by Jane Feather
Tonight he would, superficially at least, return matters between them to their pre-quarrel amity, and he would make absolutely certain from now on that nothing happened between Aicha and Sarita of which he was unaware. He could see no way of forbidding their meetings that wouldn’t give rise to awkward speculation and put Aicha on her guard, so he must orchestrate those meetings himself.
He crossed the Court of the Lions and entered a marble-paved hall where musicians were playing. He paused to watch the delicate, sinuous motions of two veiled dancing girls. The men in the hall were relaxing, their voices low in deference to the music. Moonlight filtered down from the cupola, blending with the soft glow of oil lamps. Abul glanced up to the balcony over a small inner porch. It communicated with the women’s apartments, and he wondered if any of them were watching the entertainment from behind the latticed jalousies.
He crossed to the stairs in the porch and went up to the balcony. As he expected, the balcony was deserted. Anyone who had witnessed his arrival below would have hastened to alert the seraglio to his impending appearance. As he stepped through the arched entrance to the main parlor of the seraglio, he was immediately greeted with a welcoming chorus of soft voices as the women came forward in a silken rustle, clearly ready for him. Aicha was not one of their number.
They poured him sherbet, offered stuffed dates, chattered of their doings, but no questions were asked of the caliph. His business was his own to divulge or not as he felt appropriate. He spent a few private minutes with each of them, asking about their health, their happiness, the health and happiness of their children. It was a routine visit. The vizier kept him informed of any changes or problems within the seraglio, so he knew who had had a tooth pulled the previous week, whose child had fallen off its pony, who had quarrelled with whom, and was able to weave his way through the delicate domestic politics of this feminine domain without awkwardness.
Aicha continued to be conspicuous by her absence, but Abul was content to give her the opportunity for a gracious belated appearance that would demonstrate her status as sultana. She was probably harrying her handmaid over the all-vital business of her dress and hair, jewels and perfume.
His supposition was quite correct. When Aicha had been told of Abul’s approach, she had left the parlor and gone immediately to her own apartments, summoning Nafissa. This morning, he had said he had forgiven her, so maybe this visit would be a public demonstration of that fact. But she couldn’t appear eager and placatory in front of the other women; that would imply she had reason to be anxious for his forgiveness. She must make a dignified entrance after he had spent time with the others, thus indicating that she had a special place in his attentions and was not to be grouped with the rest, but she would be dressed to seduce, as she had planned last night. And maybe he would stay with her …
“No, not the pearls, you idiot girl! Not with this robe.” She slapped Nafissa’s hand as the girl attempted to fasten a rope of opalescent pearls at her throat.
Nafissa moved out of reach and maintained a prudent silence. The sultana always wore the pearls with the crimson robe.
“Rubies,” Aicha demanded. “Quickly, girl. There is no time to waste.”
The rubies against the crimson were a declaration. Nafissa was obliged to acknowledge the fact as she fastened the clasp. However, she reflected sourly, the sultana might have informed her that she wished to make such a declaration this evening.
She proffered the tray with the kohl and rouge, watching as Aicha prepared her face. Her hair she wore unbound, a blue-black river pouring down her back, startling against the crimson. A mist of perfume hung around the sultana, a rich and heady fragrance that spoke of love, a fragrance that the caliph would not misinterpret.
“There, that will do.” Aicha rose to her feet, smoothing down the soft folds of her caftan. It clung to the luscious swell of her breasts, hinted at the hollow of her waist, snugly delineated the curve of her hips. Aicha nodded in satisfaction. Then, annoyingly, the image of the Christian girl rose in her mind’s eye. She saw again that perfectly proportioned daintiness. The girl’s robe, cut like Aicha’s, had clung and curved, but it hinted at more hollows, offered new-ripened fruit rather than a full harvest.
