The Hand of Fatima Read online

  *

  After several days’ riding from Tlemcen, Brahim reached Tetuan towards the end of October 1574. He avoided all paths, navigating by instinct and his experience as a muleteer, always heading north. He hid from the slightest sign of movement, and did not allow himself to become over-confident, even though he was certain by now that Umar would not pursue him through these hostile lands. The two horses were very valuable, and the chest revealed a second fortune of precious stones and all kinds of different gold coins.

  Tetuan was a small city set at the foot of Dersa mountain, in the valley of the river Martil. It was only six miles from the Mediterranean and nearly eighteen from the Strait of Gibraltar, at a strategic point for naval traffic. The city was fertile, enjoying an abundant supply of water from the Hauz and Rif mountains. The walled old town had been rebuilt and repopulated by the Muslims who had fled when Granada was surrendered to the Catholic monarchs, and the majority of its inhabitants were Moriscos.

  Brahim broke his vow to never again play the fool. After hiding his horses and money in the mountains, he entered the city by the Bab Mqabar gate next to the cemetery, dressed like a crazy beggar, and with only a few coins hidden in his clothing. In the city he found he could breathe in the spirit of Andalusia. The way the people spoke and dressed, the layout of the streets that could have been the Albaicín in Granada or any small Alpujarra village, instantly convinced him this was where he should live. He persuaded a scruffy urchin, with huge round bright eyes and bald patches on his scalp from scabies, to act as his guide round the city. To the surprise of both the boy and the merchants in the market, he bought new clothes and everything necessary to look distinguished when he presented himself in this new place. He also bought clothes for Nasi, as the little ragamuffin was called. He could not enter Tetuan looking destitute if he was travelling with two magnificent horses and a chest full of gold.

  After that he went back with the astonished boy to where he had hidden the horses. He washed himself in a stream and made Nasi do the same. He dressed in his new clothes and threw a blanket over the horse to use as a saddle. He loaded Yusuf´s horse with the baggage so that Nasi, his head covered with a turban, could travel behind him as if he was his servant. As soon as he heard the offer of a meal a day, the boy happily agreed to this arrangement.

  ‘If you say a word about who I am, I’ll cut your throat,’ Brahim threatened him, flashing the dagger blade.

  Nasi did not seem bothered by the sight of the knife, but his response sounded sincere: ‘I swear to Allah.’

  They rented a good, one-storey house with a garden at the rear.

  In the last quarter of the sixteenth century, when Brahim established himself in the city, the business of piracy changed completely. From the Tetuan port of Martil numerous ships, generally small galleys, set sail to attack the Spanish coasts, rivalling those from Barbary’s other corsair cities: Algiers, Tunis, Sargel, Vélez, Larache or Salé. But the arrival of large French, English or Dutch galleons in the Mediterranean caused the ship-owners in Algiers to replace their light, narrow galliots and galleys with large deep-hulled sailing ships armed with rows of cannon that could keep pace with those new vessels and defeat them. Thus the Algerian corsairs’ influence reached the most remote areas of the Mediterranean, and even the Atlantic: England, France, Portugal and as far as Ireland.

  The plundering of the Spanish coast in lightning raids did not cease completely, but became a secondary activity for the great corsair cities. This was the situation Brahim found when he established himself in Tetuan and used his new-found wealth to become a shipowner. He fitted out three galleys, each with twelve benches of rowers, and imposed one condition that the ship’s captains readily accepted: Brahim would personally accompany the expeditions because, although he knew nothing of sailing, who better to direct the attacks than a muleteer who knew every inch of the Granada, Málaga and Almería coasts?

  In March 1575, at the start of the sailing season, and at the head of a band of thirty Moriscos, the former Alpujarra mule-driver landed on the coast of Almería, close to Mojácar. Not one guard in the nine defensive towers spread along seven leagues of coast between Vera and Mojácar itself sighted the ships or sounded the alarm.

  ‘The defences are either unmanned or in ruins,’ the captain sailing with Brahim commented. ‘Some towers don’t even have a guard, or it is just an old man who prefers to spend his time in his vegetable garden rather than do the job King Philip pays him for.’

