by Jane Feather
“Aicha’s uncle is here as emissary from her father, the emir of the Mocarabes,” Abul was explaining quietly, hoping that Sarita would take the hint and accept that there were to be no introductions. Instead, she returned Kaled’s stare with one of his own intensity, although with a slightly challenging quirk to her lips.
“The emissary appears a little surprised,” she observed. “Are you unfamiliar with the women of my country, sir?”
“I am unfamiliar with women who do not show due modesty,” Kaled said stiffly, directing the statement to Abul. “In a place where men walk freely, women do not show themselves in such fashion.”
Abul shrugged. “The lady Sarita does, however, and I have no objections. If I have none, it is not for you, Ahmed ben Kaled, to express them as a guest.”
The reproof insulted the guest as the guest’s criticism had insulted the host. They both now stood in the wrong, and the cause of the trouble was looking between them with a degree of interest and amusement that could not possibly help matters. Worse, Abul realized: Boabdil was staring with a most unusual animation, his mouth half open as not a word or a nuance passed him by. His father was guilty of discourtesy to a relative and a guest, and in the defense of a mere woman, justly criticized. Yet another nail had been struck deep in the coffin of the filial relationship, and there would be a merry tale with which to regale his mother at sundown.
Abul felt a most unreasonable and unusual flash of resentment toward Sarita. He controlled it with difficulty, and when he spoke, it was with stern formality. “We interrupt your repose, lady. You will excuse us. We pay a visit to the mews.”
Sarita stepped aside without another word. She had spent long enough in this society to know by now what had happened and to guess at the ramifications. And she blamed herself. She should not have approached Abul when she saw him in the company of a strange man. But she had not thought. It was all part of her uncertain position: she did not see herself as a woman of the Alhambra, and Abul did not treat her as such, yet to the large community within the palace and the larger one within the kingdom itself, she could not be placed in any other terms.
Abul, in his own interests, should not have defended her, she thought ruefully, watching as the three walked on up the path. But she knew that if he had failed to do so, the sour taste of betrayal would have coated her soul, and there would have been little he could have said or done later to sweeten it.
Her heart jumped in the manner she had learned to dread, and she stood still on the path, feeling the great void within her as her heart paused for what seemed like an eternity before beginning a rushing, uphill, scrambling beat that brought a cold sweat to her brow, filled her with an icy fear, and turned her limbs to water.
“What is it?” Kadiga hurried over to her. “Sarita, you are not well. Why will you not consult the caliph’s physician? He is most skilled.”
Sarita was unable to speak for a minute, and Kadiga put a supporting arm around her, gazing helplessly at her bloodless lips, feeling the quivers ripping through the thin frame. The nausea would follow the spasm, as always, and then Sarita would seem to be her usual self, although rather fatigued.
“Come back to the tower,” Kadiga said when she sensed that the paroxysm was beginning to ebb. “Let me send to the lord Abul.”
“No.” Sarita shook her head. “It is passing now. There is nothing the matter with me that needs to be fussed over. I will rest a little until the queasiness passes.” She wiped her hand across her brow. “I wonder if it is something I am eating that does not agree with me.”
Kadiga lost every vestige of color in her normally ruddy cheeks, and her gut loosened with terror at the hideous thought that followed Sarita’s tentative suggestion. It could not possibly be … and yet Kadiga knew in the deepest recesses of her being that it was not only possible, it was probable. If she paused to consider the pattern of Sarita’s slow decline, if she paused to study the symptoms …
Kadiga had more than a layman’s skills and knowledge of sickness imparted to her by her mother, who had been well known as an apothecary. But Kadiga, in her relatively lowly position in the Alhambra hierarchy, was rarely called upon to use the body of knowledge, and as a result, it was never at the forefront of her mind. But now that knowledge put flesh and bone onto the most frightful specter. But what was she to do with the … suspicion … belief … no, the knowledge? It was as dangerous to impart as it was unthinkable to keep to herself.
“Kadiga, you are as white as whey!” Zulema exclaimed from Sarita’s other side, where she was holding her arm. “Are you also ill?”
Kadiga shook her head slowly, as if making the motion through honey. “No … no, I am perfectly well. It was something I thought … Come, let us return to the tower, where Sarita may lie down for a while.”
Sarita was too relieved to be lying flat on the divan in the cool, breeze-freshened sleeping gallery of her tower to object when her attendants insisted on undressing her and putting her properly to bed. A deep, black wave of sleepiness was creeping over her, upward from her toes, and she welcomed it, bringing as it did relief from the nausea and the wildly erratic pumping of her heart.
“I will stay with you,” Kadiga said. “If you need me, I will be in the court below.” She went down the stairs, a rather puzzled Zulema following.
“What is it, Kadiga? Something troubles you,” the other woman said directly.