Since when had Abul’s concubines troubled her? She took herself vigorously to task. This woman would come and go like the others. She was no wife, could not be a wife. Christians could not be wives, and most particularly when they brought no gifts or payments with them. This one seemed singularly devoid of all external inducements, brought to the Alhambra in the night, a member of one of the tribes who wandered the peninsula, close-knit, frequently inbred, artisans and entertainers. The newcomer had nothing to offer Abul but the transitory pleasures of her body. He would tire of her soon enough, and then she would take her place in the household like all the others. In the kitchens or the laundry, if Aicha had any say in the matter, and she saw no reason why she shouldn’t have.
“Have fresh mimosa placed in the mirador,” she instructed Nafissa. “Bring jasmine tea, as my lord Abul enjoys the infusion, and …” She had been about to say “almond cakes” but swallowed the demand. She had forsworn sweetmeats. “Make sure the lamps are filled and then leave.”
Nafissa bowed the sultana from the chamber, reflecting slightly maliciously that it was to be hoped the lord Abul decided to honor the sultana’s bed after all this anticipation. The lady Aicha wouldn’t be fit to approach for days if she suffered a further snub from her husband.
Aicha was not permitting herself to consider such an outcome as she entered the parlor. She stood for a moment in the doorway, taking in the scene. The women were clustered around Abul’s divan, bright as butterflies in their embroidered silks, heads nodding, voices skipping as they competed for the attention of the man who informed their existence.
Abul sensed Aicha’s presence. It was a waft on the air. Of perfume? Of purpose? He turned his head and smiled at her as she stood in the doorway. The smile cost him an effort, but he was a consummate diplomat and well able to dissemble when the occasion demanded.
Hiding her relief at the clearly inviting smile, Aicha swept across the room in a graceful swirl of silk. “My lord Abul, you honor us.”
“Not at all,” he said, rising from the divan. The other women discreetly moved into the background, but their eyes were all sharp observance. “I am always refreshed in such company.” Taking her hand, he bent and lightly kissed her cheek. The mingled scents of perfume, powder, and rouge assailed him, and he found himself longing for the straightforward freshness of a woman’s skin, the unalloyed smell of new-washed hair.
But that woman was denied him this night. This one was his obligation and his purpose. “I would be private with you,” he said.
Aicha’s cheeks pinkened with pleasure and relief. “The mirador is pleasant on such a night, my lord,” she murmured. “The breezes are sweet and the air cool.” She laid a hand lightly on his arm, smiling her own invitation, and against his will he was stirred. For eleven years they had been man and wife, and she had never failed to please him between the sheets. There was no reason to resist with his mind the ease his body craved and the contact common sense told him was necessary for the greater good.
They left the parlor, the women’s whispers surging in their wake. The sultana’s apartments were left exactly as she had ordered, lamps lit, wicks trimmed, the scent of mimosa mingling with the perfumed oil of the lamps. But Aicha didn’t linger in the bedchamber. She went instead to the stairs leading to the mirador. Here, yesterday, she had prepared herself for a night of passion with her husband and had been disappointed. Tonight she was determined not to be.
Abul followed, losing himself in the magic of the night, the aura of sensuality Aicha conveyed. He needed to be ministered to, his wishes paramount, his demands anticipated. It would make a refreshing change from coaxing and teasing his resistant guest, from answering provocation with its like, from holding back in extremis because the woman didn’t yet unde
rstand that each loving had its own integrity and need be in no wise shadowed by past lovings, or by the possibility of future ones.
In the mirador, Aicha moved to help him with his burnous. “No,” he said. “I would watch you, Aicha.”
He reclined on the cushions beneath the window, watching his wife as she slowly removed her clothes. There was skill and artistry in her disrobing, and he felt the slow mounting of desire as those golden curves were revealed and she stood, naked but for the rubies at her neck and ears, before him.
He reached for her, and she came down to the cushions with him, her hands moving now with the same skill to undress him. She caressed him, brought him throbbingly alive, set his nerve endings atingle, filled his head with the red mist of desire, and he gave himself to the hands and lips and tongue that she knew so well how to use.
