The Love Slave

by Bertrice Small

  “You are her best friend, my lady Tarub,” the prince said. “Watch over her as best you can. If you believe that she might do herself or any other harm, send to me immediately. I must protect her.”

  It was all they could do. In a few weeks the caliph would bring Zaynab back from al-Rusafa. It was late autumn now, and the days were not only shorter, but they were growing cooler. Al-Rusafa was a summer palace, and not at all suitable for a winter’s stay. The builders worked night and day to finish the new favorite’s apartments, and finally they were done.

  “Tomorrow,” Abd-al Rahman told Zaynab, “you will begin your journey back to Madinat al-Zahra. I have a fine surprise for you, my love, when you return. I know you will be very pleased.”

  “You spoil me,” she replied with a smile, “but I confess to enjoying it, my dear lord. We cannot go, however, until we have visited the little summerhouse in the middle of the lake. You promised me we would see it together.”

  “We will go now,” he told her.

  “It is evening, my lord,” she said. “The moon is already up.”

  “That is the best time to see this particular little summerhouse,” he replied, taking her hand and leading her from their chamber outside to the lake, where a small boat awaited them. Helping her in, he pushed the tiny vessel into the water, and joining her, began to pole the cockle from the shore out toward the center of the lake. It was not a long voyage, and within a very few minutes he was tying their boat to the railing of the summerhouse. Stepping out, he took her hand and drew her up behind him.

  Inside the summerhouse. Zaynab looked about her. It was built of wood that was gilded, and its roof was a glass dome. As she looked up, the caliph shifted a small lever in the woodwork. Suddenly water began to rise up and over the glass dome, falling in a transparent sheath down the hemispherical roof; yet within the summerhouse they remained dry. “Ohhhh!” she cried in wonder.

  “Do you like it, my love?” he asked her.

  “It is wonderful!” she exclaimed Then she saw that the house was furnished with a single double couch and a small table by its side that held wine, fruit, and a softly flickering oil lamp. “You meant to bring me here tonight!” she said, clapping her hands with delight.

  At that moment the moon rose over the trees, silvering the water around and above them. The caliph removed his embroidered silk caftan even as Zaynab removed hers. He drew her into his arms and kissed her tenderly. His fingers caressed her face, and she smiled radiantly at him. “You are the most beautiful woman in the world,” he told her. “I will give you anything within my power to give you, Zaynab, my love. You have but to ask it of me, and it shall be yours.”

  “There is but one thing I long for, my lord,” she answered him softly. Her little hand reached up to stroke his strong facial features.

  Catching her hand in his, he turned it over and placed a burning kiss upon her palm. “Tell me, my love, and it is yours!” His gaze burned into her eyes. Their time together in the solitude of al-Rusafa had rendered him obsessed with her. What had begun in lust for him was turning to love.

  “Give me your child,” she said simply.

  “You would bear me a child?” His youngest sons were already five and seven. He was surprised, yet elated by her response.

  “You are startled,” she said with a smile. “Does my wish displease you, my dear lord?”

  “Do you love me, Zaynab?” he asked her, curious.

  She thought a long moment and then said, “In honesty, my lord, I do not know. Once I thought I loved a man, but my feelings for you are different from those I had for him. I do not believe, however, that I should want your child if I did not feel some tenderness toward you.” She smiled almost shyly at him, laying her golden head upon his shoulder. “I must care for you, else I should be heartless.”

  He wrapped his arms about Zaynab in a tender embrace. His lips touched her soft hair. “I have loved you from the moment you stepped from your litter that day in the Hall of the Caliphate,” he told her.

  She laughed softly. “You lusted after me that day,” she accused.

  He laughed back. “I did,” he admitted, “but I loved you then too. Not as I love you now, Zaynab, but I did love you.”

  His eyes told her that he spoke the truth. He did love her, or at least he believed he did. More, she comprehended that she cared for him. She sighed as his hands began to caress her. This was all that mattered now.

  He turned her about, and began to fondle her breasts. “They are like young pomegranates, ripe and bursting with their sweetness,” he whispered in her ear. His thumbs rubbed her sensitive nipples. “And these are like the little cherries that come to al-Andalus from Provence in early summer.”