  And so it proved. Even though the corsairs still often raided the Spanish coast, the defence system of watchtowers stretching all along the coastline, with guards and runners who were meant to alert the cities and troops, had fallen into decline from a lack of financial resources, and was now practically useless.

  On this occasion, nobody prevented Brahim from taking part in the looting of some farms near Mojácar. Almost fifty men, Moriscos and freed galley slaves, landed on the coasts of al-Andalus, whilst the others stayed with the ships. The majority split into groups and scattered in search of booty. Brahim paused for a moment and watched them running inland. Spain! He breathed deeply and his chest swelled with pride. He had returned to Spain and those were his men! He paid them! He had a small army at his service.

  ‘What you waiting for?’ the captain urged him. ‘We don’t have much time!’

  On the far side of the beach they came across some peasants working their land. Brahim saw them flee, with the corsairs close behind them. They caught up with two of them.

  ‘Over there!’ Brahim shouted, pointing to his left. ‘There are some houses.’

  He remembered them from the days when he had travelled as a muleteer in the area.

  The Berbers ran to where the former muleteer pointed. By the time they reached the small group of humble dwellings, their inhabitants had also run off, alerted by the shouts of those who had fled the fields.

  Brahim kicked the door of one of the houses down. It was pointless, but the violence made him feel powerful, invincible. Yet there was nothing worth stealing in the home of a miserable peasant family.

  After a while all the corsairs met up again on the beach. They had suffered no casualties, and had not even had to fight. They had discovered only a little money, some trinkets and a lot of clothing of little value, but they did have fifteen captives. Standing out among them were three young, healthy and voluptuous women from Galicia who would fetch a good price on the Tetuan slave market. They were among those brought down to repopulate the kingdom of Granada after the expulsion of its own people.

  As the men boarded behind him, a sweating, flushed Brahim fixed his eyes once more on the lands of al-Andalus. In the distance rose the Sierra Nevada, with its peaks, its rivers, its forests . . .

  ‘I have returned, bastard Nazarene!’ he shouted. ‘Fátima, I am here! I swear to Allah that one day I will take back what is mine!’

  37

  Córdoba, October 1578

  HERNANDO SPURRED Corretón on and the cold air of the Córdoba meadows caught him full in the face. The resounding echo of hooves on damp earth could not drown out the curses of José Velasco and Rodrigo García, who were galloping behind him, trying to catch up. He had challenged them right there in the meadow, surrounded by mares and foals: ‘Corretón can beat any of your horses.’ The two veteran horse-breakers were incredulous, but jokingly accepted the challenge.

  ‘The last one to reach that plantation of cork oaks’, said Hernando, pointing to the edge of the meadow where the trees marked the boundary of the field where the mares were kept, ‘buys a round of wine.’

  He leant forward in the saddle over Corretón’s extended neck, keeping the reins loose but maintaining a light contact with the horse’s mouth, and feeling in his legs the frantic rhythm of his mount’s swift, impulsive strides. Hernando continued to spur the horse on, increasing the gap on his pursuers. It was a great day for all Moriscos. Before they had left for the pasture the news had spread through Córdoba as all the ch
urch bells began to toll. Don John of Austria had died of typhus at Namur. At that time governor of the Low Countries, the scourge of the Alpujarra had ended his days in a simple hut.

  Few horses galloped like Corretón, and Hernando shouted at the top of his lungs. For the women and children of Galera, whose execution the Christian Prince had ordered!

  Less than a quarter of a league from the trees, first Rodrigo and then José overtook him, throwing up a shower of mud and pebbles. Hernando slowed down until he reached the two riders waiting for him. They were already in the wood, cantering slowly so that their mounts could recover.

  ‘We’ll drink to you!’ Rodrigo boasted.

  José smiled and mimed raising a glass to his lips.

  ‘He’s much younger than your horses,’ the Morisco defended himself.

  ‘You should have thought of that before you started bragging,’ Don Diego’s groom retorted. ‘Are you going to try and get out of it?’

  ‘You know I am not! I chose the wrong distance.’

  Rodrigo drew near and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Well, that will cost you money.’

