All the while, droning from a high stool, a reader imparted to her from a scroll the iron-clad rules of concubinage, returning to the beginning each time the scroll came to an end and repeating. "Thy master is beloved of Allah, and thy master is thy lord. Thou shalt hear and obey thy master's every wish. Thou shalt anticipate his needs and fulfill them. Thou shalt crawl to his feet in thy abasement, and wash them gently in rose water and oil them. Thou shalt amuse thy master in one thousand different ways. Thou shalt answer thy master's desire upon the couch of love with thine own, and take him lovingly in thy hand. Thou shalt delight his eye with thy form and face, and his ear with thy soft voice, singing songs..."
At last Dolores stood upon her feet, still wrapped in her cotton cloth, to face Fawzia's critical scrutiny. Dolores felt that she virtually glowed from cleanliness, and to judge from the harem mistress's approving nods she probably did.
"Well, well, you appear a great deal more appetizing than you did last night. You have beautiful hair, girl. Wavy and thick." Fawzia passed her hand lightly over Dolores's burnished mane cascading to the small of her back, and then stood back for a better look overall. "Your complexion cannot be faulted either—smooth and warm, like the blush of a peach. But you are too skinny." She looked down. "And your feet are too big."
"My feet are not big!" Dolores glared ungratefully. But she could not deny she felt wonderful, better than she had in weeks, the fatigue, depression, and panic scrubbed and massaged and powdered away by Fawzia cool-fingered assistants, the pleasure of being beautiful again restoring her pluck.
"Can you dance?" the harem mistress asked.
"No."
"Can you sing or play on an instrument?"
"No."
Fawzia heaved up a short laugh. "Well, you can be taught. But you better have other attributes, my fine Christian lady, or your lord will soon tire of you. There are too many women already here in the Alhambra who pine away their lives forgotten."
Dolores gaped at her. "Is this the Alhambra Palace, then? Have I been cast into the Sultan's harem?"
"Yes, but you are not destined for the Grand Sultan Abu Abdullah, stupid; have you heard nothing? The Sultan pays no heed at all to the women he already possesses. What would he need you for, untalented as you are? The Sultan has given you to his favorite courtier, Jamal ibn Ghulam. Though I would not understand why an ill-tempered Christian scarecrow as you should be so lucky."
"Lucky?"
"Yes, unbeliever, you will be the envy of the entire harem. The Sayed Ghulam is a virile, handsome man with eyes to cause the houris in Paradise to faint with delirium and a voice like a majestic lion." Fawzia crossed her arms over her ample stomach, causing her myriad bracelets to jingle. "But I do not know. It worries me to think you cannot—at least—excite and seduce him with the dance. You may not please him overmuch."
Dolores's eyes flashed; she drew herself up and put cold contempt in her voice. "Well, mistress Fawzia, he will have to find another to seduce him. I want none of him. He is ugly and vile and if he puts his horrible hands on me I shall kill him," she cried. The realization of why she was being so pampered hit her and lanced a spasm of nausea through her.
Quite unperturbed, with not even a frown on her face, Fawzia stepped closer and without warning forcibly swung the flat of her great palm twice to hit Dolores swift, resounding blows on both cheeks, almost knocking her off her feet and leaving her head ringing and her face stinging with red marks. Noting with satisfaction the stunned tears of pain welling in her insolent charge's eyes, the woman shook her once, impatiently, by the shoulders. "Perhaps you were previously a lady, but you are now just a slave and so shall you always be. You have no rights, you have no thoughts, you have only duties: obedience, subservience, and silence. Your master is your lord; you are his property. He may treat you kindly or strangle you if he wishes, and the sooner you learn that submission is your only recourse the better for you. Do you know what we do with unruly females?"
Dolores shook her head, dazedly.
Fawzia crossed to the window and pointed through the grill. "Come here then and look. And learn, if you are wise, Christian."
