The Eagle and the Dove Read online

  “About what, Mother?” The foreboding was now a hard, sharp knot.

  “Can’t you guess?” Lucia seized her hands. “My darling child, it is Tariq. He came to me at the end of siesta. Surely you must have sensed how he favored you … although, to be sure, I didn’t see it myself, really. I just thought he was taking extra notice because we were without a man’s protection … but no, you are to marry him, Sarita. You are to be the wife of the leader—”

  “No!” Sarita interrupted with a cry of mingled dismay and fury. “How can you talk so? You know how it is between Sandro and me. How can you talk—”

  Lucia slapped her face, her expression one of fear and horror. “Do not ever mention Sandro in that way again! Are you mad? Tariq has spoken for you. The wedding will be in three days’ time. Everyone knows of it now. The preparations will begin tomorrow—”

  “No!” Sarita interrupted again, beside herself with the panic-stricken sense of an unstoppable nightmare. “You cannot consent to this—I will not consent—”

  “You fool!” Lucia shook her shoulders. “Listen to me. Tariq has no need of my consent. He is the leader and he has spoken for you. You will go to him tonight to mark the bethrothal.”

  Sarita forced herself to be still, to think. While it was true that no marriage could technically take place without the consent of both parties, in practice it was unthinkable that she should refuse Tariq as husband. She would be excommunicated, banished from the tribe and its supports, from the intricate networks that protected and gave identity. She would be a raceless, homeless, friendless vagabond cast upon a world that gave short shrift to those who belonged nowhere. Prostitution or death were her only alternatives. Faced with such a choice, what girl would refuse the honor of becoming the leader’s bride? Would refuse the honor of the leader’s bed, traditionally to be sampled at betrothal as confirmation of intent by both parties? She thought of those moments of passion with Sandro; snatched moments, so often interrupted. But the need to be together, to love together, was the driving force of her life—of Sandro’s life. How could she pretend such love didn’t exist? How could she deny that all-consuming desire for which they had already dared so much?

  Slowly she shook her head. It couldn’t be denied. Tariq was a dangerous man, but he was not evil. He had shown some softness toward her in recent months; perhaps he would listen to her. But even as she thought this, it came to her why he had refused her marriage to Sandro. He had wanted her for himself, even six months ago, when Sandro had gone to him in the blithe expectation of success and been refused so curtly and without explanation.

  Was she to tolerate this? Meekly accept her fate in Tariq’s bed this night, and stand by as Sandro married someone else? No, it was impossible!

  Impetuously, she ducked back through the entrance and leaped to the ground, hearing her mother’s imperative voice calling her back. She ran across the clearing to where Tariq and the men were still gathered, sitting down now, leather tankards of Malaga in hand as they sampled the fruits of Sandro’s expedition.

  She flew into the circle. “Tariq, please, I must talk with you. You cannot do this.”

  Slowly he rose to his feet, taking in the wildness in her eyes, the strain in her slight frame. Her hair swirled unkempt around her shoulders, adding to her distraught air. “I cannot?” he said. “What are you saying, Sarita?”

  “You cannot marry me,” she said. “Please, Tariq, I love Sandro. I cannot marry you.”

  Tariq’s blue eyes went as dark as the deepest ocean. “Cease this foolishness now,” he said, “and it will be as if it had never been spoken.” He gestured to the audience, and she knew even in her distress that he was being magnanimous, was willing to ignore that she was humiliating him in front of the other men, in front of the entire camp, she realized as people began to approach across the clearing, drawn by the emanating tension, by the certainty of some impending disaster.

  Sandro’s pallor was ghastly. He had heard nothing of the betrothal until this moment and now stood up also, unable to speak even as Sarita proceeded to destroy them both.

  “It is not foolishness,” she said. “Only let me explain, Tariq—”

  “There is nothing to explain,” he interrupted in harsh anger. “You have said all there is to say.” He turned to Sandro. “You have been with this woman.” There was no questioning in his voice, and his eyes glittered with an almost feral fury.

