The Eagle and the Dove Read online

  The Eagle and the Dove

  Jane Feather

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Afterword

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Late fifteenth century

  Moorish-held Granada

  It was midafternoon. Snow iced the mountains, blinding white against the harsh blue summer sky where the great copper ball of the sun hung, its heat clawing at the earth.

  The girl slipped out of the encampment, her bare feet soundless on the parched grass and scrub of the olive grove. There was no movement, no sign of life. The tribe was all stretched in siesta, sleeping through the heat; even the birds were silent. The dogs opened an eye at her passing but, recognizing her, didn’t bother to raise their heads. She didn’t breathe easily, however, until she was through the grove and out on the blinding, shimmering white dirt track that wound its way up to the Sierra Nevada behind her and down to the distant sea ahead of her. She stood on the track, drawing the searing air into her lungs, feeling the violent beat of the sun on her bare head. The air was filled with the scent of wild thyme.

  A flicker of red showed across the track, from behind a cluster of rocks. He was there.

  Heedless of the broiling heat, Sarita broke into a scrambling run up the rock-strewn slope. Her bare soles were like leather, and she hardly felt the scrape of rock or the prickle of thorns in the scrub. Her hair hung unbound down her back, the sun setting aflame bright fires in the unruly mass of ruddy curls. She had kilted her dress, freeing her stride for the climb, and her legs, strong and sun-browned, covered the ground with easy speed.

  “Sandro! Ah, you were able to come.” Laughing, she leaped behind the outcrop of rock and into the arms of the young man who was waiting, smiling. A pony tethered to a thornbush hung its head in limp patience. Two mules, wine kegs slung across their saddlecloths, cropped the scrub.

  “Tariq will not expect me back for an hour,” Sandro said. “He will assume I kept siesta in the village. Only mad dogs would go out in such heat!”

  “And we are mad dogs,” Sarita said, taking his hand and pulling him down into the slight shadow thrown by the rocks. “Mad to court such danger, but no one will see us here.” She raised her arms to him in hungry welcome.

  Kneeling astride her, he took her face in his hands and kissed her. Her mouth opened beneath his, her tongue dancing, and her breasts pressed warm and firm against his red tunic. “No one saw you leave?” He drew back for a minute, his fingers going to the lacing of her bodice.

  “No … no, I am sure not. My mother was snoring when I left the wagon.” She laughed, exultant, excited, yet frightened … by the intensity of her feelings, by the immediacy of their danger, by the absolutely forbidden nature of this meeting.

  Sandro slipped the loosened bodice off her shoulders and bent his head to her breasts. Sarita moaned softly, arching her body against his mouth as his tongue teased her nipples, his teeth lightly grazed the tight, hardening buds.

  “I want you,” he whispered, his breath damp and warm on her heated skin. “Oh, Sarita, I want you so much I can hardly contain myself.”

  She responded only with her body, drawing him tightly against her, pushing up his tunic, sliding beneath his shirt, her hands caressing, stroking, pinching with sudden urgency as her own need spiraled.

  A dog barked: sharp, staccato sounds of warning in the motionless air. Their movements stilled; breathlessly they drew apart. The sound was coming from the olive grove. Probably the dog had simply caught an unfamiliar scent, but the damage was done. The encampment would be alerted, the peace of siesta broken.

  Sarita sat up, pulled up her bodice; her eyes, the color of seaweed, were still liquid with the desire of a minute earlier, and her hands trembled as she fumbled with the laces. “You go back first,” she said, whispering, although there was no one close enough to hear them. “If you make much of reporting on your errand to Tariq and the other men, you will hold their attention, and perhaps no one will notice that I am missing. I’ll come into the camp from the rear, as if I have had private need.”

  Sandro stood up slowly. He looked down at her, his face twisted with frustration. “What can we do? I don’t understand why Tariq forbids our marriage.”

