Now Auntie Chava harrumphed. “Stories won’t get dinner cooked,” she said.
But they took out the good wine at dinner, and Auntie Chava made me a cup of sharbat. The coins would pay this year’s taxes, with some left over for next. When Old Mordecai finally returned, Uncle Eli told him the whole story, exaggerating Dunyazad’s praises of me.
“This is an omen,” Uncle Eli told Auntie Chava. “Our fortunes are turning—I know it. By this time next year you’ll have more jewels and silks than you ever had before. You’ll see—I’m right. Those ones you sold today—they’re nothing to what you’ll have soon.”
Auntie Chava smiled—a bit sadly, I thought. “I don’t need jewels and silks, Eli. I never wear them anyway. This house . . . and you . . . and food enough to keep all of us. That’s what I want.”
* * *
It was hard to sleep that night. I kept worrying about Shahrazad. What if the tale I told wasn’t good enough? What if it made the Sultan yawn? What if he hated it?
I turned it over and over in my mind, noticing how nothing very adventurous actually happened in the story, and how the end didn’t quite feel right. I fretted about where Shahrazad would break off to make the Sultan want to hear more. There just weren’t very many exciting places in that tale. Or none exciting enough.
It was a boring tale! I could see that now, though I had not before. It would never save her!
I slept fitfully and woke at dawn. After ablutions and prayers, I got right to work. Busy. I had to keep busy. I milked the goat in darkness, then hauled water from the courtyard well and scrubbed the chipped brown tiles of the floor as the morning sky grew pink. Auntie Chava, I thought, was sleeping forever this morning. When finally she awoke, I pestered her to send Old Mordecai to find out if Shahrazad had survived the night. I knew she would never let me go out alone.
Auntie Chava admonished me on the virtues of patience, but sent Mordecai for news so promptly that I knew she was worried, too. I hauled more water, started the fire in the brazier, put on a pot of lentils, filled the lamps with oil, mixed dough for a loaf of bread.
Where was that Mordecai?
At last, I heard the courtyard door creak open. I froze, afraid, now, to know. Auntie Chava appeared in the archway to her quarters; Uncle Eli came up beside her.
“Well?” Uncle Eli asked.
Old Mordecai smiled his toothless smile and raised his skinny arms high. “She lives.”
* * *
After that, I danced.
I danced as I polished the lamps. I danced as I refilled the lentil jar. I danced as I sieved the grain, and even as I spun a skein of thread.
It was clumsy dancing, I know, with my bad foot thunking awkwardly about. But I didn’t dance to give others pleasure. I danced for the sheer, giddy joy of it.
“Calm yourself, Marjan!” Auntie Chava kept telling me. “You’re going to break something. You’re going to hurt yourself. I’m going to hurt you—you’re making me crazy!”
But I refused to calm myself.
She lives! The most beautiful words I had ever heard!
I spun Julnar’s story over and over in my mind, imagining the Sultan’s reaction—how he must have laughed at this part or that, how he must have held his breath in suspense, how he must have gasped in wonderment.
It was a splendid tale! I had always loved that tale!
I imagined that the Sultan might want more stories like that one. And Shahrazad would send for me. No—not send for me. She would come herself! She and all her retinue: a caravan of silk-turbaned eunuchs and bejeweled serving women. There would be a knock at the gate, and the eunuch would enter—the gold-clad one who had led her to the Sultan. I could see him now, the way he would look, his cloth-of-gold robes shimmering against the dull brown courtyard walls. He would announce Shahrazad, and she would come gliding in, and everyone would kneel and kiss the ground. Then she would touch me on the shoulder and tell me to rise. She would ask me for another tale and, when I had told it, she would open up her purse and out would pour gold coins—enough gold coins to pay all of Uncle Eli and Auntie Chavas taxes . . . forever!
I was so caught up in my daydreams that, after my third spill of oil in the kitchen, Auntie Chava banished me to the back room to mend old clothes.
“And don’t prick yourself]” she called after. “Keep your mind on your work!”
And that was why I didn’t hear the knock when it came.