  Sandro found his voice. “I love her,” he said. “We will go from here, accept exile from the tribe.”

  “No, you will not.” Tariq took a step back, all expression wiped from his face. He held his arm straight out, two rigid fingers stabbing at the younger man. “You have challenged me, Alessandro. When you defied my edict you challenged the leader of the tribe of Raphael and you will make good that challenge. The woman and the tribe belong to the winner.”

  “No.” Sarita’s cry of horror fell into the sudden silence. “You will kill him.”

  Tariq turned to look at her, his face still a mask from which all emotion had been banished. “Or he will kill me.”

  Lucia’s noisy sobs could be heard in the deathly hush that greeted the words. Sarita struggled with her horror, her panic, the same desperate sense of being in an unstoppable nightmare. She looked at Sandro and saw that despite his pallor he was quite still, his face set in resolute lines. He had no choice—honor was being forced upon him. He had offered to accept for both of them dishonor in exile, and the offer had been refused. Now he would die in honor. But he would die. She had seen it before, knew its inevitability, and on one deep tribal level she, like Sandro, accepted the code and its exercise.

  The men began to move backward, making a rough circle around Tariq and Sandro. Tariq pulled off his tunic and tossed it to the ground. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. The muscles in his arms were like small hills.

  Sandro prepared himself similarly. He was younger by some ten years, strong in his own right, but without the muscular solidity that came from those extra years of toil and battle.

  Sarita had entered a cold void where nothing seemed to reach her. She was there in the clearing in the olive grove in the simmering heat of late afternoon, but she was not there. She was drifting on some cloud, some cool, rainy cloud where none of this was happening. She saw their knives, the plain steel glittering in a shaft of sunlight. She watched them move, circling each other, coming together in their deadly dance.

  It was over so quickly it was almost impossible to believe it had happened. Tariq exacted vengeance and confirmed his leadership, quickly and cleanly. He was not interested in a cruel prolongation of the inevitable or in providing a spectacle. When it was over he stepped back. “He died with honor. We will bury him tonight.”

  The circle parted as he walked to where Sarita stood, her eyes closed as they had been throughout the brief horror. But as he reached her, her eyes opened, and they were as cold as a green glacier. “I will never marry you,” she said, softly articulating every word. “Never, Tariq. You have Sandro’s blood upon your hands for nothing.” Then she turned and walked away. No one made any attempt to prevent her as she moved through them, proud and unbowed, seeming to be insulated from all around her.

  Tariq knew he should go after her and assert his mastery over her as publicly as he had asserted it over her lover, but he found he could not. She would marry him, of course. She would come to his bed that night, if he demanded it. But the bright gilt of certainty was suddenly tarnished. And it couldn’t possibly be so, not when he had so powerfully demonstrated the invincible power of his leadership.

  He swung round on the still noisily sobbing Lucia, his voice harshly commanding. “You will send your daughter to me tonight.” Then he strode from the circle toward his own wagon.

  The man hidden in the shadows of the olive grove had missed nothing. He had heard little of what was said, but gestures and events had told their own tale as loudly as any town crier. There was little more information to be gleaned by furth
er spying. Silently, he slipped from the grove, back to the track and his waiting horse. He rode upward, toward the rose-red bulk of the Alhambra, ablaze against the snowcapped mountains under the last rays of the dying sun.

  Chapter Two

  “Will you take a tisane, my lady?” The waiting woman approached the sultana Aicha with some hesitation. The wife of Muley Abul Hassan had been in uncertain temper for some time, since before the caliph had left on his journey to Almería, and her reactions were unpredictable.

  Aicha did not immediately reply. She leaned forward into the basin of the massive fountain in the Court of the Lions, holding her fingers into the falling water. The water was cool and clear, and the sound of it filled the court, an oasis in the still heat of the afternoon.

  “Where is my son?” She spoke finally, letting her wet hand fall upon the head of one of the twelve lions on whose back the basin rested.

  “With his tutor, my lady.” The woman did not add that the caliph had decreed that his son’s lessons must continue until sundown. Aicha knew that perfectly well, just as she knew that her husband was attempting to lessen her maternal influence over the growing boy, the caliph’s heir.

