The Eagle and the Dove Page 4

  The horse was not Tariq’s. That was her only thought before the animal plunged to a rearing halt beside her. The rider swung sideways, downward. She was caught beneath the arms. Her bundle fell, scattered across the track, the silver pennies winking in the moonlight. She seemed to fly upward before landing with a solid thump in front of her captor, before the scream in her throat could be released.

  Abul held her firmly across the saddle, one arm behind her shoulders, the other across her waist, one hand gripping the reins. He was aware only of exultation, of the feel of her body. Her bones were so tiny. He looked down into her face. Her eyes were filled with outrage. They were that same dark, wet emerald he remembered, and they contained no fear. Her mouth opened, and again without thought he put his hand over it, forestalling the alerting scream.

  Her teeth bit deep into his palm. He drew breath on a swift inhalation of pain but kept his hand where it was. Her teeth sank deeper, and he increased the pressure slightly. He wasn’t hurting her, but it was as uncomfortable for her as it was for him.

  “If you promise not to scream, I will take my hand away,” he said softly in Spanish.

  Thoughts tumbled in her head. If she screamed, the encampment would hear. Did she want to be rescued by what she had determined to escape, even if it could only be escaped through death? Whatever this was, it wasn’t what she had left. She remembered him, this man with the bright black eyes, the smile on his lips, the hand over her mouth. What did he want of her? She could taste the salt of his skin. With no clear thought, she released her teeth.

  Abul whistled soundlessly in relief, removing his throbbing hand and shaking it. His hold had relaxed, and Sarita instantly took advantage, twisting and pummeling as she fought to slide down from the horse, still standing on the track.

  Abul pulled his cloak from his shoulders and swung it over her, capturing her flailing limbs in its folds, twisting it securely around her until she lay as tightly wrapped as a babe in swaddling bands.

  “Be still, paloma mía,” he said gently, stroking her cheek. “You will hurt yourself, and I would not have that happen.” He was smiling at her, amused by her struggles yet not mocking. “I came to buy you,” he said. “But only a fool would pay for the dove that flies into his hands.” He chuckled softly and turned his horse up the hill.

  Sarita lay still. The tight folds of his cloak were curiously comforting, the inability to fight strangely soothing. She could do nothing. But she was achieving her goal. She was not in the least frightened. Her abductor gave no excuse for feeling threatened. She could be angry at the abduction, but for the moment it rather suited her own plans. No one would look for her, wherever she was being taken.

  Yusuf picked up her scattered bundle, including the silver shower of coins, and followed the caliph and his guest up the hill.

  Sarita entered the palace of the Alhambra. Her eyes widened as they passed beneath the outstretched hand of the Gate of Justice, its five open fingers representing the five precepts of Koranic law. She still had said nothing. There seemed to be nothing to say.

  Chapter Three

  “Yusuf and the lord Abul have returned, my lady.”

  Aicha came out of the dreamy trance that had occupied her since Abul’s departure. She turned to look at Nafissa, standing in the archway. “Good. Help me to rearrange my hair.” She rose gracefully from the ottoman. “Has the lord Abul gone to his apartments yet?”

  Nafissa stepped aside as her mistress moved past her, down the staircase to the sleeping chamber beneath the mirador. “I do not believe so, my lady.”

  Aicha paused on the bottom step. “Whatever do you mean, girl, you do not believe so?”

  Nafissa swallowed uncomfortably. “I heard that he has gone to one of the perimeter towers, my lady. And Yusuf went immediately to have speech with the vizier. It is not known what about, but he has been closeted with him this last quarter hour.”

  Aicha frowned as she sat on a low-cushioned stool before her crystal mirror. “Put fresh mimosa in my hair. Why would my lord go to one of the towers?”

  Nafissa drew out the drooping flowers from the sultana’s hair, keeping her eyes watchfully on the face in the mirror. “It is said he had someone with him, someone he carried before him on his palfrey.”

