The Bird King Page 4

  “You are a dead man,” he informed the trembling herald who stood in the hall.

  “I’m sorry, my lord,” the herald stammered. He was not quite a man—not old enough to have grown into a rather large nose—and he was so terrified that Fatima worried he might wet himself. “A Castilian delegation has just crossed through the Gate of Granada under a flag of truce. They’re coming up the hill now.”

  “Coming here?”

  “Yes, my lord. Half a dozen nobles, it looks like, and their outriders, and a baggage cart. And two women.”

  “What nonsense is this?” The sultan pounded one fist against the doorframe, causing it to rattle. “You, boy—”

  “Rajab, my lord.”

  “Rajab. Wake up my pages. Wake the chief vizier, my private secretary—and get Hassan the Mapmaker, who is surely not asleep. I want to know where the rest of this delegation is hiding.”

  The hall was suddenly full of noise. The herald ran away, screaming orders, and was succeeded by the sound of doors opening and closing. Abu Abdullah slammed his own door, cursing again.

  “Fatima!” he called.

  Fatima presented herself.

  “I need you to do something for me,” said Abu Abdullah, cupping her face in his hands. “There’s a party of Castilians at our doorstep, and for reasons that surpass my understanding, they’ve brought women with them—we’ll have to put them up in the harem. They won’t like it, but we have no other quarters for highborn ladies here. I want you to look after them. And keep an eye on my mother. She’ll flay them alive if you’re not careful. Can you do all that?”

  “Yes, my lord,” said Fatima, clenching and unclenching her hands. Abu Abdullah bent to kiss her.

  “So young, and already so brave,” he said. He looked as though he wanted to say something else, but hesitated and then turned away.

  “Go down to the kitchens first and find out whether we have anything to feed them,” he instructed her, grabbing her robe off the floor and tossing it to her. “Take my door, it’s faster. We’re not clinging to tradition tonight.”

  Fatima pulled on the wrinkled garment and set off into the hall. Men and boys in various states of dress were hurrying back and forth, knocking into each other and shouting accusations. None of them bumped into her, however, or even looked at her after the first startled glance of recognition. Fatima squared her shoulders and tried to appear nonchalant. She picked her way around a hastily discarded cup rolling about underfoot, its sticky green contents—emetic herbs, by the smell—congealing rapidly in a series of male footprints.

  “Hsst! Fa!”

  Hassan was billowing toward her like a wayward bonfire, his curly hair standing on end above a suspiciously pink face. Fatima felt herself flush.

  “You’re out of your senses,” she hissed, pulling him into an alcove. “You can’t just wave me down like a peasant. Didn’t you tell me to be more careful just this afternoon?”

  Hassan only grinned, watching the commotion in the hall with almost hysterical glee.

  “Are you drunk?” asked Fatima.

  “As a bandit,” snickered Hassan.

  “You’re a madman. You know there are sheikhs at court dying for an excuse to have you flogged.”

  “I don’t care,” said Hassan. “It was very, very good wine.”

  Fatima rubbed her eyes. She thought with longing of the sleeping mat waiting for her at the foot of Lady Aisha’s divan.

  “And the boy who served it to me—you know what I’m saying, Fa, you’re such a clever girl—his name was Rajab, and he left and came back, and when he came back, he told me the most extraordinary thing. There are real live Castilians at our gates. I mean, they’ve been at our gates for decades, but now they’re inside our gates, and the sultan wants me to come and show him where the rest of them are. But I need pencil and paper to show him that. It’s not as if I see things. I’m not one of these unwashed mystics. My brain is in my fingers. That’s all. In my fingers.” He waved his hands to demonstrate.

  “You need to get sober,” said Fatima.

  “When did you become no fun whatsoever? And what the hell are you wearing?”

  Fatima looked down. The outline of her breasts was visible, in exquisite detail, through the sheer fabric of her robe. She clapped one arm over her chest.

  “Get sober,” she repeated, then hurried toward the kitchens, dodging page boys who balanced shoes and basins of rose water in their arms, and prepared herself for the sort of night that ran headlong into morning.

