The Hand of Fatima Read online

  ‘No, thank you,’ he said, handing back the glass.

  ‘Drink, Moor!’ shouted the innkeeper, who was clearing one of the tables. ‘Wine is a gift from God.’

  Hernando looked at Juan, who answered by raising his eyebrows.

  ‘This wine is not exactly a gift from your god,’ replied Hernando, ‘we brought it.’

  ‘Heretic!’ The innkeeper stopped scrubbing the table and headed for him, puffing and blowing.

  ‘I told you he was brave, León,’ Juan butted in, pushing his hand into the man’s chest to prevent him reaching Hernando, ‘although I take back clever,’ he added, turning to the lad.

  ‘Does my having a drink matter so much to you?’ asked Hernando.

  ‘In my inn, yes,’ bellowed the innkeeper, still struggling with Juan.

  ‘In that case,’ said Hernando, raising the glass in a toast, ‘I’ll do it for you.’

  If they force you to drink wine, then drink it, but do not make a vice of it, he said to himself, taking a long swig.

  He left the inn at dawn: a few Christians were coming out of mass. After the first one, he drank several more toasts with Juan and León. The innkeeper, honour satisfied, offered him the scant remains of the guests’ dinner, which they reheated on the coals. Hernando headed straight for the tannery. He felt tipsy, but had discovered a nugget of information that might perhaps be of some use to him: when they heard he worked at Vicente Segura’s tannery, Juan and the innkeeper had exchanged smiles and increasingly obscene jokes about the tanner’s wife.

  ‘Make good use of what you know,’ Juan advised him. ‘Don’t be as rash as you were with León.’

  Hernando turned a corner on Calle Badanas, and suddenly quickened his pace. Was that . . .? Yes. It was Fátima. She was waiting a little beyond the tannery gate the apprentices and workers used.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Hernando asked her. ‘What about Brahim? How come he has allowed you—?’

  ‘He’s at work,’ she interrupted him. ‘Your mother won’t tell him anything. What happened?’ she wanted to know. ‘You didn’t come home to sleep. Some of the men in the house wanted to report you to the authorities straight away.’

  ‘Here.’ Hernando handed her the two copper coins. ‘This is what I’ve been doing. Hide them. They are for us.’

  And why not? it occurred to him. Perhaps he could buy Fátima’s freedom from Brahim. If he came by enough money . . .

  ‘How did you get it? Have you been drinking?’ Fátima frowned.

  ‘No. Yes. Well . . .’

  ‘You’re going to be late, Moor.’ The bald, stocky foreman who chose the hides shouted the curt warning from the road to the tannery.

  Why should I be so cautious? thought Hernando. He felt capable of anything! Besides, he might never have as good an opportunity again: on his own with the worker who, according to his smuggling companions, was dallying with the master tanner’s wife.

  ‘I am speaking to my wife,’ he fired back haughtily as the foreman continued on his way.

  The man stopped dead and turned round. Fátima cringed and pressed herself against the wall.

  ‘So what? Does that mean you can be late?’ he roared.

  ‘Some people waste more work time calling on the boss’s wife when he’s away from the tannery.’ The look of embarrassment on the man’s face confirmed his night-time companions had been right. The foreman gesticulated without saying a word. Then he hesitated.

  ‘You play for high stakes, lad,’ he managed to say.

  ‘I, and many like me: an entire people! We once staked even more than that . . . and we lost. I don’t much care what the outcome of the game is now.’

  ‘And her?’ the other man added, pointing at Fátima. ‘Doesn’t she matter to you either?’

  ‘We look out for one another.’ Hernando reached out to Fátima’s astonished face and stroked her cheek. ‘If anything happens to me, the tanner will find out . . .’ Hernando and the worker’s eyes locked. ‘But then again, perhaps they were just rumours not worthy of attention? Why cast doubt on the honour of a master tanner of high standing in Córdoba and on his wife’s good name?’

  The other man thought for a few moments: honour and reputation, the most precious possessions any Spaniard could have. Many a one had lost his life over a simple affair of honour! And the master tanner . . .