The first I knew of it was hearing Auntie Chavas raised voice. I set down my mending, listened. There were other voices, too. Uncle Eli’s—sharp, protesting—and another I did not recognize. A man’s voice? A woman’s? I couldn’t tell.
I stood and, throwing on my veil, moved toward the sound of the voices—through the kitchen, into the bright midmorning light of the courtyard, past the well. The voices were coming from Uncle Eli’s private rooms. They were quieter now; I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
I didn’t see the incense burner until I kicked it, sent it clattering across the tiles. The voices stopped. Auntie Chava peered out at me; her eyes were grave. Then he walked past her, into the courtyard, looking at me. I knew him by his bejeweled headdress, by his smooth, aloof face, by his cloth-of-gold robes: Shahrazad’s eunuch.
I had a strange feeling now in the pit of my stomach. I had wished for him to come, and here he was, standing before me. Yet now . . . I closed my eyes and wished him away. But when I opened them again he was still there. He was staring at my foot.
“Was she this way from birth?” he asked.
“No,” Eli said. “It was . . . an accident.”
An accident. I felt the shame of it again, the shame so deep that even Uncle Eli, who never lied (except to hope out loud) . . . had lied. The old familiar anger washed through me in a wave. I stood still, waiting for it to pass.
“Accident?” The eunuch turned to look at Uncle Eli, raised one eyebrow.
“It happened,” Eli said, “before she came to live with us.” He didn’t look at me. His eyes were avoiding mine.
The eunuch made a sound, an umm sound that could mean anything. Then, “Come along,” he said to me.
Auntie Chava moved toward me, pressed something into my hand. It was a comb, a jewel-studded comb, the kind you wear in your hair. Her comb—the one thing she had saved for herself. “I want you to have it,” she said. “I was going to give it to you later, when—” She stopped, then all at once threw her arms around me, enveloping me. I breathed in the smell of her: cumin and citron and a smell that was hers alone. Over her shoulder I met Uncle Eli’s gaze. He looked tired, sad. The rims of his eyes were pink.
“But where?” I said, pulling back, fastening my gaze upon Auntie Chavas face. “Where is he taking me?”
“You’re going to live there now, Marjan,” she said. “In the Sultans harem. Shahrazad wants you with her and she won’t be denied.”
“But. . . I don’t want to live there. I want to live with you.
I half expected her to scold me, for it was not my place to speak out. But instead, she touched my sleeve and said, “Wants don’t enter into this, Marjan—save for the queens wants. We don’t want this any more than you.”
I gazed numbly about the courtyard—at the threadbare carpets on the floors, at the cracked tiles, at the faded cushions stacked by the wall. It was not nearly as beautiful as the Sultans harem. And I had to work hard here, every day. But it was a good enough life. Auntie Chava and Uncle Eli, they cared for me. Loved me, though they had never said so. Though I was a servant in their home.
I remembered my daydream, how I had imagined that Shahrazad would want my help again. The way it actually happened was not exactly the same. But close. The eunuch. . . I had seen him in my imagination, standing in the courtyard, exactly as he stood at this moment. But now I wanted no part of that dream, no part of the brutal life of that harem.
Auntie Chava was wrapping my veil around me. Numbly, I clutched it at my chin. She gazed at me for a moment, the
n gently traced my eyebrows with her fingers.
“Look to your own survival, child,” she whispered.
Chapter 4
Shahrazad’s Cripple
LESSONS FOR LIFE AND STORYTELLING
My auntie Chava used to tell me to chew my words before letting them out. “Seven times, Marjan,” she would say. “Chew them seven times.” If you let your words go buzzing out of your mouth like bees, she always told me, they will come back and sting you.
The trouble was, I couldn’t resist letting them out. They made a turmoil in my mouth until I did. And sometimes, they seemed to slip between my lips before I even knew they were coming. Besides, I knew from Shahrazad and her stories that words can hold great power.
Still, Auntie Chava was right. Silence holds power, too.
