Sultan's Wife (14 page)

‘Not so bad so far. He does not sound the sort of master who beat you to accept his religion.'

‘He did not need to. He was himself a convert to Islam, finding it a kinder and more charitable religion than Christianity. I elected to accept it for his sake, then came to love it for itself.'

She firms her lips. ‘So, you were well treated, educated and pampered into apostasy. You are not doing well in persuading me you are any sort of expert in the matter of suffering.'

It is a fair remark. ‘What comes next I have never told another living soul. It is' – I close my eyes – ‘painful even to remember.'

She says nothing, just looks at me. Expectant, determined; unwilling to be deflected.

I take a breath. ‘My master the doctor died … suddenly. I was sold again, but this time my new master was not so kind. He had a scheme, of which I was a small part. And a small part of me was to be sacrificed to that plan. Must I explain in any detail?'

‘You must.'

‘When they led me into the hut on the edge of town, I thought they were going to kill me, and started to fight them. When I realized what they had in mind, I wished they had. At one and twenty I was tall and strong; but profit made them determined. They dragged me inside. When I saw the table, stained black from the spilled blood of those who had been gelded
before me, and the wicked knives laid out in a gleaming row on the cloth beside it, my knees gave way and I staggered like an ox hit between the eyes with a mallet.'

Her eyes are upon me, wide and shocked. One of her hands flies to her mouth.

‘What happened after that, well, it passed in a kind of daze. The body cannot comprehend such pain: it sends the spirit elsewhere. Like a bird roosting in the eaves, I looked down on myself, spreadeagled and bleeding, and felt nothing. I am told that for the three hours after the operation they walked me around to keep the blood circulating; then they buried me up to my neck in the desert sand and left me there for the wound to heal. I was given nothing to eat or drink for three days, though they placed a wide-brimmed hat over me to keep the sun off and paid a boy to keep the ants and prey-birds away. But he could do nothing about the young nobles of the town, who came each day to jeer. I was unaware of them the first day; the second day their voices were indistinguishable from the noise of the crows and vultures. But on the third day I regained consciousness and I saw them lounging against a wall, the sunlight glinting on their gold jewellery. They ate dates and tossed the stones at me. When I cried out they laughed.

‘ “Hear him roar!”

‘ “A mangy-looking lion, indeed.”

‘ “Whoever saw a black lion? He is a hyena, a feral dog.”

‘ “Not much of a luxury man!”

‘ “Man? He is no man, not any more!”

‘They all laughed at that. I threatened them with death and dismemberment, in Senufo, then in English, Italian and finally Arabic, until one of them came and stood over me and hauled up his robe and shook his male parts at me. “This is what a real man looks like, you stinking pander!” He was about to piss on me when the man who had paid for my mutilation came out and drove him and his companions away and gave orders that I be dug up. Remarkably, I healed. I knew I was healing, for I was aware of the cost of every ingredient in every poultice and liniment they applied to my mutilation and could calculate the return on their investment. By the time they took to using wolf's onion, which is a very
expensive herb, I knew I was going to survive and I took a perverse pleasure in the expense.'

Her eyes are shining – with tears? I have been so caught up in the telling I have not been watching her face.

‘Did you not want to die?'

‘I did want to die. For a long time I wanted to die. I lay there full of grief and hatred and fury and shame. I denied God; then I prayed to him. I suffered nightmares and flashes of memory – of my former life, of the mutilation. But little by little there came a time when I found I noticed other things than my own misery. The small bliss of clean cotton against the skin. Losing my terror of pissing. The flicker of sunlight between rushes. The song of birds. The taste of bread. The sound of children's laughter …'

A tear that had swelled in her eye now overflows the lid and spills slowly down her cheek. I find my hand, of its own accord, reaches out to brush it away.

She shifts backwards away from me like a startled animal.

‘I am sorry.'

‘No. No. You took me by surprise, that's all.' She gives me a steady look. ‘I had not expected kindness.'

