They continued climbing towards Alcútar. They were advancing in single file along a narrow track with Juviles still in sight down below when the sound of a loud voice echoed across the ravines, streams and hillsides. Hernando came to a halt. A shiver ran down his spine. How often he had heard Hamid! Even in the distance, the boy could recognize the old holy man’s voice as it rang out proud, strong and defiantly, as happily as on the evening Hamid had shown him the Prophet’s sword.
‘Come to prayer!’ they all heard Hamid calling, probably from the church tower.
The call to prayer bounced off cliffs, rolled among the boulders and penetrated the thick vegetation, until it filled the entire valley of the Alpujarra, from the Sierra Nevada to the Contraviesa, and then rose up to the heavens. It had been more than sixty years since the call of a muezzin had sounded here!
The group came to a halt. Hernando looked up at the sun. Then he stood upright to make sure his shadow was twice his height: it was the exact moment for prayer.
‘There is no strength and power but in Allah, the excellent and great,’ he murmured, joining in with the others. This was the response they had given every day in their homes, either at night or noon, taking the utmost care to make sure no Christian could hear them from the street.
‘Allah is great!’ Brahim shouted, standing upright on his stirrups and brandishing an harquebus high above his head.
At the sight of his stepfather’s ruthless face, Hernando shrank back in fear.
Brahim’s shout was taken up by all the men following him. Brahim waved his harquebus for them to set off again. Before he renewed his march, one of the men wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. Hernando heard him snuffling and clearing his throat, as though trying to keep back tears. He urged the mules on again, Hamid’s call to prayer still echoing in his mind.
In Alcútar, situated at a little more than a league from Juviles, they were received with the same dancing, chants and celebrations as they had left behind in their own village. El Partal, after encouraging the villagers to rise up, had moved on with his men to nearby Narila, where he had been born.
Like all the villages in the high Alpujarra, Alcútar was a maze of narrow streets that crisscrossed the mountainside, lined by small, whitewashed houses with flat roofs. Brahim headed for the church.
A group of between fifteen and twenty Christians were gathered in front of it. They were closely guarded by Moriscos armed with sticks who shouted at them and beat them into line, like shepherds with their flocks. Hernando could see the terrified eyes of a young girl whose straw-coloured hair stood out among the Christians; she was staring at the body of the deacon, which lay riddled with arrows by the church front. As the Moriscos passed by, they spat on it or scornfully kicked the slumped body. Next to him on his knees was a young man whose right hand had been sliced off. He was trying in vain to stop the blood haemorrhaging as his life drained away. The blood stained the sleet-covered ground, while nearby, to the delight of some Morisco children, a dog was playing with the severed hand.
‘Load up the booty!’
Brahim’s voice rang out just as the most daring of the children stole the hand from the dog and threw it at the feet of the mutilated Christian. The dog ran after it, but before it could reach the stricken man, a woman cackled, spat on him, and kicked the severed hand away again, for the dog to do its worst with.
Hernando shook his head and followed the armed men into the church. The straw-haired Christian girl, her hair soaked by the falling sleet, was still staring wide-eyed at the deacon’s body.
Soon afterwards, he re-emerged, his arms laden with the gold-embroidered silk vestments and a pair of silver candelabra. Hernando threw them on to the heap of goods piling up outside the church. He bent down to pick up a woollen cape that had been looted from one of the Christian houses. Brahim frowned at him from atop his horse.
‘Do you want me to die of cold?’ Hernando said, anticipating his stepfather’s reprimand.
By the time the sun began to set and a red line was painted above the peaks surrounding the Alpujarra, the twelve mules were weighed down with the spoils. The body of the young Christian who had bled to death lay on top of the deacon’s. The other Christians remained huddled together nervously outside the church. The voice of the village muezzin rang out, and the Moriscos laid out the silk and linen garments in the freezing mud and prostrated themselves in prayer.
