The Eagle and the Dove Read online

  She prepared her face with care, outlining her eyes with kohl, touching her cheekbones and lips with rouge. But there was nothing seductive about her this morning as there would have been if she had been able to carry out her plan of the previous evening. It was important that she appear pleasing and dignified, graceful and modest in her approach. If all went well, maybe she would have the opportunity to bring up this puzzling new arrival.

  She left her apartments and made her way through the internal halls to the caliph’s private domain. Servants stepped aside, pausing in their sweeping and polishing, as she passed. She hesitated on the threshold of the anteroom, where a small group of Abul’s personal retinue waited to be summoned to his presence. Aicha, holding her scarf across the lower part of her face, stepped up to the guard at the door.

  “Will you inquire if my lord Abul can spare a few moments for his wife?” Her voice was low, but nonetheless assured. There would have to be a very good reason for the guard to deny her access.

  Abul looked up from the parchment he was reading when the door opened to admit the guard. His face showed no expression as the man told him that the sultana was outside and requesting an audience. “Show the lady Aicha within,” he said, rolling the parchment and laying it on the table beside him. He had been feeling relaxed and good-humored after his session with Fatima and had been contemplating with amusement and pleasurable anticipation his next attack on the citadel of Sarita, but some of this good humor faded as his wife entered the chamber.

  She let the scarf fall from her face and bowed, smiling. “I give you good day, Abul.”

  He returned her smile with a semblance of warmth. “Good day, Aicha.” She was looking very beautiful, he observed. But there was something beneath the beauty, a brittle quality, that he was not used to seeing. He studied her closely and thought she seemed nervous. Her hands moved in the folds of her gown, and her eyes slipped away from his.

  “It has been long since we had speech alone,” she said, her smile suddenly forced. “I am afraid I have offended you.”

  Abul stood up. “You must know that you have,” he said gravely.

  “I was foolish,” she said, her voice low and rushed. “I had no right to question your judgment about our son. Can you not find it in your heart to forgive me?” Her soul screamed denial of her statement even as she made it. No one, only she, Boabdil’s mother, had the right to order the child’s life, but in the interests of the greater good, she must appear to bow to her husband’s decrees.

  “I have forgiven you,” he said. It was the truth. Her petulant and ill-advised refusal of her body had caused him no more than transitory annoyance. He had punished her for it, but his present loss of desire for her had other causes, causes that could not be eradicated, since they were firmly rooted in the person he now perceived her to be.

  Aicha came close to him, laying her hand on his arm. “I have missed you, my husband. I have not known how to ask for your forgiveness.” She kept her eyes down, hiding her resentment at being obliged to make this mortifying speech. But Abul was not fooled. He knew his wife too well to believe that anything less than desperation had driven her to this pass.

  “We will not speak of it again,” he said lightly. “Did you have other business with me this morning?”

  Aicha ground her teeth in frustration. She knew she had achieved nothing more than a surface smoothing of matters between them, but if he had forgiven her, then what was continuing to cause her husband’s present disaffection?

  “No,” she said in the same soft tone. “I came only to see if I could make matters right between us. I thank you for your generosity and your forgiveness, my husband. I will not take up any more of your time.” She glided to the door, then paused, still with her back to him. “Is there anything you wish me to do for the woman you brought into the palace last evening? Should she be accommodated within the seraglio?”

  Abul allowed a small smile to touch his lips. So this was really what it was all about. It didn’t surprise him. Aicha kept herself well informed of all events in the Alhambra and was presumably devoured by curiosity over this one.

  “You are always so thoughtful and conscientious, Aicha,” he said gravely. “But there is no need to concern yourself over the woman. She is Spanish and would not be at home within the women’s apartments.”

  Aicha waited for a few seconds, hoping to hear more, but Abul said nothing. She controlled her disappointment. “As you wish, my lord. You will inform me if I should give order for any further arrangements.”

