Something happen to the pigeons? There was another morsel to add to my soup of worries!
As the story unwound, I saw what Shahrazad had been saying about things balancing out. The evil Queen Lab and her scheming mother were balanced by Julnar and her mother, who were strong and intelligent and kind. And also there was Marsinah, the slave girl who took pity on Badar Basim. Finally, at the very end, Badir Basim forgave Princess Jauharah. After all she had done to him—changing him into a bird and banishing him to an island with no water and nothing to eat. But he still loved her. Though they brought all the beautiful girls in the kingdom for him to choose from, he wanted only her.
“And when Princess Jauharah’s father told her of this,” the storyteller said, “these were her words: ’Do as you wish, for sorrow and spite have come to an end, and I agree to be his wife.’”
The storyteller smiled. “We leave them in happiness! May Allah bring the same to you and all who stand in need.”
“That’s all?” I couldn’t help myself; I couldn’t believe that was the end.
“The ending displeases you?” he asked.
“He just forgave her? After all she did to him? And she wasn’t even punished?”
“Oh,” the storyteller said. “So you’re an advocate of punishment.”
“Of justice!” I said. “And how could he live, lying beside her at night, knowing how she had deceived him?”
The storyteller looked off into the distance, combing his beard with his fingers. “Well, don’t you think it best,” he asked at last, “for the Sultan to hear a tale that favors forgiveness?”
Slowly, I nodded. It would be a good lesson for the Sultan, forgiveness. Still, the ending didn’t satisfy me.
“How did you come by that?” the storyteller abruptly asked, staring at my foot, which poked out beneath my gown.
Hastily, I covered it. “An accident,” I said. Suddenly, my face felt hot.
“I heard a story some years ago,” he said, “of a woman who had a young daughter and feared for her, so—”
I cut him off. “Don’t put me in one of your stories!”
Silence, again. My angry words hung in the air. I saw that Dunyazad was looking at me with startled eyes. At last, the storyteller spoke. “We all have our demons to deal with, Little Pigeon. Its when we cherish them—cradle them to our breasts and feed them day after day—that’s when they curdle our souls.”
* * *
Just after sunset prayers, Ayaz returned. He whispered something into the storyteller’s ear and handed him a heap of clothing. The storyteller divided the heap, gave half to Dunyazad and half to me. The cloth was coarse-woven, like Auntie Chavas cloaks. But brightly colored. Garish. With stains, I saw, and patches. I held up the garments one by one to see what they were. A bodyshirt, a cloak, a winding-scarf for a headdress. And not a veil among them. Boys’ clothes!
“A family of musicians is going into the harem tonight,” the storyteller said. “Four brothers and their sons. They have consented to let you go with them and pretend to be part of their family. Once inside, you can break away from the group. Now, go into the next room and change.”
“But. . .” I looked at Dunyazad. “I thought they didn’t let men into the harem.”
“Sometimes they bring in entertainers,” she said. “We watch through slits in the curtains, so they can’t see us.”
“But. . . they’ll see us,” I said. “You and me. Unveiled!”
“It’s the only way,” the storyteller said. “It’ll be dark, and these men can be trusted.”
I hesitated.
“Princess Budur did it,” Dunyazad said, “and so can we.”
* * *
It was not dark—not quite—though shadows lay thick upon the streets. All the light in the world seemed to have wicked up into the sky, a luminous sapphire blue. A soft breeze cooled the air.
I kept my head down as we followed Ayaz to the musicians’ cart. But Dunyazad didn’t. She had cast off her unnatural meekness and stood tall again, striding powerfully after Ayaz. At last she was dressed as a boy, like Princess Budur. As we approached the cart, she drew me aside. “Stand up straight, Marjan. You don’t look like a boy, with your eyes downcast that way.”
I didn’t feel like a boy. I just felt strange in these clothes. They were rough against my skin, after the soft gowns I’d grown used to. Worse, my long braid was knotted up on my head, secured with pins and my garnet comb, and tucked into the headdress. I was afraid my hair would come unpinned at any moment and slither down my back. But worst of all by far, I was walking around on the streets with no veil, with the outside air touching my neck and ears. I felt naked.
