by Jane Johnson
With the calm pragmatism of the truly desperate, we leave behind three thousand tents, all the costly treasures looted from the palace at Sijilmassa, and the bodies of the two hundred slaves who refused to walk another step, and make a silent retreat by the light of the full moon.
A full day’s march later, we are in sight of the Red-Walled City. Since plague still rages within, Ismail returns to the hills, where we sack a Berber village and eat our way through every sheep and goat that the villagers have cosseted through this hard winter. The mood is one of elation. We are alive! The Defender of the Faithful has yet again proved worthy of his title.
By the time we reach Dila, where the court has relocated, more than half a year has passed. With every step, I find myself gripped, not by anticipation but by dread. Has Alys survived the birth, and, if so, has she then survived the predations of Zidana?
It is a torment not to be able to storm straight into the harem and seek her out, and there is no one left behind of whom I may safely ask news. Instead, as the sultan avails himself of the luxury of a long-awaited steam bath, I find myself wandering between the soldiers’ camp and the court, a full member of neither one nor the other. There are celebrations all around as friends and families are reunited; wails of mourning as news of the fallen is received. But no one cares whether I am alive or dead, and I feel like a ghost as I drift around the compound.
‘You look forlorn, Nus-Nus.’
I turn. It is the cook, Malik. We clasp arms like old friends. We are old friends. From being cast down in the depths of melancholy, suddenly I am raised up on high. We grin and grin at one another.
‘Come,’ he says. ‘There’s lamb roasting for the emperor’s supper, and his highness’s favourite sweet pumpkin and chickpea couscous. You look as if you could do with some feeding up.’ He holds me at arm’s length, regards me with his head cocked. ‘You’ve changed, you know. Lost weight, not that you had much to lose; you look older.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Not in a bad way. Anyway, war will do that to a man. Toughens you up, I suppose. The High Atlas in winter certainly isn’t my idea of fun.’ He leads me to the long tent that functions as his kitchen. It is hot and bustling, full of pungent vapours that make my mouth water so hard I have to keep swallowing rather than drool like a dog. I take my place on a stool while he chops and shouts and stirs, and at last he brings me a dish of couscous ladled over with fresh, bright vegetables – vegetables! for the first time in weeks – and then anoints it with a magnificent scarlet gravy and for moments on end I just sit there with the dish cradled between my hands, gazing at it. Ruby tomatoes, emerald peas, opal chickpeas, golden squash. After our winter fare in the monotone mountains, it is a feast for the eyes, a treasure-trove of colour. I can hardly bring myself to spoil its perfection by eating it; but then Malik drops into the middle of the dish a steaming shank of lamb fragrant with garlic and cumin and I cannot help but fall upon it like the dog I am.
As I eat he tells me the news of the court, most of which streams in a meaningless babble past my ears as I apply myself to my food, until I catch the word ‘swan’, at which my head shoots up. ‘Say that again,’ I mumble through a full mouth.
‘The White Swan was delivered of a child, though there has been a lot of discussion as to its nature.’
My heart soars and dips like a dragonfly over a pond. ‘And are they both in good health, mother and child?’ I ask, trying to sound nonchalant.
Malik shrugs. ‘There were rumours … It is not for me to say. I am sure she is well enough, but –’ He has loose, mobile features, ridges of soft skin on his brow that furrow when he concentrates. He turns his steady brown gaze upon me. ‘Take care, Nus-Nus: there are malicious gossips who like to whisper that the child is yours.’
I stare at him. ‘Mine? That would be quite a feat!’
The frown becomes a half-smile, lopsided, ironic. ‘I know, Nus-Nus; and you know. But, even so, be aware. Your tenderness towards her hasn’t gone unnoticed.’
I force out a laugh and bend my head to my food again so that he will not see the truth of it, and eat my way to the base of the dish, long past the point at which I am no longer hungry.
‘So, Nus-Nus, How is your first taste of real food in all these weeks?’
