I stand and pick my way through the thicket to Adán’s side. “Brother,” I say. I shake him gently.
He sits up.
Let this be Your will. I take the braid from my neck and slowly pull it over my head. I feel for Adán’s hand and drop the slip of hair into his open palm.
“Tell her I’m come for her and the children.” My voice scrapes my throat, for in the shadow of my words I see tombstones stacked high as fortress walls, shining towers in flames, and blood in the marketplace.
Forgive me, I say. Forgive me.
Adán rises. He shakes the pine needles from the bearskin and stamps the fire to ashes. “Wait here,” he says. “Be ready.” And he kisses my head before he crashes away in the direction of the road.
I pace the thicket. I warm my hands over the hot ashes of our fire. The hollow of my chest feels stripped, between the ache of wanting for Sofia and my children and the knowledge that I’ve surrendered Córdoba to whoever steeps it in the most blood. The Berbers. The Abbasids. The Christians of the North. I lie down by the fire’s remnants, too tired even to sleep, and stare blindly up at the sky.
I must fall asleep at last, for when I wake, the sun has burned through the morning gloom. Its light is bright all around me. Somewhere down the steep vale below the thicket, a baby cries. Another child joins in, echoing its wailing. But their voices waver and quiet as a woman picks up a song. Her voice is husky with the cold.
And then her voice peaks higher, clear as church bells, clear as the muezzin’s call.
I stand. It is the voice that drew me from the riverbank to the orange grove, tied a string to my heart. For a moment, I think it might be my memory, grown stronger now that I am near my beloved again, for can Adán even have had time to deliver my message? But no, in my memory, there is no child’s cry, no small imperfection in her voice. My heart catches and lifts high. I start forward, pushing through the thick trees, and stumble out into an open vale. I trip down the hill, fall, and right myself again. I am running blind, stalks of dry winter grass slapping my legs, but her voice is closer now, more real than anything in my memory. I am running and falling, running again, her voice so near I know if she keeps singing I will be able to run straight to her.
The song halts.
I stop in my tracks. The wind rustles the grass.
“Ishaq?” The word comes from my right, only a few paces ahead.
I drop to my knees. Let it be her. I know I am not worthy, but let it be her.
“Ishaq?”
I stretch out my hands. “Sofia?”
She throws herself into me. Her arms lock around me, the thick wool of her dress warm on my skin, the smell of her different now, less salt and more smoke, but still her. Her throat makes a wrenching noise. She kisses my mouth, my eyelids, my forehead, my cheeks. I hold her and hold her and let my sorrow spill out of me. We rock together in the tall grass. One of her tears hits my face and courses down into my left eye. I blink. For a moment, I think I see a flash of red gold, her hair. I reach for her face and trace the line of her jaw, the delicate folds of her ears.
My knuckles brush her hair. It seems lighter, too light. I feel for her braid, but it isn’t there.
“Your hair… ,” I say, frowning.
She takes my hand and guides it from root to tip. It stops in a ragged line where her shoulders meet her neck. “Grandmère cut it as punishment,” she says.
“Oh.” I lean my head heavily on her collarbone and crush her against me. She is thinner, her body more worn. “Sofia, forgive me.” Forgive me, forgive me.
“It was nothing,” she says. She kisses my eyes. Her voice breaks. “It was nothing.”
“How are you here?” I cock my ears from side to side, but all I can hear is the gentle chafe of dry grass. “Where are your brothers? Are they far behind?”
Sofia takes my face in her hands. A small tremor runs through her fingers. “They’re not coming.”
“How—”
“I’ve been watching a long time, in case the chance should come,” she says. “Preparing. Last night, I heard Cordobán voices in the hall, and two soldiers from that man de Lanza’s band talking of a blind servant in the woods. And when de Lanza left to tend to him….”
I open my mouth to speak, but Sofia stops me with her rough fingers laid soft on my lips. She takes a trembling breath. “After they brought me here, I found Grandmère’s books, the ones on poisons and sleeping draughts—”
“Sofia.” I try to stop her. I do not want her to admit what she is about to say.
“And when Henri allowed me out for walks, I began looking for the plants they describe.”
“Sofia.” I try again.
“No, listen Ishaq,” she says firmly. “I couldn’t find any poppies or fellenwort to make them sleep….”
No.
“But I found a laburnum tree.”
Laburnum. I see the pages of her grandmother’s Pharmakopia open on the table before me again. “They’re dead?” I make myself ask.
“I don’t know.” She clears her throat and reins in the trembling in her voice.
I take her shaking hand in my own. I would forgive her anything.
“Grandmère’s book only said what would kill a man, not how much would force him down past waking. I tried to dilute it, but….” Her words soften, as though she’s turned away from me to cast one last look at the castle. “I don’t know what I’ve done, Ishaq.”
I kiss her fingertips again and again, because there isn’t anything in the world to say.
“Lady?” an older woman’s voice calls behind her. “Are you well?” One of the children makes a high, questioning noise, testing the sound of its voice.
“Is that my daughter?” I ask. “My son?”
“Yes,” Sofia says softly to me. She turns and calls over her shoulder. “Yes, I’m well.”
The wind stirs the grass around us, carrying the scent of rain and pine and far-off smoke.
“Come.” Sofia takes my hand and helps me to my feet. “Come and meet your children.”
AND WEEP LIKE ALEXANDER
Neil Gaiman
The little man hurried into the Fountain and ordered a very large whisky. “Because,” he announced to the pub in general, “I deserve it.”
He looked exhausted, sweaty and rumpled, as if he had not slept in several days. He wore a tie, but it was so loose as to be almost undone. He had greying hair that might once have been ginger.
“I’m sure you do,” said Brian Dalton.
“I do!” said the man. He took a sip of the whisky as if to find out if he liked it, then, satisfied, gulped down half the glass. He stood completely still, for a moment, like a statue. “Listen,” he said. “Can you hear it?”
“What?” I said.
“A sort of background whispering white noise that actually becomes whatever song you wish to hear when you sort of half-concentrate upon it?”
I listened. “No,” I said.
“Exactly,” said the man, extraordinarily pleased with himself. “Isn’t it wonderful? Only yesterday, everybody in the Fountain was complaining about the Wispamuzak. Professor Mackintosh here was grumbling about having Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” stuck in his head and how it was now following him across London. Today, it’s gone, as if it had never been. None of you can even remember that it existed. And that is all due to me.”