by Jane Johnson
He is old and gaunt, with a dark face and close-cropped, snow-white beard. His eyes blaze, shrewd and fierce, under the brim of his intricately wound headcloth as he looks me up and down. I am taken aback when he addresses me in English. ‘Good day, Alys Swann. My captain has a tendency to exaggerate, but I see that for once his description has not done the subject justice.’
Made bold by disbelief, I look back steadily. ‘Lovely enough to be forced into servitude as a harlot to some monstrous sultan, or so I am told.’
His eyes gleam. ‘It strikes me that you are a woman of some conviction. Conviction and beauty are two qualities to be prized, but when combined, it is like harnessing a wild stallion and a mule to the same single carriage: the result can be … dangerous.’
‘For the coachman or the passengers?’
‘For all concerned. But especially for you. Alys Swann, it would be a shame indeed to see such spirit broken and such beauty marred.’
‘They would torture me into converting?’
‘The emperor will not lie with an infidel.’
‘Perhaps it is best to put me on the blocks and sell me to the highest bidder.’
He folds himself with surprising grace and suppleness to sit before me cross-legged so that he can look me in the eye. ‘The emperor is always the highest bidder, Alys Swann; even if the price he pays is not monetary. You will not understand this, I know, but believe me when I say that I dare not sell you elsewhere. Moulay Ismail would hear of it and have my head. Young women of such striking appearance are too rare a commodity in our markets not to draw attention.’
‘Then keep me here as a servant,’ I challenge.
‘It is not possible. I am sorry, but we must pass you on. You are a prize fit for an emperor, and for the emperor we shall prepare you.’
7
Three days later, Lalla Zahra comes to my room bearing a bundle of silks. She lays them down on the rug and sorts them into brightly coloured piles. Then she holds up one of the items against me. ‘This will suit you.’
It is a plain silk robe in a glowing green-blue, with wide sleeves and frogged buttons running down the front. It is unlike any piece of clothing I have ever worn. Pragmatic concerns, constrained finances and the strictures of a climate that encouraged worsteds and wools have prevented me from ever wearing anything so impractical. I itch to wear it; and yet I fight the urge. ‘I doubt it,’ I say, folding my arms.
‘Try it on.’
We stand there for a long moment, staring at one another. Then she smiles. ‘I understand your reluctance, Alys. I am not made of stone. But events have their inevitable path and it is impossible to go back from here. Let us make the best of it, and of you.’
I strip to my chemise and she drops the robe over my head and upraised arms. The silk feels like water against my hot skin, and too flimsy for decency.
‘This goes over the top of it.’ She offers another filmy garment, a sort of outer coat of embroidery on a ground of gold net. It is extremely finely worked. I find my traitor hands reaching for it as if they have a will of their own.
She shakes out my hair around my shoulders, then leads me to a mirror, and I stare at my unfamiliar reflection. The transformation wakes an almost physical pain. If I had looked like this, would Laurent have walked away as easily as he did?
Laurent was an itinerant artist: Holland is full of them these days. They say it is the easiest country to make a living in, if you have a little skill with paint and brush. After the war with Spain finally came to an end and trade flourished, every Dutch merchant suddenly wanted to show off his wealth, to surround himself not only with the beautiful, real objects that bolstered his faith in the new reality, but with representations of those objects too. Depictions of flowers and fruits, town scenes, portraits: a house was not a home unless its walls boasted a dozen framed images of the world inside and out. Holland hung its soul from a hook for all to see. Laurent had tried to make a living as a painter in his native France, but the French are snobs about such things and Laurent had made no name for himself. Although he had some skill, he was by no means an outstanding draughtsman; but in The Hague he made a good living. He was handsome; that was one reason why. Merchants’ wives and daughters encouraged his attentions. Black hair, dark eyes, sculpted bones: he was as unlike the broad, blond, ruddy-complexioned men of the town as could be. I never considered myself a romantic ninny whose head could be turned by a striking face or a flowery compliment, but when I met Laurent it was as if my heart had plunged off a cliff and the rest of me had followed an instant later.