The red sky had turned to black and the sunset prayers had been said when El Partal and his men returned to Alcútar. His band of thirty ruffians – some of them on horseback, others on foot, all of them well wrapped up and armed with crossbows, swords or harquebuses, and all wearing daggers at their belts – had been joined by some armed villagers from Narila, who were now trying to control the line of Christians they had brought with them. El Partal’s men did not seem to mind the cold or the falling sleet: they were talking and laughing among themselves. Beyond them, Hernando saw there was another mule team loaded with the spoils from Narila.
The new prisoners joined the already numerous Christians outside the church. The Moriscos lashed out if any of them attempted to talk to the newcomers, so that in a short while silence reigned once more. The Morisco children ran in among the armed band, admiring their daggers and swelling with pride if any of them ruffled their hair. Brahim and the Alcútar constable welcomed El Partal, and then withdrew to one side to talk with him. Hernando saw his stepfather pointing in his direction, and noticed how El Partal nodded. El Partal then pointed to the mules carrying the booty from Narila, and gestured as if to call their mule-driver over, but Brahim was obviously against the idea. In spite of the distance and the fact that only a few torches pierced the gloom, Hernando realized that the two men were arguing. Brahim was gesticulating and shaking his head: it was plain they were discussing the new muleteer. El Partal seemed to be trying to calm things down and to convince Brahim of something. Eventually they appeared to reach an agreement, and the Morisco leader called the recently arrived mule-driver over to give him instructions. The man offered Brahim his hand, but the other refused, and stared at him warily.
‘Have you understood what your place is?’ Brahim growled at him, glancing at El Partal out of the corner of his eye. The Narila mule-driver nodded. ‘Your reputation goes ahead of you: I don’t want any problems with you, your mules or your way of working. I hope I won’t have to remind you of that,’ Brahim said by way of farewell.
The man’s name was Cecilio, but on the mountain trails he was known as Ubaid of Narila. That was how he proudly presented himself to Hernando, after he had followed Brahim’s orders and led his team of mules over to join the young lad.
‘I’m Hernando,’ he replied.
Ubaid waited.
‘Hernando?’ was all he said when it became obvious the boy was not going to add anything more.
‘Yes. Just Hernando,’ he replied firmly, although Ubaid was several years older than him and a professional muleteer.
Ubaid laughed sarcastically, then immediately turned his back to attend to his animals.
If he heard what my nickname was . . . thought Hernando, feeling his stomach muscles clench. Perhaps I should adopt a Muslim name.
That night the Moriscos feasted on food and grain looted from the Christians’ houses and celebrated the success of the uprising in the Alpujarra. All the Morisco villages in the region had joined them, El Partal said joyously. Now there was only Granada!
While the leading men of the village looked after the armed bands, the Christians were shut in the church under the care of the village scholar. Like Hamid in Juviles, he was charged with attempting to convert them to Islam. Hernando and Ubaid stayed with the mules and the booty, protected from the sleet in a rough shed. The women of the village did not forget them, however, and brought them quantities of food. Hernando quickly sated his hunger, and so did Ubaid, but once his stomach was full, he wanted to satisfy his other appetites, and Hernando noticed him pawing any woman who came n
ear. Some of them sidled up to him as well, sitting next to him and encouraging his advances. Hernando shrank back and looked away, until the women left him alone.
‘What’s the matter, boy? Are you scared of them?’ asked his companion. The food and the women’s company seemed to have put him in a better mood. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of, is there?’ he said, addressing one of them.
The woman laughed out loud, and Hernando blushed. The muleteer from Narila sneered: ‘Or are you afraid of what your stepfather might say? You two don’t seem to get on very well.’
Hernando said nothing.
‘Well, there’s no surprise in that,’ Ubaid concluded. His mouth twisted in a complicit smile that in no way improved his filthy, slovenly looks. ‘Don’t worry, he’s too busy playing the big man . . . but you and I are far closer to what really matters, aren’t we?’