Ayaz nodded good-bye to us, his eyes carefully averted. We climbed up into the cart, setting the burlap-wrapped bundles of our harem clothes in our laps, and sat on the floor among the musicians. One handed Dunyazad a small drum and said to me, “You’re a singer.” Then he shifted, turned away from us—as all the others had done.
We rode in silence through the narrow alleys and streets. At last, I saw the bulk of the palace looming before us. Moonlight frosted its domes and silvered the outlines of the trees beyond. We stopped near the southern door. The musicians picked up their instruments and stepped out of the cart. Dunyazad and I followed. Walk smoothly! Don’t limp! I told myself. It was good that the cloak was overlong and hid all but the toes of my bad foot. Two helmeted palace guards stood on either side of the massive arched door, their hands on the hilts of their scimitars. Most of the musicians went before us, but three of them waited to go behind. I held my breath as Dunyazad neared the guards, moved into the flickering patch of torchlight between them.
Then she was past.
My turn now. Don’t limp. I looked down, watched my toes. Just as they moved into the light, one of the guards stepped forward, stopped me. “What’s in the bundle?” he growled.
My heart was pounding in my throat. “Change of costumes,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, trying to deepen it a little. I remembered to stand tall—like Dunyazad, like Princess Budur. Then, with all the boldness I could muster, I looked straight into the palace guard’s eyes. A woman would not do that. No woman would ever do that.
A sudden bright trill sounded behind me. I glanced back. A piper, and now a drummer, were playing. As the guard turned to look, a bell-ringer shooed me quickly past.
I hastened after Dunyazad and the other musicians as they followed a guard through a long colonnaded corridor. He stopped at a wooden door and spoke to a eunuch; Dunyazad and I huddled in the middle of the group. And then the eunuch was moving through the doorway, calling out, “Withdraw!” We followed him through the empty kitchens, their high, vaulted ceilings blackened with smoke. Dunyazad pulled on my arm, tugging me into an alcove. She pushed on a wooden panel; it opened. She nudged me inside. I stood in the dark, listened to the click of a closing door. I heard her beside me, breathing hard. Then her voice, near my ear: “Change into your harem clothes. Leave the other ones here; I’ll get rid of them later.”
It was black as ebony; impossible to tell what things were except by feel. I fumbled about and once tripped on my sash and nearly fell. Nearby, I heard soft grunts and rustlings, then a muttered curse. At last I was dressed—as well as I could manage. I unpinned my hair and tucked in my precious comb.
“Where are you, Marjan? Hold out your hand.” Dunyazad patted down my arm to my hand, grasped it, pulled me along behind her. “There’s not much time,” she said. “Make sure people see you, so they know you re here. I have to get to my sister.”
She led me a long way in the dark until at last, we stopped. “Go out here. You’ll know the place. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I did know it: the room where she had taken me into the passage the day I had escaped in the chest. Some way off, I could hear strains of lilting music. Maybe if I just slipped into the crowd watching the musicians, no one would know I’d been gone.
I could hope.
Following the sounds, I found a group of women gathered around a curtained wall that divided a large room in half. They were peering through slits in the brocaded fabric. I crept into the room, stood just behind them. No one turned around. No one had seen.
I let out my breath in a sigh.
“Marjan!”
I spun round. Ashraf! She grabbed my arm, yanked me toward the door. “The Khatun wants to see you,” she said.
“Now.”
Chapter 18
Prisoner
LESSONS FOR LIFE AND STORYTELLING
Sometimes I wonder if the stories you tell begin to tug at your life, begin to change it in some mysterious way. Not just that you learn from stories, though that can happen, too. But even deeper: Could it be that, by choosing certain stories, you draw to yourself the happenings inside them? So that your life begins to echo your stories?
Ashraf gripped my arm and pulled me down the hallway toward the stairs. I stumbled, lost my footing, but she didn’t stop—didn’t even slow down. She just kept on dragging me until I was sure my arm was going to wrench out of its socket, until my feet, scrambling around, finally got themselves underneath me again.