Outside, opposite their window and at the base of a rectangular, mosaic-tiled court stood a strange device, unshielded from the bright sun: a platform of planks on which rested a long block of wood and two upright poles supporting a heavy yoke that could be raised or lowered to any height. The platform was occupied. A mocha-skinned, raven-haired Berber girl knelt naked upon it, her hands captured by round holes in the block of wood, her shoulders and head pressed down by the yoke so that she suffered a painful, bent-double position. A group of brightly dressed women crowded around, laughing and giggling and pelting the crying girl with pebbles and rotten fruit. Some had long peacock feathers with which they tickled the soles of her feet and her belly. Some pulled her hair or reached up and slapped at her bare haunches while she wept and weakly pleaded with them to stop.
"The punishment yoke is just for minor infractions, where the girl's beauty is not to be marred," Fawzia noted. "That one has always been a troublemaker. She has been there a day and will be released tonight. But if she continues to misbehave she will earn the wire lash."
Horrified, Dolores whispered, "But why do those women torment her? Is she not one of them, one of this harem?"
Fawzia shrugged her fat shoulders. "They distress her because they are bored, that is why. But it would go worse for you. This quarter is for the Sultan's wives and women and his guests, as such you are. But some facilities are private, only for the royal concubines. Your master will have to make use of the punishment yokes located out in the open of the First Plaza, where any man that passes can see your shame and toss buckets of filth on you or spit at you, anything so long as you are not marked. So, if my noble Spanish lady does not want to kneel naked and covered with dung to amuse the loiterers in the plaza, I advise her to calm herself. And never, never speak of harming your master. For those words alone you could be blinded and crippled and sent to amuse the beggars in the Albayazin. But I shall be lenient with your ignorance—the first time."
She jerked her head sideways as an order to Dolores. With a last, subdued glance at the humiliated woman outside, Dolores stepped away from the window to face the callous grins of Fawzia's assistants. One of them gave her a pair of soft slippers and a wide blue silk robe to slip over her head. Her hair was left undressed, simply tied back with a silk ribbon.
"There, that finishes you for a while. New women are ordinarily trained for several days before being taken to their masters, but yours is in a hurry to assess his purchase," Fawzia mocked, her beady eyes still reinforcing the message that she meant to be obeyed. "Go where you wish, or rest in your cubicle. We will find you again later. The serving maids will give you food. They all know a few words in your language." She motioned to her assistants and turned to lead them out, but swung back again to where Dolores stood. "Oh, there is one more matter. Your past life is dead; you shall never leave here except to be sold or buried. Therefore you must choose another name. That is the rule. What shall it be?"
Dolores could no more utter another name she wished to be known by than she could stop the rigidity that took her muscles again at the harem mistress's casual words or the dread that plucked at her insides. She stood silent, nonplussed.
"Well then, I shall give you one, a good Moslem name to please your new lord." Fawzia squinted her eyes to study Dolores for a moment and tapped one fat ringed finger to her lips. A pleased chuckle issued from her creased throat. "Karima, that's what it shall be. Karima is your name, girl, and do not forget it." As she lumbered away Fawzia threw over her shoulder, "That means 'gentle.'" And there trailed back a chortle of mischief from her.
Dolores followed the women along the gallery and into a small, columned hall glowing with the brilliant colors of mosaic tile walls. The sound of women's voices could be heard from beyond its graceful, farther archway. Somewhat forlornly she watched Fawzia and her assistants
disappear through an opposite curtained doorway without even another glance at her, and suddenly she stood alone. She looked at her red palms and raised her wrist to her nose to sniff the exotic oil they had rubbed into her skin while she thought If they left her to herself like this they must be certain she could not escape the harem. Ha, perhaps not Dolores, the Baroness de la Rocha, but the Dolores of Ciudad Real's mean alleys and cul-de-sacs might. And would. In one manner or another.
She raised up her head, squared back her shoulders under the sensuous slip of the silk robe, and headed toward the garden which she could see framed in the archway. Her first task in the few hours she had was to study her surroundings and understand what a physical escape might involve. She stepped warily into the garden but immediately jerked herself back under the arch as she was almost run into by several laughing, shouting women in flying veils and jangling jewelry pelting along after another hooting girl who fled them holding something above her head. Dolores's ears filled with their laughter and the musical sound of female chatter, along with the splash of water and twang of a stringed instrument. She stepped from the cool shadow under the archway into the most beautiful garden she could have ever imagined.