  Chapter 3

  The delegation arrived well after midnight, in a limp hour that was neither very late nor very early. Fatima waited for them in the Court of Lions with her mistress and the other palace women, all scented and dressed as if for a wedding: the freewomen veiled in pale silk, Fatima and the other slaves bareheaded. Lady Aisha had demanded that Nessma surrender her second-best robe for Fatima to wear. There had been an argument and tears, and now Fatima was balancing a copper platter of bread and olive oil in both hands, wearing a beaded azure gown that was too short at the hem and too big around the bust and hips. She could hear Nessma sniffling some distance behind her.

  “No one is to bow,” instructed Lady Aisha, her face inscrutable beneath a layer of saffron-colored gauze. “It’s not our way. The men might bow to you, but you are not to bow in return. Do not look them in the eyes, even though they will stare at you without shame. They may stink, my dears, for northerners are not fond of bathing, but you are not to remark on the smell.”

  Someone giggled.

  “And do not speak to the men, now or ever,” said Lady Aisha sharply. “The men are not our concern. We are here to receive their ladies, whoever they may be. Nothing more.”

  Fatima shifted on her aching feet. The weight of the platter seemed immense, though it was only a little bread—so little, in fact, that the cook had artfully arranged it with sprigs of flowers to disguise its meagerness. Fatima craned her neck to stare at the torchlit colonnade at the far end of the courtyard.

  “How much longer?” she asked.

  “Hush, impudence,” said Lady Aisha, poking her in the ribs with a bony finger. “What will the foreigners think if we can’t even manage our girl slaves? Pretend to be meek and obedient for once in your life. It will be good practice.”

  A moment later, there were voices approaching, punctuated by the ringing clatter of armored feet. Abu Abdullah entered the courtyard in a fresh turban and an embroidered coat, his bodyguards following a discreet distance behind, carrying pikes. The sultan’s head was bent toward the man walking beside him. He was short, the man was: square, perhaps forty, with a full head of sun-blanched brown hair and a trim beard. He was dressed in ceremonial armor, his half helm tucked beneath one arm. Other men, similarly dressed, followed behind him, and behind them their own guards, one of whom carried the colorless flag of peace.

  “Ah.” Abu Abdullah stopped when he saw Fatima and the others arrayed in front of the lion-headed fountain, as if he was surprised to see them there. “Of course, forgive me—these are the honored women of my house, who are eager to play host to your own.”

  “Ladies,” said the square man beside the sultan, sweeping back his free hand and corresponding foot in an elaborate bow. Fatima willed herself not to laugh.

  “May I address them?” asked the man, rising again, his face somewhat flushed.

  “You may,” said the sultan drily, “though I hope you will not be offended if they do not address you. These are my wives, the ladies Maryam and Hurriya. My half sister Nessma. And my mother, the lady Aisha. Also their companions and attendants.”

  “Of course,” said the man, bowing again. “The lady Aisha’s wisdom and—and shrewd diplomacy, let’s say—are known to us in the North. We all remember who really brokered peace after the battle of Loja.”

  Fatima watched Lady Aisha out of the corner of her eye. Aisha inclined her head ever so slightly.

  “My dear ladies,” said the man, tugging nervous
ly at the buckle of his breastplate, “I am General Gonzalo Marquez, and I come as an emissary of peace from their most Catholic majesties, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.”

  “Your masters are unknown to me,” said Lady Aisha. Fatima looked up at her with alarm. Her eyes were steady and dark, unwavering. “I know a Ferdinand of Aragon and an Isabella of Castile, but not a Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. There is no such country.”

  Abu Abdullah’s face had gone rigid. Fatima had a fleeting, suicidal impulse to set down her tray and go to him, but rocked back on her heels instead, pressing the flesh of her bare feet into the flagstones.

  “My beloved mother,” said Abu Abdullah in a chill voice. “It’s very late, and you’re overtired. No one would think less of you if you went to bed.”

  “It’s perfectly all right,” said General Gonzalo with a smile that did not quite reach his eyes. “The lady is half correct. There was no such country. Once we were Castile and Aragon and León, and we fought each other instead of our enemies. But our kingdoms have put aside the sin of fratricide and united under the banner of faith, with the blessing of His Holiness the pope. So now, you see, there is such a country. It extends from the Pyrenees in the north to the Strait of Jebel Tareq in the south. You are standing in it.”