  ‘People like to gossip,’ he said at length. ‘But get a move on. Best not to be late.’

  The foreman made to walk off, but Hernando called: ‘Hey!’

  The man stopped.

  ‘Where are your manners? Aren’t you going to say goodbye to my wife?’

  The foreman hesitated, anger etched on his face, and yet he gave way a second time.

  ‘Madam . . .’ he mumbled, staring at Fátima.

  ‘Why humiliate him so much?’ she reproached Hernando once the man had disappeared through the tannery gate.

  Hernando looked into her black, almond-shaped eyes. ‘I will lay them all at your feet,’ he promised, and immediately raised a finger to the girl’s lips to silence her protests.

  28

  IT WAS NOT difficult for Hernando to grasp the spirit of Córdoba, beyond the churches and priests, the masses and religious processions, the rosaries or the nuns and friars begging for alms on the streets. In fact, devout Córdobans honoured their religious obligations and gave generously to women from the lower orders, to hospitals or convents, as well as meeting the demand for religious bequests in their wills or rescuing captives from the hands of the Berbers. But once their duty to the Church was fulfilled, their interests and way of life diverged further and further from the religious principles that ought to have driven them. Despite the efforts of the Council of Trent, any priest who did not possess a concubine in his house made use of a slave. It was not regarded as a sin to make a slave pregnant. It was, so Hernando heard, like bringing a horse to a donkey to beget a mule; when it came down to it, so the argument went, the offspring took on the social class of the mother and was born a slave. Efforts by Church authorities to stop confessors extracting sexual favours from women resulted in the need to keep confessor and penitent apart by means of a screen in the confessional. Yet the authorities themselves were hardly a good example of chastity and modesty. The riches and favours that went with their positions were much coveted by the second sons of the noble families, and the dean of the cathedral himself, Don Juan Fernández de Córdoba, a man of distinguished lineage, had lost count of the number of children he had scattered throughout the city.

  Civil society was no different. It was as though beneath the purity that was supposed to rule married life there lay hidden a world of licentiousness where scandals happened time after time with bloody consequences for those caught in the act of adultery. Nuns were cloistered mainly for financial reasons by their fathers and brothers – it was less of a drain on family money to hand a daughter over to the Church than give her enough of a dowry to attract a husband of the same social class – and since these young women lacked any religious vocation they competed with the clerics to be seduced by the philanderers who relished the challenge of acquiring such a precious trophy; it was one of the greatest successes they could boast about.

  For Hernando and the other Moriscos who had used their hoes to make the stony lands of the kingdom of Granada fertile, Córdoba society seemed lazy and corrupt. Work was despised; workers were denied access to public office. Artisans did just enough to earn a living, while an army of gentlemen, the lowest rung of the nobility, generally without means, would rather die of hunger than humiliate themselves by undertaking gainful employment: honour, the exaggerated sense of honour that imbued all Christians whatever their social class, made it impossible!

  Hernando had first-hand experience of this a few days before the celebrations for the victory at Lepanto. He could have apologized, as he tried to do at the outset; do an about-turn and let the matter go; but something inside him would not let him. One evening he was walking al
ong the narrow Calle de Armas, near the Consolación hermitage, where there was an orphanage with its hatch for abandoning unwanted children, when a young gentleman approaching from the opposite direction stumbled as he was passing and almost fell. He had a haughty manner, and was wearing a black cloak with a sword at his belt and a hat adorned with trimmings. Hernando could not help smiling as he tried to help him. Far from thanking him, the young man ostentatiously shook off Hernando’s hand and growled: ‘What are you laughing at?’ as he recovered his footing.

  ‘Forgive me . . .’

  ‘What are you looking at?’ The young man made as if to reach for his sword.

  Who was he to ask him that? After his stumble, the gentleman was trying to rearrange the packing of sawdust he used to pad out his breeches. Ungrateful wretch! What if he were to teach the fop a lesson?

  ‘I was just wondering . . . what is your name?’ Hernando stammered deliberately, lowering his eyes.

  ‘Who are you, you stinking dullard, to be interested in my name?’