Kindness. Is that what it was, that gesture? Perhaps, in part: but there was self-interest there too. For now I feel a bond with this woman, a connection, a slow-burning fire: somehow I must save her from herself. I must persuade her to convert so that she will live and I may see her, just occasionally, in the gardens of the harem, with the sun in that yellow hair, meet her eyes across the fountain as Black John sings his melancholy songs …

I summon every iota of persuasion I can dredge from my soul. ‘My life now is not so bad. I take what small pleasures there are to be taken by simply being alive. Of which there are many, even here, even in my reduced state.'

‘Life persists, I suppose, the urge to survive. What stubborn beings we are, holding tight to what little delight is left to us.' She shakes her head wonderingly.

‘I ask myself if there is some mystical vessel in the soul in which such pleasures accumulate like water in a glass? Finally the emptiness is replaced
with life and suddenly one day, in a great surge, you want to live more than you want to die. I have come to accept that I shall never be a free man, nor marry nor father children, yet I eat, I sleep, I laugh, and think and watch and
feel
. I am myself. I persist.'

She casts her gaze down and I see her hands knot in her lap. ‘Children. Ah, yes, there we are: the weak spot. And yet I would be a fruitless tree, twice dead,' she says softly at last.

‘I do not understand.'

‘In the Book of Jude it is the description of an apostate: one who is spiritually dead, and will go to the Lake of Fire. But it means more than that, to me.' She looks up from her interlocked fingers. ‘It's what I am. A virgin woman, untouched and without issue. Yet I have always wanted children.'

Something knots inside me.

‘I was on my way from Holland to be wed to an Englishman when they captured me. Just think, I might be there now, in my great house in London, a married woman of estate, maybe even, a month and more into my marriage, a woman with child.'

Is this my chance to press my case? ‘If you want the chance to bring new life into the world, Alys Swann, then just say the shahada. You will be gently treated; you will be fêted. The sultan is good to the women of his harem; their lives are far from onerous. You are more like to die of boredom and too much comfort, than of fear or pain.'

‘And the children that are born of such a union?'

‘They are his own, and acknowledged. Bear him a son and you will be accorded great status, maybe even taken as an official wife.'

‘A high honour to which to aspire.' Her tone is clipped. ‘And the children stay with their mothers?'

‘Children here are greatly cherished. They stay in the harem until they are of an age to be trained in their duties.' I pause, but conscience drives me on. ‘Sons are greatly cherished,' I amend. ‘Sons buy you status within the harem; but they may also buy you jealousy and enmity from the other women, and that can be … dangerous.'

The amazing eyes flicker over my face, then she drops her gaze and sits there contemplating her hands, until I feel sure I have destroyed every
chance of persuasion by my honesty. Fool! I chastise myself. For a moment there I sensed the tide turning in my favour, but now there is a terrible stillness to her that suggests some degree of acceptance. Of her martyrdom? If she goes to her death, she will take me with her. The memory of the bliss I experienced on stepping outside the gaol earlier that afternoon returns to me, poignant and mocking. Ben Hadou is an arch-manipulator, I think. A diplomat, an ambassador, a negotiator. And yet he appears to have decided that the task of turning this woman would defeat him, and offered me up in his place. I can imagine his words now: ‘Nus-Nus will make a more favourable impression on her, majesty, than your humble servant. Such a big, black man, speaking in eloquent English? A low jungle-dweller, raised to the heights of court servant and educated enough to pour poetic phrases in her ears? How could she not trust the word of such a fellow? Perhaps he will even tell her his own story: how could she fail to be moved by that?' And Ismail, forgetting that he has not seen me for three weeks while I festered in a cell, says, ‘Yes, he has a gentle manner for an
abid
: you are a wise man, Al-Attar: go fetch the boy at once.'

I am expendable; already facing a death sentence. Who would miss me? No one. I see Zidana's lips curled into that malicious smile. ‘Good luck … you will need it.'

Will I have to beg this fragile woman for my own life, I wonder? It is a last resort, and ignoble. I feel a tremor of intent run through me as I prepare to cast myself down and beg Alys for my sake, if not for her own, to submit herself to the sultan's will. Outside, the mournful wail of the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer: fourth prayer, appositely the maghrib – ‘The Westering', the setting of the sun. I wonder if it will be my last.