  Aicha made no immediate response. She had no idea how or where Nafissa acquired her information, but the handmaid always knew everything that went on in the palace. It made her an invaluable attendant.

  “This person,” Aicha said finally, “is man or woman?” She watched Nafissa’s busy fingers rethreading her hair with the fresh yellow blossoms … she must put on more perfume too … “Well?” she demanded when the girl remained silent.

  “I do not know for sure, my lady, but those who saw say that the person was enwrapped in my lord’s cloak and was easily carried by him into the tower.”

  “Woman or child, then,” Aicha mused, chewing irritably on her lower lip. Had Abul acquired a captive during his absence, some dependent of an important family to be held for ransom; as hostage, perhaps; or given to him in gift or payment? Such transactions were hardly unusual in a world where competition and the threat of combat were the primary tools of diplomacy and negotiation, one where alliances and fidelity must be bought or compelled. Muley Abul Hassan was in general a merciful captor, charitable in victory, but he manipulated his world in the manner of the times and would not balk at taking into slavery for tribute or vengeance a highborn child or woman from the family of an adversary.

  Abruptly, Aicha decided that her plan of seduction must be postponed. If Abul was preoccupied with politics, he would be an unwilling partner, and she would be a fool to increase her present disadvantages. And if it was a woman he had acquired for his own purposes, then he would presumably be occupied with her during the night. She tore the mimosa from her hair with rough petulance, tossing it to the floor, where it seemed to lose its delicate freshness immediately, the color fading against the rich turquoise mosaic of the tiles.

  “Help me to bed; then discover what there is to know of this captive. You will bring me a full report when you wake me in the morning.” Standing, she threw off the heavy brocade robe, letting it fall to the floor with the discarded mimosa. Nafissa ran to pull back the silken coverlet on the bed set into an alcove facing the windows, but when she bent to pick up the wrap and the flowers, her mistress curtly dismissed her.

  Alone with her frustration, Aicha lay in the moon-washed room. Her body, carefully aroused during the earlier hours when she had prepared herself for a night with Abul, was not now to be satisfied, but the physical disappointment was as nothing compared to her chagrin at the thwarting of her plan and the very real anxiety, now akin to fear, that she was in danger of losing all influence with her husband. Tomorrow, she must get his attention, after she had discovered the identity of the captive in the tower. Only by knowing everything of significance that went on in the palace could Aicha keep ahead of events. And only by keeping ahead could she ensure her dominant position.

  As they had ridden through the courts of the Alhambra, Sarita had wriggled upright so that she was sitting straight, although still held firmly and still swaddled in her captor’s cloak. They had stopped in the first large court, and her captor had had a short exchange with his companion, who had dismounted and disappeared into one of the buildings. Two turbaned footmen had then joined them, trotting beside the horse as they moved on again.

  The sound of water was everywhere, fountains splashing, streams running softly in marble channels. The mingled scents of myrtle, oleander, mimosa, roses, and orange blossom were so luxuriant that Sarita had trouble identifying the separate components in the general fragrance. Lamplight poured in golden rivers from the arched porticos, and torches swung in iron sconces beneath the colonnades, illuminating the buildings and gardens they passed with a soft glow, in muted contrast to the brilliant clarity of the stars in the velvet black canopy of the sky, their white light glittering on the snowcapped mountain peaks.


  Sarita had the strangest sensation of inhabiting some enchanted world. The reality of her mother’s wagon and the tribal fires of the encampment became smudged in her mind, as if she had taken some potion to distort the hard edges of the corporeal world. The dreadful events of the afternoon had lost some of their vividness. They seemed to bear no relation to her being held by a strange man on a strange horse, riding through fairyland, and if this was real, then perhaps that had not been. She knew that such thoughts were fanciful, of course; the pain of Sandro’s death was like a boil beneath the skin of her mind, waiting to erupt, but for the moment she was content to drift on a charmed sea and let events take their course. She had certainly contrived a most thorough escape from Tariq.