  ‘It’s that . . .’ Hernando’s mind raced. The arrogant fool! How could he teach him a lesson? The pointed velvet shoes he could not take his eyes off suggested that this particular gentleman must have some money to his name. He noted the fancy breeches and the lining of his cloak, obviously sewn with great care by some maidservant. ‘It’s just that . . .’

  ‘Speak!’

  ‘It seems . . . I think . . . I suspect I heard you talked about the other night in the tavern in the Corredera . . .’ He let the words hang in the air.

  ‘Go on!’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to make a mistake, excellency. What I heard . . . No, I cannot. Forgive my presumption but I must know your name.’

  The young man thought for a moment or two. So did Hernando. What sort of a mess was he getting himself into?

  ‘Don Nicolás Ramírez de Barros,’ the young man declared earnestly, ‘a nobleman by ancestry.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ confirmed Hernando, ‘it was your excellency they were talking about: Don Nicolás Ramírez. I remember now.’

  ‘What were they saying?’

  ‘There were two men . . .’ Hernando paused, and was about to go on when the gentleman got in ahead of him.

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘Two men, well dressed. They were talking about your excellency. Definitely! I heard what they were saying.’ He pretended not to dare continue. What could he tell him? There was no going back now.

  ‘What were they saying?’

  What could they have said? Hernando asked himself desperately. A nobleman by ancestry! The dandy had boasted about that.

  ‘That your ancestry wasn’t pure,’ Hernando said bluntly.

  The young man tightened his grip on his sword. Hernando finally dared look up at his face: it was flustered, furious.

  ‘In the name of Saint James, patron saint of Spain,’ the nobleman muttered, ‘my bloodline is pure back as far as the Romans. I can trace my family name back to Quintus Varus! Tell me: who has dared to suggest such an insult?’

  He felt Don Nicolás’s onion breath on his face.

  ‘No . . . I don’t know,’ he stuttered, not needing to pretend this time. Had he gone too far? The young man was shaking with rage. ‘I don’t know them. As your excellency will understand, I don’t get involved with such people.’

  ‘Would you recognize them?’ How could Hernando recognize two men he had just invented? He could say that since it was night he did not see them clearly enough. ‘Would you recognize them?’ the gentleman insisted, shaking him violently by the shoulders.

  ‘Of course,’ said Hernando, retreating away from him.

  ‘Come with me to the Corredera!’

  ‘No.’

  Don Nicolás gave a start. ‘What do you mean, no?’ He stepped towards Hernando, who backed away.

  ‘I can’t. They’re expecting me at the . . .’ What was the workplace furthest from the Potro district? ‘They’re expecting me at the pottery. Your problems are no concern of mine. All I’m interested in is supporting my family. If I don’t turn up at work, the boss won’t pay me. I have a wife and children I’m trying to bring up in the Christian faith . . .’

  That did it! Hernando congratulated himself on seeing the gentleman slowly fishing around in his stockings until he found a purse. For Fátima! thought Hernando. ‘One of them is ill and I think another—’

  ‘Shut up! How much does your boss pay you?’ Don Nicolás asked, counting out the coins in the purse.

  ‘Four reales,’ Hernando lied.

  ‘Take two,’ the other man offered.

  ‘I can’t. My children . . .’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘I’m sorry, your excellency.’

  The gentleman pressed a four-real coin into his hand.

  ‘Let’s go!’ he ordered.

  To get from the Consolación hermitage to the Corredera was only a matter of crossing Plaza de las Cañas, a few short paces that the gentleman covered purposefully. His hand on the hilt of his sword, he cursed and swore vengeance on those who allowed his family name to be sullied. Hernando went in front, pushed on from time to time by Don Nicolás. And now what? he thought. How was he going to get out of the trap he had set for himself? But he clutched the coin in his hand. Four reales! Money he could put towards buying Fátima’s freedom.

  ‘What if they’re not there this evening?’ he suggested as the gentleman urged him forward with a shove.

  ‘Pray that that will not be the case,’ was Don Nicolás’s only reply.