  Sarita shook her head. “Neither do I. But while he does, you know what we risk by meeting in this way.”

  Somberly, Sandro turned to untether the pony. Tariq’s word was law in the tribe of Raphael on all matters, both political and domestic. Heredity gave him the right to his leadership of the kinship network; his enormous strength and fighting skills ensured that the right could not be wrested from him. Marriage between two members of the tribe was both a political and a domestic issue, and it was for Tariq to approve or forbid. This union, for some untold reason, he had forbidden. Sandro could challenge the edict, but to do so he must challenge Tariq himself. He knew he could not do so successfully. He was no physical match for their leader, and twenty seemed very young to die.

  Sarita jumped to her feet. “One last kiss,” she demanded urgently, reaching her arms around his neck, standing on tiptoe, pressing herself against his length.

  The young man groaned in his need. “I love you so!” He bit her bottom lip with a desperation to match her own, and Sarita tasted the salt of her own blood. It should have checked her urgent passion, but it simply augmented it, and it was Sandro who finally tore himself away from her. “Stop! Holy Mother, Sarita, stop.”

  They stood for a second fighting for control, both awash with the despairing sense of unfulfilled desire and the love they must conceal. Then Sarita licked her finger and reached up to wipe a smear of her blood from his mouth. “Go,” she said.

  Sandro went without another word, leading the heat-sodden pony and the laden mules down the hillside before mounting and riding through the olive grove and into the encampment as if nothing had occurred to break his progress from the city of Granada, where he had been negotiating the purchase of Malaga wine for the tribal encampment.

  Sarita remained behind the rock outcrop for a few more minutes. Her lip stung, and she wondered how noticeable it would be. Very little evaded her mother’s seemingly lethargic scrutiny, and even less that of Tariq, these days. But a cut lip could be easily explained.

  Judging that Sandro would now be in the encampment and involved in the ritual greeting and reporting, she came out from behind the rock and began the descent to the dirt track. It was slower going down, perhaps because she had no excitement as spur. This time, she was conscious of sharp stones and thorns against the soles of her feet.

  Just as she reached the track, a cavalcade of horsemen rounded the bend, coming up from the coast road. The horses were beautifully caparisoned, harnesses glinting silver and gold in the sunlight. Their riders were richly dressed in the embroidered caftans and soft Cordovan leather of the Morisco-Spaniards.

  Sarita’s clan of traveling entertainers, craftsmen, and artisans had crossed the frontier from Castile into Granada two weeks ago. It was Sarita’s first visit to the kingdom of the Moors, although as individuals they were not an unfamil
iar sight. There was free passage between Spain and Granada, and a superficially amiable sharing of frontiers; members of the tall, gold-skinned, commanding race were often to be seen on the streets of Spanish towns and riding the highways.

  There was something particularly striking about this group, however, that kept her standing by the side of the track, waiting for them to pass. They were riding upward into the mountains, toward Granada and the great glowing red palace of the Alhambra. Ten of them on glossy black steeds, curved knives at their belts, jeweled collars and belts, silk tarbooshes beneath embroidered scarves.

  One man rode slightly ahead of his companions. He drew in his horse as he came abreast of Sarita, and the others followed suit. Sarita found herself subjected to a silent, intense scrutiny.

  The caliph, Muley Abul Hassan, sat his horse easily, the reins loose on the animal’s neck. He didn’t know what it was about the pedestrian that had given him pause, but he was accustomed to following instinct and now indulged his curiosity. It was an indulgence that whetted rather than satisfied. The girl had a fragility to her frame belied by some emanation of strength. Two hands would span her waist, and her breasts beneath the laced bodice were as small and firm as nuts, her hips a slight rounding of the gay orange dress kilted about her calves. She was dressed with the somewhat tattered carelessness of the peasant, yet she was neither ill-nourished nor self-effacing, exhibiting none of the characteristics of the poverty-stricken, downtrodden peasantry. Her feet were planted squarely upon the ground, her chin slightly lifted.

