Sultan's Wife (3 page)

I must make my way straight back to the palace to attend Moulay Ismail, and explain to Zidana that her requests are being fulfilled and that I will return for them later that day and hope that luck is still running with me. It is the only sensible thing to do. I turn decisively; too quickly … catch my foot on some obstacle on the floor behind me, and lose my balance.

I am usually agile, but the eyeballs have unsettled me – or possibly even caused my fall, just as I was congratulating myself on evading their evil influence – and the next thing I know I am on my back with my head jammed up against a pile of baskets, which now totter and come tumbling down, covering me in porcupine spines, dried scorpions and – I pick something off and hold it out with distaste – a veritable plague of dead frogs. In some agitation I spring to my feet, brushing the vile things off me. The spines and scorpions' claws caught in the wool of my burnous are hanging on for grim life. I pluck them off one by one, then catch up the back of my cloak to examine it and see that I have also managed to knock over a container of cochineal, which is creeping upwards through the white wool in a greedy red tide.

All composure deserts me: the cloak, a fine piece, finer than any I could ever afford to buy for myself, was one of Ismail's own, and now it is ruined. Usually when you are given a gift you can do with it as you will, but the sultan has an acute memory and an unfortunate way of asking why you are not wearing whichever item he has grandly presented to you: I have seen more than one man lose a limb, or his life, over an unsatisfactory answer.

Snatching up the corner, I begin to wring the red liquid out of it, only to find it thicker and darker than cochineal and sticky on my palms; and now a bitter tang fills my mouth and nose, a smell that has nothing to do with crushed beetles, or incense or anything beautiful or sacred.

Looking down in some dread now, I find that the obstacle over which I stumbled is indeed the corpse of Sidi Kabour. Someone has slit his throat for him as neatly as a sheep's at Eid. His handsome white beard has been severed too and lies on his chest in a great clot of gore. And in the moment of his death his bowels have voided, which is the filthy smell that underlies the iron: the incense brazier must have been laden with whatever came to hand in an attempt to mask the stink.

A great sadness fills me. Muslims teach that death is an obligation upon us, a task to be completed and never shirked; that it is neither a punishment nor a tragedy, and not to be feared. But somehow that gentle philosophy does not encompass the brutality of this death. Sidi Kabour was a fastidious man in life: that he should have been butchered so and left to lie in a sea of his own blood and filth with his eyes gazing unseeing into the gloom is repulsive. I bend to close those poor, staring eyes, and find something protruding from his grey lips. I prise it away.

Even before I examine it I know with a dull certainty what it is. A chewed corner of the list I made of Zidana's demands: clearly the old man tried to prevent its being taken by eating it. That, or someone has forced it into his mouth. The rest is gone, but whether into Sidi Kabour's gullet or the hands of his murderer I do not know. Nor can I stay to find out: for another terrible thought strikes me; then another.

The first is that I am covered in blood and will be clearly marked out as the assassin. The second is the memory of laying the priceless Qur'an down at my feet when righting the shelf on which the jar of eyeballs rests.

Feeling bile rise into my throat, I turn around, only to have my worst fears confirmed. The once-spotless white of the protective linen is now dyed a patchy crimson. I rip the fabric away from the precious object within …

Blood upon a holy Qur'an is a terrible sacrilege. But blood upon the Safavid Qur'an for which Ismail has been pining presages a slow and painful death.

For me.

I stare at the ruined book, and then at the dead man, trying to take in the enormity of the situation, thought spinning off uselessly in all directions. I should declare the murder, make a statement to the authorities, assure them of my innocence. But who will believe a slave? For that is all I am, whatever my status inside the palace. Within its walls lies a magical, protected realm; but outside, I am nothing but an overdressed black man covered in an honest merchant's blood. And if I am arrested, I do not fool myself into thinking that the sultan will be so concerned as to save me from my fate: he is much more likely to fall into a temper because I am late and lop off my head the moment he sees me again.

