THE LAST MORISCO
Chapter 1
5 July 1556, Agua Amarga cove, Kingdom of Granada
Before the last vestiges of light disappeared from behind the mountain range, the lookout leaned his hands on the parapet of the watchtower and, as he scanned the vastness of the sea opposite him, he could feel the heat trapped in the stone slabs. He took a deep breath, and the stench of rotting seagrass turned his stomach.
“Come down, Pascual!” someone shouted.
He looked back into the abyss. He could barely make out the foam of the waves breaking on the beach.
“What the hell am I doing in this land?” he grumbled to himself.
Many of those who arrived in that region, reconquered from the Muslims less than a century earlier, did so either fleeing from something or attracted by privileges reserved for nobles and gentry in Castile.
“Are you coming or not?”
The incessant pillaging of Almeria’s coastline had been going on throughout the summer. The pirates would disembark in some isolated place, and, under cover of darkness, would go inland until they came across a village to plunder.
Had there been a cool breeze, Pascual might have stayed at his post, and perhaps he would have seen the approaching sails. But he decided to heed his companion’s call and join the card game being played below.
That decision would cost him his life and ruin those of many an innocent soul.
As soon as the ships’ bows hit the sandy seafloor, a hundred shadows leapt to the ground. They were all dressed in dark clothes and carried their weapons wrapped in black cloth to avoid any telltale glint or clink. Following a silent choreography, they split into two groups. After a brief exchange of orders, the first column of men headed for the mountains and the second, somewhat smaller group, made for the watchtower.
Oblivious to the threat that loomed over them, the lookouts kept their eyes on the cards that Pascual had just thrown on the table.
“Three kings!”
After flashing his companions a toothless smile, the victor of the hand scooped the coins towards him.
“If I had known that I wouldn’t have called you.”
“Come on, Cano, don’t be such a bad loser!” replied the third watchman, a wispy-bearded young man by the name of Lorenzo. Pascual was about to shuffle the cards again when a loud bang on the trapdoor made them all jump. After a brief moment’s hesitation, he threw the cards on the table and rushed up the steps, torch in hand.
He poked his head over the parapet and, in the flickering torchlight, was able to make out the men below. His heart began to pound wildly.
“Who goes there?” The lookout managed to squawk.
“Surrender, and nothing will happen to you!”
At that moment, the other guards burst onto the platform.
Lorenzo was petrified. Cano, on the other hand, went to torch the pile of dry firewood.
“Don’t do it, they’ll kill us!” Pascual exclaimed in alarm.
“We are already dead!” Cano replied with a determined gesture.
“Let’s raise the alarm and send as many of them to hell as we can.”
“If you come out now, we’ll let you go!” shouted one of the pirates. “We mean you no harm.”
The tall, well-built Berber spoke good Castilian, although his accent gave his origin away.
“Help will not arrive in time.” Pascual reasoned. “Our only chance of getting out of this alive is to give ourselves up and hope that the bastards will be content to hold us to ransom.”
Lorenzo, whose face was already as white as a sheet, began to shake. He had heard stories about the Christian slaves crammed into the Barbary galleys and had always thought that a quick death was preferable to being chained to an oar until the day you were sent to the bottom of the sea.
The pirates rolled a barrel of gunpowder against the base of the watchtower, but before they could light the fuse, the tower’s trapdoor, which was about three yards from the ground, opened up. After throwing out their swords, the occupants started climbing down a ladder.
The first to die was Pascual, pierced through the heart by a spear. On seeing what was happening to his companion, Cano tried to return to the tower, but was hit by a crossbow bolt that went in through the back of his neck and came out through his mouth. It was even worse for Lorenzo: he was caught alive.
After hiding the bodies, the pirates moved inland, advancing up steep paths in such a tight line that, in the dark, they often stumbled into each other.
The expedition’s guide was a renegade Morisco from the district, whose ability to flit nimbly over rocky terrain thanks to his short legs, had earned him the nickname of “Nipper”.
The area was unpopulated, since, by royal decree precisely to prevent pillaging, no one lived within a league of the coast.
In the early morning, the steep hilly terrain gave way to more gently sloping wastelands and the sky behind them took on a purple tinge.