  There was a wildness to her, the caliph thought, a sense of something untamed. That was where the strength came from. Her eyes, as green and lustrous as dark, wet emeralds, met his gaze unfearingly. Her mouth was full but firm, the bottom lip slightly swollen. The bridge of a small, straight nose was lightly dusted with freckles, the cream and ivory of her cheeks blushed with the sun. As he stared, she tossed her head as if rejecting his gaze, and the rich burnished tangle swirled like fire around her shoulders. Muley Abul Hassan had never seen a woman quite like this one.

  “How are you called?” he asked in Spanish.

  Sarita did not reply. She was fascinated by the man, as much by his attitude as by his looks. His eyes were as black and sharp as an eagle’s, deep-set beneath black arched brows; his skin was a deep gold, tinted with olive. His mouth was incisive under a neatly clipped mustache. Black hair curled from beneath the tarboosh and scarf. He held himself with an unconscious power, the arrogance of one who never has need to question who or what he is. A man of Tariq’s stamp, she thought, yet with some essential difference, one she could not identify.

  He repeated his question, and she snapped out of her strange trance. Shaking her head abruptly, she sprang out in front of his horse, across the narrow dirt track, and disappeared into the silvery depths of the olive grove.

  The caliph watched her go. “Discover what you can,” he said in Arabic over his shoulder and nudged his horse into motion.

  Sarita was shaken by that strange, almost silent encounter. The man had in some way reached out to her, had somehow touched her. So absorbed was she in her thoughts that she forgot she had intended to approach the encampment from the rear and instead broke through the olive trees into the clearing from the direction of the road.

  The camp was orderly, wagons and tents in a circle, cooking fires damped down, horses grazing on the outskirts, the guarding wolf hounds lolling. At night they would be alert, pacing the perimeter of the camp, on the watch for predators, man or beast. Women were moving slowly about their domestic tasks, still lethargic after siesta. They wouldn’t begin to make preparations for the evening meal until the sun went down and were enjoying this relative respite from the work round, talking in small groups, nursing infants, sewing in the shade of wagons or olive trees. Small children scampered between wagons and tents, threading their way through the knots of adults, shrieking, laughing, fighting. No one took any notice of them. Their elder siblings, also granted respite from the tasks that fell to their hands, hung around in gossiping clusters or in conspicuous pairs. The pairs were closely if unobtrusively monitored by the women.

  Sarita stepped into the clearing and felt suddenly exposed, standing alone at the edge of this gregarious scene. The men were gathered outside Tariq’s wagon. Sandro was talking. There was laughter, as if he were telling an amusing story. He probably was, Sarita thought. He was known as a good raconteur in a group where the ability to entertain was much prized. He would be doing his best to divert observation and attention until she had been able to merge into the scene, but as she moved forward, Tariq turned, almost as if he had sensed her sudden appearance. Leaving his group, he came toward her, his pace slow and measured. A hush fell over the encampment, a hush of expectation.

  Sarita stood still as he approached her. Tariq towered over her. The men of the tribe of Raphael were in general tall, broad, and prided themselves on their physical strength and fitness, but even by these standards Tariq was a giant of a man. His swarthy skin was blackened by the Mediterranean sun, his eyes a hard blue, his luxuriant red-gold beard a pointed contrast to the thinness of the mouth it framed. He was a dangerous man, but he did his work well—was an effective and respected leader—and Sarita knew that the first was necessary to achieve the second.

  “Where have you been?” he asked, standing in front of her, feet planted wide, hands resting lightly on his hips.

  Frustration, disappointment, and the disturbing encounter on the road all contributed to Sarita’s response. Her chin lifted, and she met his hard blue stare with a flash of anger. “I’m well past marriageable age, Tariq. Surely I may be allowed to walk where I choose.”