  Aicha moved restlessly down one of the paths radiating from the fountain. The sound of water accompanied her as it flowed through a delicate channel in the center of the path. The air was heavy with the scent of red and white oleanders massed in luxuriant brilliance between the paths, noisy with the humming of worker bees among the flowers. A swallow dived into the court, then soared upward over the pillars, up into the deep blue ether above the palace roofs. But she was aware of none of this delicate beauty as she sought the shade of the arcade.

  Abul should be returning soon, maybe even this afternoon. Would he call her to his bed when he returned? It had been many weeks since she had received the summons, not since she had angrily refused him the night after he had told her he was removing Boabdil from her primary care. She had raged at him, then wept and pleaded, saying the child was too young to be given over to the management of tutors, that he still needed his mother. Finally, Abul had coldly told her that he didn’t approve of her care, that she spoiled and overprotected the child and did the boy no service by it. In anger, she had withheld herself from him. Abul was not a man to insist when a woman was unwilling, and she had hoped that by continuing to punish him, she would persuade him to change his mind. It had had the opposite effect. Once having been refused, he no longer asked for her.

  He had summoned others, though, and Aicha had had to pretend a lofty indifference when one or other of his concubines was regularly preferred to the wife.

  “Will you take a tisane, my lady?” the waiting woman ventured again.

  “At sundown,” Aicha said with a snap. “I will take a tisane with Boabdil when he is released from his tutor. Leave me now.”

  The woman departed immediately, her slippered feet soundless on the rich mosaic as she went into the palace.

  Aicha paced the colonnade. She had miscalculated, taken her husband’s gentleness too much for granted, overstretched his easy tolerance. She had assumed he was not like other men, but she had been mistaken. Abul would not permit a woman the upper hand, although he stood on little ceremony and was always considerate. If he did not return prepared to forgive, she must swallow her pride and beg for his forgiveness. She lost status through his neglect, and with that loss went the loss of authority. But more importantly … much more importantly, it threatened her plans for her future: the future she had been planning for so many years—the future she would have through Boabdil.

  Abruptly, she went through an arched doorway into the cool tiled hall where another fountain played gently in the center. Women moved about the hall, their silken caftans as brightly mingled as a field of butterflies. They gossiped in low-voiced clusters, played dice, sipped sherbet, nibbled little cakes, placed delicate stitches in rich fabrics against the sound of soft music coming from the gallery above the hall.

  Aicha walked among them, her progress acknowledged by slightly bowed heads, a polite cessation of talk. She was still the caliph’s wife. In her own apartments she found as always the peace and seclusion in which she could think most productively. She went up a narrow flight of stairs to the mirador, a belvedere whose arched windows looked over the garden and out over the mountains. The sweetness of the cool mountain air filled the chamber from the windows on all sides, and as she reclined on an ottoman beneath them, she could let her mind expand to absorb the majestic vista, imagine herself an eagle, soaring over the white peaks. The light breeze fluttered her skirt, lifted the gauzy scarf covering her midnight-black hair, and a mood of optimism crept over her, replacing her previous apprehension. She and Abul would make love here when he returned, laved by the mountain breeze, soothed by the exquisite beauty of the balcony chamber.

  Then the tranquility was shattered by the strident call of the bell from the alcazaba. The sentries in the watchtowers were announcing an arrival. Aicha stood up swiftly. Her windows didn’t look toward the granite edifice of the fortress, but she could recognize the rhythm of the bell. Neither stranger nor foe approached. The caliph was returning. Her heart beat fast. Should he find her waiting to greet him with the grand council and senior members of the household in the antechamber adjoining the ambassador’s salon? Should she go to the Court of the Alberca to greet him as he rode in? Or should she stay here and hope he would come to her as he used to do? No, nothing was ever gained by passivity.