As they came out of a small hollow, the guide suddenly crouched down. The stealthy warriors following him scattered into the undergrowth, but the expedition leader crept up to him and questioned him with his eyes. “Sorbas!” exclaimed Nipper, pointing to a high plateau covered with houses that were appearing in dawn’s incipient glow.
The aptly named Al-Sawad, the dark one, focused his gaze on the castle that defended the entrance to the village.
“How many guards are there in the fortress?
“About ten,» whispered Nipper.
“Bailiffs?
“An old man and a couple of deputies. They are Moriscos[1], so they can’t bear weapons.”
The pirate leader continued to scan the rooftops until he identified a tower crowned by a cross.
The main objective of the pirate raids was the capture of hostages, and the most advantageous ransoms were those of nobles and clerics.
“What about Christians?”
“Twelve families, plus the priest and the sacristan. They all live in the same street, in the upper part. To get there we will have to go right through the village.”
“And nobles?”
“No. The lord has a town house, but he never uses it.”
Nipper had been born in the town they were going to raid and, although he had run away to Africa some years earlier, he had kept himself informed of the comings and goings of the Levant thanks to the constant flow of fugitives from Granada arriving in the port of Oran.
The pirate examined the fortress again. This time he spotted a silhouette on the battlements.
“Are you sure that there are no more than ten soldiers in the town?” “Maybe even fewer, they fear no attack.”
Just then, the sun came over the eastern peaks and bathed the houses in a soft golden light. As soon as the cockerels began to celebrate the arrival of the new day, the town gates were opened, and two sentries took up their posts on either side of the stone archway.
A league away, in the village of Quajalana, Khalil heard his father’s call, but, indifferent to his brothers’ yawning and stretching, still lay in his bunk.
“Get up, you slacker!” Rashid, the first-born, ordered him.
“If father comes looking for you, you’ll be in for it.”
Although he was only seven years old, Khalil knew he had to obey.
He got to his feet, still rubbing his eyes, stretched the sheet over the bunk shared with another of his brothers, and made his way to the courtyard. His father met him with a scowl and did not take his eyes off him until, after splashing his feet and face with water from the trough, he ran to take his place with the other sons.
The head of the family, a wiry man, with the skin of his face taut over his bones and an almost completely shaven head, looked towards the glow above the wall and turned his palms upwards. Imitated by his children, he prostrated himself and rose to the rhythm of the prayer he was uttering in the language of his forefathers.
The teaching of Islam had been forbidden in the kingdom for more than seventy years but, although offenders were severely punished, in the most remote villages, most of the New Christians continued to profess the creed of their ancestors.
When the brief ceremony was over, Yousuf and his children sat down on the mats spread out on one side of the open space and invoked the name of Allah. Salma, the mother, placed a tray of steaming cakes and a bowl of fresh figs in front of her husband, while the eldest daughter, Zahra, assisted by her three-year-old sister, poured the fresh goat’s milk. Khalil wanted to grab the little girl by the arm to cuddle her, but she, in her haste to slip away, plunged her bare foot into the bowl of figs. The room fell silent, then Yousuf stood up and, grabbing his daughter by the armpits, lifted her up to eye level.
“Amina, Amina, what am I going to do with you?”
To everyone’s surprise, he turned the girl upside down and nibbled her little juice-stained foot. Karima, the youngest of the family, wanted to join in the party and crawled hurriedly to her father, knocking over the bowls of milk as she went.
As soon as the laughter had died down, Salma and Zahra tidied up the mess and took the girls away. They would eat when the boys had gone out to the fields.
Breakfast passed in silence. Yousuf was sparing with words, and in his presence, nobody spoke unless spoken to.
As soon as he had finished his meal, he clapped his hands and rose smoothly to his feet with greater ease than his appearance would have suggested. His children formed a line again and, eager to find out the task of the day, they fixed their eyes on him.
“Today we will go to mow, but you, Khalil, will stay here to muck out the pens.”
The skinny, curly-haired boy stood and watched as his brothers gathered up their tools and, playing around with each other, disappeared into the street beyond.
The pirates came to the edge of the dry riverbed surrounding Sorbas and positioned themselves within crossbow range of the castle. Two of them, dressed like locals, headed for the town gate.
“Where do you think you’re going so early in the morning?” asked one of the sentries guarding the entrance.