No sooner had I stepped within the harem doors than the eunuch handed me off to a bony, beak-nosed woman of middle years. “Follow me,” she said crisply, then marched down a wide glazed stairway that ended in a chamber of the baths. She was stripping off my clothes when Auntie Chava’s comb, which I had tucked into my sash, skittered across the marble floor. We both knelt to pick it up, but the beak-nosed woman was faster. She turned over the comb in her spindly fingers, darting quick glances at me as if she thought I had stolen it. At last she gave it back—grudgingly, I thought—and was about to rise when something caught her eye. My foot.
She pulled off my sandal and stared. Hot shame flooded my face for the second time that day. I know it’s a shock to people, when they first see my foot. How it’s stuck turning downward and twisted in, so I have to walk on the inner side of my big toe. How the skin all up the front of it is wrinkly and scarred.
“You’re crippled,” the woman said, and her voice was thin and mean. “Why should she want you?”
I didn’t answer. I don’t know that she expected me to. After another long moment she went on taking off my clothes and then bore them away, pinching them between thumb and forefinger as you would hold a dead rat.
I stood in the center of the vast chamber, naked as a plucked chicken and utterly alone. Far across the room, I could see several towel-swaddled figures reclining on couches. My hands moved to hide my nakedness and I turned my body to hide my foot—though the swaddled women paid me no mind.
It was silent, save for the splash of water. Columns of sunlight streamed in through round holes in the high, vaulted dome. Light mingled with the smoke from burning censers and puddled on the marble floors like liquid gold. Brilliant tapestries, studded with pearls, hung from the walls. At the center of a blue mosaic fountain, four golden lions spouted clouds of glittering spray.
Though I had often been to the Jewish baths with Auntie Chava, they were nothing like this. Not nearly so big. Not nearly so rich.
I looked down at the comb in my hand. It was made of silver, with a row of tiny garnets down its spine. Often I had seen it in Auntie Chavas hair. I closed my hand around it—tight. No one would take it from me!
Now I heard the hollow clank of pattens on marble and saw the woman returning. She carried a basket and another pair of pattens. I always have trouble with pattens because of my foot. These were not as high as some—a hand’s length from the floor, like foot-sized wooden tables. Still, I knew from experience that it was better to wear them than not. In the inner chambers, the floors were hot I strapped one patten to my good foot and then, feeling the woman’s cold, curious gaze upon me, fumbled with the straps of the second until I could drag it across the floor without losing it. Then, “Come,” she said, and led the way into the second chamber.
Steam lay dense and warm upon the air. The woman set to work on me, slathering every hair below my neck with depilatory paste, plucking unwanted eyebrow hairs by trapping each one between two crisscrossed strings and yanking—hard!—until tears sprang into my eyes. All the while, she made low, disapproving sounds in the back of her throat. She rinsed off the paste, drawing water from a marble fountain, and scrubbed my scalp and hair. Then she assailed me with a rough-napped glove until my skin felt flayed.
In the third chamber, the air was sweltering hot and so clotted with steam that breathing felt like sucking water. I could hear voices murmuring around me; I could see shadows moving in the mist. The woman led me to a steaming pool and drenched me with near-boiling water. At last, she wrapped me in a muslin bath sheet and herded me back to the first chamber.
Usually, you went slowly through the baths. Usually, you got to relax when you were through washing. When I went to the Jewish baths with Auntie Chava, I would massage the kinks out of her neck and shoulders, and then she would let me lie down. But this woman had hastened from chamber to chamber, and now she did not let me rest. She seated me on a wooden bench and, prodding me to move this way and then that, painted me, powdered me, perfumed me, raked a comb painfully through my hair. Not my comb. I wouldn’t let her touch it.
But why was she rushing? Where was she taking me next?
I wanted to ask so many things that I couldn’t squeeze them all into a single question; they spilled into a stream of questions that started small and flowed out to cover the rest of my life: Would I see Shahrazad soon? Would I be a kitchen drudge or an honored servant? Would I live here forever or would they let me go after a while? Would I ever see Auntie Chava and Uncle Eli again?
