Hart, Mallory Dorn

  Jasmine on the Wind by Mallory Dorn Hart

  In the brutal back alleys of Cindad Real, two young pickpockets steal a precious moment of love... so intense, so abandoned, their hearts are forever bound. Cruelly torn from each other's arms, they are swept apart by the tides of war.

  Francho, the tattered orphan boy, would become a darkly handsome knight, thundering across his Spanish homeland to vanquish the Moors for honor and glory. Flame-haired and fiery-souled Delores would become the darling of a sensuous court, fighting to reclaim the searing passion she had once know, the love no other man can ignite. Within the besieged walls of proud Granada, last of the Moslem strongholds, destiny would give Francho and Delores one last chance to embrace the promise of a love as glorious, as haunting as... Jasmine On The Wind.

  1985-86 RT Reviewers' Choice -- First Historical Novel

  Nothing Could Quench the Leaping Bright Fire of Their Passion,

  "I have never met anyone so stubborn," Francho railed at Dolores, as they stood by the river.

  She stamped hard on his boot. "How can you expect me to accept apologies when you are shouting at me, bribon!" she cried as he jerked his foot back.

  Francho reached out and brushed away the silky locks of auburn hair from where they blew against her mouth. His touch made her tremble. She could not drop her eyes from his, those amused, compelling eyes that haunted her dreams.

  With a groan he pulled her into his arms and held her close to him. "What do you do to me? Why can't I leave you alone?" he moaned into her hair.

  Transfixed and betrayed by her own helpless desire, Dolores melted into his embrace, molding herself against his tall body and muscled thighs, her hair whipping about them both . . .

  "A lively and charming pair of lovers ... an exciting adventure."

  —Roberta Gellis

  "To read JASMINE ON THE WIND is to be lured into a sumptuous world of romance and adventure ... an extraordinary world where you will be intoxicated by the intensity and richness of detail and atmosphere that Mallory Dorn Hart creates."

  This novel is a work of historical fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents relating to non-historical figures are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance of such non-historical incidents, places or figures to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Another Original publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020

  Copyright © 1986 by Mallory Dorn Hart Cover artwork copyright © 1986 Roger Kastel

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020

  ISBN: 0-671-62303-6

  First Pocket Books mass-market printing December 1987

  POCKET and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  In loving memory of Marie and Jack without whom this book could not have been written.

  PART ONE: Castile

  Chapter 1

  The usual bustle of merchants, farmers from the countryside, housewives and servants, travelers, vendors, and loiterers milled through the stalls of the city's big market square. The morning sun was halfway to noon when the loud thumping of a drum and tootle of a flute could be heard over the din of commerce and people began flocking from all the aisles of displays, carts, and crates to see the itinerant entertainers.

  Dolores had already selected her mark and given Pepi the nod, but she was pleased that the woman left off her sniffing and prodding at the cheese before her and sailed off to follow the crowd. For Dolores's work, crowds were perfect. And this time she'd picked her victim more carefully. Last month she'd had to run for her life to make her "rat hole" and then had to slip back into the inn all smelly and dirty—just because the young woman whose silver pomade ball she coveted didn't happen to be wearing anything at all under her satin gown, the lewd bawd. As lightly as Dolores's hand had slid under the skirt to slit the pocket where the pomander rested, the woman had felt the feather touch on her bare legs and shrieked.

  At least this time her mark was decently dressed, a stout, prosperous-looking matron in a white wimple whose gown was fashionably raised in front to display a heavy underskirt and whose sleeves, slit at the elbow, showed the snowy fabric of a full-length chemise underneath. From her unobtrusive post at the side of the cheese stall, Dolores had made a quick but careful scan and determined where a laden pocket made the fabric of the gown ripple on one side with just a slight more downward pull than on the other. The lady even obligingly carried a cloth-covered market basket on one arm with the leafy tops of greens sticking out.