  “I will indeed,” he replied with the same solemnity, well aware of her annoyance and frustration. “Thank you.”

  Aicha left with her gliding footfall, drawing her scarf across her face as she passed the men in the antechamber. There was no indication in her demeanor of the furious turmoil in her head. She had achieved nothing during the interview but her own mortification. She had no sense that she was returned to her husband’s favor, and she had gleaned no impressions, let alone information, about the mysterious occupant of the perimeter tower. And no enlightenment of the most curious fact of all: why, if Abul had acquired a new woman, one who spent all night in his bed, had he had need of Fatima this morning?

  But maybe Nafissa would have some answers by now. She would at least have discovered from Fatima the extent of the caliph’s need.

  Abul stepped through the arched door of his chamber into the portico of the Myrtle Court. A pair of green finches trilled at him from a cage swinging from a hook in the roof of the colonnade. He whistled at them, and they regarded him with beady eyes, heads tilted to one side. That earlier smile played over Abul’s lips. Aicha had been so transparent. He wondered if she had heard of Fatima’s visit. Probably. The entire seraglio would be in a ferment of speculation by now. His smile faded. He was going to have to make some move indicating his wife’s reinstatement, even if it meant calling her to his bed once or twice in the next few days. It was his responsibility to ensure peace and harmony in the palace, and eroding Aicha’s authority with the women would do little to achieve that.

  Suddenly impatient, he turned back to his chamber. The sooner he dealt with the waiting courtiers and the day’s business, the sooner he could resume the siege of his determined captive, and let his wives make of it what they wished. It would certainly enliven the ordinary routine of the seraglio. He rang the handbell that would summon his waiting vizier from the antechamber.

  It was midmorning before Yusuf knocked at the door to Sarita’s tower. Kadiga opened it.

  “I am come to escort the woman to the baths,” he announced, standing in the doorway, arms folded. “She is to come immediately.”

  Sarita had spent the time since her return from her walk examining her new wardrobe. Zulema and Kadiga had told her the caliph himself had given order the previous evening that she be provided with this wealth of jeweled and brocaded garments, and they had entered enthusiastically into the examination. For Sarita, it had been a game. She had never possessed more than two dresses at a time, one for summer and one for winter: plain, serviceable garments that would survive bareback riding as well as scrambling across rocks and marching on the highways and byways. The caliph’s choices had no utilitarian qualities whatsoever, as far as she could see. The silks were of the finest, the embroidery the most delicate, and the lavish sprinkling of jewels would have taken her breath away if she could have taken any of it seriously. They were definitely clothes for languid drifting in fairyland. But there was another quality to them which she found more disturbing. When she wore them, they clung delicately to the swell of her breasts, swung gracefully around her hips, and the material, while far from transparent, yielded a very definite sense of the flesh beneath. There was, Sarita decided, something more than faintly immodest about them, and it struck her that they had been designed by men with men’s pleasure in mind. In view or what she had already discovered about life in the Alhambra, it seemed a reasonable supposition.

  She had insisted on
mending and washing her orange dress, despite Kadiga’s vigorous protestations, and it now hung reassuringly to dry in front of one of the windows of the gallery. When it was dry, she would be ready to leave this place.

  She ignored Yusuf’s arrival at first, for she couldn’t understand a word he said anyway; but she couldn’t ignore Kadiga’s translation.

  “He has come to take you to the lord Abul in the baths.”

  Here was the opportunity to force the issue. Sarita selected an apricot from the bowl on the table. She took a leisurely bite. “I will remain here, Kadiga. Tell Yusuf that he must tell the caliph that I have no wish to attend him in the baths or anywhere.”

  Zulema gave a little whimper, and Kadiga came slowly across the court. Her eyes were alight with intelligent speculation, her pointed features seeming more finely drawn than usual. “You do not know what you are saying, Sarita.”

  “Oh, but I do.” Sarita spat the apricot stone into the palm of her hand and tossed it aside. “If the lord Abul wants me, then he must come for me himself.”