My mind froze in terror around the image of the Khatun. I couldn’t think. I gave a hard, twisting yank with my arm, slipped out of Ashraf’s grasp, and fled away from the stairs. I landed wrong on my bad foot, stumbled, and Ashraf was there again. She grabbed my braided hair and hauled me to the steps, then up. Pain jolted through my neck, burned like fire in my scalp. I tried to keep up with her to ease the fury of the pain, but she was moving fast, moving through courtyards and hallways and up another long flight of steps until at last we came to the Khatun’s quarters.
The smell again. The sickly sweet, rotten smell. I couldn’t see her, could see nothing but the dark carpets because of the way Ashraf held my braid. As we drew deeper into the dim room, the smell grew stronger, flooded my nose and throat until I was choking with it.
“Here she is,” Ashraf said. She flung me to the floor; I hit hard and stayed, my face just inches from the Khatun’s feet. Tiny feet—shod in perfect bejeweled slippers, with pouches of fat mounding up around their rims. “I caught her going to see the musicians,” Ashraf was saying. “I have no idea where she’s been.”
“Get. . . up .” That voice. That soft, hoarse voice.
I rose slowly, studying the Khatun’s face. Though the bloated surface of it seemed calm, I could see something in her eyes, something deep and raging. Behind her, in the shadows, Soraya looked different. There was a soft, wounded look about her. Her eyes were red and puffy, as if she had been crying.
“Where were you?” the Khatun demanded.
“I was—” I started to say with Zaynab. But maybe they had searched there. “I was here and there, around the harem.”
Her hand whipped out at me before I saw it coming. The slap stung, brought tears to my eyes. I rubbed at my cheek, tried to blink back the tears.
“Don’t you dare lie to me,” she said. “Where were you?
“I was here,” I said. “I was here the whole day.”
This time, she hit me with her clenched fist. Pain shot through my cheek. I staggered backward, caught a foot in the hem of my gown, fell to the floor. She was standing over me now. I scooted back like a crab but bumped into Ashraf’s legs.
“Who is he?” the Khatun asked. “Who is she exchanging messages with? When do they meet?”
He? Exchanging messages? A meeting? I struggled to understand but couldn’t grasp what she was saying.
“I know she has a lover—she can’t hide it from me. They all do. Let them live a month beyond the wedding and they’re plotting with their lovers against my son. Who is he? Tell me!”
She was talking about Shahrazad. She thought—“No,” I said. “There is no lover! She—”
“Tell me!”
The Khatun’s foot thrust out and caught me in the ribs. I rolled onto my stomach, but she kept on kicking—little vicious jabs. My sides were on fire with pain. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered how she could keep this up. She was so fat, she could barely walk.
At last the kicks stopped. I could hear her wheezing. “Tell me!” she said.
“She . . . doesn’t. . . have . . . a . . . lover.” It hurt to talk. It hurt to breathe.
I felt her moving heavily away. As the smell of her ebbed, I heard her say, “She knows. I’ll wring it out of her. Lock her up—for now.”
Ashraf took my arm and hauled me to my feet. Pain sliced through the whole middle of me. I groaned, stooped over, clutched at my ribs. My cheek and eye were throbbing. I stole a look back once as we left—a quick one, because the pain struck again, a jagged bolt of it in my side. In the dim light, I saw that the Khatun had seated herself again on her sofa. Behind her, I half expected to see Soraya’s familiar smirk.
But no. She wasn’t smirking.
Her face was rigid with fear.
* * *
It was a small, musty-smelling room she took me to, in an uninhabited part of the harem. By the feeble light of Ashraf’s candle, I could see a chamber pot in the corner. Dust, sprinkled with corpses of dead bugs, carpeted the floor. There were no rugs, no cushions, no hangings, no windows. No ornaments of any kind—except for the cobwebs that festooned the shadowy corners of the room. Something scuttled across the floor. Only a beetle—I hoped.
Ashraf hesitated in the doorway, then grudgingly set the candle on the floor. The wooden door thumped shut; I heard the grate of a key in the lock and then footsteps moving away.
I squatted down, leaning against a wall, pressing one hand in upon my hurting ribs and another against my hurting cheek and eye. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t sleep. I knew I should be afraid. But I was numb.
