Part 21 (1/2)
”Don't ask questions,” Djoura hissed into his ear. ”I have walked all the way across Andalusia to rescue you, so you just follow me.”
With a glance back toward the spot where he had last seen Damiano and another at the figure of the boy who lay snoring at the bolted garden gate, Raphael did follow Djoura, up and over the garden wall.
Now I am a renegade, he thought, crouching in the obscurity of the roadside, looking back at the pale height of clay he had just scaled. Just like Lucifer: a renegade.
Not quite like Lucifer, he qualified, as a firm dark handhold pulled him on. Lucifer would never let anyone lead him by the hand. The snores of Ali the doorkeeper faded in his ears.
For five minutes he scuttled after his liberator, along alleyways he did not recognize, pa.s.sing squares where even now in the second hour of morning they encountered people who had risen already for the next day as well as people who had not yet been to bed.
He was prodded to walk upright. He was made to stroll. Djoura, stepping meekly behind him, twisted her bony knuckle into the small of his back to induce him to behave. ”You are free, Pinkie! Walk like a free man!”
Raphael was walking the only way he knew to walk. On impulse he turned on his heel and came round beside the woman. He laid one arm over her shoulders.
”If I am free, then this is how I please to walk,” he replied reasonably. ”And if I were wholly free, I would not walk at all, because I need so much to speak with you, my dear Djoura.”
The Berber wiggled out of touch. ”None of that! What are you thinking, man? You'll have us both pilloried, holding on to me in public.”
Raphael smiled ruefully, feeling not very free at all. But he trotted along, talking over his shoulder, while Djoura drove him from behind.
”Did the magic pull you from your Moroccan home, Djoura? Or were you still on the sea when the call came?” Djoura puzzled at his phrasing. ”I escaped from the s.h.i.+p before it sailed the harbor. I tossed a customs man into the water, took his wallet, and walked down the gangway an hour before sailing.
”Pah!” She spat dry and catlike upon the street. ”That s.h.i.+p was like a prison, and I've had enough of chains. And I have no family left in the south.
”Besides.” Her voice dropped in timbre and her eyes snared moonlight. ”I had to come back for my pink Berber.” A grin spread over Raphael's face: a shy grin as tight as a shrunken suit of clothes. All he could say was, ”I missed you, too, Djoura.” But that smile and the warmth which accompanied it dissolved as he thought further.
”But if I am running away from my master and you are running away from your home, then where are we going TO?”
The black woman snickered. ”How about your home, Pinkie? Don't you have one, somewhere, with a mother who would be glad to see her little boy again?
”Along with his charming friend?”
Raphael stopped dead in the exact middle of the street. He made no answer, nor did he glance at Djoura, but stood with his hands clenched at his sides and his head bowed. He bit his lip. Djoura was standing before him, a concerned look in her coffee-colored eyes. ”I know already that you are not a Berber,” she said diffidently. ”It was the music you play that confused me. But I have heard you play themusic of many places, since, and that doesn't matter.”
”It doesn't? You came back for me anyway?” They were quite alone on the street. Raphael touched her face. The look she gave him back was haughty, as though to say the reasons she did the things she did were hers to know.
”Djoura, I don't know how to find my home anymore. My memory has been... damaged. But I know the earth is filled with pleasant places to live. Come with me and we will find one we like.”
”That is for me to say,” replied the woman, shooting him a glance over a lopsided smile. ”I am the one with the wallet,” she added, letting coins tinkle softly beneath her clothes.
But she let him kiss her in the darkness that came after the moon's setting.
11.
The great military ent.i.ty that was the Alhambra was not about to bestir itself in the cause of the wounded pride of the Qa'id Hasiim Alfard: not though he had a thousand hors.e.m.e.n under his command.
But Hasiim had also within his regiment a few dozen men tied to him by blood: tribes men and sons of subordinate tribes, These had allegiance of another order.
Days before Djoura arrived back in Granada, Hasiim was aware of her escape. When the fursan courier relayed this message to the qa'id, he did nothing but shrug. But Hasiim's many eyes and ears were opened.
Djoura led her blond companion through a tangle of sleeping streets. There was no indecision in her step, for what is the use of indecision when one does not know where one is going? Raphael, too, followed without hesitation, for it was all one to him. The light (hardly more than symbolic) iron ring about his neck had been hidden beneath swaths of fabric.
Black fabric.
”In the north,” murmured Djoura over her shoulder, ”it will be necessary for me to pretend to be giaour-a Christian. You will show me how.”
Raphael considered this silently, while he gazed down at the uneven street in front of his bare feet.
”I'm not sure,” he said at last, ”that I can do that convincingly.”
”Because I am black?” Djoura countered, with rising belligerence. ”Or because I am too much of Islam?”
Raphael shook his head. ”Because I myself don't know how. There are so many dogmas AND sacraments, and one need only do or say one word wrong to get into a great deal of trouble. I have not ever studied...”
The Berber woman snorted. ”Yet you yourself are a Christian, and have managed.”
”I am not a Christian,” he stated, and for easier conversation, Raphael fell back beside the woman.
”That much I DO know. There is a ritual called baptism which one must undergo to be a Christian, sometimes by immersion and sometimes by sprinkling. I have never been baptized.”
”That you remember...” chided the black good-naturedly. ”But you don't remember much.”
She took his hand. ”Ho! You are so cold, Pinkie. Is it because of your weak skin?”
At her touch (And it was not cold at all. No, underneath all her tentlike layers, Djoura was very warm.) Raphael had begun to tremble slightly. He turned his hand beneath hers, and moved his sensitive fingertips over the surface of her palm, her thumb, her wrist...
And he said nothing at all.
Dawn was near, but the darkness now was almost complete. Djoura stopped in her tracks, suddenlyindecisive. ”We'll give you another shawl, Pinkie. That will keep you warmer.”
He allowed her to drape another musty garment over his shoulders. ”Djoura,” he whispered, when all was arranged to her maternal liking. ”Could you call me Raphael?”
She stiffened and barked a laugh. ”That again?” When he neither moved nor responded she continued more seriously. ”That is a very important name in the desert, Pinkie. A fearful name. Raphael is one of the great djinn, which a good Berber-a good Muslim-must never bow to wors.h.i.+p.”
Then it was Raphael's turn to laugh. ”I don't ask you to wors.h.i.+p me, dear one, but only to call me by my name.” And when Djoura didn't reply he took the opportunity to kiss her softly upon the lips.
Djoura stood still for a moment, then made a very small noise in her throat and turned her head away.
Stepping back, she protested, ”I don't want to be pawed around by a simpleminded man!”
”I am not simpleminded, Djoura,” he replied with no hint of offense. ”Only new here.
”And I love you. When you left the household...” ”That was YOUR fault, with your big mouth...”
”When you left I missed you terribly, and then when Da-miano brought you back...”
”When WHO brought me back?” the woman almost wailed. ”You ARE an idiot, Pinkie.” Djoura caught her tongue, then, and with unexpected consideration corrected herself, ”Raphael. I came back by myself, with no help from anyone!” She turned on her heel and paraded forward again, going nowhere in particular with great determination. Raphael took hold of her skirts so that he would not lose her in the dark. ”I'm glad,” he began again. ”Either way. That you came back for me.”