At that moment, the woman pestering Ubaid demanded more attention from him. The muleteer shot Hernando a glance he did not fully comprehend, and then sank his head between the woman’s breasts.
Later on, Ubaid went off with another woman. As he watched them leave, Hernando recalled what the Juviles sacristan had told him: ‘The new Christians, those Morisco women,’ he had explained in one of the many doctrinal lessons he had given the boy in the sacristy, ‘indulge in the arts of love by disporting themselves shamelessly with their husbands . . . or with those who they are not married to! Of course, marriage does not mean much to the Moors: it is nothing more than a contract similar to that for buying a cow or renting a piece of land.’ The sacristan treated Hernando as though he were an old Christian, descended from a long line of Christians, rather than the son of a Morisco woman. ‘Both men and women indulge in the vices of the flesh, in a way that is repellent to our Christ the Lord. That is why they are all so fat, so dark and fat, because their only wish is to give their men pleasure, to sleep with them like bitches on heat. And if their husbands are away, they turn to adultery; they fall into the sins of gluttony and sloth. They spend the whole day gossiping; all they want to do is pass the time until they can receive their men again with open arms.’
‘Christian women can be fat too,’ Hernando had been tempted to reply, ‘and some of them have far darker skin than the Morisco women,’ but in the end he had kept quiet, as he always did with the sacristan.
Christmas Day dawned cold and clear in the Sierra Nevada.
‘They will not renounce their faith,’ the Alcútar scholar told El Partal and the other Moriscos gathered outside the church. ‘If I talk to them about the true God and His Prophet, they reply by saying their Christian prayers together. If I threaten to punish them, they commend themselves to Christ. We have beaten them, but the more we do that, the more they call on their god. We have taken their crosses and medallions from them, but they go on crossing themselves.’
‘They will give way,’ El Partal growled. ‘Cuxurio de Bérchules rose up last night. El Seniz and other leaders are expecting us there. Gather up the spoils,’ he said, addressing Brahim. ‘And bring the Christians out of the church. We’ll take them to Cuxurio.’
About eighty people were dragged out of the church with shouts and blows. When they saw the furious mob outside, the women and children began to cry, and many raised their eyes to the heavens and prayed; others made the sign of the cross.
El Partal waited until all the Christians were outside, then went to look them over.
‘May Christ bring down—’
The bandit leader silenced the Christian’s threat with a violent thrust from his crossbow. The thin, small man fell to his knees, blood trickling from his mouth. A woman who must have been his wife ran to help him, but El Partal sent her sprawling too. He screwed up his eyes until his dark brows formed a single menacing line. All the Moriscos of Alcútar were present. The Christians remained silent.
‘Take off your clothes!’ El Partal commanded. ‘All men and boys aged over ten are to strip!’
The Christian men looked at each other incredulously. How could they strip off in front of their wives, their neighbours’ wives, their daughters? There was a rumble of protest.
‘Take off your clothes!’ El Partal ordered an old man with a straggly beard who was standing in front of him, a whole head smaller than he was. The man’s only reply was to cross himself. The outlaw slowly drew his long, heavy sword. He pressed the sharp point on the old man’s Adam’s apple, until a drop of blood appeared. He insisted: ‘Obey me!’
Defiantly, the old man dropped his hands to his sides. Without hesitation, El Partal plunged the sword into his throat.
‘You. Strip!’ he ordered the next man, raising his bloody sword again. The Christian turned pale. He looked at his neighbour choking to death beside him, and slowly began to undo his shirt. ‘All of you,’ barked El Partal.
Many of the Christian women lowered their gaze or covered their daughters’ eyes. The Moriscos burst out laughing.
Ubaid, who had been closely following what had happened, walked off towards the mules. Hernando followed him; they had to prepare for departure.
‘The poor things are going to be really weighed down!’ the muleteer observed ironically. ‘Nobody knows exactly what they are carrying. Perhaps that’s just as well; if by chance something were lost, nobody would notice . . .’