Aicha felt the slow burn of triumph as Abul surrendered to her. She had always known that this was the way to heal all breaches, to reaffirm her ascendancy. No one could do for him what she could. She had known that she had made a grave error in imagining that depriving him of her skills would be a bargaining counter. She knew better now, knew she must use what she had to hold him, to bind him to her, to keep her secure in his trust and confidence, because only thus would her and Boabdil’s entwined future follow the course she had set. She bent her head, grazing the hard shaft of his passion with her teeth before drawing him into her mouth, placing her tongue where her teeth had been.
Abul moaned in the extremity of his pleasure, gloried in the climactic explosion, and Aicha moved slowly up his body, smiling to herself as she felt his total dissolution. Her own lack of fulfillment was of no importance. She had allowed herself no hint of arousal tonight, and Abul had made no attempt to include her in his own pleasure. But that was as it should be sometimes. The important thing was that he had come to her apartments, that everyone knew he had done so, and if she could contrive to keep him here until the morning, then her triumph would be complete.
She lay down beside him as he slept the sleep of satiation.
Abul woke abruptly and with a dreadful sense of unease. For a minute he lay staring out into the darkness, at the star-glittered mountains heaped in the distance. And for a minute he didn’t know where he was or how he had come to be here. Then he felt Aicha’s body, soft … too soft … beside him. He smelled the residue of her perfume, and his nose wrinkled. Suddenly it was disagreeable, or maybe it was because it had been on her skin too long.
Self-disgust washed over him. Not because of what had happened, but because he had enjoyed it. He no longer desired Aicha as a woman. He had used her tonight for political reasons, but he had been pleasured by her, nevertheless.
He imagined Sarita, sleeping alone in the tower between crisp sheets, her skin fresh, her hair massed in unruly curls around her face. He remembered how she had been the previous night—a naked tumble of limbs beside him, sleeping the sleep of an exhausted innocent.
He leaped from the cushioned divan as if he had been stung. The air was cool on his heated skin, but its freshness could do nothing to cleanse him of his disgust.
Aicha appeared to be sleeping heavily and did not stir as he slipped on his robe and slippers. He looked down at her in the moonlight for a minute, then trod softly from the room in search of the cleansing seclusion of his own apartments.
Aicha kept her eyes closed, her breathing even, until she heard his sort pad on the stairs to the bedchamber below. Her first instinct when he’d left the divan had been to entice him back with pleas and sensual promise, but self-protective wisdom kept her still. There had been something disquieting about the haste of his departure, almost as if something was driving him from her. And if Abul refused her pleas, was unseduced by her promise, then she would lose face. It was better to let him go and not know whether a word or a gesture from her would have kept him at her side until dawn. But her disappointment was great and her anxiety now unalleviated. Somehow, matters were still not right between them, for all that Abul had publicly returned her to favor and allowed himself to be pleasured by her. But what was still wrong? How had she erred?
The image of the Christian Sarita rose again. What had she to do with Abul’s abrupt departure? Was he leaving his wife’s bed in such haste to go immediately to his new mistress? Was the other one more skilled than Aicha? She might have the advantage of novelty, but Aicha couldn’t believe she would have greater skill, would know as his wife did exactly how to please the caliph. But then she remembered that so far the woman was resisting Abul. She had even attempted to escape. Aicha had heard of the fiasco in the Mexuar and how angered Abul had been. But was he also intrigued?
Aicha threw off the thin silk coverlet and stood up, going restlessly to the window. The palace slept, all but the sentries in the alcazaba and the watchmen doing the rounds of the ramparts. Aicha looked out toward the ramparts and the shadowy shapes of the towers. Why did Abul keep the Spaniard separate? If he was taking her into his seraglio, then her rightful place was in the women’s apartments with the rest of them, under the authority of the sultana. And if he was simply intending to enjoy her as a slave or captive, once she had capitulated, then why was she housed and attended with the ceremony and status he would accord a highborn concubine? He had said it was because she was Spanish, but that was no reason to accord her special treatment. Most of the women of the seraglio were familiar with the Spanish tongue to some extent.
