Adan tries to hide a laugh. “They say her children have dark hair, and they share their mother’s eyes, but not her complexion. There are whispers Henri du Ceret might have been cuckolded before he was even wed.”
“Take me to her,” I say. I can hear the twist of pleading in my voice. I feel for the furs Adan left me earlier in the day and begin hurriedly wrapping them around me. “I’ll go now. Show me the way.”
“Easy. Calm,” Adan says. “It isn’t that simple.”
I sit down again and let out a breath in frustration. “You’re right. I know.”
“We could steal her away,” Adan says. “You could send some sign with me, and with her help and my men, we could do it.”
I touch the braid of hair around my throat.
“But they would give chase, and if it’s known you’re the one who’s taken her, you risk bringing all the fury of the Christian armies down wherever you go. You could never return to
I nod and swallow.
“So you decide. Will you take her from this place and go on being no one, or will you forget her and become Ishaq ibn Hisham of the Umayyad line again?” Adan says.
A log resettles itself in the fire. The flames flare, and then shrink.
Adan touches my arm. “You know if you ride south, I would go with you. I would raise an army for you.”
I rub my forehead. “Give me the night,” I say. “I need to think.”
“As you say.”
Adan piles more branches on the fire and rolls himself in the bearskin to sleep. I feel my way to the edge of the thicket and turn my face up to the sky. The snow has stopped falling, but the wind trails its cold fingers over my face.
Until now, I never truly understood the story of the Hebrew king Suleiman asking God not for long life, or wealth, or the death of his enemies, but the boon of wisdom. Would that God would offer me such a bargain. Would that He would speak to me as He spoke to the prophets. Would that He would send me His messenger angel.
The wind makes a hollow sound in the treetops.
I kneel and touch my head to the wet leaves rotting on the ground, unsure if I am facing Mecca or if I am turned away.
The cold creeps into me, but still I kneel, my head to the earth, my hands tight around Sofia’s braid. Dim light seeps into the thicket. I raise my head. My limbs pop and my joints grind with stiffness as I right myself. I draw in the first cold breath of day. “You will not answer for me, will You?” I say aloud.
I stand and pick my way through the thicket to Adan’s side. “Brother,” I say. I shake him gently.
He sits up.
“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.
Adan 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 Cordoba 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 Adan 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.
“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. “
“Oh.” I lean my head heavily on her collarbone and crush her against me. She is thinner, her body more worn.