He came to the door, seeking a commission: seeing a solidly built, well-presented merchant’s house he no doubt expected a solidly built, well-presented merchant to open the door to him, but when I explained the lack I saw his face fall before he recovered himself and started to make his apologies. It was that moment of perceived disappointment that was my downfall: for in that moment I fell in love. A perverse decision, indeed: to yearn after something you can never have. He had clearly shown me in that unguarded moment his true estimation of me: that I was neither rich enough nor lovely enough to interest him as either subject or object of his skills.
Although we had acres of empty wall on which to display a painting, the last thing we could afford was a commission. But I commissioned him anyway. Judith overheard our conversation. She was right behind me when I turned back into the house after standing there watching the Frenchman loping away down the street with a swagger that made my insides flutter.
‘We can’t afford it,’ she said. ‘You know we can’t.’
I was her employer and she just a servant, but when you bake bread together at sun-up each morning, these inequalities rather get knuckled in with the dough. I was used to her speaking her mind and rarely rebuked her for it.
‘He’s dangerous,’ she went on. ‘You can see it in the way he walks. Go after him: tell him you’ve changed your mind.’
I knew she was right, but I made her be quiet: having an external conscience is never a comfortable thing.
He came the next day, and the next and the next for three whole blissful weeks, and I sat on a chair in the kitchen garden for him. ‘The light will be better there for you,’ I said; meaning, there’s not a stick of furniture in the house, and you will guess my motives.
He set up his easel amongst the bean-poles and trod on my seedlings, but I never complained. It was intoxicating, having my portrait painted. He was used to dealing with uneasy subjects and had a way of flattering that made me go limp and complaisant. Being inexperienced, I took each compliment at face value. I hugged them to me (in place of him) in my narrow bed each night: to have such a handsome man examining my face minutely, even though I was paying him for the privilege, was a heady experience for an unmarried 24-year-old who had never considered herself worth looking at. Each touch of the brush on the canvas felt like a caress; and with each brushstroke I felt myself grow more beautiful. I dreamed of the life he and I would have together, the children I would bear him. And suddenly I wanted his children with a passion. I had never thought of having a child until that time: but after, the idea gripped me like a sickness.
Did I think I was exerting some sort of silent spell over him during those quiet hours? The more deeply I fell in love with him, the more sure I became that my feelings were reciprocated – by the tilt of his head, the set of his lips, by the way he stayed to take a glass of sugared lemon water or one of the little cakes I took such care to prepare for him each day.
He refused to show me the work while it was in progress, but by the time he completed the commission I had convinced myself of what I would see captured by his clever hands, in the immortal oils he squeezed out so lasciviously on to his palette. So at last when he revealed the finished painting I thought he was playing a trick on me, had substituted for mine another woman’s portrait. This woman was plain and dull-looking, in her sensibly high-necked dress and her starched white cap and collar … Her eyes, screwed up against t
he light in the kitchen garden, were lost in folds of white flesh; her nose was beak-like, her lips set in a firm line. She looked a severe Puritan virgin, rather than like the daughter of an English royalist who was dying for a French artist to tear off her clothes and ravish her amongst the broad beans and radishes.
I choked down my disappointment, paid him and bade him farewell. He had spent four hours every day for three weeks in my company: he took the money and was gone within five minutes, not looking back once. I never saw him again.
I took a long, hard look at that portrait. Then I burned it. I carry the painting within me as my image of who I am … and it is certainly not the woman staring back at me from Lalla Zahra’s mirror. This is the woman Laurent should have painted, this exotic minx, with her glowing skin and bright, loose hair, whose eyes shine with the same turquoise lights as the silk. This woman might have captivated him as I had so longed to do.
I give my reflection a wry smile: just as well, I think, that I did not.
Lalla Zahra misreads my expression for one of self-satisfaction. ‘You see, Alys, you will make a fine courtesan. The kaftan becomes you.’