I had tried to ask the eunuch, but to no avail. The whole way to the harem I had seen little of him but his back and, when I did catch a glimpse of his face, it was as expressionless as a stick of wood. He did not say a word, even when I asked twice. Even when I asked loudly. Now again the questions burned in my mouth, but I chewed them; I did not let them out.
A silky green gown floated down over my head; I thrust my arms through the sleeves. The woman girdled my waist with a length of rose brocade—I slipped the comb inside it—then draped an amber-colored robe about my shoulders. “Open your mouth,” she said. “Breathe out.” She drew near, sniffed at my breath, winced, reached into her sash and pulled out a couple of leaves. “Chew these.” I chewed; mint exploded on my tongue.
The woman stood back, eyed me critically. The fabric slid across my skin—slippery-smooth and far lighter than the coarse muslin I was used to. I felt clean and soft and pretty. But then the woman’s gaze drifted down to where my crippled foot, shod in a soft leather slipper, showed beneath the robe; I curbed an impulse to hide the twisted foot behind the sound one.
The corners of the woman’s thin mouth turned down. “Well,” she said, shaking her head, “you’ll have to do.”
She moved toward the door, and the question welled up within me, would not be stilled. “Where?” I demanded, not budging. “Where are you taking me now?”
The woman started to say something, then snapped her mouth shut, seeming to consider. At last, she spoke.
“I am taking you,” she said, “to the Khatun.”
* * *
The Khatun.
I had forgotten about her. But it made sense that they would take me to her first.
The Khatun Sultana was the Sultans mother. The Crown of Veiled Heads. Everyone knew that she was the most powerful woman in the harem. Far more powerful than Shahrazad. Far more powerful than any of the Sultan’s wives had ever been—even before he began killing them.
As the saying goes, a man may have many wives, but only one mother.
Another thing I knew about her—she had had three sons. The eldest had been poisoned—killed—by one of the Khatuns jealous co-wives. And I had also heard that the Khatun’s third son—this Sultans younger brother and the ruler of Samarkand—was killing wives every night as well, because his first wife had betrayed him. But he had no Shahrazad.
I tried to think what else I’d heard about the Khatun. But it was hard. People didn’t talk about her.
I had never, until this moment, found that strange.
* * *
Her chamber was dim and cavernous. It smelled of something rotten, sickly sweet. Trying to hide my limp, I followed the beak-n
osed woman across dark carpets toward a seated figure in the glow of lamplight ahead. I saw movement in the shadows on either side and made out the shapes of two slave girls wielding long ostrich feather fans. When we drew near, the beak-nosed woman knelt and kissed the floor; I did the same, just behind her.
“Rise.” The voice was rough, hoarse, commanding.
The beak-nosed woman stood, moved to one side, and then I could see her clearly.
The Khatun.
She was hugely fat. She seemed to spill over the edges of the massive cushion she was sitting on. Her neck fell in folds over her pearls and I could see the shapes of billowing mounds of flesh beneath her robes. Though her face was bloated, misshapen, it held traces of lost beauty—an arch of brow, a curve of lip. Between pouches of soft, fleshy skin, her dark eyes gleamed.
As she reached with a swollen, beringed hand to motion me near, I heard a tinkling sound. Her gown, I saw, was stitched over from bodice to hem with gems: rubies, pearls, emeralds, diamonds—a staggering display of wealth.
She looked me up and down for what seemed like a very long time. Then, “So,” she said in that hoarse voice. “So this is the one they told me about—Shahrazad’s cripple.”
I recoiled as if I had been slapped. Behind her, I heard a stifled giggle. I peered into the darkness and saw a young woman standing there—a beautiful woman with pale skin and coppery hair.
“Precisely what are you to Shahrazad,” the Khatun asked, “that she would ask my son to buy you for her?”
That smell, borne on the breeze of the ostrich feather fans, filled my nose—the sweet smell of decay. Smoke rose from incense burners all around, but nothing could mask the stench. I closed off my nostrils from inside—breathed through my mouth—but the revulsion crawled down my throat.
“I. . . don’t know, my lady,” I said.
I didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t know quite why; my mind was moving slowly, like wading through a pool of deep water. But I didn’t want to tell.
Shadow Spinner Page 3
