“Sanchuelo tries to accuse the Jews of a plot to murder the caliph and his family,” Adán said, kneeling by my couch in the shaded eaves of Nasir’s courtyard. “He uses my name. Though they say your father won’t believe it.”
A rare breeze touched my neck. Earlier in the day, Nasir and his wife had propped me up on a bank of pillows in the corner of the courtyard, where they said the open air would help me recover. I hadn’t spoken since I first awoke in their house.
“Ishaq,” Adán said. “Why did they do this to you? Tell me.”
My lips had dried together. I pulled them apart to answer. “Sofia.”
“What about her?” Adán asked in frustration.
“I… I shouldn’t have… without her brothers’ consent….” My throat closed around the words. I pressed my nails into my palms.
“You took her for a lover?” I could hear the anger in Adán’s voice, but I didn’t know if it was meant for me or Sofia’s kin.
“Yes.” I leaned forward into the pain in my ribs. I deserve it, I deserve it. Oh, God.
Adán didn’t speak. His leather coverlet creaked as he rose. He scuffed around the perimeter of the courtyard’s smooth flagstones, and then came back and knelt beside me. “You loved her?”
“I would have married her,” I said.
He fell silent again.
“God has delivered His judgment,” I said, so quietly the steady rush of the fountain nearly hid my voice. “With their hands He marks me unfit to rule.”
Adán took my head in his hands and kissed my forehead again, as he had done the night he found me. “Brother, you know better than to ascribe the will of God to the works of men.”
A hard tear burned my left eye. I wished to God for Him to consume me in flame or let the earth open up for me—Oh, God, let me cease to be—but the quiet heat of the sun continued, and the water bubbling from the fountain, and the birdsong from the roof, and I did not cease to be. I reached out to Adán. “I cannot go back to my father’s house. He can’t know.”
Adán laid his hand over mine. “Anything you say.”
“Will you… will you find her?” I tightened my grip on his hand. We both knew I was too damaged to rise from my bed, much less seek her on my own. “See she’s kept safe and whole?”
“Yes,” Adán agreed.
“She has an uncle somewhere in Catalunya. They may have taken her there. See she has everything she needs. Shoes for her feet and cloaks for winter. And see no one speaks ill of her name.” My throat closed in on itself and the words halted in my mouth. I choked on all I wanted to give her. Pearls to seed her hair and a swift horse to ride out on whenever she chose, all the books of my library, a place at my side when I wrested control of the caliphate back from Sanchuelo. But without the sight of the courtyard to distract me, my mind unrolled the image of Telo striking her, her head hitting the wardrobe, the look on her face when she saw me stripped of my manhood, abased and unclean, helpless to save either of us.
“I will,” Adán said. “Anything you say, brother. But if I go, you must be ready when they start to speak of me as your murderer. I won’t be able to set foot in al Andalus so long as they remember your name. I won’t be able to come back for you.”
God forgive me, God forgive me.
“I know,” I said. “Go.”
He rode out on the north road in the cool predawn dark the next morning.
Some months later, when my bones had healed and my eyes crusted over in a thick stratum of scabs and scar tissue, I asked Nasir to bring me a walking stick. I pushed myself slowly to his front door.
“Stay,” Nasir pleaded. “There’s no need for you to leave. How will your friend Hadid find you if you go?”
“He won’t return,” I said. “God grant it, I may go to him some day, but he won’t return.”
Thus I left the quiet of Nasir’s house for Córdoba, to live in the shadow of what was once my home, to erase myself from all men’s memories, and to pray for word that would lead me back to my beloved and my friend.
We have reached the wooded no-man’s-land inside the Catalan border, by the chill banks of the river Segre. Our caravan has been shrinking, the imam and the students long since left behind in Madrid, and many of the merchants stopped in smaller cities and towns along the way. Lázaro and his men make up the bulk of the caravan, save Miguel’s wagon and a Christian merchant we picked up, also bound for Catalunya. We file close together over the narrow road. At night, we sleep in the woods. We light no fires. Icy rain patters down on us in the day, heralding autumn in the North country. Even Mencia has fallen under the pall of silence that hovers over us. Although we have traveled beyond the chaos rippling out from Córdoba, unallied highwaymen and Visigoth war bands roam the wilderness in these parts. A fight has broken out among Lázaro’s men about whether to abandon Miguel, Mencia, and me, since traveling with Jews and a Moor so near the Pyrenees places them in danger. But so far, we haven’t woken to find them gone.
I walk alongside the cart with my hand resting on its upper boards while the mapmaker’s horses strain up a steep grade. Wet rocks bite my feet and several times I slip, but catch myself on the cart’s edge in time to keep from sliding under the wheels. My leg aches at the old break. The crash of whitewater roars up from the river gorge below. Lázaro’s men have ridden ahead, but when we finally crest the hill, we find them stopped.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“Shhh.” Miguel quiets me.
“State your allegiance,” a strange man’s voice, speaking Catalan, booms over the road.
No one answers.
“State your allegiance,” the stranger tries again, in Castellano this time. The words are heavy in his mouth. He swallows the ends of them, and it takes me a moment to remember where I’ve heard his accent before. I am ten years old, jacketed in gold brocade and standing in the shadow of my father’s throne. A Visigoth chieftain with a heavy black beard and pale skin stands at the base of the dais, a gilt and sapphire cross glinting in the fox fur at his neck, an emissary from our ancestors’ long-vanquished enemies….
“State yours,” Lázaro says. The sound of swords drawn from their scabbards rings throughout the group of men arrayed on the path before us.
“I am Athanric of the Wese. We swear allegiance to his Holiness Pope John XVIII.” The Visigoth shouts to be heard over the river. A fine sleet begins to fall.
“Then we have no quarrel with you,” Lázaro says. “We go to the court of King Filipe of Roussillon to aid his cause in retaking the southern lands from the Moorish kings.”
“And yet you travel with a Moor,” Athanric says. He pauses, as if working out a problem in his head. “And Jews?”
I cannot see, but I feel the gaze of two score pairs of eyes turned on our wagon in the silence that follows.
“They’re no part of our caravan,” Lázaro replies.
“Then you will not object if we dispatch them from your company,” the Visigoth says. “We would be remiss in our Christian duty if we did not baptize them here in the river.”
Lázaro pauses. The cold gush of the river rises in the silence. An uneasy murmur works its way through his men. “No,” Lázaro says. “They’re no concern of ours.”
Mencia clutches my arm.
“Good lords.” Miguel raises his voice for the first time, and I am surprised at how strong and clear it is after so much silence. “I am a tradesman. My wife and I travel to Orgañá, no further, and this man is our servant. We are no threat to you.”
“A Jewish tradesman,” Athanric says. He thumps the flat of his sword against his leg. “And wearing no marks on his clothes.”