I tear off my ruined cloak and bundle the blood-soaked Qur'an inside it. I look around and see Sidi Kabour's ancient burnous hanging on a peg beside the entrance. He does not dress the part of a rich man: but that is the Muslim way, not to proclaim a better fortune than your neighbour. I stalk over to the cloak, only belatedly realizing I am leaving a trail of bloody footprints in my wake. The burnous is too short, but I feel anonymous in it; except of course for my jewelled yellow slippers, which are now a dull crimson. In this country, only women wear red footwear, and, whatever else I might be, I am not a woman. Off they come, into the bundle with the book. Better barefoot than bloodstained; better to be taken as a beggar or a Jew than a murderer. I pull the long, pointed hood up over my turban, hunch my shoulders to disguise my height, sling the bundle over my back and walk quickly out into the souq with my head down.

‘Sidi Kabour!'

The voice is curious, inquiring. I do not turn around.

At the first set of gates I am waved in by the palace guards, who are too bored and chilled to be curious about my change of attire. I cross the
processional square and pass quickly by the magazines and the vast barracks, where ten thousand of the sultan's Black Guards are stationed; then through a second set of gates leading into the pavilions.

Striding at speed, I dodge piles of building sand and pyramids of lime mortar; vats of
tadelakt
plaster, stacks of timber and tiles. I run past the koubba, where the sultan keeps the gifts he is brought in tribute. (How furious the givers would be to know that the rare items they so carefully selected have been thrown in a great pile to gather dust. Ismail is like his small son Zidan; he grows bored with his gifts minutes after receiving them.) The guards should have challenged me: a running, bloodied, barefoot man carrying who knows what under his arm; but they are inside, sheltering from the weather.

As I draw closer to the sultan's pavilions, the personnel are of necessity more alert. ‘Hoi! You there! Show your face and tell us your business.'

It is Hassan, and behind him are three of Ismail's most trusted guards, terrifying-looking men half a head taller than I and massively muscled. I have seen Hassan break a man's neck with his bare hands, and Yaya take a lance through the thigh without so much as blinking. I push back the hood of the burnous. ‘It's me, Nus-Nus.'

‘You look like a drowned rat caught stealing bread from the granary.'

‘Laundry.' Which is at least true in part.

‘Well, you'd best get into the dry or it'll be soaked for a second time.'

I walk quickly past them through the vast horseshoe archway and into the great hall, my bare feet slapping and skidding on the marble. I can hear a knot of courtiers coming in my direction. I reach my room, an antechamber to Ismail's pavilion, and slip inside just before they come into view.

In the fountain in the courtyard outside I wash my feet and hands of blood, hoping no one is watching, and then bury the ruined
babouches
in the loose soil beneath the hibiscus. But what to do with the burnous and the Qur'an? My sparse little chamber is still a grand space, with its arched window, cedarwood ceiling and
zellij
walls, but other than my narrow horsehair divan it contains only a prayer mat, a lap-desk for my writing implements, and a wooden chest on top of which sits one incense burner and a candlestick. These, the clothes I stand up in, the contents of the pouch I carry and those in the chest, are the sum of my worldly possessions.

I put aside the incense burner and candlestick and empty the contents of the chest on to my bed and barely have time to stow the bundle inside when I hear the sultan's voice.

‘Nus-Nus!'

That voice is unmistakable. No matter how quietly he speaks, no matter the crowd or the chatter that surrounds him, it affects not just my auditory senses but something visceral, deep inside. I throw off the spoiled crimson robe, put on the first thing that comes to hand (a dark blue woollen tunic), kick on my old babouches, dash out and prostrate myself.

‘Get up, Nus-Nus! Where is the book?'

My poor dazed wits have not yet created a plausible excuse for the whereabouts of the ruined Qur'an. I lie with my forehead pressed against the cold tiles, imagining people asking: Did he die well, poor Nus-Nus? Was there much blood? What were his last words?

‘The book, boy! Get up! Go and get it! How else are we to record my amendments?'

It takes a moment or two for comprehension to seep into my addled brain and the wave of relief when it comes almost renders my legs inoperable. I scramble to my feet, run back into my room and grab up the book and the lap-desk and run back outside.

