“The North?” I repeated dumbly. My lessons at the time had been all Aristotle, algebra, and petty diplomacy. The vizier had charge of the larger matters of state, and he assured my father the Northern lords were rabble-rousers and brigands, soon to be crushed beneath the charge of a Moorish cavalry, with him, the son and heir of the great warrior al-Mansur, at its head.
“Yes, my lord,” she said. “They say the Christian lords from Castilla north to the Occitan territories are spoiling for war. I heard my brothers talking of raids on the outskirts of Tulaytulah and a muster north of Madrid. There is even talk of the Northern lords riding into Córdoba to reclaim the bells of Santiago de Compostela. And the vizier raising the call for more mercenaries in turn. Is it true?”
Something shifted in my chest, like to a bone popping into joint. I did not see it then, but a keener and more durable thing than the whim that drew me to her window had put down its roots in me.
I dropped my light manner. “It’s true. There was a raid on Tulaytulah and some of the smaller towns north and west. But trust me, lady, you need not fear. My father and I desire peace as much as any in the caliphate, and the vizier has all the mercenaries he needs.”
She studied me for a long pause. “If you say it,” she said finally.
I looked up at her, her hair hanging like ropes of gold braid beneath the window ledge. “May I know your name?” I asked.
“Oh, the price of that is more news.” She smiled, teasing again. “I’m locked up alone here with nothing but my handwork and a few servants most days. I cannot even ride out without my brothers’ escort. I am parched for news of the outside world.”
“What would you like to know?” I asked. “The fashions of the court at Granada? The latest arguments from Alexandria? Shall I recite an epic from the Greek or tell the tale of Scheherazade?
She laughed. “Only tell me what you’ve seen on your ride today and what brings you so far outside the city.”
“Well.” I pretended to count on my fingers. “I have seen the bridges of Córdoba by the earliest light, three farms, two other manors, a field of sunflowers tall as a man, a very fat merchant fall from his horse, and the most quick-minded woman I have ever met. My mother excepted, of course.”
“Of course.” The lady smiled.
“As to what brings me,” I said, “I can only say the vizier is happier when I keep myself amused away from court, and when he is happy, we all prosper.”
“Have you no duties there?” She raised her eyebrows. “Shouldn’t you be learning the arts of state at your father’s hand?”
“My father and the vizier agree, there’s no need for me to learn the messy particulars. Not with such an able administrator in our employ.”
“I see,” she said.
“And your name, lady?” I prompted. “Or have I not yet satisfied your thirst?”
“No, my lord, I am perfectly satisfied,” she said. “I am called Sofia de Rampion.”
“Thank you,” I said. “And you must call me Ishaq.”
“Yes, my Lord Ishaq.”
I held up her embroidery. “May I return this to you?”
Her face fell. The levity that had buoyed her so briefly fled. “You cannot enter the house. My grandmère would tell my brothers.”
“Should I leave it here for you?” I asked, looking around at the dusty courtyard below her window.
“Wait,” she said. “I have it.” She disappeared from the window and returned with a little porcelain water pitcher tied to a length of flax string. She pointed to the olive tree below her window. Its upper branches disappeared into the spill of vines. “Climb up.”
I hoisted myself up onto the sturdiest bough, reached out for the pitcher, dangling level with my head, and tucked the delicate piece of embroidery into its neck.
Sofia drew it up. “Thank you, my lord.”
I swung down from the tree. “May I come to you again? I could bring more news, better news next time.”
She traced an invisible design on the windowsill with her finger. “I think not, my lord.” She raised her eyes and I could read regret written all over her face. “I have loved our talk. Truly, it has brought me joy. But my family—”
“—will not object to what they don’t know.” I finished for her and smiled.
She ducked her head to hide a small, mischievous smile aimed back at me. “You live up to your reputation, Ishaq ibn Hisham. And for your part, won’t you boast of me as one of your conquests?”
“Believe me, lady, I am better at keeping confidences than you’ve heard,” I said. “Not even the captain of my guard knows where I’ve come today, and he is my dearest friend.”
She paused and stared at me, taking my measure.
“May I come again?” I asked.
Slowly, so slowly I would never have noticed had I not been watching every movement of her body, she nodded her consent.
“You will not regret it, lady,” I said, walking backward into the trees. “I will bring you news from all over al Andalus, from the halls of Cairo, from Baghdad, from every corner of the known world.” I nearly tripped over a fallen branch and righted myself. “Even from Damascus itself!”
She laughed, and the sound rang so lovely, so light, I thought nothing of the small sliver of darkness between the shutters of the window beneath her room, or how it disappeared as they pulled themselves shut.
Lázaro snorts in his sleep, jarring me out of my reverie. I push aside the thought of leaving his throat slit by his own knife and drag myself up out of the shadow of the stairs by my walking stick. It will take the rest of the night to reach the city’s outer gates at my limping pace, and the good part of early morning to beg a place in Lázaro’s caravan going north to Catalunya. For now that I know where Sofia is, it is as if God has touched His lips to my ear. It does not matter if she remembers me, or that I am blind and will likely die on my way to her. Some of my youth returns to my limbs. I grasp the braid around my neck and the kite string pulls tight once more.
I am coming to you, I swear. I am coming to you.
Adán found me in the library at Madinat al-Zahra late at night the Friday after I first met Sofia. Parchment bearing architectural designs for the Great Mosque lay thick over my lap and on the table before me. A smoking hashish pipe dangled absently from my hand. My father and I had returned from prayers at our private chamber within the mosque earlier in the day, when the sun stood at a right angle over the palace gardens. Kneeling there before God, I remembered Sofia’s fears. It had come to me how this private chamber, the palace, our reliance on the vizier only turned our heads from the trouble around us, though all the while it lapped at our necks. I had come straight to the library and instructed the scribes to bring me all the plans for the mosque from the time it was rebuilt from an old Visigoth church to the most recent additions under my father. I had also asked for the annals of the golden reign of my great-grandfather, Abd al-Rahman III.
By the time Adán came looking for me, daylight had fled the room. He carried an oil lamp. “Night’s full on, brother. Shouldn’t you be sleeping? Or at least visiting that pretty minister’s daughter, what’s her name? Iuliana?” He stopped beside me at the table and lifted the sheaf of papers. “What’s this?”
“Doesn’t your Shabbat keep you from laboring over these questions?” I said, rubbing my palms over my face.
“Don’t tell me you’re thinking of adding to the mosque again, Ishaq,” Adán said, letting the papers fall with a slap. “There are other ways to distinguish your reign when it comes, you know.”
“No,” I said. I was too tired even for our boyish needling. “I was thinking of knocking down walls, not building new ones.”