One eyebrow lifted slightly. “I suspect your ambitions, Kerbouchard, and if stories of the Castle of Othman are a criterion, I suspect you would find plenty of cooperation out there.”
She studied the crowd. “Sixty or seventy of the people here might be ranked among the most brilliant in Córdoba, and perhaps twenty more who will be their equal in a year’s time, but few of them will be better informed than you.”
She looked directly into my eyes, and hers were very beautiful. “Be sure of this, Kerbouchard. You would not be here unless you belonged here.
“John of Seville has kept pace with your studies, and only last week Averroes was reading a book on alchemy translated by you from the Persian.”
“Introduce me to your guest, Valaba.” The tone was cool. “I do not believe we have met socially.” It was Prince Ahmed. His eyes were utterly cold.
“Prince Ahmed,” Valaba said, “my very good friend, Mathurin Kerbouchard!”
“And my very good friend!” Ya’kub appeared from under the trees where he had been talking with Averroes.
“Of course, Your Eminence.” Prince Ahmed’s eyes were bitter. “These are your domains.” His pause was brief. “But I understand that Kerbouchard likes to travel.”
“Believe me, Prince Ahmed,” I said, smiling, “you must forgive me if I avoid your city. You make a guest almost too welcome!”
“Without assistance you would still be my guest. Sometime I expect to learn who assisted you.”
“Assisted me? I assure you, sir, I was alone on the face of that rock, very much alone. No one could have helped me in that situation. If you doubt me, try scaling that cliff yourself.”
“I am not a performer.”
“Each of us plays many roles. Some are heroes, some villains, and some merely”—I paused slightly—”mountebanks.”
His face went white under the olive skin, and for an instant I thought he would strike me, but he turned abruptly away. His back was stiff as he walked away, and Ya’kub turned to me. “You make enemies, Kerbouchard.”
“I did not choose him for my enemy, Your Eminence; he chose me. He owes me some months in a dungeon.”
“He has been paid in laughter,” Valaba said.
Then at a signal from Valaba, ibn-Quzman sang, a low, haunting melody, the love song of a desert rider, following it with a wild, fierce song of war and vengeance. Yet I could not lose myself to the music as I wished. There were enemies who might even dare the displeasure of Ya’kub for the pleasure of spilling my blood. Powerful friends could make armor of a word, and from their lips a phrase could be a shield. This had I witnessed tonight.
Yet I placed less faith in the words of men than in my own hands and the steel behind my sash. That man who is no longer on guard is one who invites death.
Ibn-Quzman crossed to Valaba as she stood beside me, and I said, “I envy you. You sing more beautifully than any other.”
“You are Kerbouchard? We must talk one day of the Celtic bards and their songs.”
“And you could explain the writings of al-Mausili. I know too little of music to understand all he has written.”
“You know of him? His uncle, Zalzal, they say, played the lute better than anyone.”
We talked idly for a time, and when he had gone on, Valaba put her hand upon my arm. “Ya’kub wishes to make a place for you.”
Ya’kub overheard the remark and came over to us. “Loyal men are not easily found, Kerbouchard, and there are dangerous days before me. I could make a place for you that would allow leisure for study.”
“I am sorry.”
He was not pleased, and I hastened to explain. “There is no prince I had rather serve, but I have a mission and but lately have received a clue.”
Briefly, I explained. “If my father lives,” I added, “I must find him; if he is indeed dead, I must know. Nothing else would keep me from serving you.”
“I had thought of you as commander of my personal bodyguard.” He smiled slightly. “Rumor has said you are skilled with a sword.”
“May I suggest a man?”
“I trust few men, Kerbouchard.”
“This one can be trusted. I would stake my life upon it, and he is here tonight, in command of the guards around these walls. He proved loyal to me in time of trouble.”
“His name?”
“Haroun el-Zegri.”
“I know the man.” He listened to the music, then said, “Come! Let us dine.”
On the table where food awaited us I saw sugar for the first time, white, gleaming crystals. It was something of which we in Christian lands had heard but never seen. We had for sweetening only honey or sweet grasses.
There were heaps of food in infinite variety. Plates of carra bige, a pastry sausage of chopped almonds and walnuts mixed with sugar and over which melted butter had been poured. This mixture was rolled into a thin pastry and baked for fifteen minutes or so. It was served with a spoonful of natif, a fluffy mix of sugar, egg white, and orange flower water.
There was rice with sour lemon sauce, pilaf Egyptian, shebach, an Egyptian fritter, green and black olives, brains fried in batter, artichoke hearts also fried in batter and served very hot, and kebaeba, a mixture of red meat, pine nuts, and crushed wheat. There was louzine saparzel, a Syrian dessert of quince, ground almonds, and cardamom seeds served in small squares. There was rose jam, made of rose petals, sugar, and lemon.
There were skewers of beef, lamb, and veal, smoking hot and ready to be served in a number of sauces and styles. There was wine from Portugal, Italy, and Greece as well as coffee, sweetened with sugar.
The moon arose, holding its light beyond the minaret of the great mosque, and Valaba said, “Then you will be leaving soon?”
“At any moment.”
“We have hoped you would remain. Ya’kub is a good man, and the time is near when he will need good men about him.”
“It is well to think of Ya’kub. He is a rarely fine man.”
She turned toward me. “I think of you, too, Kerbouchard. The way you take is filled with risk.”
“Are there other ways?”
“For some, even for you, perhaps. You are a strange man, Kerbouchard. You are an adventurer yet a scholar.”
“There have been many such, even Alexander, and Julius Caesar. I but dabble in scholarship. Learning to me is a way of life. I do not learn to obtain position or reputation. I want only to know.”
“Is not yours the best way? To learn because one loves learning?”
“There are places I have not seen, Valaba. I would feel their suns upon my face, the brine of their seas upon my lips. There are too many horizons, and too many dreams of what may lie beyond those horizons.”
“What are you seeking, Kerbouchard?”
“Must one seek something? I seek to be seeking, as I learn to be learning. Each book is an adventure as is each day’s horizon.”
“What of love, Kerbouchard? Did you love Aziza?”
“Who is to say? What is love? Perhaps for a time I loved her; perhaps in a way I love her still. Perhaps when a man has held a woman in his arms, there is a little of her with him forever. Who is to say?
“A ruined castle, an ancient garden, a moon rising over a fountain … love comes easily at such a time. Perhaps we loved each other then; perhaps we do not love each other now, but we each have a memory.
“Love is a moment of stillness that sometimes a word can shatter to fragments, or love can be a thing that endures, a rich deep current that flows unending down the years.
“I do not think one should demand that love be forever. Perhaps it is better that it not be forever. How can one answer for more than the moment? Who knows what strange tides may sweep us away? What depths there may be or twists and turns and shallows? Each life sails a separate course, although sometimes, and this is the best of times, two lives may move along together until the end of time?
“Listen to the music out there. Is the song less beautiful because it has an end? I believe each of us wishes to find the song that does not end, but for me that time is not now.
“You see?” I spread wide my hands. “I have nothing. I have no home, no land, no position. I am an empty gourd that must fill itself.
“I would owe no debts to destiny, Valaba, nor could I exist on the bounty of another. I am not a lapdog to be kept by a woman. I do not know what awaits me out there beyond the rim of things, but destiny calls, and I must go. For you and me, today is all we have; tomorrow is a mirage that may never become reality.”