The Hand of Fatima Read online

  ‘To you?’ spat Brahim. ‘To an old man from the Albaicín in Granada? It was probably you and others like you, cowards the whole lot of you, who decided not to join the uprising. You betrayed your brothers in the Alpujarra—’

  ‘I am asking about your wife,’ Jalil insisted.

  ‘Do you have a wife, old man? Can you provide for her? Can anyone provide for a wife in this city?’

  ‘Does that mean you cannot provide for her?’ Karim interjected.

  ‘I mean’, drawled Brahim, ‘that nobody can do so in Córdoba.’

  ‘Is that the extent of your plea to this hearing?’ asked Jalil.

  ‘Yes. You all know it, you’re all aware of our situation. Why put on this pantomime?’

  Jalil and Karim conferred quietly. In the corner, Aisha reached for Fátima’s hand and squeezed it tight.

  ‘Brahim of Juviles,’ Jalil pronounced, ‘we recognize the hardships afflicting our people. We suffer them as you do and we realize the difficulties facing one and all, not just in providing for their wives but in feeding and dressing their children. We would not accept a wife’s petition based on such reasons. It is true that I cannot provide for my wife either, not as I was able to do in Granada. However, there is not a single believer in Córdoba who has two wives as you do. If, as you say, nobody can provide for a wife in this city, how can you claim to do so for a second wife? We grant you a period of two months to prove to this council that you are in a position to care adequately for both of your wives. Once that period of time has elapsed, if you cannot comply and she insists, Fátima will be taken away from you.’

  Brahim listened to the verdict without moving a muscle. Only his narrowed eyes gave any indication of the anger that was gnawing away at him. Then Karim spoke. Hamid had made a request of the two elders. ‘I know him well,’ he’d said, referring to Brahim. ‘He could kill her rather than hand her over,’ he’d assured them.

  ‘Out of consideration for your son and given the scant resources at your disposal, we do not demand of you, as normally required by law, that you support your second wife during the idda. We free you from that responsibility for the sake of the child. But, in the meantime, Fátima will live under our protection.’

  ‘You dog!’ muttered Brahim, confronting Hamid.

  The three young Moriscos immediately moved between him and the holy man.

  ‘Come with us, Fátima,’ Jalil urged her.

  Aisha prised apart her and Fátima’s tightly entwined fingers. Both their hands were clammy. Fátima reached out to touch her companion one last time, and then walked towards the elders.

  32

  AT DAWN, Hernando arrived at the royal stables, a new building beside the fortress of the Christian monarchs, seat of the Córdoba Inquisition. Since arriving in Córdoba, Hernando, like the rest of the Moriscos, had stayed clear of that district, San Bartolomé, situated between the mosque and the episcopal palace, the Guadalquivir and the western edge of the city wall. It was not just that the Inquisition and its prison were to be found there, or the episcopal palace, with its constant comings and goings of priests and those involved in the Inquisition, but that, unlike the rest of Córdoba’s neighbourhoods, not a single free Morisco was registered in San Bartolomé. Its inhabitants were different from the rest of the city: this was a parish that had been added to the plan of the city devised after the Reconquest and that, by royal decree, was populated with stout, sturdy men required to be skilled archers in time of war: a kind of city militia always ready to defend the city walls. These qualities epitomized the privileged people from San Bartolomé, who considered themselves above the rest of the inhabitants. They even married amongst their kind, and had many running battles with the rest of the parishes. Few Moriscos wanted to get involved with inquisitors, priests or such proud and haughty people.

  That night, Hernando was able to shelter in the house of the wool carder who had found himself a wife. He was treated to a fine dinner, which they all enjoyed in an atmosphere of some nostalgia, with salted spicy lamb, pepper and dried coriander, all fried in oil as was the way in the Granada they all yearned for. Before they had finished eating, Karim, who also lived on Calle de los Moriscos, called at the wool carder’s house and joined the gathering after leaving Fátima in his wife’s care. Hernando and she were not allowed to see each other during the two months that had been granted to Brahim.