No, there were mysteries here, and mysteries were intrinsically threatening, particularly when they had a bearing on the female domestic structure of the Alhambra. That was the sultana’s province. It came under her authority, and that authority could be eroded by secrets which the sultana didn’t share.
She would seriously cultivate the Christian, beginning this coming morning. She would contrive a meeting, play on her feminine sympathies, try to draw her within the circle of the seraglio. It shouldn’t take long to gain her confidence, to discover what motivated Abul in his continued pursuit. Then maybe she would be able to discover whether the girl was the root of the problem. If so, she could be easily removed as long as Aicha had access to her. She had seemed open enough yesterday, unsuspicious, although clearly deeply resentful of her present position.
Fertile soil, Aicha decided, making her way down to the chamber below. And there were many possible approaches to sow the soil aright. Once she had made an ally of the newcomer, she would pose no threat.
Decision-making always reassured Aicha, restored her sense of purpose and control. Perhaps she had been overly disturbed by Abul’s leaving her bed so abruptly. How often had he remained beside her all night? Hardly ever. He liked his privacy; she knew that perfectly well. Probably he had left in such haste so as not to disturb her. And if that wasn’t the case, then she’d soon discover what was and correct it.
Thus resolved, Aicha went back to bed to sleep the disfiguring shadows from beneath her eyes.
Sarita awoke with a sense of purpose to match the sultana’s, her decision of the previous evening etched as clear-cut in her mind as when she had made it. It infused her with the possibility of power: the power to change her situation. Only now did she realize how the belief in her inability to effect a change in her position had crept up upon her since her abduction, each failure gradually sapping her will. And no failure had been more potent than that of yesterday’s so blindly stupid plan. How could she have imagined that she could simply walk out of this place?
Energetically, she swung herself off the divan. The snowy mountain peaks were faintly tinged with salmon, and she knew that within twenty minutes they would blaze crimson. Dawn was her favorite time of day. She always woke before cockcrow, as if some internal timepiece alerted her the instant before the sun’s first finger touched the eastern skyline.
Dropping onto a cushion on the floor of one of the little balconies at a long, arched window, she rested her elbows on the rail and looked out over the ravine, watching the day begin. The River Darro danced, a narrow
, spritely thread at the base of the ravine below her. How to get down? Her reflective pleasure in the sun’s rise was interrupted with the question that had really brought her to the window.
The tower was set into the ramparts. The wall of the ramparts clung to the steep side of the mountain. But the steepness was not insurmountable. Once at the base of the wall, she could scramble down, with the aid of the bushes and scrub as handholds. She’d done such things many times, knew how to avoid the thorns, where to watch for nature’s traps for the unheeding foot. Once in the valley, she would simply follow the course of the river into the city. She would meet none but goatherds and peasants, and they would have little interest in molesting one whose dress and manner would offer neither prize nor threat. Her coloring would advertise her race, but Sarita didn’t think she would be bothered by country folk. In the city, it would be different. Townsfolk were dangerous. She would cross that bridge when she reached it. For the moment, her pressing concern was to contrive a way out of this window, to the base of the wall.
Jumping was out of the question. There were no handholds and footholds. She needed a rope of some sort.
She turned away from the first scarlet flush on the peaks to look within. Her eye roamed the gallery. Silk was a strong material. Silk in this tower was plentiful: hangings, rugs, coverlets, and, above all, the luxurious wardrobe with which Abul had so considerately supplied her. She began to wander the tower intently, assessing which items could best serve her purpose. At the end of her reconnaissance, she had decided that a rope of sufficient length and strength could be fashioned. It might not be long enough for her to step to the ground, but a small drop would pose no difficulty. How to fasten it? But, of course, the balcony rail was of iron. It would be simple enough to tie the makeshift rope to the rail and slither hand over hand down the length until it was safe for her to drop. Of course, there would be no way of retrieving the rope. It would remain to advertise her escape route, but with luck, if she timed it right, she’d be well away and hidden in the shadows before any pursuit could start.