‘I have known all the time it would come down to this,' she says quietly. ‘To whether the hardness of my will and the strength of my faith can overcome the tenderness of my heart.' Pause. ‘It seems to me there is much to fear, whichever prevails.' Her eyes seek mine. I do not know what she sees there, but the smile she gives me is sweet indeed. ‘If I resist, they will kill not only me but you also, won't they?'

Suddenly I cannot speak. Instead, I nod dumbly.

She looks away.

My little room has been restored, just as ben Hadou promised. My old blanket is spread smooth across the narrow divan; the prayer mat sits square in the middle of the chamber, and my lap-desk has been placed on the wooden chest, beside my incense burner. A new candle has been inserted into the candlestick. I move these items and open the chest, to find my clothing neatly folded within; but of the couching book there is no sign. Abdelaziz's nephew must have taken it elsewhere. I wonder why; and whom I will have to go to ask to have it returned to me. I hope I will not have to go to the vizier himself.

I walk out to the courtyard and stare around in the twilight. Nothing has changed out here except that with the warm weather after the rain the vegetation has grown more lush and there are more flowers out on the hibiscus, cheery scarlet trumpets proclaiming their indifference to the strife of the world of men. Usually the sight of them would lift my heart, but today they depress me.

‘Nus-Nus?'

I turn, to find Abid, one of the sultan's body-slaves, regarding me with a wide grin. ‘You're back! We thought you were dead. Samir gave us to believe as much.'

‘Did he now? I wonder why.'

The lad looks awkward. He knows more than he is saying, I suspect. Then I look down and see that he is carrying the couching book.

‘Well, that's a relief: I wondered where it had gone.' It seems that things are returning to normal, little by little. I take the book from him. Its old leather feels warm and comforting in my hands; its proportions and weight are as familiar to me as my own. As I turn to cross the room with it hugged to my chest, Abid says, ‘You're to come now. The sultan is asking for you.'

I bend and stow the precious book back in the chest where it belongs.

‘What are you doing?'

‘Putting it away for safe keeping.'

‘Well, don't! Bring it with you.'

‘Now?' I say stupidly.

‘Now!'

‘Are there corrections to be made?' I imagine that Samir Rafik has filled it with errors and that this has been contributory to his removal …

‘His majesty has a woman with him now.'

Fifth prayer is imminent. The sultan would never ignore the ‘Isha' salah' in favour of a couching: he is a devout and fervent man, meticulous in observing the correct forms of worship. Perhaps Abid has misunderstood.

‘It's too early.'

‘And to translate for him. He can't make the white woman understand his orders. He needs you to translate for him so that she does as she is told, and then record the couching in the book.'

My heart stalls, then kicks wildly. But what had I expected?

Arriving at the sultan's private quarters, I find him stripped to his long cotton undertunic, stalking the room stiff with fury and frustration; but at least his hands are empty of weapons.

‘Majesty!' Placing the couching book down carefully, I prostrate myself upon the silk rugs.

‘Get up, Nus-Nus,' he says impatiently, hauling me by the arm. ‘Tell the stupid woman to take her damned clothes off!'

I scramble to my feet. Alys sits hunched on the corner of the sultan's divan with her hands crossed over her chest. Tatters of a silk kaftan – a clean rose-pink that has replaced the soiled turquoise – hang from her shoulders like strips of flayed skin. She does not look up as I approach.

I have seen so much random violence in this place, witnessed sudden deaths, mutilations and woundings; I have been privy to hundreds of deflowerings, seductions and – not to put too fine a point on it – rapes, that I should be immune to one more incidence of the same; but it seems I am not.

‘Alys.'

She lifts her gaze to me. ‘I'm so sorry to cause such a fuss,' she says.

‘Alys, you must not anger him any more. Let him do what he must and it will be over all the sooner.' The words seem terrible to me even as I speak them. ‘Take your gown off, Alys.'