Ama had told her the circumstances, not sparing any detail, in which her brother Abdallah had died, after he had been thrown by a horse he had trained and bred himself, and how his wife had only survived him for a year.
‘Even on his death-bed he thought about you and made young Umar swear on the al-koran that a regular supply of food and clothes would be sent to you. He never got over your absence.’
Zahra sighed and a sad smile tugged at her face.
‘Our childhood memories were so closely intertwined you know…’
Then she stopped, as if the memory of her brother had led her to others. The look on her face reminded Ama of the old days. She must be seeing him in her mind’s eye, Ama thought to herself. I wish she would talk about him. What is there to hide now?
It was as if Zahra had read her old rival’s thoughts. ‘Whatever became of Mohammed ibn Zaydun?’ Zahra tried to sound very casual, but her heart was beating faster. ‘Is he dead?’
‘No, my lady. He is alive. He changed his name, you know. He calls himself Wajid al-Zindiq and lives on a hill a few miles from here. Zuhayr ibn Umar sees him regularly, but does not know his past. He too is sent food from the house. Umar bin Abdallah insisted we did that, once we had discovered the identity of the man who had moved into that cave on the hill. This very morning Zuhayr was with him for several hours.’
Zahra was so excited by this piece of news that her heartbeats sounded like gunshots in Ama’s ears.
‘I must sleep now. Peace be upon you, Amira.’
‘And upon you, my lady. May God bless you.’
‘He has not done that for a very long time, Amira.’
Ama left the room with the lamp. As she stepped outside she heard Zahra say something. She was about to return to the chamber, but it was obvious that Ibn Farid’s daughter was thinking aloud. Ama remained rooted to the tile in the courtyard on which she stood.
‘The first time. Remember Mohammed?’ Zahra was talking to herself. ‘It was like the opening of a flower. Our eyes were shining, full of hope and our hearts were leaping. Why did you never come back to me?’
Chapter 4
‘THERE IS NO OTHER way. If necessary we must permit Providence to avail itself of the darkness of the dungeon and pour the light of the true faith on the benighted minds of these infidels. Friar Talavera my illustrious predecessor, tried other methods and failed. Personally, I believe that the decision to publish the Latin-Arabic dictionary was misguided but enough said on that question. That phase is mercifully over, and with it, I trust, the illusion that these infidels will come to us through learning and rational discourse.
‘You look displeased, Excellency. I am fully aware that a softer policy might suit the needs of our temporal diplomacy, but you will excuse my bluntness. Nothing more or less than the future of thousands of souls is at stake. And it is these which I am commanded by our Holy Church to save and protect. I am convinced that the heathen, if they cannot be drawn towards us voluntarily, should be driven in our direction so that we can push them on to the path of true salvation. The ruins of Mahometanism are tottering to their foundations. This is no time to stay our hand.’
Ximenes de Cisneros spoke with passion. He was hampered by the fact that the man sitting on a chair facing him was Don Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, Count of Tendilla, Mayor and Captain-General of Granada, which the Moors called Gharnata, Don Inigo had deliberately chosen to be dressed in Moorish robes for this particular meeting. It was a style that greatly distressed the Archbishop.
‘For a spiritual leader, Your Grace reveals a remarkable capacity for interceding in matters temporal. Have you thought about this matter seriously? Their majesties did agree the terms of surrender, which I drafted, did they not, Father? I was present when a solemn undertaking was given to their Sultan by the Queen. We agreed to leave them in peace. Friar Talavera is still greatly respected in the Albaicin because he kept to the terms that had been agreed.
‘I will be blunt with you, Archbishop. Till your arrival we had no serious problems in this kingdom. You failed to win them over by force of argument and now you wish to resort to the methods of the Inquisition.’
‘Practical methods, Excellency. Tried and tested.’
‘Yes, tried and tested on Catholics whose property you wanted to possess and on Jews who have never ruled over a kingdom and who bought their freedom by paying out gold ducats and converting to our religion. The same methods will not work here. Most of the people we call Moors are our own people. Just like you and me. They have ruled over a very large portion of our peninsula. They did so without burning too many bibles or tearing down all our churches or setting synagogues alight in order to build their mesquitas. They are not a rootless phenomenon. They cannot be wiped out with a lash of the whip. They will resist. More blood will be spilled. Theirs and ours.’
Cisneros stared at the Count with a look of pure contempt. If it had been any other grandee of the kingdom, the Archbishop would have declared to his face that he spoke thus because his own blood was impure, tainted with an injection from Africa. But this wretched man was no ordinary noble. His family was one of the most distinguished in the country. It boasted several poets, administrators and warriors in the service of the true faith. The Mendozas had employed genealogists who traced their descent back to the Visigothic kings. Cisneros had yet to be convinced by this last detail, but the pedigree was impressive enough, even without the Visigoth connections. Cisneros knew the family well. He himself had been a protege of the king-making Cardinal Mendoza. After all, the whole country was aware of the fact that the Captain-General’s paternal uncle had, as Cardinal and Archbishop of Seville, aided Isabella to outwit her niece and usurp the Castilian throne in 1478. The Mendoza family was therefore held in very high regard by the present King and Queen.
Cisneros knew he had to be careful, but it was the Count who had violated the norms which governed relations between Church and State. He decided to remain calm. There would be other opportunities to punish the man’s arrogance. Cisneros spoke in the softest voice he could muster for the occasion. ‘Is Your Excellency charging the Inquisition with corruption on a grand scale?’
‘Did I mention the word corruption?’
‘No, but the implication…’
‘Implication? What implication? I merely pointed out, my dear Friar Cisneros, that the Inquisition was amassing a gigantic fortune for the Church. The confiscated estates alone could fund three wars against the Turks. Could they not?’
‘What would Your Excellency do with the property?’
‘Tell me, Father, is it always the case that the children of your so-called heretics are also guilty?’
‘We take for granted the loyalty of the members of a family to each other.’
‘So a Christian whose father is a Mahometan or a Jew is never to be trusted.’
‘Never is perhaps too strong.’
‘How is it then that Torquemada, whose Jewish ancestry was well known, presided over the Inquisition?’
‘To prove his loyalty to the Church he had to be more vigilant than the scion of a noble family whose lineage can be traced to the Visigoth kings.’
‘I begin to understand your logic. Well, be that as it may, I will not have the Moors subjected to any further humiliations. You have done enough. Burning their books was a disgrace. A stain on our honour. Their manuals on science and medicine are without equal in the civilized world.’