  She swallowed the last bit of the honey cake she had filched, wiped her hands down her short, coarse-woven tunic, and peeled away from the canvas side of the stall to follow the woman as she joined the stream of people hastening to create a throng around the man with tinkling bells sewn to his tunic who nonchalantly slid burning brands down his throat as his cohorts played a gay jig. From the corner of her eye she saw Pepi slide off the crate of geese he sat on and attach himself to the mark from another angle. She hoped he wasn't going to gawk at the fire-eater himself before he got busy because she didn't believe in stringing things out. She liked to work her mark and be gone, and no more than two in a morning, for the more marks gulled the greater risk of "Thief! Thief! I've been robbed" splitting the air and then everyone became suspect, even a timid and innocent-looking thirteen-year-old girl.

  Let Carlos and Francho take the chance of an alerted crowd grabbing to stop them or the Hermandad guards racing close on their tails, they loved that, the strutters. She didn't anymore, not since she'd grown too big to duck under an arm handily. Anyhow, Papa didn't complain about what she returned him in coin and salable goods. What she did, she did well.

  Pepi was her "stall" today, and she watched him slip in just ahead of the mark, who was approaching the improvised stage. Pepi was small and now disappeared from her sight, blotted out by the stout woman's girth, but it didn't matter. As soon as the excited crowd began to tighten into a large knot, pushing and craning to see over each other, Pepi would create the diversion she needed. Innocently Dolores shuffled along just to the side of the woman, a great-chested dame whose eagerness to see the entertainment was making her careless. She decided at that point she would not need the tiny, curved knife forged to a band that fitted on the first joint of her forefinger. She judged the pocket shallow enough just to dip.

  The crowd, shouting dares and encouragement at the posturing, jingling fire-eater whipping his burning brands around, was getting dense. The mark, bobbing her coiffed head to see the incredible sight of a man sliding searing orange flames down his gullet, was surrounded by jostling people, one of whom, Dolores thought impatiently, should be an eleven-year-old boy getting ready to— Whomp! The market basket flew up, knocked into the air by a staggering Pepi pretending to have been pushed into it by careless onlookers, onions, turnips, and beets tumbling out to the tune of the woman's dismayed cry. Cursing at Pepi's clumsiness, the dame moved to heave herself into a stoop and retrieve her vegetables before they were trampled or stolen, but the apologetic boy, trying to help her gather the erratically rolling onions, only hindered her more by his clumsiness, his back and shoulder getting in her way and immobilizing her against the people behind her for a second, all Dolores needed.

  Clucking with sympathy at the woman's side Dolores stooped too, along with others around, to gather up what vegetables were salvageable. A lightning dip of her slim fingers and a small drawstring purse
was nimbly withdrawn by its gathered top and speedily palmed. With a disgusted squawk the matron shoved Pepi aside and dove for her provisions, popping whatever she could find into the basket, the more honest people about her tossing in various bruised globes, even Dolores, who handed her a ragged bunch of beets, which she took with a nod and a dark mutter about wild and barbaric boys. Distracted by the loss of her provisions, the mark forgot about the fire-eater, shoved her wide back against the murmuring, fascinated throng pushing her forward, and began to fight her way out of the fire-eater's audience and back to her housewifely duties.

  Dolores pushed her way from the crowd too, but in another direction. Actually she made no haste. Even if the woman felt in her pocket now and screamed her head off, even in the unlikely event she herself could be collared as the hook, she had passed the purse to Pepi as he had squeezed past her to slip away through the crowd. She was clean. She would meet Pepi at home and they would take a few coins before delivering the purse to Papa. She had felt copper maravedis inside the soft leather, but also at least six or so silver reales. She glanced sideways at a foolish and vain woman who wore her embroidered purse and a little scissors dangling on leather cords from her belt, fine candidates for Dolores's tiny knife. But no. She'd gotten an expensive lace-trimmed satin kerchief today and a purse that was heavy for all it was small. Plenty for one morning, and the fortnightly market lasted two days; there was always tomorrow. Papa would only give her a few maravedis, anyhow, enough for a ribbon of shiny stuff or a cone of raffia matting holding honeyed fruits, and she could only clip so much from each haul. Her greedy father didn't part with enough to inspire her to work too hard.

