Part 14 (1/2)

Hakiim frowned. He suspected Perfecto of talking nonsense. Like a child. Like a Spaniard. ”To do what, and for whom?” He led his animal along a street so narrow that pedestrians darted into doorways to allow them to pa.s.s.

Perfecto's animal followed. The Spaniard's reply was inaudible and so Hakiim turned and asked him to repeat it.

”It does not matter to whom I gave the promise, does it? It was a promise and I was therefore honor bound.”

Hakiim, as a dealer, thought this att.i.tude was so much dung of the mule. What was more, he was certain that Perfecto had no more illusions than he himself. But as he turned to say something of this nature, they rounded a hump in the road, and a white donkey, carrying a man and two sacks of wood, rammed nose-to-nose into his mount.

There was a great thras.h.i.+ng and hawing, and Perfecto's innocent mule received a kick in the chest from Hakiim's. When the incident had resolved itself (the donkey rider backing his animal along the alley and into a cul-de-sac) Perfecto pointed urgently along a cross street that led out of the gates of Granada.

”Here. You will arrive at the fortress at the same time as if you had cut through the city. AND, we will be able to hear ourselves talk.”

”I don't want to be able to hear ourselves talk,” whispered Hakiim to himself, but he turned the mule's head.

”As to what the bargain-or rather the promise-was, well, that was to depend on circ.u.mstance. As it happened, it was necessary that I sell this man in Granada.”

It was cooler outside the wall, and undeniably fresher, but Hakiim's mood was unimproved. ”Not man, Perfecto, but boy. And how can you...”

Quite calmly the Spaniard corrected his partner. ”Not boy, Hakiim, but man. The blond was never a eunuch.”

Hakiim let the reins slide down his mule's neck. For some moments his tongue forgot speech. ”And you knew it?”

”From the beginning. But I knew that you would be very unhappy with the idea of selling an entire, so I thought it better to pretend.”

Perfecto, jogging along on the mouse-gray back, looked more complacent than ashamed.

Hakiim thought furiously.

”I should have suspected something when the Berber woman refused to be sold without him.”

Now it was Perfecto's turn to raise his eyebrows. ”Berber woman? Djoura?”

Hakiim made a negatory wave. ”She... always claimed to be a Berber. Pay it no mind.”

But Perfecto's little eyes squinted littler. ”Are there, then, black Berbers?”

”A few,” Hakiim admitted. ”In the west and south. But that doesn't mean that she is one...”

Perfecto gave a heavy sigh. ”It would be a dangerous thing, to sell a woman of Berber tribe as a slave, in a land where the Berbers have the sharpest swords,” he said.

”You are referring to Tunis?” Hakiim mumbled nervously.

”I am referring to Granada,” answered the Spaniard.

The wall of the city rose to their left, gray but gleaming like milk in the sun. Below was a bank of shalethat crumbled down to a series of turtle-backed hills. The sprawling fortress called the Alhambra, red walled and white towered, gleamed from half a mile away. Hakiim took a deep breath of sage-dry air and listened to the cicadas in the dust.

But for Perfecto, now, he'd have solitude.

”There is a world of difference between selling a Nubian who CALLS herself a Berber and is not, and selling a man YOU call a eunuch, and who is not. What will happen when Ras.h.i.+d finds out he has been tricked?”

Perfecto urged his animal close beside. ”Tricked? It was not I who told him Pinkie was a boy, but Djoura herself”

Djoura. Hakiim's brow knotted. ”Yes! Our black lily must have known. Was she in this business with you?”

Perfecto spat off to the side. ”No. Djoura is only perverse.

”And Ras.h.i.+d can have no complaint to us, since Pinkie did not cost him one shaved copper!”

Hearing an unmistakable jingle, Hakiim turned his head. Perfecto had taken out his moneybag and was shaking it in his hand for emphasis. Hakiim's own profits were kept in a discreet bag-belt which wrapped his body beneath his s.h.i.+rt. It was a heavy belt, but not so full as this moneybag.

A sudden guess made Hakiim blurt, ”So you were paid for taking the eu-the blond.”

Perfecto laughed, and at this moment Hakiim's mule stopped dead and pawed the black shale with his foot three times.

”A bad omen,” grunted the Spaniard. ”When a mule does that. Take a good look before stepping onto the s.h.i.+p you engage, old friend!”

Then he added quickly, ”No, I was not paid for taking the Saqalibah, or at least not in gold. I told you I did it for someone to whom I owe a number of favors.”

Hakiim was getting tired of being told that. ”Which makes me suspect the fellow was no more a legal slave than a physical eunuch,” he replied. ”Tell me, Perfecto. Who puts you under such strange obligations?”

”I will do better than tell you,” the Spaniard proclaimed. ”I will introduce you.”

This was too much. As though Hakiim had any desire to meet Perfecto's low European friends... ”No time,” the Moor said shortly.

”All the time in the world,” replied Perfecto, and he laughed.

”Go meet the devil, you d.a.m.ned paynim!” the Spaniard bellowed, swinging his moneybag (heavier than gold), down on the back of Hakiim's neck.

These visitors were so fancy that not only Fatima and Ama had to be hidden but the furniture as well.

The normally concealed household bedding, however, was subject to a good deal of attention, as the dining room was strewn with pillows and the spread long ago embroidered by Ras.h.i.+d ben Ras.h.i.+d's mother hung dimpled from the ceiling. (This use of her handiwork would have surprised Lu-crezza, wife of Pablo, very much.) Ama found this all very hard, as she perched on a heavy oak table in her hidey-hole at the corner of the house. Since all the floor was taken, she was forced to crawl along the tops of the piled European furniture. Like a cat. And there were no cus.h.i.+ons to make her position softer.

Better to be an old drudge like Fatima and supervise the cooking in the kitchen house than be locked up like this, in stifling heat with nary a toy or amus.e.m.e.nt all evening. Djoura was scrubbing pots, and even Raphael had been taken from the little wife of Ras.h.i.+d, for he was to play for the guests.

Ama felt a stab of resentment. Wasn't it she who had sensed the value of the musician, when Ras.h.i.+d hadn't wanted him for free?

And for that matter, wasn't the blond a mere European? Why did Raphael get to attend the party, while her pure Moorish bottom rested on the hard wooden furniture her people despised?Ama would turn the tables on all of them, she promised herself. Big tables, like the one she sat on.

Hasiim Alfard, lean and dry-faced Berber of Morocco, looked to go the night without cracking a smile. His two lieutenants, Masoud and Mustapha, sat like dusty shadows at his feet, and unbent no more than their qa'id.

Ras.h.i.+d's reaction to this was a grin like that carved on a turnip-face. He knew such an ingratiating and constant smile displayed a certain feeling of weakness before his powerful guests, and so he wiped the expression from his face again and again.

But it came back unnoticed, and in fact, there it was now, splitting his wide face and revealing teeth of various a.s.sorted shades. ”You find it crowded in Granada, Qa'id Hasiim, after the tents of your people?”

Hasiim's right hand dipped into the spiced lamb, went to his mouth, and rinsed itself in the crockery bowl before he replied. ”I find it... dirty,” said the Berber. ”But then, what can I expect? It is Granada.”

The dry man (only his lips were moist, wet with the grease of Ras.h.i.+d's expensive hospitality) turned slowly away, distracted by the ud player in the corner.