Ismail is being uncharacteristically solicitous as we go through the daily rigmarole of my tasting his dinner for poison. I had completely forgot myself earlier. My belly feels as if it may give birth at any moment to a child made of pumpkin and couscous, with beady white chickpeas for eyes. It is all I can do not to belch as I force another spoonful in. I swallow and smile, swallow and smile. I force myself to rapture, making suitably appreciative noises, and as soon as the meal is declared safe for the sultan to eat, I am dismissed and waste all of Malik’s artistry by heaving it up into a bucket.
The next day the sultan visits his harem. First he pays his respects to Zidana, who exclaims dolefully over his lost weight.
‘Djinns have taken your flesh! Someone has cursed you!’
Ismail has little patience with talk of djinns. ‘I think you have stolen it yourself,’ he tells her, slapping her ever-more capacious rump. The empress is so surprised by this breach of protocol that she says nothing, but lets him lead her away to his quarters, to be the first in this new chapter of the couching book.
This gives me the chance I have been waiting for. I tell the harem door-guard that I have come to take back my monkey, and he waves me through with a knowing smile that I do not like the look of. Once inside the harem, another problem: Alys is nowhere to be found. I accost a harem servant. ‘I don’t know, she keeps moving,’ one girl tells me in exasperation. ‘Don’t waste your time with her.’
Another says, ‘The White Swan? Don’t make me laugh!’ and walks on, as if I had asked the whereabouts of a unicorn or a phoenix.
And then I spy Makarim, Alys’s body-slave. She sees me coming and makes to dodge me, but I stand in her way. ‘Where is the Englishwoman?’
The smile she gives me is mocking. ‘The djinns took her.’
I catch her by the arm. ‘What do you mean? Where is she?’
She tries to pull free, but I am desperate now. I shake her, not gently.
Makarim squeals. ‘Take your hands off me! I will scream and have the guards cut your head off!’
‘Where is Alys? I know you know!’
‘What if I do? She is just a crazy woman and you are just a cut-man. She has no wits and you have no balls: be damned to both of you!’
This is not the compliant little body-slave in whose charge I left Alys: something has changed in the balance of harem power. My fingers dig into the tender flesh of her upper arm: suddenly I want to hurt her. As if she knows this, she makes a sudden, jerky effort and wrenches free of me. But, instead of running away, she steps out of my reach and just looks at me. There is something in her expression that reinforces the sense I have that she knows too much, something bold and gleeful and exultant. She examines the reddening marks on her arms, then stares back at me, her eyes hard and glittering.
‘I will pay you back for that, eunuch,’ she spits like a little cat, and then she runs.
I want to go after her, but what is the point? She will make a fuss and shout for the guards, show them her bruises. I turn and continue my search, running here and there, ducking my head into tents, feeling the panic rise.
At last, quite by chance, I come across an odd little makeshift shelter on the edge of the harem where a crone sits alone, a dark blanket draped over her head, hunched over a charcoal brazier on which she is cooking something for her lunch. ‘Good day, lady,’ I start, and she stiffens as if I have alarmed her. I am about to ask her if she knows where the English courtesan may be found, when something comes flying out of the shelter and hurtles towards me, chattering madly. I feel the scrape of cold claws tracking across my skin, and then suddenly there is Amadou on my shoulder, bending his monkey-face towards me, baring all his yellow, yellow teeth. ‘Hello, my
lad, have you missed me?’ I ruffle the fur on the top of his head and he butts his skull against my hand and narrows his eyes in delight.
I turn to apologize to the old woman for the trouble my monkey has been causing her when she throws back the blanket and I realize it is no crone after all. Malik had told me I appeared older and thinner, but the effects of a hard winter in the mountains have taken a worse toll on the White Swan. She is gaunt and sallow, with dark rings under her eyes, which seem twice their usual size. Her clothes are in a wretched state, filthy and worn; her body seems misshapen. She stares at me as if she has seen a wraith.
In some alarm, I set the monkey down and kneel beside her. ‘Alys. My God, Alys, what has happened to you?’