Gradually, my mind unfroze, and thoughts began to skitter across the surface of it.
Would they feed me? I wondered. Or would they leave me here to starve? My thoughts took a weird, sideways jag to Badar Basim, how Princess Jauharah had banished him to an island with no food and no water. Someone had saved him, I remembered—Marsinah, the slave girl. But this was real life—not a tale. There would be no Marsinah for me.
At least we’d gotten the story. So for now, Shahrazad was no worse off than she’d been before I met her. Unless Dunyazad had been caught. But no. She wouldn’t be caught.
Still, I’d hoped for so much more. To save Shahrazad.
But there could be no saving of her. At best, she was doomed to cast about for new tales day after day so she could survive another night. At worst...
I had heard tales of torture in the palace. I’ll wring it out of her, the Khatun had said. Would I break under the pain, tell the Khatun what she wanted to hear? If the pain was bad enough, would I betray Shahrazad to save myself?
Madar!
The word came to me unbidden: a plea. You should have stayed with me. You should have smuggled us away with Abu Muslem. You smashed my foot, but it didn’t do any good. Are you happy now? Are you?
And I could see her face then, in my mind’s eye. But she was not happy. She looked down at me, and her eyes were sad.
* * *
I sat up, uncertain what had awakened me. Pain jolted through my body—though not quite as bad as before. My eye still throbbed, and I couldn’t get it all the way open. Hunger gnawed at my belly. Though the candle still burned, it slumped on the floor, a mere stump. Soon, it would go out.
And then I heard it: a sound. A grating at the door. A key.
I backed into a far corner, avoiding the cobwebs. Slowly, the door swung open.
In the dim yellow glow of the candle, I made out a pale face and copper-colored hair. Soraya. She put a finger to her lips, motioning me to hush. That was odd, I thought. Who would hear? Why would it matter?
She closed the door behind her and, moving forward, pulled some objects from the folds of her gown and set them down on the floor.
A full waterskin, an embroidered napkin filled with bre
ad and dates, and three more candles.
“Eat quickly!” she said. “No ones supposed to feed you.”
Like Marsinah! But I never thought that Soraya would help me. Briefly, I wondered if the food were poisoned. Or drugged, as someone had drugged her sharbat. But hunger overcame my doubts. I gobbled the bread and dates, then washed them down with water. Soraya watched, still standing, lifting her skirts a little so as not to soil them on the filthy floor.
When I had finished, I rose, brushed the dust from my gown.
“This was all I could manage for now,” Soraya said. “I’ll bring you more tomorrow.”
“Why? What do you want from me?”
She licked her lips. “I don’t want to marry the Sultan. The Khatun . . . she beat me yesterday when she found out you’d escaped.”
I remembered how she had looked the day before—as if she had been crying—and felt a sudden twinge of guilt.
“Now she doesn’t trust me. She’d trust me even less if I married her son. I don’t think she’d trust any woman who married him.”
What was it the Khatun had said? Let them live a month beyond the wedding and they’re plotting with their lovers against my son.
“I know you re helping Shahrazad,” Soraya said. “But I doubt she’s taken a lover. I’m not even certain the Khatun truly thinks that—though she wants to. It would suit her ends. She’s never liked Shahrazad.”
“There is no lover,” I said. “But . . . is Shahrazad all right? Has the Khatun . . . done anything to her?”
Soraya shook her head. “No. Not yet.”
Then Dunyazad must have returned safely.
“I want to help you help Shahrazad,” Soraya said. “I want her to live.”
How can I believe you? I thought.
I looked at her—hard—and saw fear. She had changed.
“You have to tell me what you’re doing,” she said. “So I can help.”
I shook my head. “No. I can’t tell.”
“Then tell me what I can do. To help her stay alive.”
I pulled my silver-and-garnet comb out of my hair. Slowly, I held it out. “Here,” I said. “Give this to Dunyazad. I’m sure she’ll recognize it. Tell her where I am, and why. She deserves to know that. Tell her . . . not to do anything to put herself or her sister in danger for my sake. But tell her that I’m afraid . . . of what they might make me say. What lies,” I said. “If they hurt me.”
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