“We are going to buy flour.» replied one of the pirates, pointing to the empty sack on his shoulder.
The guard turned to his partner.
“You know ‘em?”
“Dunno, all look the same to me!”
The soldiers stepped aside. They were still laughing when two daggers appeared in the fake farm labourers’ hands. Their laughter turned to cries of alarm, but it was too late. In two swift movements, the pirates had slit their throats.
The lookout on the rampart saw the horde running towards the entrance. and grabbed his arquebus… The fuse was out. He started to shout, but it was too late: the assailants had rushed through the gates and scattered throughout the town.
On the parade ground, the captain commanding the fortress could not believe what the flustered sergeant had just told him.
“What do you mean, bandits?” “Yessir, ‘bout thirty of ‘em, sir.” “What about casualties?”
“Farceto and Camacho, their throats slit at the entrance. We must send word to Mojacar, sir!”
“For God’s sake, Peñarroja! We only have six men left; we cannot leave the castle undefended.”
“Are we going to tolerate these bastards roaming the town as if they owned the place, Captain?”
“Of course not!” Pedro Ramirez de Arellano ran his fingers through his thick shock of black hair. “Leave two arquebusiers here, the rest follow me.”
A few minutes later, the captain and a small number of soldiers were leaving the fortress, but no sooner had they set foot outside than crossbow fire forced them back under cover.
Al-Sawad knew what he was doing. He had posted a handful of men in front of the castle gates to keep its occupants holed up while he went to the church with the rest of the party.
In less time than it takes to say the Lord’s Prayer, the priest, the sacristan and his sister were removed from the church.
“Stop to take nothing.” Al-Sawad ordered. “We have come for slaves, nothing else.”
The pirates and their hostages followed Nipper into the alley of the Old Christians.
“Peace be with you.” exclaimed the Barbary chief, seeing three men armed with batons at the entrance to the alleyway.
“Peace? What peace are you talking about? Go back to where you came from!” said the eldest of them, as the shutters of the windows were hastily closed behind them.
“We wish you no harm, brothers.”
The old bailiff planted his club on the ground in front of him, as if it possessed the power to stop the bloodthirsty gang.
“I am not your brother. I am the law here and I order you people to leave, right now.”
Al-Sawad saw that the younger assistants could not stop their hands from trembling.
“Oh we’ll go alright, no doubt about it, but”, he said, “we will take the infidels with us first.”
“You’ll have to step over my dead body first!”
Tired of the old man’s stubbornness, the pirate took a step forwards.
“Get out of the way, you lackey of infidels!”
On recognising Nipper, the bailiff’s eyes opened wide.
“You! You brought them here, you little bastard!”
Without uttering a word, Al-Sawad drew his cutlass and, with one slash, split the old man’s head open. As he watched him fall, what little courage his companions had left vanished and, in the blink of an eye, so had they.
The bailiff’s sacrifice had not been entirely in vain, as it had given the Old Christians time to barricade themselves into their houses. Even so, the assailants started hacking away at the door of the first house in the alley with their axes and soon broke it down. They entered the house shouting.
Seconds later, panicked screams rang out. After a few moments of confusion, the pirates came out dragging two young women and an old wench. They were about to enter the next house when a shot rang out at the entrance to the alley and an axe-wielding pirate fell to the ground with a thud.
Al-Sawad snarled and turned bitterly towards the source of the detonation locating several soldiers taking cover behind a wall.
“Where did they come from?”
Nipper looked at him, his eyes wild. “I don’t… I don’t know…”
“As a child I had heard about the underground passage linking the castle to the watchtower at the other end of the village, but I had always thought it was a legend.”
Al-Sawad realised that, despite outnumbering their enemy, they risked being caught between two arcs of fire and, turning to his men, he ordered a retreat.
“Praise the Lord!” shouted Sergeant Peñarroja when he saw that the bandits were retreating.
“Let’s go down and cut them off, Captain!”
“Stand fast!” growled Ramírez de Arellano. “For God’s sake, they’re taking people away!”
“Think, damn it! Those bastards will kill the hostages.”
The Berbers crossed the ramparts and ran off down the dry riverbed. Once they were out of danger, Al-Sawad ordered a halt and summoned the guide. “What do you see there?” he asked, pointing to the prisoners.