  The horses began to breathe more easily. They had begun their ride back to the city when Rodrigo attracted their attention to something. ‘Look!’ he exclaimed, pointing towards the undergrowth.

  The rump and hindquarters of a mare were sticking out from beneath some bushes. They approached and dismounted. José and Rodrigo went to examine the body of the mare, whilst Hernando stayed with the horses.

  ‘It’s one of the oldest mares,’ José said from beside the animal. They returned to where Hernando was waiting and mounted up. ‘But she bore good foals,’ he added, like an epitaph. ‘We’ll go back to Córdoba,’ he told the Morisco, ‘you go and find the keeper of the brood mares, and tell him he has a corpse here. Come back with him, and when he has skinned the mare, take the hide to show the administrator. He will remove the mare’s details from the books. Be quick about it, before some wild creature gets to work on the carcass and the King’s brand vanishes!’

  If the mare’s body was attacked by scavengers and the brand of a crowned R disappeared, it would impossible to prove the death to the administrator and the keepers of the brood mares would be in trouble.

  *

  Hernando carried the dead mare’s hide thrown over the front of his saddle, with its brand clearly visible. It smelt like the ones he used to carry from the slaughterhouse to the tannery more than seven years ago. How his life had changed in that time! Finding the keeper of the brood mares, returning to the wood and skinning the body had taken most of the rest of the day. By the time he had finished the sun was already going down, its rays flickering around the silhouette of Córdoba. It was possible to make out the cathedral emerging from the middle of the mosque, the fortress, the tower of Calahorra and the bell towers of the churches, all illuminated by a reddish glow above the house roofs. As they rode at a walk through the countryside the silence was almost complete. Corretón stepped softly as if aware of the spell. Hernando sighed. The horse’s ears flicked back in surprise, and the rider patted its neck.

  Nearly a year and a half earlier a young horse-breaker had suffered an accident in the pastures. The bull he was running had brought down the horse and gored the man in the groin.

  Alonso, the injured man, was taken to the royal stables. He was bleeding profusely, but the horn did not seem to have affected any vital organs. Nevertheless, when the surgeon arrived at the stables and examined Alonso’s groin, he diagnosed that he would need to operate on his penile gland. Alonso would not let them come near him until a public scribe came to testify that his penis had not been circumcised prior to the operation. It was Hernando who had to run and find the man. He feared Alonso might bleed to death in the time it took for the official to respond, but nobody seemed disturbed by that possibility. Everyone present, even the surgeon, accepted Alonso’s demand as logical. Not to appear Jewish or Muslim was more important than life itself! To Hernando’s surprise, the scribe reacted promptly. As soon as he heard him, he handed Hernando his papers and instruments to carry, and ran to the stables. The scribe followed the surgeon’s fingers and explanations with great interest, and despite all the blood and torn flesh was able to personally confirm that Alonso was not previously missing his foreskin. He certified how, during the operation, according to the surgeon, it had been necessary for medical reasons to remove the rider’s foreskin. He handed the document to the patient, who clutched it as if it contained his life . . . or his honour.

  ‘I don’t think Alonso will be able to ride again any time soon,’ Don Diego commented to his groom after he had witnessed the public document. ‘Can you ride?’ he immediately asked Hernando, who was still standing next to the scribe.

  ‘Yes . . .’ Hernando stammered. This was the opportunity he had so much longed for.

  Don Diego put his response to the test by mounting him on a four-year-old horse ready to be sent to the King. As soon as Hernando felt the power of a horse between his legs, every single piece of advice from Aben Humeya rang through his head. Upright, sit up straight; proud, above all proud; light-handed; the control is in your legs; use force only if necessary; dance! Dance with your horse! Feel it as part of yourself! And so he danced with the horse. He asked it to move in the ways that, over hundreds of days, he had observed the expert riders obtain from their mounts as they worked them in the yard or in the covered school the King had ordered built to protect the animals from the extremes of summer and winter weather. Hernando himself was surprised by how the horse responded to his legs and hands. He was captivated by of the manners of this beautifully trained thoroughbred of the new Spanish breed.

  ‘He has the same instinct, the same gift in the saddle as he does on the ground with the colts,’ Don Diego commented to José and Rodrigo as they studied the performance of rider and horse. ‘Teach him. Teach him all you know.’