  What were two months? Hernando again thought to himself as he made his way to the stables. His happiness would be complete . . . if it weren’t for his mother. When they were outside the house saying goodbye, Hernando asked after Aisha, and Karim told him his mother was facing up to the situation with great strength of mind, that he should not worry: the community was behind them.

  ‘Prosper, my boy,’ the elder encouraged him. ‘Hamid told me about Don Diego and the horses. We need people like you. Work hard! Study! We’ll look after all the rest.’

  Karim disappeared into the cool darkness of that March evening with the words, ‘We have faith in you,’ which disrupted the fantasies about Fátima that Hernando let himself indulge in endlessly that night. We have faith in you! When Hamid had said that to him, it was as if he were addressing the child from Juviles, but hearing it from the lips of that unknown elder from the Albaicín . . . They had faith in him! For what? What more was required of him?

  He crossed the Campo Real, scattered with litter as usual, and glanced to his left where the majestic fortress stood tall. The Inquisition! A shiver ran down his spine on seeing the four towers, each one different, which rose up from the corners of the fortress with its high, crenellated walls. The long façade of the royal stables began right there, at the end of the fortress. Hernando could smell the horses inside, hear the shouts of the grooms and the neighing of the animals. He stopped at the broad entrance door, next to the ancient wall, near the Belén tower.

  The stable was open, and those sounds and smells he had picked up on the other side of the façade hit him when he stopped at the threshold of the open door. Nobody was guarding the entrance and, after waiting for a moment or two, Hernando took a few steps forward. To his left a great nave-like building stretched ahead of him, with a broad central corridor on both sides of which, between pillars, were stalls full of horses. The pillars supported a long straight sequence of low vaults, which led the visitor on past one arch, then another and another . . .

  Youngsters were working with the horses in the stalls.

  Standing still at the entrance to the body of the building, in the middle of the corridor, Hernando clicked his tongue to stop the first two horses on his right, tethered to a ring on the wall, from biting their necks.

  ‘They do it all the time,’ said someone behind him. Hernando turned quickly when the man who had spoken followed suit and clicked his tongue more forcefully. ‘Are you looking for someone?’ he asked.

  He was a middle-aged man, tall and sinewy, dark-skinned and well dressed, with leather buskins above the knee fastened with straps along the calf, his shoes and fitted white breeches free of frills or embellishments. After looking him up and down, the man smiled at him. He was smiling at him! How many times had anyone done that in Córdoba? Hernando smiled back.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I’m looking for the groom of Don Diego . . . López?’

  ‘López de Haro,’ the man came to his aid. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Hernando is my name.’

  ‘Hernando what?’

  ‘Ruiz. Hernando Ruiz.’

  ‘Well, Hernando Ruiz. Don Diego has many grooms. Which of them are you looking for?’

  Hernando shrugged his shoulders. ‘Yesterday, at the bullfight—’

  ‘I remember now!’ the man interrupted him. ‘It was you who led the Count of Espiel’s stallion into the square, wasn’t it? I knew you looked familiar,’ he added while Hernando agreed. ‘I see they didn’t catch you, but you should not have helped the count. That man should have had to leave the square on foot and in disgrace; what sort of victor
y is it when the bull kills a horse because of his stupidity? It was a fine animal,’ he muttered. ‘In fact, the King should forbid him from getting on a horse, at least in front of a bull . . . or a woman. Good, now I know who you’re after. Come with me.’

  They left the building with the stalls and went out to a huge central courtyard. There, three horsemen were breaking in horses, two of them mounted on magnificent examples while the third, whom Hernando recognized as Don Diego’s groom, was on foot and making a two-year-old colt run in circles around him as far as the head halter the animal was wearing on top of the bit and bridle would allow; the loose stirrups were knocking against its flanks, getting it worked up.

  ‘That’s him, isn’t it?’ The man pointed. Hernando nodded. ‘He’s called José Velasco. By the way, I’m Rodrigo García.’