  One of the sultan’s guards shifted on his feet, palming the leather grip of his pike. Abu Abdullah held up a hand in warning.

  “I am standing in the Emirate of Granada,” said Lady Aisha in a voice that was almost pitying. “Seat of the Red Palace, greatest of the kingdoms of Al Andalus. You can’t frighten me by changing a few names on a map. For centuries you have harassed us, yet here we are—the last emirate of Muslim Iberia.”

  General Gonzalo laughed. There was no amusement in the sound of it, only a well-tended anger.

  “If you were not a woman, I might be surprised to hear such naive talk in a city surrounded on all sides and starving,” he said. “But since you are a woman, your loyalty to your son and your people does you credit. Nevertheless, you’re wrong. This war might have started on a battlefield, my lady, but it will end on a map.”

  Fatima was close enough to Lady Aisha to feel a tremor go through her body, transmitted through the thin flesh of her shoulder where it brushed Fatima’s own. Her outrage was carried with it, and Fatima felt herself tense. This was what it amounted to, all their prodigious honor: even as great a woman as Lady Aisha was easily silenced, and she, Fatima, carrier of platters and bather of backs, was never welcome to speak at all.

  “This is no way to begin,” said Abu Abdullah. His voice was thin and tired. “We’ll speak in private tomorrow. For now, please—rest and eat.” He gestured toward Fatima’s farcical arrangement of bread.

  Fatima looked from the sultan to the general and back again. She could not tell why she felt the sudden urge to defend her master against this foreigner, why she should interpret the insult against him as an insult against herself, yet she did, and desired to punish the general for it. She set her platter on the bare ground. Straightening, she pulled the hem of Nessma’s gown up to her calf and pushed the platter toward the general with the ball of her foot.

  There was a collective sound of disbelief, a half cry. Fatima thought she heard Nessma shriek, though it might have been someone else; she did not turn to look. The general went red from his neck to his scalp. Something quivered in the thick slab of his jaw.

  “We came here under a flag of truce,” he said in a low voice. “We came prepared for your Moorish perversities, but not to be insulted like this—to eat from a tray some whore of a slave girl has touched with her filthy foot—”

  “No—please, let’s not start a fight with the white flag hanging over our heads. It’s blasphemous. Here—” It was a woman’s voice, high and musical. It came from a dark blonde head that was moving between the shoulders of the men, who shifted aside to let it pass. A woman—a girl, perhaps, though she was dressed in a plain velvet gown of widow’s black and her hair was gathered at her neck beneath a matronly white coif—emerged from the throng of armored Castilians and hurried toward the platter of bread. As she bent to pick it up, she looked into Fatima’s face and smiled. Fatima stared at her, startled.

  “I would have done the same in your place,” the woman whispered. Her face was long but delicate, her eyes strikingly pale against the rosiness of her skin and the brassy gold of her hair. She might have been twenty or twice that; the strange composite of her features made her age unguessable. Smiling again, she took the platter and presented it to General Gonzalo. Fatima was looking at his feet, trying to appear chastened, but she could feel him staring at her. He dipped a hunk of bread into the olive oil with an air of funerary calm.

  “My lord and ladies,” he said in a voice that matched his demeanor, “this is la Baronesa Luz Maria Martines de Almazan, one of Queen Isabella’s closest advisers, who is here at her majesty’s personal request.”

  “Just Luz,” said the woman, inclining her head. “I gave up my title when I entered the order of Santo Domingo. Catalina! Come here and hold this for the general, please. I’d like to greet our hosts properly.”

  A pillowy maidservant extracted herself from the crowd and panted toward her mistress, accepting the platter of bread with a sigh. Luz crossed the courtyard in her wide black dress, its hem stiff and faded with dust, and sank in a curtsey at Lady Aisha’s feet.

  “I’ve been waiting to meet you, senora,” she said. “And my own mistress is eager to meet you as well. She asked me to tell you so.”

  “Please get up,” said Lady Aisha drily. “We heathens bow only to God.”

  Luz rose, her expression unwounded. She grinned at Fatima.