Nipper looked at the priest with his bloodied face, at the sacristan, whose teeth were chattering uncontrollably, and at the women who were crying, imploring to God and the Virgin.
“You swore in Algiers that we would return loaded with slaves. How many have we taken?”
The Morisco lowered his head and replied almost inaudibly.
“Five…» The pirate leader lifted his face up towards him, «But it’s not my fault!
“You Christians, old or new, you are all alike, infidels and liars.”
“I kept my word! I took you to the place we agreed.”
“Damn you and all your bastard race. You will pay for this!”
Al-Sawad drew his dagger and grabbed Nipper by the hair, forcing him to his knees.
“Wait!” he pleaded desperately, «Wait! I know where we can find more hostages.”
Al-Sawad, stopped the movement of his weapon.
“Speak up!”
Nipper coughed in panic. In a quiet voice, he managed to whisper:
“Less than a league from here there is a village… uncircumcised people.”
Al-Sawad stared at him for a few seconds, which seemed like an eternity to the guide.
“Take us there!”
Khalil emptied the last load of manure onto the dunghill and went into his house. It was the last of the twelve houses that made up Quajalana, a small, whitewashed village, bordering the dry riverbed that, one league to the south, surrounded the town of Sorbas.
“You stink!” complained Zahra, his elder sister, as soon as he walked into the house.
The boy pinched the material of his shirt and held it to his nose.
“It’s not that bad!”
“You smell worse than a Castilian. Go and wash yourself, right now!”
Khalil went outside and off down the street, completely indifferent to the blazing sun. Possessing inexhaustible energy, he couldn’t understand why older people just walked. It was much more fun to run, leaping about from one side to the other.
He crossed the village in a jiffy and headed for a spot in the wadi where the last flood had left some natural pools.
As he passed the fountain, he met his mother. Amina was with her. Despite the sweltering heat, Salma was wearing a blouse, a linen tunic and a pair of baggy trousers tight around the ankles. As all Moorish women did, she covered her head with a veil.
When she saw Khalil, the little girl ran towards him with open arms, but did not get to hug him.
“What a stench!” The little girl put her hand over her nose.
“Where are you going, son?» asked Salma.
“I’m going for a swim.”
“I want to go for a swim too.” the little girl begged. Her mother shook her head.
“Mum, oh please!”
“I said no!”
Salma lifted the earthenware water pitcher waist high and, with a quick swing of her hips, landed it on her head.
Then she held an open hand out to her daughter, who had crossed her arms and tucked her hands into her armpits, sulking.
“Let her come, mother, I’ll take care of her.” Khalil suggested as he saw his little sister barely holding back her tears.
“All right but keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn’t get her clothes wet.”
Salma walked away with the pitcher balanced on her head and one hand resting on her waist. Amina gave her brother a bright smile.
A little further on, kneeling in front of the stones that served as their washboards, three neighbours were chatting excitedly while their daughters spread out their clean clothes on some bushes. On seeing them, Amina lost all interest in the swim and began tugging at her brother’s hand.
“Don’t get your clothes wet!” Khalil reminded her, before letting her go.
“What a handsome young man!” exclaimed one of the washerwomen. “Come! Come here and let me give you a kiss like I used to when you were a little boy.”
Embarrassed by their laughter, the boy started running and didn’t stop until he reached the pools, where some kids his age were already splashing around happily. Without even stopping to say hello to them, Kahlil took off his clothes. But just as he was about to dive in, he noticed a toad staring at him with its bulging eyes.
He threw a stone at it, and the toad disappeared with a leap into a reed bed. A little confused by the jeers of his friends, Khalil followed the toad through the reeds. He moved on, taking care not to make a sound when a rustling noise nearby caught his attention. Through the vegetation he caught a glimpse of a black-skinned figure stealthily advancing along the wadi. Kahlil had seen men of that race before, but this one was different: everything about him was fearsome. A single lock of braided hair protruded from his shaven head, he carried a net in his hands and held a knife between his teeth. With growing dread, the boy noticed that more strangers were coming up behind the African. Despite his young age, Khalil realised that something terrible was about to happen.
He wanted to scream and run away, but his throat had gone dry, and his feet refused to move. Someone barked an order, and the strangers ran forwards screaming. Shaking uncontrollably, Kahlil closed his eyes.