I would deny it if I could, but the smell of her almost knocks me backwards. Is this the radiant beauty I left behind, a woman as ripe and fragrant as a pomegranate, of whom I dreamed every night? What in the world would stop someone as fastidious as Alys Swann from visiting the hammam with the other women? Only something appalling, only fear, or madness …
‘I thought you were never coming back.’
Her voice is as harsh as a crow’s croak, and she does look like a crow, all black and hunched over. Overcome by compassion, I forget that at any moment someone might walk behind the tents and spy us, and reach out for her and pull her to me. I hold her tightly, taint and all, bury my face in the matted tarnish of her once-gold hair. As I do so, something moves between us, and then begins to wail. When I look down, I realize that Alys has strapped the baby across her chest. It waves its fists peremptorily, and its face screws up into a ball of noisy demand. As she moves away from me to suckle the babe, a sharp pain shoots through me. Everything has been for this: servitude, humiliation, captivity, apostasy; and now even madness. And yet the child itself is gloriously, selfishly unaware of its mother’s sacrifice. It is a greedy beast: it seems to feed for ever, as if it would suck the last human morsel of her away, leaving nothing but a hollow shell of flesh behind. Perhaps Makarim is right: perhaps Alys has been taken by djinns …
I bow my head over the pan of soup that is cooking over the brazier – a thin-looking mixture of vegetables and chicken bones innocent of any discernible seasoning and apply myself to stirring this grey gruel while my mind churns. Striving for some small degree of normality, I say, ‘So, Alys, tell me: what have you called the baby?’ I realize I have not even asked its sex.
She looks up, and her eyes are full of love: but not for me. ‘He is Momo, short for Mohammed; Mohammed James, one name for his new family, one for his old. Is he not beautiful?’
All I can see is a tumble of yellow hair and an intent red mouth. I make a non-committal sound; it is a boy, then. Ismail will be pleased. ‘Tell me what has happened that you are out here in this … condition,’ I urge her. ‘Was it Zidana that drove you away?’ My ruse with the Targui woman must have failed.
She laughs, the sound like a rusty hinge. ‘Zidana, ah, yes, it always comes back to her. But not only her: there has been an unholy conspiracy against me. You would not believe the things they have done …’
It is as if someone has unstoppered a leak in a bucket: the words pour out of her. She tells me, in a rush, how Momo was stolen from her, how she feared the baby would be killed. She tells me that for these last weeks she has lived in this terrible limbo – neither in the harem nor out of it – keeping herself out of everyone’s view. At all times she has the child strapped to her: she sleeps fitfully, sitting upright, as I found her. ‘That way if they surprise me, they cannot easily separate us,’ she explains, as if it is the most natural thing in the world. At night she has walked the camp when everyone else is asleep, and gathered scraps for the cookpot and linens for the child. All the while she tells me these things, as if they are sane and normal behaviour, I stare at her, aghast.
‘There was a time when I thought your ape would be the death of us,’ she confides, ‘but if it were not for Amadou’s scavenging skills I don’t know what would have become of us. He is a fine little thief! Heaven alone knows where he has managed to find figs and oranges at this time of year.’ She smiles and her face is transformed and I see in a sudden flash the Alys I left behind and my heart tears all the more.
‘I am back now.’ I swallow. ‘And so is Ismail. No one will dare do anything to harm you or the child now. All shall be well.’
She stares at me. ‘I cannot stay here. You have to get us away! You and Ismail will go away again and then they will kill us.’ Then she clutches my arm with such urgency I can feel her fingertips digging down to the bones. ‘Get us out of here, Nus-Nus, I beg you.’
Can it be done? Insane schemes tumble through my mind: darkening the giveaway golden hair of both mother and child with ashes and water, making myself a beard of sheepskin, bribing a guard or two (or five, or ten … but with what? I have no money) to get us into the soldiers’ compound, and beyond, where the camp-followers lurk on the outskirts of the settlement. And from there, a mule, or two, and a long trek on back roads and through open country to Meknes to see if Daniel al-Ribati is still there and may help us leave the country … Almost I have persuaded myself that all this is possible, when I hear the high, brassy sound of Fassi trumpets blaring out, announcing the arrival of the sultan, and the chill of cowardice runs through my veins, extinguishing my hot thoughts. I turn my mind swiftly in a different direction.