  She reached up and wrapped her arms about his neck, allowing him free access to her entire body. He put an arm about her waist, drawing her as close to him as possible. She laid her head back upon his shoulder as his lips moved hotly over her neck and up to her ear. He nibbled delicately upon the lobe, then swirled his tongue about the whorled interior. A hand kneaded her breast. Rubbing herself provocatively against him, she felt his maleness pressing into her flesh. His hands crushed her hips in a fierce grip. Removing those hands, she turned about and led him to the double couch, pushing him down upon his back.

  Kneeling next to the couch, she began to caress him with her hands. He sighed, deeply affected by her tender touches. Zaynab slid herself up on the couch to join him. Crouching over him, she pressed teasing little kisses over his whole body. Her long golden hair brushed his naked body with such a sensual touch that he shivered with delight. It formed a curtain shielding her from his view as she grasped his manroot in a firm grip. Slowly and with long, leisurely strokes she licked its length again and again. She took its tip between her lips and applied a firm pressure. He shuddered with pleasure. Deliberately and with great care she took him in her mouth and suckled upon him until she tasted the first sweet drop of his love juices.

  And while she pleasured him, he reached out and found her plump Venus mont. His fingers insinuated themselves between her nether lips, stroking, stroking, seeking out the tiny badge of her sex, finding it. He teased at it for a time, and then when she whimpered softly, even as her tongue encircled the ruby head of his manroot, he pushed two fingers into her eager body, moving them back and forth until her own love juices sprinkled his fingertips with a generous effusion.

  Zaynab drew away from him and then mounted her lover, sheathing his length in a single graceful motion. His hands reached up to touch her breasts again. She closed her eyes, leaning back slightly, and felt the hardness within her throbbing hotly with passion. She rode him for a short time, but then he rolled her over so that he became the dominant one. Holding her legs open and back, he pushed into her again.

  It is so sweet, she thought lazily as he moved hungrily upon her, pistoning her with his lust. She tingled from the soles of her feet to the top of her head, her body shuddering as she reached the first plateau, and then the second, and finally a third. With a cry she dug her nails into his shoulders, raking them down his back. She gasped for breath, sensing his expansion and then feeling the explosion of his seed as it thundered into her waiting, eager body. Then she swooned, the pleasure overtaking her like a wave hitting the beach.

  Afterward they lay happily together upon their backs, sated for the moment. Above them the water device cascaded down over the glass dome; a night bird called sweetly, poignantly, to its mate, and the moonlight silvered their fevered bodies with its light.

  Chapter 13

  “She is with child,” Zahra said grimly to Tarub. Her face was pinched with her anxiety. She had not slept decently in days.

  “You must stop it!” Tarub spoke sharply. “Our lord Abd-al Rahman has fathered eighteen children already. This will be but another.”

  “What if it is a son?” Zahra said, a desperate tone to her voice. “What if she convinces him to displace Hakam for her son?”

  Tarub could not b
elieve what she was hearing. Zahra had always been sensible, clever, and practical. Now she was behaving like a madwoman. “Zahra! Zahra! Get a hold of yourself,” Tarub begged her friend. “Our lord will never replace Hakam as his heir. He loves Hakam above all his children. The caliph is not a young man any longer. He would not supplant Hakam, a grown man, with an unborn infant. It would be too dangerous. It could destroy the Caliphate! Besides, Zaynab might have a daughter.”

  “I had not thought of that,” Zahra said tonelessly.

  “She is very happy,” Tarub told her companion.

  “You have been to see her?” Zahra was surprised. Why had Tarub been to see her? Was Zaynab making a new and influential friend? Tarub, she suspected, had always been secretly ambitious for her children, and now for her grandchildren. Tarub had never really been her friend. I have no friends, Zahra thought.

  “She would welcome you if you would but come,” Tarub said, unaware of her companion’s speculations. “You have never taken the time to know her, Zahra. You have built her up in your mind as some dreadful villainess, and she really is not. She is a simple girl who wants nothing more than a man to love her, and to bear that man’s child. I like her.”