  “But we cannot tell Yusuf that.” Zulema had her hand over her mouth as she shot anxious looks at the still figure standing in the doorway.

  Yusuf spoke in his sharp, abrupt manner, turning to leave the court. Clearly he expected her to follow, Sarita thought, like an obedient puppy. She selected another apricot.

  Kadiga spoke swiftly and at some length. Sarita had no idea what she said, but the effect on Yusuf was not reassuring despite the woman’s obviously conciliatory tone. His face darkened, and he stepped back into the court, harshly interrupting Kadiga.

  “He says you must go with him,” Kadiga said with a helpless shrug. “I told him you were feeling unwell, but he still says you are to accompany him.”

  “Then tell him the truth,” Sarita said. “Tell him that I will not go with him.”

  “You are mad,” Kadiga whispered, but a gleam of admiration showed in her eyes. “Why will you not go?”

  “Because I do not belong to your lord Abul. Because I am not obliged to obey him. Because I am a captive held against my will,” Sarita explained succinctly.

  Zulema stepped across to Yusuf, drawing her scarf across her face. She spoke hurriedly, her voice soft and sweet and pleading.

  Yusuf stared at the Spanish woman, who still sat on the ottoman, calmly eating apricots with her face brazenly exposed, just as if he weren’t there. He found himself at a loss. Lord Abul had told him to escort the woman to the baths. He had not told him to bring her or to fetch her. Had the caliph used such words, Yusuf would have had no hesitation about picking up his recalcitrant charge and carrying her off. But he hadn’t been told to do that, and he knew that this woman had an unusually powerful effect on his lord. He couldn’t imagine where it came from, himself. She struck him as too small and uncontrolled to be attractive, with that extravagantly curly red hair and those turbulent green eyes. But it was not for him to question the caliph’s flights and fancies.

  Zulema was suggesting that the woman was reluctant to leave the shelter of the tower in the daylight because she was frightened and uncomfortable in a strange place. Yusuf looked searchingly at the girl, still calmly eating apricots. She didn’t look in the least frightened or uncomfortable to him, but Zulema’s explanation gave him a face-saving way of avoiding confrontation. On his return, he would have different instructions from the caliph.

  The door closed with a snap on his departure, and Kadiga gave a gurgle of laughter. “I have never seen Yusuf at a disadvantage before,” she said, helping herself to an apricot. “But you were wonderful, Zulema.” She went into a peal of laughter.

  Zulema’s smile was rather more restrained, but Sarita was developing the impression that the softer of the two was no less humorous than her friend. “I don’t think he believed me,” Zulema said, and then began to laugh also.

  “But what did you say to him?” Sarita demanded, laughing although she didn’t yet know why, simply because their laughter was so infectious.

  Zulema told her. “It would have been more convincing if you hadn’t been spitting out apricot stones as if you hadn’t a care in the world,” she said. Then she sobered abruptly. “But what will happen now?”

  Sarita shrugged with a nonchalance she was not entirely sure of feeling. “We’ll wait and see. But I expect your lord Abul will come here as I requested.”

  Kadiga grinned. “That was a strangely worded request. But why would you refuse to go to the caliph? You passed the night with him.”

  Yes, thought Sarita, but not the night you might imagine. Again she couldn’t think how to explain the truth, so she just shook her head and said, “I am not here of my own free will. I wish to leave, and the lord Abul must arrange it.”

  Abul was waiting in the Court of the Cypresses outside the baths. His administrative tasks completed, he was relaxing in the sun, listening to the play of fountains and contemplating a leisurely progression through the halls of the baths, introducing his resolute and intriguing guest to their sensual and spiritual delights, delights that would hopefully further wear down her resistance. He had little difficulty hearing the truth behind the diplomatic explanation for Yusuf’s empty-handed arrival. A frown touched his eyes, replacing the languid anticipation of pleasure. It could become tiresome if she threw down the gauntlet over the smallest matters.