  She emerged from the square and took a shortcut alley to get back to the inn, scratching vigorously at some bug bites on her arm, which reminded her of how glad she was not to have to endure the fleas in her "rat hole"—actually a cat's nest in a plank shed nearby to the market square, with a prominent and stout iron lock on the door but with a loose plank in back that could be manipulated aside for quick entry and then pushed back again. Here she crouched, in the stink of the cats—whom she fed from time to time— and waited until whomever was chasing her had given up. This was the part of thieving she wasn't too happy with anymore, the fun was evaporating from getting scratched and filthy and scared.

  But today she was pleased with herself; she tossed her kerchiefed head like some of the merchants' wives did, very proud and uppity, and her wide mouth curled in a grin at herself. Such airs, her Aunt Esperanza would snort. Not that Dolores wouldn't have been better pleased if she'd loosed a gold locket from its moorings or stealthily undid a good brooch. From a little girl on she'd been fascinated by the flash and glitter of jewelry, although any of it she got went to Papa. What would she do with it? Her new height stood her in good stead with jewelry though, for she was almost as tall as many adult women and could easily slip a ribbon knot and slide off a necklace without the wearer's neck even feeling the breeze.

  There was still some sweetness on her lips from the honey cake and she wished she had another, but she didn't feel it was right to steal too much from the same vendor; they had to make their living too. Copying the erect but graceful walk of the decently dressed woman with two little children just ahead of her, Dolores sauntered down a narrow street, dropping her exaggerated sway when necessary to dodge splashes from mounted riders and carts spraying the dirty water that trickled down the center of the road. Oh well, some days the pickings were not as exciting as others; tomorrow she'd try for a gold brooch.

  ***

  By 1483 the small city of Ciudad Real, set down in the rocky, sunbaked stretches of the Castilian plain, had grown to an important crossroad for commerce traveling north from Andalusia and Moorish Granada, and goods going south from the reaches of Catholic Spain. The city had a number of open squares to separate its torturous tangle of narrow streets and boasted not only a major market square for itinerant traders but also an impressive plaza, where local merchants and vendors did business in the shadow of a newly constructed, splendid Gothic church.

  With all its burgeoning wealth and vitality, the city supported a number of hostelries, some mean, some excellent, but all with their partisans who would not think of spending their coins elsewhere.

  Papa el Mono's two-story, thatched-roof, rundown establishment squatted behind its old wall on a small square not far from the city gates. The proprietor sold drink and passable food and kept wenches accessible for those whose purse sometimes matched their love of pleasure. Papa el Mono had achieved a modest reputation for having something for everyone: a cheap wine or flagon of ale for the muleteer; a blear-eyed woman for the raucous soldier; a decent roast hare or cold bird with some fiery spirit for the merchant or moneyed traveler; and transients could find beds in an upstairs dormitory, hardly fancy but cleaner than most.

  The stoop-shouldered innkeeper looked like the pet monkeys sometimes carried by wealthy ladies, hence the wooden carving of a monkey hanging above the inn's wooden gates. His little eyes peered anxiously from his wizened face, his manner was hesitant, his attitude toward those who could not pay for what they had received more reproachful than angry as his huge peacekeeper 'Fredo booted the merchants into the stableyard dust. His patrons deemed him no more or less dishonest than any of his brethren, all of whom practiced petty chicanery when they could get away with it. But Papa el Mono had a quick eye for detail, such as on which side a man wore his purse and whether the bulge in it might mean copper, silver, or, less likely, gold; and where such a guest might be going when he left the premises, and in what sobriety. He carefully nurtured the relaxed opinion his customers held of him and considered himself a master of deception.