She does not understand at all when I tear it off and throw it back at her and burst into tears. It is the first time I have cried since being taken captive.
The kaftan is only the beginning. I am taken to a place they call a hammam, a type of communal bath. There, I am stripped and marched into a very hot chamber filled with steam. It is hard to see for all the vapour, but when it clears I find large numbers of local women walking about stark naked with no more shame than Eve before she bit the apple. Some sit; others squat, displaying clefts as hairless as a child’s. All of them chatter away in their strange language, and their cries and laughter echo off the close stone walls. If I close my eyes, I can believe I have entered a colony of apes.
This easy nakedness shocks me, for in the streets the women cover themselves from head to toe in swathed attire that offers nothing to even the most prurient imagination. I will have to reassess the people I find myself amongst. If the gentler sex can be so brazen, what must the men be like, and how would they treat a woman like me?
The maids wash my hair and scrub my skin and I give up trying to fight them off, until, that is, I am taken into an anteroom and made to lie spread-eagled on a block of stone. The strip of chemise with which I have covered my loins is unceremoniously torn away, and for the next half an hour I have to close my eyes and think myself back in the tranquil courtyard at Lalla Zahra’s house, for the indignities I suffer are quite unspeakable.
Later that night, when I examine myself in the privacy of my room, all over my poor red skin is as innocent of hair as any of Raphael’s cherubs.
The next day Lalla Zahra tells me to make ready for my journey to Meknes. She hands me a book. ‘You are an educated and intelligent woman: I think you will appreciate it. Promise me you will read from it whenever you can.’ Then she hugs me briefly and regards me for a long moment, her eyes glittering in the bright light.
It is small and simply bound in dark brown leather. I think, foolishly, it is a Bible and thank her for her kind gesture. But when I open to the flyleaf I find it to be ‘The Alcoran of Mahomet, Translated out of Arabick into French. By the Sieur du Ryer, Lord of Malezair, and Resident for the French King, at Alexandria. And Newly Englished, for the satisfaction of all that desire to look into the Turkish Vanities. London Printed, Anno. Dom. 1649.’
The heathens’ holy book; and printed in London too! When I lift my head to voice my outrage, I find she has slipped away as silently as she came in. I throw the offensive book away from me; but when I go down into the courtyard there it is, perched on top of the bag of clothing and toiletries I am to take with me on my journey.
8
It is a Friday when we leave the city, the Mahometans’ holy day. All over the city the eerie cries of their prayer-callers echo through the warm air like the cries of foreign birds.
Three of us travel inside a curtained box. The two other women are dressed in a similar fashion to me, in cotton kaftans with bright scarves bound around their heads. Like me, they are blue-eyed, but they look as foreign as the Moroccan women, with their dark brows and lashes. We sit in stultified silence as the cart rattles and jolts its way through the narrow city streets. Once I twitch aside the curtain and a shaft of sunlight cuts through the carriage like a knife. The girl next to me flinches and turns her head away. Her hands are never still, her fingers working listlessly against one another in a nervous fashion.
There are men everywhere, flowing in a stream towards the nearest mosque: men in white robes and little skullcaps; men in tunics and wide trousers that stop short of the ankle; men in turbans or beneath hooded robes. Their faces are as brown as polished walnuts and their black eyes are inquisitive. Their stares are frank, piercing: like hunters who have sensed quarry.
After what seems an interminable interval, but may have been only two hours, we come to a halt.
‘Are we here already?’ asks the girl on the other side of the carriage.
‘You’re English!’ I cry, almost an accusation.
It is the other one who answers me. ‘Irish. We’re Irish, not English. We’re sisters, so we are, Theresa and Cecelia: sisters from Ringaskiddy, though there’s not many as knows where that is so I just say Cork.’
Which explains the telling of the phantom rosary beads. My mother was fiercely anti-Catholic, blamed the old king’s French wife for his, and therefore our family’s, downfall; and when his son married a Portuguese Catholic, she was incandescent with rage. I peer through the crack in the curtains. ‘We’re in a forest.’
