The Moor's Account Read Online Free PDF Page B

and stand, with his hatchet drawn again. I thought my hour had come, butGod willed that a stray musket ball brought him down. He fell forward and his hatchet grazed my leg, leaving a shallow cut along my shin. I cried out. I do not remember what I said, I imagine it was nothing at all, just a cry of relief at having survived the attack. Then I took the weapon by its handle and, trying to contain the fear inside me, I resolved to defend myself.
    I raised myself upon my knees to peer over the stack of crates at the battlefield. Soldiers in armor were firing their crossbows and muskets, and the Indians were fighting back with their lances and arrows. Here and there, a few Indians had managed to inflict grievous harm—a Castilian in a rusty helmet tottered from his mount, his hands gripping the lance that had landed on his thigh; another had fallen from a slingshot strike—but more often, the Indians suffered injury. I remember that one of them, his bowels slipping out from his stomach, was holding on to himself with both arms. Another one screamed as a soldier straddled him and smashed his body with a mace.
    I was not a man of arms and I knew nothing of battles, but I could see that this was not a fair match, that the Indians had no hope of winning. Soon, I found myself searching the dusty field for my master, the man to whom my mortal fate was tied. Where was he? Then I saw him, past the line of crossbowmen, riding on his horse. With his sword, he hacked an Indian on the shoulders until blood sprayed out from him. The man fell down to his knees, and Señor Dorantes trampled him as he moved on to the next. The other horsemen, too, had come upon the same solution; they crushed the Indians before them on the field in a savage stampede.
    Then there came the sound of a horn and the Indians began to retreat. The sun had set now and it was difficult for me to make out the faces of all those who lay on the ground. As I walked, I was guided more by the sound of soldiers knocking the Indians about and the smell of dust and smoke than I was by sight alone. O Lord, I thought, what am I doing here in this strange land, in the middle of a battle between two foreign peoples? How did it get to this? I was still standing there, stunned and motionless, when torches were lit and names were called. Settlers and friars trickled in from wherever they had found some cover—a crate, a tree, or even a corpse. Behind us, the Río Oscuro rumbled, flowing unceasingly toward the ocean.

2.
T HE S TORY OF M Y B IRTH
    My mother once told me that I had been destined for a life of travel. The signs, she said by way of proof, had been there on the day of my birth. At that time, my father was a newly credentialed notary, with ambition to match his youth, but he found it nearly impossible to earn decent wages in Fes. You see, the city was overrun with refugees from Andalusia, Muslims and Jews who had fled the forced conversions. Among these exiles were many famous jurists and experienced notaries. So when news reached my father that the town of Melilla—less than three days away by horse—had fallen to the Crown of Castile, his first thought was that there would be even more refugees in the city and even less work. He decided that he and my mother should move south to Azemmur, where he was born, where his brothers still lived, and where he could, without shame, call upon them if ever he needed help.
    But the story of my birth began long before I tumbled forth into this world. It began when one empire was falling and another was rising. It began, like a thousand other stories, in Fes. My mother, Heniya, was the youngest of nine children, the only girl, and my grandfather’s favorite. When she turned fifteen, he had agreed to let her marry a wealthy rug merchant, someone he thought would take good care of her, but the merchant died just three months later in a fight with two of the sultan’s mekhazniya. Her second husband, an old and