  They reached the great Córdoban square from the south. Hernando tried to get his bearings in the vast open space. There were three inns on the square: La Romana, on the side where they had just arrived, and two others on their right, on the eastern end of the square: the Los Leones inn and the Carbón inn, close to the hospital of Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles. There was still enough daylight. People were going in and out of the inns and the great square was a hive of activity.

  ‘Well?’ asked the gentleman.

  Hernando grunted. What if he ran off? As if he had read his thoughts, Don Nicolás grabbed his arm and dragged him to La Romana inn. They unceremoniously pushed a customer standing in the doorway out of their way and entered the establishment. The gentleman shook Hernando roughly, demanding an answer.

  ‘No. They’re not here,’ said the lad. Several of the customers peered in his direction as he surveyed the interior of the inn.

  He made the same claim in Los Leones. Of course they weren’t! he thought as they went into the Carbón inn. Why should they be? But then, his four reales . . . What would the gentleman decide to do? He would never let matters rest like this. His honour and his family name were at stake! He would make him wait all night and then . . . He had paid him what he thought was the equivalent of a month’s wages!

  A loud guffaw interrupted Hernando’s thoughts. At one of the tables, a bearded man clad in the uniform of a regular soldier raised a glass of wine and was carousing with two other men at his table. He was clearly drunk.

  ‘That’s him.’ Hernando pointed, ready to make his escape as soon as Don Nicolás was distracted.

  But the gentleman pressed even harder on his arm as if readying himself for the fight.

  ‘You!’ Don Nicolás shouted from the doorway.

  All chatter in the room suddenly stopped. Laughter was cut short. A couple of customers quickly rose from the nearest table and moved away, knocking over their chairs. Hernando felt his legs start to shake.

  ‘How dare you sully the family name of Varus?’ the gentleman shouted again.

  The soldier lumbered up out of his seat, gulping down the rest of his wine, which dribbled into his beard. He reached for the inlaid hilt of his sword.

  ‘Who might you be, sir, to raise your voice to me?’ he roared. ‘To a lieutenant in the Sicilian regiment of His Majesty’s army, a noble from Vizcaya!’ When he heard this, Hernando shuddered. Another nobleman! ‘If you are a true gentleman
, which I very much doubt, you are a disgrace to your ancestors.’

  ‘Are you questioning my ancestry?’ shouted Don Nicolás.

  ‘I told you so,’ Hernando tried to whisper in his ear. ‘That’s what I heard, that he questioned . . .’ But Don Nicolás paid him no attention, and all at once Hernando’s arm was free.

  ‘You sully your own family name!’ the lieutenant bellowed.

  ‘I demand redress,’ screamed Don Nicolás.

  ‘You shall have it!’

  Both gentlemen drew their swords. The people still at their tables got up to clear the space and the two men faced each other.

  Hernando remained stunned for a few moments. They were going to fight a duel! He opened his sweaty hand and looked at the four-real coin. He tossed it into the air a couple of times, catching it in his palm, and then walked out of the inn. Idiots! he thought, as he heard the metallic clash of their blades making their first contact.

  On the way back to Calle de Mucho Trigo Hernando felt troubled, very different from what he had expected after the successful outcome of his risky wager: two noblemen were gambling with their lives without either of them even being aware of what his adversary really intended. And all because of a misunderstanding! On the way, when it was already dark, he ran into a procession of blind people walking tied together in single file. They were reciting the rosary and begging for alms as they did three nights a week, roaming the streets of Córdoba beyond the Hospital for the Blind on Calle Alfaros. A man who was praying and tending the candles on an image of the Virgin at the front of a building dropped a coin in the tin that the first of the blind men shook rhythmically. Hernando stepped out of their way and held on tightly to his four-real coin. Christians!

  He had made a good deal of money since finding out about the goings on between the tannery foreman and the boss’s wife. He had thought it over for several nights: he could write and count and surely those skills could land him a better-paid job than his work in the manure pit, for which he was paid less than a servant; and yet he chose to stay where he was. His job at the tannery kept him far away and hidden from the rest of the workers, who hardly ever came near the place, so that he could enjoy a certain freedom, sanctioned by the foreman, which he would not have had in any other job.