses were closed down, because they said they were nothing but places where we practised our filthy lusts. We were forbidden to own Negro slaves — although as you know, Negroes are made by Allah to be slaves, for they are the accursed sons of Ham.’

Nicholas sipped his coffee.

‘Our madrasas were closed, all our children were to be placed in Christian schools. To save their souls. And so you see, humiliation piled upon humiliation. Eventually a million little humiliations — do they not add up to their own kind of atrocity?’

‘So you rose in revolt?’

The Moor nodded. ‘Though we had no arms, no training, no fortresses and little money. Yet the Turks and the Moroccans promised us much. So we rose in revolt. At first Aben Humeya and Aben Farax led a band of no more then eighty followers. Young men full of blood and fire, and all the recklessness of the young. They had nothing else to look forward to but a life scratching a living herding goats in the Alpujarras, or running a stall in the market square. Why should they not take the golden road to martyrdom and paradise? More and more flocked to join the revolt.

‘We fought from the natural fortresses of the Sierras — though we must not call Spain’s highest mountain Mulhacen now, must we? It is an Arab name. Like the Alhambra. Like algebra and alchemy, and the Christians’ favourite, alcohol, which is forbidden to us. Surely Allah plays jokes upon mankind, to instruct him!’

The Moor smiled, and the smile faded. The boy came back and whispered to him, ‘The four are here for you.’

‘Tell them to wait,’ he said.

Four, thought Nicholas and Hodge. And they had not so much as a dagger between them.

The Moor resumed. ‘One law said that any Muslim, of any age or sex, could receive a hundred lashes if he came near a town. For speaking Arabic you now spent thirty days in chains. Then bitterness and fear erupted in atrocity, and fed more atrocity. Christian villages were attacked by armed bands and put to the sword, though our leader Aben Humeya tried to restrain it. And then the whole Moorish quarter of Albacin, of Granada. Our men sold captive Christian women and children into slavery, under cover of night off the coast, to the Barbary corsairs. In return they received arms and munitions. A few Turkish supplies also came through the coastal blockades.

‘And so for the Spanish, any Moor was now suspect by race, regardless of conduct. In some villages, Moors were hunted down with hunting dogs, for sport. Whole families were slain and buried in mass graves.

‘There were still six hundred thousand Moors within Spain. A great number. But we could not oppose the Spanish army, and it destroyed us. Of course it did. We were only villagers, townsmen, merchants, and with families to protect. We were utterly defeated. Many of our people were herded down from their villages, broken up and divided, some sent on the long march to new settlements in Castile, or concentrated in camps in alien valleys, on the poorest land.

‘A few fanatics still fight on now, in the Sierras and in lonely valleys. But what for? The Morisco people have already begun their long walk into exile. And this is really what Spain wanted all along, I think. What men such as Pedro Deza had long since dreamed of: a pure Spain, white and clean and Christian. That day has nearly come now. Pedro Deza has triumphed.

‘And after all we have suffered, perhaps we are glad, or at least resigned, to be going. Those fugitives you witnessed, out there in the rain. They are not really weeping to go. They are weeping to be driven out in such ignominy, so unjustly robbed of their possessions. Many have lost relatives and loved ones in the wars. But they are not sorry to go. Here is another fine irony, my friends. I am in agreement with Pedro Deza after all. I do not think that we Muslims and Christians can live in peace side by side. Not for very long. And so, after nearly a thousand years in al-Andalus, we go.

‘Into exile, and betrayed too by the Turk. Constantinople promised us soldiers — none came. Just guns. And already we hear that in Morocco we are further preyed upon and robbed even by our brother Muslims. In Spain we are despised as traitororous Mohammedans, but in Morocco, we are thought not true believers, tainted by centuries of living under the infidel. They jeer at us as we step off the ships at Tangier or Ceuta, saying we sold our pigs just before embarking. It gives the Moroccans the excuse they need to practise their most ardent belief of all: cheating and stealing from those who trust them. It is a disgrace to the Faith.

‘It is the flight of King Boabdil. You know of him?’

‘The last Moorish king of Andalus.’

The Moor nodded. ‘Who reined in his horse on the last high pass over the mountains of Spain, and looked back one last time over his beloved, lost kingdom of golden Granada — and sighed. That pass that has ever since been called El Suspiro del Moro. The Moor’s Last Sigh.’

He said very softly, ‘The history of men is but sadness and sorrow, always and for ever. Trust not in men and their history. Trust in Allah only.’

After a while Nicholas said, ‘Yet — though your people are going and passing away from Spain for ever, you still wish to receive these. . gifts, from England?’