  They turned onto a cypress-lined path, leaving the main cluster of the palace buildings behind them. Again their way was lit by pitch torches, and she could see ahead the looming height of the perimeter wall. One of the two footmen spurted forward to open a small gate into a trellised garden, at the end of which stood a tower set into the outer wall of the palace compound. It seemed they had reached the end of the present journey. Did a tower signify a prison? Prisons were not usually found in pretty gardens. They were forbidding buildings, but there seemed nothing forbidding about this one. Before she could decide how she should react, her captor had swung deftly to the ground, still holding her cradled in his arm. Sarita knew she was small, but there was something a little dismaying about the ease with which he accomplished the maneuver. It certainly didn’t offer much hope for a successful bid for freedom, had she been contemplating it.

  The footman opened a door and she was carried into the tower, where she was set carefully on her feet. This was most definitely not a prison. She was in a small hall, more like an inner courtyard than a room. The walls of fragile fretwork were exquisitely decorated in lapis lazuli and delicate artwork; an alabaster fountain surrounded by flowers and fragrant shrubs played softly in the middle of the room; slender marble pillars supported a filigreed colonnade.

  The cloak slipped from her shoulders as she gazed in delight. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for such man-made beauty. The grandeurs of nature—majestic vistas, vivid rioting color of flowers and trees—all these were familiar to her, taken-for-granted aspects of life for one who lived upon the road. But Sarita had had no great acquaintance with interiors. Occasionally she had stayed in an inn. She had been inside shops and churches, the latter often richly decorated, but she could never have imagined anything like this. It was more beautiful than any church, and even in her delight, she felt a flicker of disapproval that anyone should have the arrogance to beautify a simple abode as if it were the house of God. But then she remembered that these were infidels. She opened her mouth to ask, “What place is this?” and then closed it again. The initial decision not to speak had not been conscious, but she felt somehow safer in her silence, as if, without words, she would not be placing any permanent construction on what was happening to her.

  Abul watched her face closely. He read her pleasure in her widened eyes, in her parted lips, and he waited for her to speak. When she closed her lips firmly on whatever she had been about to say, he sighed internally, but comforted himself with the reflection that at least she wasn’t mute. She clearly had the power of speech.

  “This is where you will live,” he said, deciding to talk to her as if she were responding verbally. “Come up to the gallery.” He gestured toward a staircase.

  Sarita looked up and saw an upper gallery running around the inner court. The vaulted cedar roof of the court rose to the summit of the tower, it seemed, and glimmering moonlight came through arched windows at the rear of the gallery.

  He had said she was to live in this place. For a minute Sarita was too taken aback by this blithely assured statement to move. Her instinct was to stay where she was, to refuse to cooperate in any way with her abductor, thus indicating her refusal to accept his assumptions. But he hadn’t waited to see if she would obey him; instead he was already halfway up the stairs. Besides, what harm would it do to see what was up there? Curiosity won with only a skirmish, and she followed him upward to find herself in what was clearly a galleried sleeping chamber surrounding the courtyard below. The walls of the pillared gallery were hung with Damascus silk. A richly cushioned silk-hung divan stood in a recess in the outer wall between two deep window embrasures. There was a crystal mirror on a low marble table. She had never seen such a mirror before; the only reflection of herself she had ever seen had been in a sheet of beaten copper. Her hand ran over the silk covering of the ottoman in front of the table. She thought of her straw pallet in the wagon, the coarse sheet and thin blanket she had in the winter. That or this: one or the other was fantasy.

  “How are you called?” Abul asked her for the third time that day. Sarita made no answer. Instead she walked to the window. Below her was a dark ravine, and across the ravine stood the massed shadows of a group of roofs, the mountains rising behind them. She wanted to ask him about the buildings, but again she stubbornly kept silent.

  “I am called Muley Abul Hassan,” Abul persevered. “I am caliph of Granada, and this is my palace: the palace of the Alhambra. But I imagine you are aware of that?” he suggested. The suggestion fell on stony ground.