Shrubs and grass and flowers marked off little lawns, each with its own splashing fountain and shady almond trees and complement of ladies of the harem, lounging in shades of apricot, pink, red, gold, pale blue, and lilac silk attire more colorful than the beds of huge roses and peonies surrounding them. The great, verdant garden, bordered by tall poplars and threaded with pebbled paths, centered upon a long, rectangular, azure pool of floating lilies and gliding white swans, its raised marble rim supporting at intervals brass pots of flowing shrubs. Iridescent peacocks sounded their raucous cries as they strutted between the lawns, birds chirped and sang in the trees, the voices of small children piped as they ran playing along the hedges.
Dazzled by the sunlit glory of the garden, Dolores at length strolled slowly up and down the paths, trying to observe without herself being observed, although she received many curious looks and even some polite nods and smiles. But none of the women stopped her or spoke to her, for which she was, for the moment, grateful. For her part she was also startled: surprised that the handsome, pantalooned women resting on the grass or sitting in groups on cushions, or trailing lazy hands in the coolness of the pool did not seem mistreated in any outward respect; con- founded that they did not even act unhappy or fearful— although she thought she detected a note of petulance in their high laughter. There were not half as many of them as she expected from the fulminating tales she had heard, and only a few children. The women chatted together, did needlework, and listened to female musicians, and the younger ones played shrieking games of tag or threw a ball with seemingly light hearts.
She circled the garden several times but found no openings in the monolithic, high walls enclosing two sides. She pattered down the cool galleries which opened onto the garden but found only more sleeping cubicles, two large halls with cushions, gaming boards, and other objects for amusement scattered about, and, guarded by a eunuch and squatting female slaves awaiting summons, the private apartments of the Sultana Morayama, and Ayaxa, the honorable mother of the Sultan, so she was informed. She peered into the harem's main bathchamber, a vast, echoing space where women were laughing and splashing or lying languidly in the soothing rays of sun from the high windows. And there were other chambers she came to, of ordinary uses. The succession of galleries and halls, she found, either ended opposite the harem garden in small, walled patios, or debouched into the same entry court she had been flung into the night before, its massive gates still shut and silent. Fawzia had spoken the truth. This barred and guarded portico was the only way into or out of the Alhambra's harem.
Harem! She felt foolish in her disappointment at finding the fabled and dreaded harem of the Grand Sultan of Granada a peaceful wing of quiet halls and gardens peopled by pampered, indolent concubines attended by scurrying female slaves and bored eunuchs, who, although she had already seen one roughly separate two angry squabblers, seemed to smile more than they scowled.
In fact, she now really believed the attendant who had beautified her and gossiped in her ear about how lucky she was to have been given away to another besides the Sultan. The ruler neglected his women, the slave whispered in Castilian, calling so seldom for any of them except the Sultana that many wept day and night from the loneliness of their bodies and the barrenness of their wombs. The attendant was a gap-toothed, rough-handed peasant girl of Andalusian heritage, but her scornful, indignant tone shocked Dolores. Far from being the objects of lustful orgies and the cruel passions of the Sultan and his friends, these desirable women bound in concubinage to the throne were wearing away their lives in rejected seclusion.
Still, she could find little sympathy for such languishing, captured butterflies for she had stared into the brazen eyes of the Moor that bought her and seen his appetite rise for her, and her fate promised to be immeasurably worse than theirs. She sat drooping on a marble bench in one of the small, empty patios and tried to think what to do next. She scooped up water from the fountain to wet her dry mouth, but cared nothing for food as the warm sun slipped down the sky. And here Fawzia and her trailing assistants found her and reclaimed her, late in the afternoon, leading her back to the dressing room of the small bathchamber.