  “You like her?” Zahra’s look was incredulous, and then it turned angry. “You like her?” she spat. “It is not Zaynab who is simple, Tarub, it is you! She has bewitched your already addled wits. You are a fool! A fat, stupid fool!”

  Tarub’s eyes filled with tears. “You have no cause to be cruel to me, Zahra. I have always been your friend. I have been loyal and stayed by your side all these years; swallowing your insults, putting up with your arrogance, and excusing it to others whom you have offended. You have no cause to dislike Zaynab. You do not even really know her, and your irrational suspicions of her are unfounded! Yes, I like her. I like her!

  “If you loved Abd-al Rahman as you have always claimed, you would be glad that he is happy with this new love; but all you care about is your high position; the fact that a city was named for you; and that your son will follow his father one day. You do not truly love our lord! I suspect that you never have. You are only afraid that you will lose your vaunted place to Zaynab. I hope you do.”

  And so saying, Tarub heaved her plump form up from the cushions where she had been sitting. Her orange silk skirts swaying indignantly, she stamped from the lady Zahra’s apartments.

  This display of anger, so uncustomary for fat, amenable Tarub, caused Zahra’s sense of proportion to be somewhat restored. She was allowing her unreasonable hatred of Zaynab to blossom out of control. She would draw attention to herself, and make herself a laughingstock within the harem. She knew there were many who had always been envious of her, and of the caliph’s affections for her. They would be delighted to see her fall. It was ridiculous that she be jealous of Zaynab simply because she was young and beautiful. With every passing day she grew older. Her beauty would eventually fade. She had no real power over anything.

  And power, Zahra knew, was the real key to happiness. Without power you became a victim. If Zaynab was honestly content to simply make Abd-al Rahman happy, happy to bear his children, then Zaynab was really a victim; a victim of her own success and lack of personal ambition, for the caliph would certainly lose interest in her as she grew swollen with the child. And after her brat was born, would Zaynab still hold his interest? Would she be able to regain it? Or would she be like so many of the other women Abd-al Rahman had loved—forgotten?

  Let Tarub run daily to the Court of the Green Columns to pay homage to Zaynab, the soon-to-be-forgotten concubine. They were two of a kind. Silly and weak. Their children would amount to nothing. Let Zaynab think by Tarub’s befriending her, that she herself would shortly extend her favor. She remembered the boldness of the girl in the baths in her early days at Madinat al-Zahra, asking for her favor, trying to wheedle her with a smile. I will never give her my favor, Zahra thought darkly. In fact I will ignore her entirely. She is nothing to me, and soon she will be nothing to the caliph.

  But the caliph was delighted that his favorite was expecting his child. He knew it had been conceived in that last passionate night they had spent in the summerhouse at al-Rusafa. The child would be born next summer. When Zaynab’s symptoms became unmistakable, he had called upon Hasdai ibn Shaprut to be certain that Zaynab was healthy and that the child would come to term. It would have been a scandal, had the doctor not been brought into the harem in secret. He came accompanied by his female assistant, Rebekah, and the caliph himself.

  “You are with child,” he said to Zaynab. It was not a question.

  “So I believe, my lord doctor,” she answered.

  “Tell me the signs that indicate this to you,” he said.

  “My link with the moon has been broken,” she began. “I am nauseous much of the time. Strong smells, particularly that of food cooking, give me a headache. My breasts are beginning to ache all the time, and the nipples are very, very tender; so much so that my lord cannot touch them any longer without giving me pain.”

  Hasdai nodded to himself, and Rebekah handed Zaynab a small glass bowl. “You must pee into it,” she instructed the patient. “My lord Hasdai needs to examine your urine.”

  Zaynab went behind a screen, with Oma holding the bowl. A few moments later Oma emerged and handed the bowl to the doctor. Zaynab came back and settled herself into a comfortable chair with a wide leather seat, watching.