Of what happened next, he would only remember the sounds.
First, the exclamations of surprise from the children, then the cries of terror as they guessed the pirates’ intentions, and finally the wailing of the washerwomen as they were captured.
A short distance away, Yousuf stopped his rhythmic sickle movement and straightened up. As he did so he felt a sharp twinge of pain in the small of his back, but he smiled when he saw that he had left his sons well behind. Here and there, small piles of freshly cut barley bore witness to the morning’s hard work. The cicadas seemed to be celebrating by filling the warm air with their chorus.
He scanned the plain of waving ears of barley and, after wiping the sweat from his brow, took a drink from his clay pitcher. At that moment there was a distant boom.
His sons stopped mowing.
“What was that?” asked Rashid.
“It doesn’t sound like thunder!” replied Hassan, the middle brother. “There isn’t a cloud in the sky.”
When the second detonation rang out, Yousuf knew where it came from.
“May Allah curse me!” He let out a howl, before running off, sickle in hand.
From the top of a nearby hill, Sergeant Peñarroja and the soldier watched as the pirates rounded up their victims and beat them savagely before gagging them. The sergeant bit his fist, but the captain’s orders had been very clear: «Follow them, but do not intervene under any circumstances! Just send a warning should they return towards Sorbas!”
The women of Quajalana came out of their houses wondering what the cause of all the shouting was. Some peered over the edge of the cliff overlooking the stream, but the spring was hidden behind a bend in the dry river.
When a gang of young boys, ignoring their mothers’ warnings, went down to see what was going on in the washhouse, Sergeant Peñarroja realised that the drama unfolding before his eyes was about to take a turn for the worse.
He clenched his jaws and with eyes like slits spurred his horse on.
“Follow me!”
The soldier accompanying the sergeant hesitated for a moment before setting off after him. They made a detour to avoid the fountain and galloped into the upper part of the village, just before the women reached the watercourse. Peñarroja ordered them back to their homes, but none of them understood Castilian. Peñarroja unhooked his flintlock arquebus from the saddle and loaded it. A single shot in the air was all it took for the confused women to turn and run for cover.
The pirates had just rounded up their quarry and were preparing to go on up to the village to complete the abduction when they heard the shot.
“What was that?” Al-Sawad asked Nipper, who was racing back from the fountain.
“There are horsemen in the village!” “How many?”
“I saw two.”
Al-Sawad grimaced. These soldiers could be the advance guard of a whole company. He had to send them a very clear message, to make them understand that it was not in their best interests to mess with him.
He turned towards the line of prisoners and looked to see which one would be worth the least on the slave market in Algiers. He saw a young girl who despite her age, was struggling like a wild beast, biting the gloved hand that held her. He ordered the child to be brought to him and dragged her screaming along the riverbed, until he was sure his enemies could see him clearly.
Peñarroja had reloaded his gun and took aim at the Berber. The shot fell short. The pirate drew the dagger from its scabbard, raised it skywards and, without even taking his eyes off the horsemen, slit the innocent creature’s throat.
The sun had not yet risen when Captain Ramírez de Arellano heard hoofbeats. He came out onto the parade ground in time to see Sergeant Peñarroja get off his horse and hold the reins out to one of the sentries. From the grave look on his face, he knew he was the bearer of bad news.
“We followed them as you ordered, captain. In Quajalana they killed a peasant and a girl. They took ten prisoners, including women and children.” Peñarroja could see the muscles of Ramirez’s jaw set firm under the skin of his cheek.
“Some villagers harassed them with farm tools, but those sons of harlots killed another hostage, and the locals gave up the chase. The Barbary pirates then joined up with a second party that was crossing the mountain range leading all the Old Christians of Lucainena de las Torres in chains, and finally set sail, unmolested.”
As the information sank in, the captain’s face darkened. He had spent the night awake, wondering if the decision to stay in the castle had been the right one. He now had his answer.
The next day in Quajalana, amidst mourning for the dead and loved ones they would never see again, three bodies were buried all wrapped in white shrouds.
The smallest of all was Amina’s.
[1] Moriscos: Spanish Muslims forced to convert to Catholicism in the 16th century and their descendants.