Kadiga bit her lip. “It is better you do not know, Zulema.”
“But it concerns Sarita?” Zulema pressed.
Kadiga sighed heavily. “Yes, but you do not want to know. Why do you not go to the palace and prepare a jasmine tisane for Sarita when she wakes? You know how it refreshes her.”
Zulema looked unusually mulish for a minute, but then her customarily amenable nature reasserted itself. If Kadiga did not want to share her problems, it would be impolite for Zulema to continue her questioning. She went off on her errand.
Kadiga paced the pretty court, around the fountain, between the delicate columns, chewing her lip, pulling on her fingers until the bones cracked. If what she suspected was true, then she herself was deeply implicated. It was she who mixed and administered the venomous draught. Slowly, unwillingly almost, she opened a small marquetry box on a cedar chest against the wall. The skin container stood innocently in one corner of the box. Kadiga stared at it as if she could see through the skin, could break down its contents into component parts. What was in it? And why was she so certain that the mischief was contained therein?
But Sarita ate and drank nothing else on a regular basis that was not ingested by others. She supped often with the women in the seraglio when the lord Abul was not with her. When she dined alone, Kadiga and Zulema ate with her. She ate fruit, of course, and sweetmeats, but such random mouthfuls were too haphazard conveyances for a regular, carefully measured dose of some death-dealing substance.
But if the mixture in the skin vial contained the bane, then only the lady Aicha could have put it there. And there lay the deepest roots of Kadiga’s fear. She had no difficulty believing the sultana capable of such a plot, capable of conceiving it and of implementing it. Aicha’s vindictiveness was rightly feared throughout the Alhambra. But there was no proof. If she went to the caliph and told her tale, her accusation of the sultana would be implicit. If there was no proof, then the sultana could accuse her of bearing false witness. She could demand Kadiga’s tongue in the name of the law, and the law would uphold the sentence of mutilation.
Kadiga shuddered as she saw the punishment being inflicted by the public executioner as she had seen it once as a small child in the bazaar in Granada. The man had accused his neighbor of stealing a sheep, but the sheep had been discovered in the ravine, unhurt, caught in a thornbush. The man’s wife had pleaded, the neighbor had relented, but the law was immutable. Not even the caliph could order a stay of execution in such circumstances.
Kadiga went upstairs and stood looking down at the sleeping woman. Her color was
waxen, slightly yellowed beneath the pallor, and her breathing was labored. A convulsive movement of her throat in her sleep was accompanied by an alarmed tightening of her brow, as if she was having difficulty swallowing and the sleeping body acknowledged its struggles.
Kadiga could begin to substitute her own draught for the sultana’s, but some instinct based on learning told the woman that the effects of the poison had progressed too far to be reversed by the simple cessation of its administration. If anything could be done now, only Muhamed Alahma, the caliph’s physician, would know what and how. But how was he to be involved without being told the truth? And how could she tell the truth without risking …
It wasn’t to be thought of. And then Sarita stirred in her sleep, her hand plucked at her throat, and she moaned.
Could she stand by and watch her death? Unable to keep vigil at the bedside any longer, Kadiga turned and half ran down to the court. But there were no answers there. Conscience wrestled with dread as she resumed her pacing.
It was midafternoon when Abul came to the tower. He had left his guest with Aicha in a private parlor in the caliph’s apartments, where Aicha could safely remove her veil in the company of a man of her own family. She was attended by her own women, of course, correctly shrouded, silent chaperones, standing at a distance against the walls of the parlor, while the two conversationalists sat upon divans in the center of the room.
Abul had tried to mend fences with his visitor, or at least to recover the superficial graces, and Kaled had followed suit. Both men were too far steeped in the necessary rites of social intercourse to permit a temporary transgression on either side to affect the surface, but Abul was aware of the resentment he had created. It was a resentment that would be transmitted to his father-in-law, together with details of the cause of the insult: a Christian concubine of immodest bearing; one allowed a foolish license from her doting possessor.
Abul had no idea what he could do to regularize matters. He could not turn Sarita into a woman of the Alhambra. Once, he had thought he could and nearly lost her in the attempt. He could not have done anything but come to her defense that morning, although he knew what it would lead to. Could he ask her to be more circumspect? But to do so seemed an insult. He loved her for what she was. What right had he to demand that she pretend to be otherwise to save him public awkwardness? Perhaps he was the besotted fool Kaled would undoubtedly make him out to be, but he wasn’t sure he cared what people thought in this matter.
His steps slowed as he reached the wicket gate of the tower garden. Shouldn’t he care? He ruled this kingdom by consensus. Could he be a wise and empathetic ruler if he flouted the most deeply held mores of his people in the interests of a lone passion?