‘Very much,’ said the Moor, still with his head bowed, dwelling on the past and his people’s sadness — and unguarded. ‘We still wish to distract Spain, to prevent this Holy League from forming a while longer. Then when it forms, let it be drawn far eastwards, to Cyprus, so that the Ottoman fleet can sail west and take-’ He bit his lip. This was too much to divulge, even to this gallant English ally — who was yet a Christian.

At that moment the boy returned with another whispered message. The Moor turned his head sharply, then said, ‘Forgive me. There is a. . I will return.’

And as he vanished behind the curtain, he glanced back at his two guests, a look of puzzlement on his face.

The only possible weapon in the chamber was a tasselled silk cushion, which might stop a dagger-thrust for a second or two. They were well and truly trapped. Before, their situation has seemed so absurd, Nicholas had smiled. His smile had gone. The Moor had talked far too much for them to walk out alive now.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Hodge quietly, ‘we’ve not hopped proverbially out of the frying pan straight into the fire, like a couple of stupid sausages.’

Nicholas nodded. ‘Hiding from the Spaniards, sheltered by a Moor. Truly Lady Fortune is a whore.’

‘You’ll be a poet yet.’

They sat in silence for a while. At last Hodge said, ‘Nick, this is agony.’

Nicholas said nothing. Surely Allah plays jokes upon mankind, to instruct him!

‘The minute we came into this house,’ said Hodge, ‘dark and candlelit as it was, there was the coffee and tobacco smell, and mint tea, and the shoes left at the door. And I said to myself even then, Hodge, dearest friend, you are in a bugger’s pickle now.’

‘We cannot betray,’ said Nicholas. ‘They saved our lives here, though mistaking us for someone else, I think. But is England really to supply the Moors with armaments, to weaken Spain from within? Is our own country so treacherous?’

‘Is she really our own country still?’ said Hodge. Nicholas looked pained. ‘Politics,’ said Hodge, waving his hand. ‘Like you said of the devil, it’s the same the world over. No one comes out of it smelling like my dad’s sweet williams.’

There was whispered conferring and then the Moor reappeared. ‘Quickly, there are soldiers. In here.’

They hurried after him. In the outer chamber was a large cedarwood chest, which the boy and a woman had cleared of its contents. They stacked the various blankets and coverlets beside it on the floor.

‘Inside,’ said the Moor.

Nicholas hesitated. Such a hiding place wouldn’t fool anyone. And once in the chest the lid might be locked or weighted down, and they would be left to starve. Who could they trust?

A thunderous drumming was heard far off. Pike butts being thumped against the bolted wooden door on to the alleyway.

‘House search! Open up in the name of King Philip!’

Hodge was already getting into the chest. ‘Mind you leave it open a crack.’

The pikes drummed again, and then they began a steady, rhythmic battering at the door. There soon followed a crash as the bolts gave and the door was flung back against the wall.

‘Give me your dagger,’ said Nicholas. The Moor looked puzzled. ‘Give it to me!’

There was the sound of running feet and ruffianly shouts. ‘On the floor! Don’t move! You, kneel!’ A muffled sound that might have been a cry of pain.

The Moor drew the thin gold-handled dagger from his belt and handed it to Nicholas without a word.

Nicholas stepped into the chest and crouched. As they lowered the lid over them, Nicholas laid the dagger blade on the rim, jamming it open a crack.

The chamber emptied and they crouched in silence.

‘I hate small spaces,’ said Nicholas.

‘I didn’t enjoy the dungeons of Algiers jail that much myself,’ said Hodge. ‘Can you see out?’

Nicholas craned painfully and tried to put his eyes to the crack. ‘No. Only darkness.’

From the rest of the house, and the warren of chambers and passageways and courtyards that was the old Morisco quarter, came a range of thumps and bangs and cries, all the more unnerving for being unseen.

After some time there came a long silence, and then they heard the door of the chamber open. A voice whispered, ‘Friends!’

It was the voice of the Moor.

They didn’t move. Nicholas’s grip tightened on the handle of the dagger.

‘Friends! It is safe. Come out.’

Still they hesitated. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

Another pause, and then Hodge slowly pushed the lid up, Nicholas ready with the paltry dagger.

There were two burly Spanish pikemen at the door, and another had his arm gripped around the Moor’s throat, half-throttling him. In his left hand he held an evil half-pike, the tip under the captive’s jaw. A fourth soldier had a knife to the throat of the boy, whose eyes rolled white with terror. In the brown eyes of the Moor there was no hint of treachery, only pleading and sorrow.

He whispered, ‘I am sorry, I am so sorry-’

‘Shut it,’ growled the soldier, screwing the point of his half-pike into his cheek and drawing a trickle of blood. ‘Or you’ll lose the boy.’ He looked back at the two wretches rising from the chest and smiled. ‘Chain ’em up.’