They relax visibly. ‘Mother Mary, thank you. Cecelia and I have sworn to be martyrs like Saint Julia and Saint Eulalia.’ Cecelia bursts into noisy tears. Theresa pats her on the arm. ‘It’s all right: you shall be like Saint Julia: I shall be Eulalia.’ She turns back to me. ‘Saint Eulalia refused to recant her faith; so they cut her breasts off.’
Cecelia’s sobs rise to a wail.
‘They put her in a barrel full of glass shards and rolled it down a hill, so they did. But even that was not enough to make her turn apostate; so two executioners tore her flesh with iron hooks and held flames to her wounds till the smoke made her swoon. And then at last she was crucified on a cross and after that they decapitated her, and a dove flew right out of her neck. It was a miracle!’ Her eyes flash with fanatic fervour. ‘She was only twelve years old. Theresa and I have pledged our virginity to the Virgin Mother herself. We’ll be Saint Cecelia and Saint Theresa of Ringaskiddy. There will be girls all over Ireland saying their prayers to us in years to come.’
I do not think this is much of a consolation for such a violent death, but the desire for martyrdom is not enshrined in the Protestant religion. ‘I envy you your certitude,’ I say gently; and I do. Will my own faith bear me safely through the trials to come?
Suddenly the door to the carriage creaks open and a man peers inside. Cecelia stifles a shriek.
‘Sidi Qasem.’ I incline my head.
‘Miss Swann. We will make a brief stop here.’
While the two Irish girls are availing themselves of a thick stand of vegetation, I spy in the distance, heading towards us, a long line of men, prisoners, making their way along the forest track. The man leading them rides forward to meet Sidi Qasem. Leaning from his horse, he takes the old man’s outstretched hand and raises it to his lips. It seems there are hierarchies even amongst slavers.
Cecelia and Theresa stomp noisily through the undergrowth and stand beside me brushing burrs and grass seeds off their robes, their eyes trained on the group of men approaching. ‘Holy Mother.’ Cecelia crosses herself. ‘They look half starved.’
The sisters make for the safety of the carriage, but I cannot tear my eyes away. The men’s hands are bound with rope, and heavy weights have been secured to their ankles to impede any attempt at escape. Where the iron moves with the movement of their legs, the weights have r
ubbed raw, red patches into the skin, and so they shuffle to minimize the chafing. Many wear no shirts and have been burned across the shoulders by the sun; their ribs show as clearly as the staves in a wrecked boat, and when they pass I see that a number of them bear livid weals across their backs.
I feel ashamed to be watching them with good food in my belly and silk against my skin. Their faces are bleak and hopeless, each man trapped in his own private hell – except for one. He turns his head towards me as the line passes the carriage. He is tall and his skin is fair, his beard showing through in little tufts of yellow. I realize with a shock that he is barely more than a boy. ‘Pray for us, lady!’ he says in one language after another; then the overseer spurs his horse back and lashes at him with his whip so hard that the boy cries out and stumbles.
I turn away, my eyes swimming. What hope is there for any of us, that these men can be treated as little more than beasts?
Sidi Qasem appears beside me. ‘Why the tears, lady?’
‘Must they walk all the way to Meknes?’
‘They will walk, or they will die.’
‘And what will happen to them when they get there?’
‘They will help to build Moulay Ismail’s new city. If they do not die on the march, they will certainly do so at Meknes. In a week; a month; a year if they are hardy. Ismail is a hard taskmaster: he makes no allowance for illness or frailty.’
‘Such a waste of human life, just to build a city.’
‘It is not “just a city”, Alys. It is a devotion to God. Our religion is a civilization-building religion: it came out of the desert and within a century it had created the greatest civilization in the world. Allah commanded us not to let a desert remain a desert, or a mountain to remain a mountain. The world must be transformed to the divine pattern; and it is in that transformation that we find our connection to the divine. Meknes is a prayer to God, a single song of praise, and Ismail is both architect and praise-singer. We all play our part in the grand design.’