Taken aback, Hernando turned to look at him. What had he meant by that? But Ubaid seemed to be concentrating on his task, as though what he had said had been nothing more than a stray comment. Yet, almost without thinking, Hernando heard himself reply in a stronger voice than usual: ‘Nothing is going to get lost! All these spoils belong to our people.’
Neither of them said anything more.
*
The procession finally left Alcútar; Brahim, El Partal and his men led the way. Behind them came a line of more than forty Christian men. They were naked and barefoot, shivering from the cold, and had their hands tied behind their backs. Their terrified women and Christian children under ten brought up the rear, together with the twenty or so mules carrying the booty Hernando and Ubaid were keeping a watchful eye on. Scattered among the others were the village lads who had decided to join the uprising. They cursed the Christians, and threatened them with a thousand horrific tortures if they did not renounce their faith and convert to Islam.
Even though Cuxurio de Bérchules was less than a quarter of a league from Alcútar, the harsh terrain soon began to cut the Christian men’s bare feet, and Hernando noticed several stones stained with blood. All of a sudden, one of the line fell to the ground: to judge by his thin legs and lack of hair in the groin, he must have been a young boy. Their hands tied, none of the other men were able to help him. When some of the women tried to do so, the Moriscos pushed them away, kicking out at the fallen boy. Hernando saw the straw-haired girl fling herself on him.
‘Leave him alone!’ she cried, kneeling beside the boy and shielding his head with her arms.
‘Ask your god to help him up,’ shouted one of the youths.
‘Renounce your faith!’ another one hissed.
The small group formed by the fallen boy, the girl and the four armed youths was preventing the lead mule from advancing.
‘What’s going on?’ Hernando heard Ubaid calling from behind.
Hernando reached the group just as one of the Morisco men added his voice to Ubaid’s: ‘If you don’t move on, we’ll kill you!’
Hernando saw the boy’s huddled body, and the look of terror on his face, even though his eyes were tight shut. He spoke without even thinking: ‘If you kill them you won’t be able to . . . we won’t be able to . . .’ he said, instantly correcting himself, ‘. . . we won’t be able to convert them to the true faith.’
All four Moriscos turned to confront him. They were much older and stronger than him.
‘Who are you to tell us what to do?’
‘Who are you to kill them?’ Hernando said defiantly.
‘Look after your mules, boy—’
Hernando cu
t him short, and spat on the ground. ‘Why don’t you ask him what you should do?’ he said, pointing to El Partal’s broad back as he rode at the front of the line. ‘Don’t you think he would already have killed them in Alcútar if that’s what he wanted?’
The four young men looked uneasily at each other and finally decided to move off, though not before they launched a few more kicks at the fallen Christian. With the girl’s help, Hernando moved the boy off the path so that the mule team could get by; held under the arms by Hernando and the straw-haired girl, he was gasping for air. Ubaid had watched the scene without comment, seeming to be weighing up the situation. So Brahim’s stepson had more guts than he had at first thought . . . At that moment, Hernando was helping the girl lift the boy on to La Vieja’s back.
‘Why did you defend him?’ Hernando asked her. ‘They could have killed you.’
‘He’s my brother,’ she replied, her face bathed in tears. ‘My only brother. He’s a good boy,’ she added, as if begging for mercy.
As the pair of them walked alongside La Vieja, she told him her name was Isabel and her brother was known as Gonzalico. She did not say much more than that, but it was enough for Hernando to realize the great affection they had for each other.
The scene in Cuxurio de Bérchules was similar to that in all the villages where the revolt had broken out: the church had been sacked and desecrated; the Moriscos were celebrating; and the Christians were being held prisoner. Another armed band under the command of Lope el Seniz was waiting there for them. The outlaw leaders decided to give the Christians one more chance, but this time, given the lack of results in Alcútar, they instructed the scholars to threaten to abuse, violate and kill their women if they refused to convert to Islam.