‘Go quickly to the hammam,’ I tell Alys. ‘Take your child and clean yourselves thoroughly. I will send someone to you, a trustworthy servant, with clean clothes for both of you. Then you must come out and present Momo to the sultan.’
Tears spark to her eyes; she begins to protest. I have to shake her. ‘It is the only way, I promise you.’
I dash back to the kitchens. ‘Malik, I must speak with you!’
He looks alarmed. ‘You can’t bring that monkey in here!’
Amadou chatters excitedly: there is food everywhere. I keep hold of him so tightly he becomes infuriated and tries to bite me. ‘Malik, how old is your oldest girl?’
‘Mamass? Twelve, coming up thirteen.’
‘Perfect.’ One-handed, I take off my belt-pouch and shake the contents on to the table. ‘It’s yours. All of it. Or put it away for her marriage chest.’ I explain my plan and he stares at me. I know exactly what he is thinking, but in the end he just gives me a look and sighs, then tucks the coins swiftly into his money-belt, rattles off some orders to his kitchen team, wipes his hands on his apron and strides away.
Twenty minutes later Amadou is safely tied to a tent post and Mamass is trotting along beside me, looking by turns apprehensive and excited. It is an honour to work in the harem, especially serving those who have given birth to the sultan’s sons, but she does not know what to expect; however, she is a bright girl and has learned much from having a father in such a position at court. ‘Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut,’ I warn her. ‘Always be pleasant to the empress and her favourites; but if ever you sense a threat to the White Swan, come running for me as fast as you can.’
She peers at me, all eyes, over the top of the bundle of clothing her mother has given us: cotton, not silk, but as clean as snow, and nods solemnly, taking it all in.
I wait for them outside the hammam, trying to look as if I have business there. When Alys finally emerges, the breath rushes out of me: she looks like a goddess, all white and gold, the babe a cherub in her arms. We are just making our way towards the main pavilion when we meet the sultan’s entourage coming the other way – hard to miss since it is preceded by four eunuch heralds bearing enormously long trumpets. The heralds and attendants (sweeping the ground before the sultan with gigantic ostrich feathers) part, and suddenly there is Ismail, with Zidana right beside him. Her eyes fix instantly, with chill fury, on Alys and Momo. She tugs her husband’s arm. ‘There are some new girls I have had brought in for you, my lord, from the corsairs’ latest trawl of the Mediterranean. One of them is from China, a pale slip of a thing, breasts like apples
and hair of black silk, destined for the harem of the Great Turk himself. You will like her, she is very exotic; but fiery too. I have had to cut her fingernails …’
But Ismail has eyes only for the child in Alys’s arms. He strides forward, with barely a glance at Alys herself, takes Momo from her and holds him up wonderingly. ‘My son?’
Zidana’s face darkens murderously, but the child is in the sultan’s arms now.
‘Don’t be taken in, O light of the world: what you see is foul sorcery,’ she says as he unswaddles it. ‘The child is a demon only pretending to be a boy. My women have seen the White Swan consorting with djinns, suckling them, lying with them, bargaining with them to gain the power to produce this illusion. Ask anyone: they have stolen her wits – she has been living amongst them in the filth and refuse of the camp. People hear her singing with them at twilight; she has been seen dancing with them naked. And the men! Always there are men sniffing around her. I have heard she leaves the harem secretly at night and spreads her legs for any man she takes a fancy to. She is a lewd creature, my love. With my own eyes I have seen her lying with the Hajib –’ She makes a signal and Makarim comes sliding past her and casts herself on the ground before the sultan.
‘My lord, it is true! I too saw this happen. I was the servant to the White Swan, but she sent me away when I tried to stop the grand vizier entering the tent. “Let him in, let him in!” she wheedled. And when I protested that it was not seemly, she struck me across the head in a great rage and drove me away, so I ran to find the empress and she came running to prevent such dishonour taking place in your majesty’s harem, and so it was that she witnessed this evil scene!’