  The official antechamber seemed the best place, as it suggested she was neither overeager nor lagging back, simply appropriately respectful. She rang a handbell, but one of her waiting women was already in the doorway, bearing a jug of hot scented water. While Aicha bathed her face and hands, the woman brushed and rebraided her hair, repinning the scarf to fall gracefully from the top of her head. Aicha drew the scarf over the lower half of her face as she hastened from the privacy of the women’s sanctum, around the Myrtle Court, and into the caliph’s official apartments.

  Muley Abul Hassan dismounted in the Court of the Alberca. The white marble paving stones threw back the sunlight with a dazzling glare, and out of habit he averted his eyes to the immense fishpond in the center of the court. The expanse of water brought instant relief from the glare. A gigantic goldfish lay still beneath the surface as if mesmerized by the heat, and Abul paused to breathe in the rich fragrance of roses from the massed bushes bordering the fishpond. His attendants were accustomed to the caliph’s leisured enjoyment of his home whenever he returned after an absence of more than a day or so, and they adapted their pace to his as he walked slowly around the pond. But they were aware of an unusual quality to his present preoccupation, a degree of intensity not usually aroused simply by the beauties of the palace.

  This air of preoccupation was also noticed by those waiting to greet him in the salon as he entered with his entourage. Those who had reports to present decided to wait for a more propitious moment and contented themselves with making the ritual reverence. The caliph acknowledged them individually, although absently, until his eye fell upon his wife, standing modestly to one side, flanked by two waiting women. She bowed her head as his gaze met hers.

  It was unlike Aicha to make public submission, Abul reflected, acknowledging her reverence with a small bow of his own. He hadn’t thought much about her during the days of his absence, but he realized now that that absence had done nothing to soften his annoyance. She was a very beautiful woman, but she had a shrew’s tongue and a certain deviousness that was beginning to trouble him. She had a talent for intrigue, for manipulation, that he had taken little notice of until recently, when his cadi had obliquely hinted that the sultana might have had a hand in the discrediting of one of his council.

  Abul had pretended to ignore his magistrate’s hints, but he had made some discreet inquiries of his own, had probed Aicha so subtly that she had no idea she had been questioned, and he had drawn his own conclusions. His wife had quarreled with the wi
fe of the discredited council member, and she had plotted her revenge. Abul had not suspected intrigue and had taken the issues as they were presented to him. The incident had given him a distaste for his wife, one that her actions over their son had increased. Now as he looked at her, he realized nothing had happened to alter that distaste, and her evident attempt to make peace was not going to affect it.

  However, he could not let that thought show in public. He greeted her with soft courtesy.

  “Will you eat later with me and our son?” Aicha asked, smiling with her kohl-lined eyes over the scarf. She had hesitated to mention Boabdil but then decided it would only be natural to do so if they were to behave as if their quarrel had not taken place.

  Abul frowned as he looked down at his wife. He saw the carefully dark-rimmed brown eyes; the artificially thin arched line of her eyebrows in the broad, smooth forehead; wisps of her hair, black as night. The eye of memory showed him her body beneath the richly embroidered caftan, lushly curved, golden-fleshed, still firm despite Aicha’s predilection for sweetmeats and honeyed sherbets.

  Green eyes and vivid hair, a slight, wiry body in a tattered orange dress, bare feet and sun-browned legs replaced the image. Indeed, they had hardly left his internal vision since she had run from him into the olive grove earlier that afternoon. He had no wish to eat with his wife and son. He wanted to hear what Yusuf had discovered about the girl. Was she for sale? It was the only issue that held his attention.

  “No,” he said. “Not today. I have pressing matters to attend to. I will speak with our son’s tutor, however.” He offered her another small bow and turned back to the waiting reception.

  Aicha’s hands were suddenly clammy, and she felt the first stirrings of real fear. She was still out of favor. The caliph was not obliged to keep a wife whom he no longer favored. But Abul would not repudiate her. He could not. Not over such a trivial issue. She would go to him tonight. If he sent for one of the other women, Aicha would take her place. And if he sent for no one, she would go on her own initiative. There were many tricks she knew for arousing a man’s interest, and once it was aroused, she knew how to maintain it.