  “Do you wish me to bring the woman, my lord?” Yusuf sounded eager to do so.

  Abul shook his head. There would be no satisfaction in a victory won through brute strength. He would play the hand as it had been dealt him. “I will go to her myself.”

  Without apparent haste, he strolled through the courts of the palace, taking the trouble to acknowledge the obeisance of those he passed. Outside the walls of his home, there was turmoil, conflict, constant upheaval. There were rival factions among the Morisco-Spanish families in Granada, the roads were plagued with brigands, and the Spanish pressed ever closer to the border of Castile, their eyes as always set upon the prize of Granada, the last remaining Morisco-Spanish kingdom in Spain. Abul knew that for Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, their lands now united by their marriage, the completion of the reconquest of Spain after nearly eight hundred years of Moorish domination had taken on holy significance. He knew he had to fight constantly to hold on to his kingdom, and not always with sword and lance; mentally, he must be alert to the slightest threat, the hint of a move against him, the merest whisper of an alliance between one of the rival families in Granada and the Spaniards. He could be ousted, he knew, only by such an alliance: a combination of treachery within and armed power without.

  When he left the Alhambra on his journeys of diplomacy, of outright battle, of trading and bribery, he lived and breathed the turmoil and the danger, drawing satisfaction from the knife-edge, as he had been born and bred to do. But within the walls of the Alhambra palace, his home, he wanted only tranquility, harmonious relationships, beauty and symmetry to soothe and gladden all the senses. He worked as hard to achieve this as he did to secure his kingdom, but the methods were different. Gentleness, courtesy, consideration—these were the tools by which Muley Abul Hassan created harmony within the walls of his home.

  It struck him, as he opened the wicket gate to the garden of the tower, that with Sarita he had introduced an unharmonious facet into the serenity of the palace compound. Her refusal to fit into his scheme of things created a discordant note. Paradoxically, he was enjoying the challenge she presented, but in keeping with the physical perfection of their surroundings and his own emphasis on peace and order, he determined to use only the most sensuous means of persuasion to bring her within the embrace of the Alhambra and all that would follow from that embrace.

  He entered the tower without an alerting knock and thus surprised the three young women in the midst of their laughter. As the caliph entered, however, Kadiga and Zulema leaped to their feet, instantly sobered, although amusement still lingered in their eyes.

  Abul had the unmistakable
sense of having intruded. It was not an unusual sensation. When he visited the seraglio unexpectedly, he always felt as if he had disturbed some very private world. It didn’t trouble him; the private world of women was all they had within the dominating sphere of their menfolk, and they were entitled to it.

  Sarita remained reclining on the ottoman and made no overt acknowledgment of his presence. As he watched, she selected an apricot from a bowl on the table beside her and slowly bit into it. The insolent sensuality of the gesture lifted the hairs on the back of his neck.

  “Leave,” he said to the attendants. They scurried past him as he stepped aside. He closed the door quietly. “So it seems you are reluctant to venture outside the tower in the light of day,” he observed, crossing the court toward her. He stretched out on an ottoman facing her and raised his eyebrows slightly at the plethora of apricot stones scattered across the table and the floor. “You do like apricots, don’t you?”

  Sarita was no longer sure that she did. She seemed to have consumed a vast quantity, and the one she now held had been taken purely for effect. She discarded it half eaten on the table. “I wish to leave this place now.” It seemed best to come straight to the point.

  Abul pursed his lips. “That color suits you.”

  Taken aback, Sarita looked down at her robe of apple-green silk. The color did suit her; the glass had told her so as eloquently as had Kadiga and Zulema. It set off her hair and did rather nice things to her eyes. Whatever she might think of this style of garment, her vanity was not beyond gratification. However, she was not about to show it.

  “It is a ridiculous garment,” she declared roundly.

  “Oh? In what way?” He seemed politely interested.