  Hernando hesitated before shaking Rodrigo’s proffered hand. He was not used to Christians offering to shake hands. ‘I . . . I am a Morisco,’ he announced so that Rodrigo would not be deceived.

  ‘I know,’ the other man answered. ‘José told me this morning. But here we are all horsemen, trainers, grooms, farriers, bit-makers, whatever. Here, horses are our religion. But be very careful repeating that in front of any priest or inquisitor.’

  Hernando noticed that Rodrigo stretched his hand out to him openly as he said these words.

  After a while, when the colt’s flanks were sweating, José Velasco made it stop, tied up the halter he used to make it run round and led it to a mounting block. He climbed up on this and, helped by a groom who was restraining the colt, mounted it carefully. The other two horsemen stopped their exercises. The young horse stood still and expectant, tensed, its ears drooping, feeling Velasco’s weight.

  ‘It’s the first time,’ Rodrigo whispered to Hernando, as if raising his voice might cause a mishap. Velasco held a long switch crossed over the colt’s neck, with the reins and the halter gripped in both hands; he held the reins loosely as if not wanting to disturb the colt with the bit he was chewing at; the halter though was tight to the ring that hung beneath the animal’s lower lip. He waited for a moment to see if the colt reacted, but there was no sign and it stayed nervously still, forcing him to encourage it gently. First he clicked his tongue; then, getting no response, he slowly dragged the heels of his spurless boots until they grazed its flanks. At that point, the colt took off like a shot, bucking. Velasco took on the challenge and in the end the colt stopped again, of its own accord, with the rider doing nothing more than holding on.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Rodrigo. ‘He’s learnt some manners.’

  So it proved. The next time, the colt came out tense, but did not buck. Velasco guided it by means of the halter and at the last moment, without hitting it, he let it see the whip on one side of its head to make it turn the other way, talking to it all the while and patting its neck.

  The nearly one hundred Spanish horses quartered in Córdoba’s royal stables constituted the select specimens, the flawless ones. They had been chosen from the almost six hundred breeding mares that made up King Philip II’s stock and were spread throughout several pastures around Córdoba. Just as Hamid had explained, in 1567 the King had ordered that a new breed of horses be established, to which end he arranged for the purchase of the twelve hundred finest mares in his territories; but it was impossible to find so many mothers of the required quality, so the brood mares came to half that number. Moreover, he instructed that taxes from the salt mines be directed to the enterprise, to include the building of the royal stud in Córdoba and the hire or purchase of pastures needed to accommodate the mares. He put Don Diego López de Haro in charge of the project. The new royal stable master and director of the breed was a Córdoba councillor from the house of Priego.

  The new breed of horse had to have a small head, slightly arched with a lean forehead; dark eyes, alert and haughty; quick, lively ears; wide nostrils; flexible, arched neck, thick at the join with the trunk and smoothly linked to the nape, with a little fat where the abundant and thick mane started; and likewise with the tail. It had to be self-assured with a short manageable back, prominent croup and wide, round hindquarters.

  But the most important characteristic of a Spanish horse had to be its way of moving, its airs above the ground: elevated, graceful and elegant, as if it did not want to place any of its feet on the burning soil of Andalusia but, after doing so, would hold them in the air, suspended, dancing for as long as possible, fluttering its front legs on the trot or gallop, as if the distance to be covered was of no importance; showing itself off proudly, parading its beauty before the world.

  For six years, as the man in charge of the breeding, Don Diego López de Haro sought each and every one of these qualities in the colts born in the pastures of Córdoba, to breed another generation and produce ever more perfect descendants. Animals lacking the desired qualities were sold as rejects, so that in the stables of Córdoba were found the purest, the most perfect, which were named by royal decree the Spanish Thoroughbred.

  José Velasco charged Hernando with the care, cleaning, and above all the training of the colts to eat from the trough. During that month of March, spring arrived and with it the time to cover the mares. The royal stable master selected the one-year-old colts to be brought in from the pastures to replace the broken-in horses that were bound for Madrid and the royal stables of the Escorial to be presented to King Philip. No horse of the Spanish breed that Don Diego considered to be among the finest was ever sold; they were all for the King, for his stables or for him to present as gifts to other monarchs, noblemen or leaders of the Church.

