Bloodstone

Chapter 3-1

Chapter 3

Inside the gateway there was a clatter of arms as the guards saluted the Grand Vizier and his guest – then a silence, as they eyed the slave. Sinan had already found the looks more penetrating here in Granada than they ever were back in Morocco. There was a barbed edge of hatred to them. He ignored them and looked up at another massive archway, and a half-seen inscription – of welcome, or warning? He couldn’t make it out – and then the gloom swallowed them. They doglegged upwards through the darkness, then emerged into day again, inside the Alhambra.

Into day; but Sinan felt that the light here, within the walls, had a distinct quality, a shade of darkness felt rather than seen. It was almost as if they had come to another country, islanded by the great red walls, with its own sky. And its own population: there were functionaries in embroidered robes and caps, younger and less exalted versions of Lisan al-Din, purposefully shuttling across the forecourt; there was a small knot of religious scholars or judges, distinguished by their nodding turbans, awaiting entrance into some inner sanctum; and, stationed at intervals round the periphery, soldiers whom Sinan knew from their dress and complexions to belong to the sultan’s elite Mamluk guard – mamluks, slaves like himself, but captured in the Christian territories then converted to Islam and a culture of fervent militarism. He could feel several dozen pairs of eyes on him.

One of the functionaries, a scribe with a bronze pencase in his waist sash, came and drew Lisan al-Din aside. ‘You must excuse me,’ the Grand Vizier said to Abu Abdallah after a short whispered exchange. ‘I am summoned. But I will be back shortly to show you round. Not the full tour, I’m afraid, as His Presence the Sultan is in residence. I have some interesting sights to show you, however, which will more than make up for the ones you may not see. Meanwhile, I’ll get someone to take you up the Watchtower. We always start there with our . . . more distinguished visitors.’

Abu Abdallah inclined his head at the compliment. Before leaving them, Lisan al-Din spoke to the scribe, who spoke to a lesser official, who spoke to a Mamluk sergeant with a crooked nose, who spoke to a lesser Mamluk, who marched through another gate. Sinan had the impression of being in some elaborate colony of insects, a pyramid of multiple hierarchies and concentric walls, ever more impenetrable. He wondered if he would ever get to see the man, the Presence, at the centre of everything. He also felt uncomfortable, smothered by stares and by the sheer density of it all.

A few minutes, later his claustrophobia was blown away. An officer led them through the inner gate, across a bridge over a small ravine, along a narrow street that passed between the Mamluks’ barracks, up a wide dark staircase – and on to what Sinan could only think of as the prow of a ship sailing through the sky.

‘Glory to the Creator!’ Abu Abdallah exclaimed, panting from the climb as he looked over the parapet. Above him the red standard of the Nasrids, the dynasty founded, like this tower, by the sultan’s ancestor five generations before, flapped a brisk tattoo in the breeze. Sinan joined his master and tried to take in the view.

To the east the great outer wall of the Alhambra curved round – the hull of the ship – reinforced by the stark square bastions. Immediately beneath this, to the north, wooded green waves of hillside rolled and plunged down to a deep cramped valley. Beyond the valley rose another steep roller of hill, its lower levels covered by a tightly-packed, tumbling flotsam of houses, its treeless crests burnt yellow by a long hot summer. The upper end of the valley was enclosed by more sere peaks and by the serpentine line of the outer city wall. On the near side of the wall, on a steeply terraced slope, Sinan could just make out the regular piles of stones that marked a cemetery.

He turned – and gasped. Before him, to the west and south, beyond a foreground of city punctuated by the exclamation marks of minarets, lay a plain. At first it seemed as vast and as infinitely green as the Encompassing Ocean, but then Sinan saw that it was dotted with farmsteads and mansions and framed by a far shoreline of hills. Further to the south-east, the hills swung in and swelled into jagged mountains, backlit and glowering and even now, in early autumn, streaked with last winter’s snow. He tried to take the view in, and couldn’t: it was too big, too strange. It all had the vivid unreality of a landscape seen in a dream.

‘So what do you think of that, my boy?’ Abu Abdallah said, softly. ‘I said you’d see some fine sights when you took to the road with me.’

Sinan had no answer. They stood there for minutes on end, silenced by the panorama before them; even Abu Abdallah – who, as the cook-slave back home once said, uncharitably, but with some truth, made a noise even when he wasn’t making a sound.

At length Abu Abdallah spoke. ‘He’s a fine fellow, Lisan al-Din. Historian, poet, orator, biographer, calligrapher. You name it, he does it, with style. Lisan al-Din, “the Tongue of Religion” . . . Hah, no one ever remembers my honorific – Shams al-Din, “the Sun of Religion”; but then, we “Suns” are two a penny. Lisan is the one and only, the silver tongue with the golden pen . . . unlike your old master, who was blessed with a tongue like a banana skin and a pen that ties itself in knots. The gift of the gaffe, that’s what I’ve got, Sinan.’ The silence cut in again, but only for a moment. ‘Not that it matters, of course, when one is universally acclaimed as the world’s greatest traveller. But to be a stylist and a statesman like Lisan is something of an achievement too. Although . . . ’Abu Abdallah turned to Sinan and lowered his voice ‘ . . . between you, me and the flagpole, he’s a bit pleased with himself.’

Sinan thought of pots and kettles, and had to look down to hide his smile. ‘But then who wouldn’t be, running this lot?’ He spread his arms to take in the Alhambra, the plain, the mountains. ‘The sultan merely reigns. Lisan al-Din’s the one in charge.’

The breeze suddenly dropped; the red standard of the Nasrid dynasty wilted and fell silent. ‘Master,’ Sinan said, ‘will he really make you a vizier?’