  “And who is she? So beautiful, and such a temper. Does she always frown like this?”

  Fatima attempted to adopt an air of serenity.

  “This is my bondswoman, Fatima,” said Lady Aisha. “Please forgive her in advance for the many offenses she is preparing to commit. I have never punished her for anything. There’s no point.”

  “Fatima,” said Luz, as if the name were an incantation. Fatima met her eyes. They were pale, yes, but not blue or green; rather some indeterminate color, like wintery air.

  “I thought you always named your slaves after flowers and precious stones,” said Luz. “Coral and Amber and Jasmine. I’ve never heard of a slave with a holy name.”

  “I named her,” said Lady Aisha. “She needed something sturdy, as it was clear her mother would not last. I thought the name Fatima would make her pious and gentle, like the blessed daughter of the Prophet. I was incorrect.”

  “She ought to have been a Hind,” mused Luz. “Or a Zeinab or a Khawla, or some other warrior woman.”

  “You know our history,” said Lady Aisha. She sounded surprised.

  “I do,” said Luz, inclining her head again. “But forgive us, Fatima—we’re talking about you as if you’re not here.”

  “Everyone does,” said Fatima. This was true.

  “Well.” Luz put her arm through Fatima’s. “We’ll stop anyway. It’s late—maybe we should leave the men to be offended elsewhere. Are we really going to sleep in the harem? Will Catalina and I be the first Catholics ever to see it?”

  “Hardly,” said Lady Aisha in a blithe voice, turning away and clapping her hands to startle the other women to attention. “We’ve taken plenty of Catholic ladies hostage over the years. Perhaps you can talk some sense into the one we’ve got now. She’s pretty enough but as stupid as a sack of rabbits. Girls! Wake up. Let’s show our guest to her room.”

  They began to move toward the colonnade. The maidservant, Catalina, shouldered a leather traveling trunk and two smaller sacks with impressive dexterity, huffing to herself as she trundled along under their weight. Fatima tried to catch her eye. She was in some way analogous to this doughy freewoman, if there were such analogies; perhaps, if Fatima were kind to her, she would confide the kinds of things that only servants know about their masters. But Catalina was staring fi
xedly at the ground, her gaze blank and indifferent, and seemed, as the sweat stood out on her brow, no freer than Fatima herself.

  The moon, as Fatima shook out the bedding in the blue guest room, was peeping through the latticework over the window, reddening as it sank toward the harem walls. It would be dawn soon. Luz was sitting on a pillow, unpinning her coif. She looked as though she had been born to a life without chairs, though Fatima knew, or rather heard, that northerners sat at high tables to eat and work and dress. Their clothes reflected this uprightness and pinched them around the waist; Luz’s own gown was not made for sitting on the floor, and bunched up unflatteringly. She did not seem to notice or to mind.

  “This is a lovely room,” she said, handing her coif and pins to Catalina and combing her bright hair with her fingers. “Such woodwork! Even the ceiling is painted. And these little brass lamps you use for light—so ingenious. Our candles stink—they’re tallow, mostly, and burning sheep fat is not the most pleasant smell.”

  “You don’t seem to like your own lands very much,” observed Fatima, tucking a bedsheet around its stuffed cotton mattress. Luz laughed a little abruptly; Fatima had succeeded in annoying her.

  “Do I give that impression? No, I love Castile. Mostly it’s not as mountainous as Andalusia, but it has its own charm. Fields that go green during the rains and then smell sweet when the sun is on them. The town I come from has a wonderful crumbly old castle in it.”

  “Is that where you live?”

  “Oh no. I live in a manor. Or I did—after my husband died, I gave it up and took vows with the Dominican sisters at Santa Maria Dolorosa. I live in an abbey now.”

  Catalina was holding a bone fine-tooth comb. Fatima took it from her with a smirk and began to run it through Luz’s hair, starting at the ends as she did for Lady Aisha. Catalina pursed her lips.

  “Are you a nun, then?” asked Fatima. “I thought all nuns wore habits.”

  “I’m a lay sister,” said Luz. “That’s halfway to a nun, I suppose. I took vows of poverty, but not of seclusion—I can leave the abbey and work in the world.”