  When there were few overnight guests upstairs to be breakfasted and ushered on their way by their host, Papa el Mono slept late, leaving his sister Esperanza to purchase food and to supervise the kitchen and the cleaning up from the night before, and affording his daughter the luxury of putting off her chores until he awoke to cuff her.

  ***

  "Gently, chiquita, gently, madre mía, look at me, I am all wet." Tía Esperanza looked down at the expanse of her water-spotted tunic and heavily hitched her creaking three-legged stool away from the tub in which her young niece disported herself.

  "It would take more than a few drops of water to get you all wet, Tía," Dolores giggled with an affectionate glance at her ponderous aunt sitting with a snow of white feathers at her feet from the half-plucked goose lying in her lap. "I have to rub hard to get off the soot. But it was surely worth it to get so dirty—and you had better keep your wagging tongue sewn down." She smiled to herself, thinking triumphantly of the silver coin she had rooted out of the ashes behind the hearthspit this morning, having noted where the drunk traveler had flung it the night before. She would add it to her little cache, and the devil with her duty to Papa. It would make a nice addition to the lace-trimmed satin kerchief she had squirreled away two days before.

  "I have seen nothing, I know nothing," her aunt mumbled, crossing her vast bosom and rolling her eyes up to heaven to atone for the lie. On the way down her eyes squinted with calculation at the early morning sun slanting through the yellowing leaves of the old oak tree growing against the wall of the little yard, an area screened from the inn's entry by the tree's huge trunk and a fieldstone barrier. She was not going to be seduced by the warm tranquility of the morning, over which hung the pervasive smell from the inn's ramshackle stables. The hour was advancing, and she had more important things to do than guard the privacy of her niece's bath. "So. How many more minutes must I spend watching you scrub off your skin?" she demanded.

  "Why is scrubbing so terrible, old grump? How can I expect a gallant and handsome caballero to notice me if I am smeared with dirt from head to toe?"

  The wisp of mustache on Esperanza's upper lip was beaded with fine sweat. "Handsome caballero, indeed. Thirteen years old and your head stuffed full of romantic tales and silly wild dreams," she huffed. She knew
the source of these fancy notions, she too had heard the scapegrace Francho warbling his rondelets of hoity-toit knightly chivalry and impractical pure young love. Dios only knew where he picked them up. Just the sort of meat her impressionable Dolores found good to dine on. She attacked the limp goose again, feathers flying as if she were rooting out all such foolishness then and there. "You are just like your mother," she lectured her niece. "You had less than a year when she died yet her mooning remains in you. Sí, and her temper too, for that matter."

  Dolores grinned. "But since you raised me, you really have been my mother. And that's why I'm so stubborn."

  Tía Esperanza refused to be teased. She cocked an eyebrow and regarded the piquant head and shoulders, which was all she could see of her young niece over the rim of the deep tub. "And didn't I raise you all up, in fact, and teach you to honor your father and to pray to God? A good job too, for a fat old woman." She nodded in satisfaction, shaking her chins, proud of herself.

  "Tía, tell me about my mother, tell me how beautiful she was," Dolores begged, swishing her hair about in the water, her eyes closed against the sun.

  "I have told you a hundred times that she was beautiful. She had curling hair which hung to her knees when she unbound it—with not so reddish a cast as yours. She was small, with a tiny waist...." Esperanza droned on, patient with the oft-repeated litany.

  Raising her wet head again Dolores opened eyes which she deliberately made very big and innocent. "Ah, that's what I have wondered, Tía. Why am I tall if my mother was not, nor Papa either? Doesn't that seem very strange to you?"

  "What foolishness. It sometimes happens that way. Look at your brother Carlos. He is tall too."

  "But crazy Luda said..."

  Her aunt's heavy eyebrows frowned together her eyes. "Crazy Luda is crazy!" She stumped her legs under her as if she were going to get up. "Girl, you waste the good morning. Wash, wash all the time lately, like a fish. You will surely come down with the ague."