Ismail watches me steadily. He tugs on his beard, which is very dark and divided into a neat fork. Above it, his eyes are bright and black, the lids heavy and hooded. There appears to be a glint of amusement in his regard, as if he knows something I do not, which may well have to do with the time and manner of my departure from this earthly life. But he is wearing green today, which is a good sign. Green is his favourite (being the Prophet's own colour) and wearing it tends to signify that he does not have bloodshed on his mind. Red, now – or yellow – that is a different matter. We all look to ourselves when he wears red or yellow, or has his page carry a change of clothing.

‘Come!'

He turns his back on me and I fall into line along with the foremen of works, a great gaggle of them, followed by the Kaid Mohammed ben Hadou Ottur (known also as Al-Attar, the Tinker) in conversation with
three other court luminaries, and lastly the Hajib: the grand vizier himself, Chief Minister Si Abdelaziz ben Hafid. It is the Hajib who now catches me up and walks beside me.

‘Are you well, Nus-Nus? You seem a little winded.' His fleshy lips are curved into a smile, but expression does not reach his eyes. We all have our masks in this place.

‘Quite well,
sidi
, thank you for asking.'

‘
Alhemdulillah
.'

‘Thanks be to God,' I echo formally, though how such a man can mention the name of the Compassionate One without being struck dead on the spot amazes me.

‘I am glad to hear it. I would be most distressed if anything bad were to happen to you.' He looks down. ‘It seems you have cut yourself.'

My heart shudders. ‘It's just mud.' I hold his gaze defiantly and watch as the smile fades from his mouth, leaving his face as inhuman as a reptile's. Then he allows his hand to fall so casually it looks accidental, but in such a manner that it brushes my groin. He watches as I try and fail to repress my revulsion.

‘So you say, Nus-Nus. So you say.'

His eyes pin me for a moment more, then he turns and powers his way through the entourage to join the sultan, a tangible reminder to me and all others that he regards himself – he alone – as being on a par with our sovereign.

Ben Hadou's pale gaze sweeps over him, and as it does so I can feel the dislike flow off the kaid, a dislike tinged with contempt, though his face remains stony. Then he turns his head and those grey eyes – sharp, watchful – come to rest on me and I feel as if in those seconds he has perceived everything that has passed between my enemy and me.

The creation of the imperial palace complex at Meknes is an act of immense hubris, grand to the point of monomaniacal. We have heard from some of the better-connected French captives that their king is attempting a similar project, on a rather meaner scale, though currently it is not much more than a hunting lodge in the middle of a mosquito-ridden swamp. When
Ismail first heard about it he laughed dismissively. ‘Those Europeans, all they create are follies, personal extravagances that can amount to nothing. But when my project is completed it will be a city of magnificent distances: the grandest offering to the grace of God that anyone has ever made. I am taking a waste land and transforming it to the glory of Allah. His holy word shall be writ large upon the ground, upon the walls and in every detail: his eternal and infinite design brought into existence in the corporeal world!'

The waste land today is being recalcitrant: we encounter problem after problem, which I must minute carefully in the records book as we go. My scattered wits have made me a poor scribe, and the rain does its best to compound the problem, blurring the ink and even completely washing away the words in places. As soon as I am dismissed I run back to my chamber. If I do not write down
right away
the precise instructions Ismail dictated and deliver them at once to the chief of works at once his wrath will be swift and sure.

I sit cross-legged on my divan, open the lap-desk and, dipping my reed pen in the ink, write carefully: ‘First, the Bab al-Raïs to be reinforced with iron studs and horizontal bands. A new chief craftsman to be found to add a sunburst design and crescent moons, since if the French king is to designate himself Roi Soleil, Ismail will command both day and night. The new design to be achieved before the inauguration.

‘Next, the guardhouse to be demolished and rebuilt on the east side.

‘Third, the outer wall nearest the
mellah
to be moved back by fifty paces; which will entail razing the houses within that compass in order to allow a proper space to be maintained between our domain and the inhabitants of the city. The occupants to be informed by proclamation and ordered to begin work at once. Dwellings will be found for them in the meantime, but they are to shift the rubble themselves beyond the site.