  Hasdai ibn Shaprut held up the deep crystal bowl and peered closely at it. “Her urine is almost perfectly clear, my lord,” he said, “but you will note the faint, almost imperceptible cloudiness beginning.” Lowering his head, he sniffed strongly. “Healthy,” he commented. Then dipping his finger into the glass bowl, he tasted it. “Healthy,” he said. “A faint sweetness, but healthy.” Turning to the caliph, he said, “I would like your permission to examine her briefly, my lord.”

  The caliph nodded. “You may touch her, Hasdai. I know that you are not lustful.”

  The physician acknowledged his master’s words, saying to Zaynab, “Hold out your hands for me, lady,” and when she did, he looked carefully at them. “Her hands are not swollen, a good sign,” he told them. “Her nails are healthy, not blue, the little moons white, as they should be.” Then he said, “I must ask you to come out and lie down, lady.” When she did so, he gently palpated her belly. Satisfied, he thanked her and then said to the caliph, “She is positively with child, my lord, and healthy, in my opinion. She is broad in the hips and should give birth easily.”

  “I am not broad in the hips!” Zaynab said indignantly, sitting up again. “I am a slender girl, as my lord can attest.”

  “I chose the words badly, my lady,” Hasdai said. “The space between your hipbones is not narrow, which is a good sign.”

  “Indeed,” Zaynab replied irritably.

  “You are slim as a young nymph,” the caliph told her indulgently, an amused smile upon his face.

  “You mock me!” Zaynab cried, and burst into tears.

  “Irrational behavior, another sign that a woman is breeding,” Hasdai ibn Shaprut said dryly. “Emotions run high at a time like this.”

  “See my learned physician friend and his assistant out, Naja,” the caliph said solemnly, struggling to keep his laughter in check. He enfolded his beloved in his arms. “There, my love, do not weep. I adore you, Zaynab, and we shall have the most beautiful child. I pray Allah will bless us with a daughter who is as beautiful as her beautiful mother. We shall call her Moraima.”

  “We will?” She sniffled against his shoulder. His strong arms were comforting, and she nestled against him.

  “Yes, we will, my love,” he said quietly, kissing her soft lips.

  The door closed behind the others.

  Lifting her up, the caliph laid her upon her bed. Kneeling next to her, he undid the buttons upon her caftan and stroked her breasts. “You are so beautiful, Zaynab,” he told her tenderly, kissing her faintly rounded belly. “I love you, and I love our
child.”

  Winter came, to be followed by a bright spring and early summer. Zaynab’s belly grew swollen with her child. To everyone’s surprise, the caliph did not lose interest in his beautiful concubine. Indeed, his passion for her seemed to deepen with each passing day.

  “I believe he will make her his third wife,” Tarub said to Zahra. They were barely speaking, but with uncharacteristic meanness, Tarub wanted to hurt Zahra. She had not forgotten the other woman’s cruelty. “He is more interested in this child than any of the others he has had.”

  “She could perish in childbirth,” Zahra said coldly. “She is small-boned and undoubtedly weak. Or,” she smiled cruelly, “the child could die shortly after its birth.”

  “The caliph would not like to hear you threatening either his beloved or their child,” Tarub replied, smiling back at Zahra. “It is careless of you to do so in the presence of someone Abd-al Rahman would believe, Zahra. Your unreasonable jealousy makes you incautious.”

  “He will never take her as his wife,” Zahra said, though she was less than certain.

  Tarub laughed mockingly, and left Zahra to her black thoughts.

  Midway through the month of Muharram, which in Christian Europe would have been the end of July, Zaynab went into labor. The birthing chair, gilded and bejeweled, was brought into the Court of the Green Columns. Although they were not allowed inside, many harem women gathered in the courtyard to await word. Tarub came in the company of the caliph’s concubines Qumar and Bacea, who were also mothers of Abd-al Rahman’s children, to attend Zaynab. Naja admitted them, bowing respectfully. Qumar was a Persian, known for her healthy progeny. Bacea was a red-haired Galacian, mother of the caliph’s youngest son, Murad. Both concubines were in their mid-twenties.

  “Are your pains hard yet?” Tarub’s motherly face showed her concern.

  “She looks strong,” Qumar said cheerfully. “She will birth her child well, I can tell.”