  And the horse-trainers did teach him. So too did Don Julián in the library of Córdoba cathedral, which the chapter had decided to move that year. From Don Julián, Hernando acquired a deep understanding of the sacred language, and he gradually came to master classical Arabic. He went to the mosque in the evening when his work at the stables was finished, and the comings and goings of priests and worshippers had diminished. He was there before compline and sometimes even afterwards, when they were about to close the cathedral doors. Don Julián was the last of the priests that first the Mudéjars and later the Moriscos managed to introduce surreptitiously into the great mosque.

  ‘Since King Fernando conquered Córdoba and the mosque fell into Christian hands,’ Don Julián’s gentle voice explained to Hernando as the two of them sat alone at a table in the library bent over documents by lamp light, ‘there has almost always been a Muslim here disguised in the habit of a priest. Our function has been to silently pray in this holy place, as well as to find out what the Church is thinking, what it is intending to do so that we can warn all our brothers about it. This can only be done if we are inside their churches and councils.’

  ‘You’re not wanting me to be ordained as a priest!’ exclaimed Hernando.

  ‘No, of course not. Unfortunately, it is now almost impossible to infiltrate new Muslims into Christian religious orders. The attestations of pure blood, and the demand for information before any position on the cathedral chapter can be attained, have become stricter over time.’

  Hernando knew about the attestations of pure blood. This was an administrative process by which a person had to prove that there was no converted Muslim or Jew among their ancestors. Pure blood had become an essential prerequisite not only to join the clergy, but also to be appointed to any public office in Spain.

  ‘This cathedral’s statute of pure blood’, Don Julián went on, ‘was approved in August 1530, although it was not ratified by papal bull until more than twenty years later. During the intervening years it was put into practice by order of Emperor Charles. At the time I passed this test, years ago now’
– the old priest shook his head as if the memory saddened him – ‘an attestation was twelve pages long and the information was quite superficial. Today they can reach two hundred and fifty pages, or more, and include detailed investigations of parents, grandparents and other ancestors; where they lived, their work, their way of life . . . In short, I doubt very much that when I’m gone, if they don’t find me out before then, we will be able to carry on this deception. We should therefore strengthen those means of protection that are not dependent on us having a presence within the churches.

  ‘Only in Granada is it any different,’ the priest went on to explain. ‘There the archbishop appears reluctant to apply the attestations of pure blood. Granada is still populated by great families descended from the Muslim nobility, who integrated with the Christian hierarchy in the times of the Catholic monarchs. There are even priests, Jesuits and monks descended from Moriscos. It is genuinely difficult to enforce the statutes of pure blood in that kingdom . . . But it will happen; they will be applied to them as well.’

  During the five years he had spent working with Don Julián, Hernando had come to know what the priest meant by ‘means of protection’. They operated through the Morisco council. This was made up of the three elders of the community: Jalil, Karim and Hamid, together with Don Julián, Abbas and himself. For the six to meet was extremely difficult for Hamid, given his status as a slave, but was also highly dangerous, especially for the cleric. Because of this Hernando acted as messenger between them all when there was a crisis that required a collective decision. Given that he needed to go to the cathedral at night, he obtained a special document from the stable scribe that allowed him a freedom of movement seldom given to the other Moriscos of Córdoba.

  This happened almost as soon as he had started work in the library. In 1573, the Muslim community heard that an uprising was being planned in Aragón. Word came via the outlaws and the muleteers who travelled from place to place. The Moriscos of that realm had made contact with the French Huguenots, promising them military and economic aid if they invaded Aragón. As the news spread, many men from Córdoba and its region showed their willingness to go to Aragón to take up arms against the Christians. The council decided to calm these desires, and begged all the faithful in Córdoba to wait and not make any hasty decisions. Two years later, the Frenchman who had acted as intermediary between the Huguenots and Moriscos was detained by the Inquisition and confessed under torture. The Count of Sástago, viceroy of Aragón, also ordered the inquisitors to arrest and torture Moriscos chosen at random from towns across the kingdom, to uncover the details of their plans.