  He felt a spurt of impatience. He was receiving no sense that the girl was in the least cowed by her abduction. Her silence was much more in the nature of a challenge, and he was powerfully aware again of that untamed quality emanating from her, despite the slightness and fragility of her frame. She had been running away, he remembered. Not a cautious act.

  She would not have run far unmolested on the nighttime roads of his kingdom, and it was a safe assumption that the hands that caught her would have been much less appreciative than his own. Even had she managed to reach the city, there would have been no security there for a lone and unprotected woman, and an unbeliever into the bargain. No, not a cautious act; one of desperation, perhaps?

  Coming up behind her, he caught her shoulder and obliged her to turn toward him. She glared her annoyance from those eyes the color of seaweed, but set her lips tight. He touched her lower lip with the tip of his finger where he had earlier noticed the slight swelling, then deliberately rolled her lip forward, revealing the faint redness of the cut just inside.

  One man had killed another over this woman that afternoon. “Passion’s bite?” he guessed softly, watching her eyes. Shocked acknowledgment was followed by a flash of anger, then a deep grief. “Ah,” he said as softly. “I begin to understand.” The violent death of a lover could be a powerful spur to a desperate flight.

  Furious rejection of this statement chased all else from her wonderfully expressive eyes, and he knew how close she was to speaking out her resentment and scorn. He found suddenly that he wanted to hear her voice more than anything, even raised in anger. But with a supreme effort of will she kept her fury within. On impulse, he bent and laid his mouth gently over hers, touching the sore spot with the tip of his tongue.

  Sarita felt the shock of the touch rip through her, from the top of her head to her suddenly curled toes. She was aware of outrage, of violation, yet of something else too; something quite contradictory, some strange sweetness coming from the man who held her so lightly. With a muffled gasp, she backed away from him until she was leaning against the gallery, her hand over her mouth as if she would protect it from further caressing assaults.

  There was a sound from below, the soft opening and closing of the door. She looked down into the court. Two women had entered, dressed in plain dark robes, scarves over their heads. Looking up, they saw her in the gallery, the tall figure of the caliph behind her, and swiftly they moved to the stairs, coming into the gallery in a soft-footed rustling whisper of their robes. They bowed before Abul, letting the scarves fall away from their faces as they did so.

  He responded to the reverence with a careless gesture. Sarita examined the new arrivals curiously. They were both young, she judge
d, not much older than herself. One of them was rather plain, her face badly pockmarked, but her homeliness was redeemed by a sweet expression and gentle dark eyes. The other had a pointed face and sharp features, and merry, intelligent eyes that met Sarita’s scrutiny with her own brand of interest. Sarita was instantly drawn to her, as sometimes happens when two people meet for the first time and recognize the potential for a deep and lasting friendship.

  “How are you called?” Abul asked them in Spanish.

  “Zulema, my lord,” the plain one answered.

  “Kadiga, lord Abul,” replied the other, glancing sideways at Sarita.

  “You are familiar with the Spanish tongue?”

  “A little,” they replied modestly.

  Abul nodded. He had instructed Yusuf to consult with the vizier and summon the two most fluent Spanish speakers among the younger female palace servants to attend his mysterious captive. It seemed Yusuf and the vizier had done their work well. These two were young, and if they lacked linguistic subtlety, they would find other ways of communicating.

  “Prepare the bath,” he said before turning back to the ever-silent Sarita. He smiled and touched her cheek where a streak of dirt stood out against the dusting of freckles and the sun’s bloom. “You are in sore need of attention, querida. Tomorrow I will instruct you in the use of the baths, but for tonight your women will attend you in the court below.”

  Before the full import of his statement, not to mention the soft endearment, had struck her, he had disappeared down the stairs. She hung over the gallery and stared in some disbelief. A round wooden bathtub had appeared from which steam curled upward. The two women were moving around purposefully, sprinkling something in the water, laying out thick towels. They stopped and stood still when their lord appeared from the stairs. He spoke to them in Arabic.