***
Wake heard a thud on the door and King’s thundering voice—the old topman in him coming out.
“You said to get you up at noon. Well, noon it is, gentlemen!”
They got up and performed their toiletries, then went down to a lunch of gazpacho. King loaned them his tattered map of the old city, oriented them on it, and wished them well. As they walked out the front door he called to them.
“Gentlemen, you are young men in a very old city. Beware of what you do. Stay in the main areas and do not, under any circumstances, initiate any involvement with any policemen or soldiers. Just ignore them and stay as far away from them as possible. But, of course, have a good time.”
The day was bright and cool, a perfect day for walking. Wake translated various signs the best he could for Allen. The British Marine, who had served as an assistant attaché in Egypt, explained how the Muslim architecture they saw, built when the Moors ruled the peninsula, incorporated complex curves and mosaics. After walking for an hour they stopped at a café, sat at a street-side table, drinking cool invigorating sangria served by a pretty girl who spoke English.
“I think I know why George King never left Sevilla,” said Allen, watching the girl gracefully walk away to the kitchen and return with their food.
Wake remembered the Latin beauties of the Caribbean. “Oh yeah, Pete, to be sure. Many a sailor has left the sea for the ladies of Spain. It’s their eyes, I think. Same thing in the Spanish West Indies.”
“Lieutenant Wake, my dear chap,” Allen said with a roguish grin, “I do believe that attraction has to do with far more than merely their eyes. . . .”
Just then an ornate carriage came down the street and passed by the café. In the front passenger seat were two matrons in black and in the rear were two beautiful teen-aged girls in brightly colored dresses, holding multicolored fans and smiling toward them. The girls spoke to each other and glanced back at Wake and Allen, suddenly spreading their fans wide and then placing them horizontally along their right cheeks, then giggled and put their fans in front of their mouth and nose. Wake didn’t understand the humor but thought it quaintly cute.
“It is a festival day, señores,” explained the serving girl. “That is why they are dressed in such a fashion and parading through the streets in their family’s carriage. By custom they are forbidden to talk with men who are not a brother or father, but they are speaking to you through Sevilla’s language of the fans.”
Allen looked around. “The what? What in the world did they say to us?”
“When the fan is placed by the cheek it means ‘I like you.’ When it then goes in front of the mouth it means ‘please kiss me.’ They liked you both. Very much.”
“Good Lord. I never saw such a thing. How wonderful. But what about those older motherly types in the front?”
“Those are the chaperones—old women with no humor, who are there to make certain the language is only with fans. They have but to say a word to the driver and he would strike into your face with his horse whip.”
“Whoa, now that sounds serious!” laughed Wake as Allen grimaced.
The serving girl’s face tightened as she watched the carriage clatter away. “They are rich Carlistos and the driver is one of their trained dogs. Whipping a man in the face is nothing compared to what else they have done to the people of Spain.”
Her hostile tone brought the priest’s warning to Wake’s mind. “Hmm . . . an expensive lesson learned cheaply, eh Lieutenant Allen?” he said.
“Very cheap, my friend.” Allen’s hand touched his face. “Very cheap, indeed. What a strange place we’ve found ourselves in.”
12
El Alcázar
Wake and his friend wandered into the very oldest part of the city, where the streets became snaking alleyways with frustrating dead ends, and they soon lost all sense of direction. They were in the heart of Sevilla, a city created by the Muslim Moors of Africa who had ruled Spain for almost six hundred years. Looking up as they walked under the shadows of arches and towers and domes, the antecedents of which had been in Damascus and Baghdad a thousand years earlier, the two officers were enthralled by the ambiance of the city.
The pastel colors and sensual curves and intricate mosaics of the buildings were complimented by guitar music with a staccato beat and smells of cooking fish and chicken coming from the many tiny tavernas. Roses and gardenias added their own scent everywhere, and the hourly bells of the cathedral were echoed by dozens of smaller churches across the city.
It was a world where the mysterious twelfth-century East met the modern nineteenth-century West—and Wake found himself intrigued by the Islamic culture that had produced such beauty so long ago. He, like so many other Westerners, had thought Muslims backward and primitive. Walking through Sevilla replaced that image and made him want to learn more about a people who, as Allen explained, had brought knowledge in science and the arts to half the known world during the Dark Ages—a time when much of Europe had reverted to wearing animal skins.
“I saw things somewhat similar in Egypt, but nothing as splendid as this. Just beautiful, really.” Allen looked up. “How does one take it all in?”
“You know, I admit I was wondering for a while why I made the trip. But this is more than worth the problems of getting here,” added Wake.
After admiring the Spanish Naval Academy, they turned a corner and found an open plaza facing a giant arched portal in a fortress wall thirty feet high. Over the entrance was a fierce-looking lion grimacing in the intricate façade, with the shield of the Christian kingdoms of Spain below him. Incongruously, Arabic script went across