  A year ago, such a response would have earned her the back of his hand, the swift, automatic clout that kept the youngsters in their rightful place, but things had changed in the past months. These days, Tariq rarely took offense at what she said, although she was aware that he paid closer attention to her than he did to any of the others of her generation. The extra notice she put down to her mother’s recent widowhood. It was customary for the protection and guardianship of the leader to be extended to widows and their children. The tolerance she had initially attributed to her advancing years. But daily observation proved that maturity, marriage, even maternity didn’t protect a woman from a man’s hand or fist raised in anger against her.

  Now Tariq remained silent, a frown in his eyes as he contemplated her challenging stance, the annoyance in her voice and stare. It should anger him, but it didn’t. It merely increased his attraction.

  Sarita, waiting in some trepidation for his response, became aware of the silent watchfulness of the camp around them. Not many people were within earshot, but there was a sense of suspended animation, as if everyone were waiting for something dramatic to occur. She had a sudden foreboding, as if something unpleasant was in store and everyone knew it but herself.

  Surprisingly, Tariq merely touched her lip with an unusually gentle fingertip. “How did you do that?”

  A little tremor went through her, but she answered with some of her earlier boldness. “I tripped on a stone and bit my lip as I fell.”

  He continued to frown, then said abruptly, “Go to your mother. She’s been looking for you. There is something she has to say to you.” He turned on his heel and went back to the group of men. The camp seemed to draw breath in unison, resuming its activities.

  Sarita tried to shake off the feeling of foreboding. She looked across at Sandro, but he had his back to her, and she knew he was deliberately avoiding catching her eye in case they should give anything away. She made her way across the encampment to her mother’s wagon, mentally bracing herself for the storm. Tariq had as good as told her that her mother was angry at her disappearance, and Lucia had a fearsome temper when roused. Usually, though, she was sanguine and indolent, preferring peaceful coexistence to the more energetic emotions.

  The wagon was small, but its possessors considered themselves much better of
f than those whose only shelter was a tent. In the wagon, they slept well clear of the earth on solid wood. The wooden sides were relatively draught-proof; the canvas roof kept out the rain. There was room for a small brazier on chilly winter nights, a rod on which they could hang their sparse wardrobe, shelves and hooks for domestic possessions. Sarita’s father, Estaban, had been as proud of his family’s comfortable living quarters as he had been of his skill as a carpenter and wheelwright. He had considered himself a cut above those in the tribe who earned their living as casual artisans or public entertainers—acrobats and the like. Wherever they stopped for a few weeks, he would set up his booth in the nearest marketplace, soliciting commissions from rich and poor alike, and generally doing a roaring trade.

  In his lifetime a curtain had been hung down the middle of the wagon, separating Sarita’s sleeping pallet from that of her parents. It was only token privacy, and Sarita, like all her peers, had grown early into the knowledge of the true congress between man and woman. Since Estaban’s death, though, she and Lucia shared the larger sleeping pallet and everything else in generally amicable companionship.

  As she climbed into the wagon this afternoon, however, Sarita was apprehensive. “Mother? Tariq said you wanted me.”

  “Ah, there you are! Wherever have you been?” Lucia had her back to the wagon entrance but turned as Sarita spoke. She was certainly agitated, but she didn’t strike Sarita as angry. She was more excited than anything. A cascade of rich material, crimson, emerald, and turquoise, tumbled from her hands. “I have been looking everywhere for you. Why did you not keep siesta?”

  “I had a pain in my stomach,” Sarita improvised. “Something I ate, I expect.” She wondered why her mother seemed so nervous. Her color was high, her hair escaping from her kerchief as if she had put it up in haste after siesta. Sarita ducked through the entrance into the wagon. “What is that material?” Then she recognized it. It was her mother’s wedding dress.

  Lucia suddenly flung her arms around her daughter with an exultant laugh. “Oh, I am overwhelmed, Sarita. Such news. Your father would have been so proud—”