Abu Abdallah drew himself up to his full, diminutive height. ‘Undoubtedly, by the grace of God. And if not Lisan al-Din, then . . . someone else. Sometime soon.’ He looked at the distant hills, his billy-goat beard jutting over the battlements. ‘I may be getting on in years, but one’s as young as one feels. And one’s credentials are impeccable: Malikite Judge of Delhi, Ambassador Plenipotentiary to China on behalf of the Sultan of Hind and Sind, Chief Justice of the Maldivian Archipelago, brother-in-law to the Sultan of Coromandel . . . ’

Sinan’s mind glazed over until the familiar litany was finished. ‘And master, when you do become a vizier, you won’t forget your promise, will you? I mean, to appoint me . . . ’

‘ . . . my Secret Secretary?’ Abu Abdallah said, completing the equally familiar question. ‘Sinan, how many times have I told you? No one else on earth could fill that position.’

The wind rose again. Sinan could see a dark army of clouds appearing over the far rim of hills, the vanguard of storms. For the first time this year, he shivered.

The Mamluk with the crooked nose led them back across the forecourt. Lisan al-Din was waiting for them by a doorway. It was an undistinguished doorway in a discreet façade. But Sinan felt that something momentous lay within.

He followed the Grand Vizier and Abu Abdallah along shadowed passages and through low chambers – in all of which he could sense, rather than see, the eyes of Mamluk guards – until they entered a large room. Its full dimensions were at first invisible in the latticed light. But as his eyes adjusted, Sinan made out the dancing patterns and colours of tile mosaic on the walls, and slender marble columns burgeoning into carved and painted capitals that supported a coffered wooden ceiling, richly inlaid. The ceiling seemed to bear down on them, like the lid of an elaborate jewel-box; or coffin. Sinan thought of those caverns, haunts of thieves and jinn, that he’d heard the storytellers describing back in the market in Fez – dark, glittering, dangerous.

‘The Chamber of Counsel,’ Lisan al-Din said. ‘We must come back when His Presence is sitting in public audience and the shutters are open. In his blessed wisdom he greatly beautified it a few years ago. But much of what you see now was the work of his late father, Sultan Yusuf, of sacred memory, who as you will have heard was murdered while at prayer – ’

‘ – by the hand of a black slave.’ The words came from a shadowed corner, soft, insinuating, enunciated. They were followed by a face – that of a tall thin man in a robe almost as stately as Lisan al-Din’s. The face was angular and pallid; it had a sheen of sweat, or oil. The nostrils flared and twitched, as if scenting decay. The eyes were fixed on Sinan. For the second time, the slave shivered.

‘Yes. Absolutely,’ Lisan al-Din said with deliberate flatness. ‘Allow me to introduce my esteemed colleague Ibn Zamrak, the Sultanic Secretary.’ The newcomer nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘And this is my most honoured friend and guest, Abu Abdallah Ibn Battutah of Tangier, the renowned traveller. No mortal man has seen so much of God’s earth, as you are doubtless aware . . . ’ If the Sultanic Secretary was aware, he showed no sign. So Lisan al-Din continued, reciting his friend’s achievements with quiet but pointed pride: ‘Abu Abdallah devoted thirty years to seeing strange lands, to witnessing the wonders and marvels of creation, to seeking the bounty of sultans and the blessing of saints, from the far west of the Land of the Blacks to the easternmost capes of China. He has trodden both ends of the earth; he has sailed upon the Circumambient Ocean. And few men have suffered so many vicissitudes as he – shipwreck, kidnap, piracy, war, deadly illness, the spells of sorcerers, the wrath of tyrants – and lived to tell the tale. And, for that matter, to write it down. In short, one might say that Abu Abdallah is the embodiment, in our age, of the immort–’ he stopped short; then cleared his throat and continued ‘ – of the immortal Khadir.’

There was a silence. In it, Abu Abdallah, eyes downcast with at least a modicum of modesty, contemplated the compliments; Lisan al-Din contemplated his friend – and his own unintentionally disturbing comparison: al-Khadir, the great traveller of Islamic legend, was one of a handful of humans who had been granted earthly immortality. Abu Abdallah, like al-Khadir, had defied distance. Had he also defied death?

At last, and with evident reluctance, Ibn Zamrak extended a pale and bony hand across the silence. ‘I have indeed heard of you, sir, and of your vicissitudes . . . or should one say, escapades?’ There was no warmth in his words, and even less in his handshake. Nor did he attempt to conceal the small cloth which he drew from his sleeve and with which he carefully wiped his shaken hand; as he did so, Sinan noticed a distinct and unaccountable smell – of vinegar. The Sultanic Secretary then turned to Lisan al-Din and spoke in a low but audible voice. ‘I urge you most strongly to keep an eye on that Clerk of Works. Time is running out. Money has run out – he’s way over budget. In fact, he’s so much over that I can’t think where the excess has gone, except – ’ the voice diminished to a hiss ‘ – into the innermost folds of his capacious sleeves.’ And with that the Sultanic Secretary turned and walked away, throwing another look of undisguised contempt at Sinan.

‘I do apologise,’ Lisan al-Din said when he was out of earshot. ‘Most indelicate of him, talking shop like that . . . But one has to make allowances. Ibn Zamrak’s origins are somewhat humble, and he has a plebeian chip on his brocaded shoulder. Not to mention a lot of ticks in his turban, as they say. Oh, and some very strange obsessions about hygiene. But he also has a point. This palace may look like a piece of paradise on earth, but it is poxed with corruption, riddled with rats – not to mention moles and other forms of vermin. Rotten, in a word. To the very core.’