  The colts arrived wild from the pastures. As Hernando was told during the days leading up to the animals’ arrival, there was a great deal of work to do, so that by the time they were two-year-olds the horses were used to the saddle and had been mounted for the first time. He and the others had to get them accustomed to human contact, to letting themselves be touched, groomed, tacked up and looked after. They also had to learn to live in stables, permanently tied to the wall-rings in the stalls, living with other horses beside them. They had to learn to eat and drink from the trough; to obey the halter and be led; and to accept the bits or the weight of the saddle necessary to mount them. All this was unfamiliar to the young horses, who until then had lived freely with their mothers.

  If at some point Hernando had dreamt of mounting one of those splendid horses, his dreams vanished as soon as they outlined what his duties would be. Nonetheless, he did fulfil another dream: on the second floor of the royal stud, above the stables, was a series of rooms for use by the stable hands. He was allotted a large dwelling with two rooms, completely independent apart from sharing a kitchen with two other families. In all his nineteen years he had never had so much space to himself! Not in Juviles, much less in Córdoba. Hernando wandered through those two rooms time and again. The furniture consisted of a table with four chairs, a good bed with sheets and a blanket, a small chest of drawers with a washbasin (he could wash himself!) and even a large clothes chest. What would he put in there? he wondered, before going to the window that overlooked the stable courtyard. When he had shown him his living quarters, the stable administrator had turned round just as Hernando was opening the chest.

  ‘What about your wife?’ he asked him as if it was she to whom he should have been showing the place. ‘It says in your papers that you are married.’

  Hernando had an answer ready for that question. ‘She’s looking after a sick relative,’ he answered firmly. ‘She can’t leave him for the moment.’

  ‘In any case,’ the administrator cautioned him, ‘you should get yourselves registered in the San Bartolomé parish without delay. I don’t imagine your wife will have any difficulty leaving the invalid long enough to get that done.’

  Would there be some problem? The question assailed Hernando once more as he stood at the window watching how Rodrigo was working a dapple-grey horse, persisting in an exercise that the animal could not get right; the horseman
’s long, silver spurs glinted in the March sun when Rodrigo stuck them in the dapple-grey’s flanks. Fátima was still not his wife. Karim had been adamant: the two months granted to Brahim had to pass, during which time Hernando was not allowed to go near her. And what if Brahim found enough money to retrieve Fátima?

  The punishment Rodrigo meted out with the spurs when the horse got the exercise wrong again bit into Hernando’s flesh as much as into the rebellious animal’s flanks. What if Brahim managed it?

  Night had fallen and he could not now return to Córdoba. What excuse was he going to give at the gate? thought Brahim. Crouching among the thickets on the road that led from the Roman tavern to the city through the Seville gate, he watched several merchants pass, all of them armed, travelling in groups for protection. He had got hold of a dagger; a Morisco who worked with him in the countryside had lent it to him after he had pestered him time and again.

  ‘Be careful,’ the man had warned him, ‘if they catch you with it they’ll arrest you and I’ll lose my dagger.’

  Brahim was well aware of that. It was fairly straightforward to bring a hidden weapon into Córdoba mingled with the crowd of people coming back from work in the fields, but to return at night, alone and armed, was nothing other than reckless. In any case, the dagger was not much use to him. Brahim brandished it determinedly at any hint of footsteps and horses. I’ll jump on them the next chance I get, he vowed to himself after letting one party of merchants after another get away while he hid in the bushes. But when that new party showed up on the road, the hand he was grasping the dagger with became drenched with sweat, and the legs that were supposed to run towards them refused to do so. How was he going to take on several men armed with swords? Cursing himself, he listened as the sound of their laughter and joking faded into the distance. The next ones, he tried to convince himself. The next lot won’t escape me.