Forcing her down on the settle again, the slave women set to work rubbing heavily perfumed unguent into her skin, from chin to toes. They blended a scented, light oil into their palms and then passed these lightly over her hair to give it shine. They combed her hair back from her forehead and plaited it into one thick braid intertwined with green, gold, and silver ribands whose tasseled ends would bump gently against the small of her back when she stood. They smoothed her complexion with a fine powder and painted her lids with silver pigment, then outlined her tilted eyes with broad strokes of kohl and darkened her brows. To her pink lips they applied a greaseless ointment to make them look moist and inviting, adding a giggled warning not to lick them and spoil the effect.
In spite of her passive cooperation that far (for she had not forgotten the lesson of the girl on the punishment platform) they had to force her into the outlandish costume: wide, floppy pantaloons of silver cloth and a flimsy, low-necked gauze bodice separated by a sash of crushed purple silk wound about her slim waist. They gave her no chemise at all; only a short, sleeveless green jacket trimmed with gilt bangles to partially cover the almost transparent blouse and save her from nakedness. A green hat, like a little round box, was fastened to her head with a strap under her braid, and a spangled chiffon shawl was pinned over it with the ends left floating behind. She thought scornfully that they were negating most of their hard work when they settled across the bridge of her nose a little, cobwebby veil—Fawzia called it a yashmak—which covered her face from nose to chin. But when they held up a long, undistorted mirror to her she was chagrined to see how exciting and lustrous her eyes appeared underscored by the cosmetics and especially the subtly revealing, gossamer veil.
Fawzia rummaged in a large, ivory box and pulled out a silver band tinkling with bells, which was clasped about Dolores's ankle, and round silver hoops hung with tiny dangles, which were fastened in her ears. The harem mistress stood back, arms folded on her big bosom, and gazed at her with satisfaction. "There! Now you look like something. You may have the silver anklet and earrings, and if you are dutiful and pleasing your lord may buy you other trinkets with which to adorn yourself."
"And when do you clap on the iron slave collar?" Dolores demanded bitterly.
"Slave collar, so that your master must caress cold metal about your throat, stupid? There is no need for such caution, anyone can see you are a concubine. Wives and daughters wear more dignified attire, brocaded tunics and embroidered shoes."
Dolores looked down at her dainty, bare feet shod in purple-dyed, turned-up leather soles held to her feet by cords about the ankle and rings of gilded leather abou
t each big toe.
"And be warned, daughter of the Cross," Fawzia continued without rancor, "no female of any rank, with the exception of the Sultana, is allowed to exit from the palace except in the company of her master or husband, or with a signed and sealed pass. The guards are alert, for it means their life if someone is missing. You will learn our ways," she finished, and the last was really an order, but softened by a slight encouraging smile.
Dolores was taken to her cubicle and left to wait there until she was sent for by her new master. She heard footsteps and chatter pass back and forth outside her drawn curtain, and soon there was the rattle of crockery and the smell of food being transported past her cubicle.
She felt primed, adorned like a pagan maiden going to the sacrificial altar. Panic was rising in her breast again, causing her to wring her hands until her fingers ached. She thought of the Moor with his hard, pitiless expression and his obvious power and wealth as a favorite of the Sultan's and shuddered. At the prison he had turned deaf ears to her plea for ransom; she felt certain he would do the same with any other plea contrary to his will. She paced the tiny chamber and cursed how tightly sealed was this harem quarter. Unless she found a chance to run and hide herself as she was taken to the Moor's chamber, to hide and hope to find a way out of the palace itself, unless she could do this she saw no way to shake her fist in the face of this enslavement and its promise of torture for obstinacy except to take her own life.
Cold fingers wrapped themselves around her heart as she tried to understand what it would be like to be no more, as she contemplated the end of her brief existence in a pool of her own blood or dangling from a scarf tied to a tree limb. Frantically her eyes swept the room, lighting on her old clothes, which had been shoved aside but were not yet disposed of; and in this pile she caught something glinting in the last rays of the sun from the window. With a few quick steps she stooped, and there, caught in the lining of her cloak hood, was the large, bead-headed pin which had held the coils of her hair in place. Joyfully she grabbed it up, seeing that the other amber bead which covered the sharp point of the sturdy, six-inch skewer was lost.
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