They were questions to be put aside for rigorous examination when he was alone and in a meditative mood, he decided. But he entered the tower with somewhat less than his usual springing enthusiasm, and the anticipatory smile was absent from his mouth, although its glint was in his eyes as he greeted Kadiga, who looked, he thought, rather down in the mouth herself.
“The lady Sarita is resting, my lord.” Kadiga made her reverence. Her heart was beating fast as she saw an opportunity to speak. She moistened her lips in preparation. Could she … dared she … would she … But even as she thus desperately deliberated, the lord Abul merely nodded and went to the stairs, leaving her standing dumbly below.
A finger of sunlight fell from the window across Sarita’s pillow. It drew out the waxy translucence of her skin, and Abul, who had not seen her in sleep for several weeks, looked down uneasily. Suddenly he felt an urgent need to waken her. “Sarita?” He bent and touched her shoulder. Her skin was clammy, the previously rounded angle a sharp point in his palm. He repeated her name and shook her, filled with a nameless apprehension that would only be quashed by her open eyes, her smiling mouth.
Her eyelids fluttered, lifted, but for a minute there was no recognition, only a fog in the green pools.
Sarita struggled to bring herself back. Dimly, she knew she was somewhere deep inside the shell of her body, if only she could summon herself. It had happened once before, this inarticulate sense on waking of herself as a flickering flame that needed bellows to puff it back to healthy life. She fixed her eyes on two black specks that seemed to be piercing her body, pouring resolution into her to aid her weakening spirit … and then it happened. She came up from the depths, initially floundering, then with an uprush of relief as her spirit reinhabited her body, and she was left only with the residue of an unformed, unfocused panic that dissipated beneath the loved and loving face of Muley Abul Hassan.
“You look troubled,” she observed in a very ordinary voice. “I’m sorry I caused difficulties for you with your wife’s uncle. I must try harder to adapt to your ways in such instances.”
“De nada,” he said from his own overpowering relief, forgetting his earlier reflections and failing to take advantage of the opportunity now offered to him. “You were sleeping very deeply for siesta, cara.”
“Perhaps so.” She sat up, sweeping her hair from her brow, noticing that strands stuck damply to her skin. “It is hot, is it not?”
“Not unusually,” Abul remarked, sitting on the divan and taking her hand. “I think you need a change of scene, Sarita. It is not right for you to be confined behind walls. I am certain that is why you don’t feel yourself.”
She smiled. “Yes, I have not felt quite myself for a few days …” Weeks, in fact, if she were to face the truth, but somehow she couldn’t accept that she was truly ailing. The people of the tribe of Raphael did not suffer more than trifling illnesses. If something was amiss with her now, then it must have to do with the unusual circumstances of her present life. “But it is nothing, Abul.”
“No, I am sure it is not,” he agreed. “But I have a surprise for you.”
Her eyes lit up, as he had known they would. “I love surprises.”
“Would you like to go down to the sea?”
“Oh, I should like it of all things.” She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “When … how … where … for how long?”
“I have a small palace in the hills above Motril,” he said. “We could go tomorrow, when the emissary from the Mocarabes has left.”
Tomorrow … Weakness slopped over her, dirty, gray, futile. How could she possibly manage such a ride? She turned her face away, pretending to look out of the window toward the mountain peaks. “That would be lovely, Abul.”
He frowned at her lack of enthusiasm. “We do not have to go if you do not wish it.”
“But of course I wish it.” And they both heard the note of desperation in her voice as she faced the recognition that she would not be able to ride for so long. Could she ask for a litter? But to do that would mean admitting that she was an invalid … and she wasn’t. Just a little tired … a little stale from being in the same place for so long … just as Abul had said. Of course she would be able to ride. Excitement would carry her through. She and Abul would be alone by the sea. There would be no distractions except those that would aid the sensual joys of their togetherness, no commitments outside those they made to each other.
She made haste to banish from the air around them that lingering note of desperation. “It will be wonderful.” Reaching up her arms, she drew him down to her. “Do you know how much I love you, Abul, querido? We will love on the sand and in the sea. Have you ever made love in the sea?” She touched his cheekbone with the tip of her tongue. “I have often thought it would be wonderful: of a different order from your baths, but with many of the same sensations.”
“No,” he said, responding to her effort with warm cheerfulness. “No, I have never done that. But do you not think the water might be a little cold in February? More than a trifle shriveling?” His eyebrow lifted as he invited the rich chuckle he expected.
She managed a smile. “Yes, I had not thought of that. But under the sun, on the sand, and in the grass, we will try new things, will we not?”
&n
bsp; “We will teach each other many new joys, Sarita, cara mía.” He drew her into his arms, filled with a deep fear because he could feel in her body a complete lack of response to the sensual promises she was making with her mouth … and, he knew, with her soul.
Chapter Sixteen
“Here is the answer to my father’s message.” Aicha sanded the parchment, rolled it carefully, and handed it to the waiting Nafissa. “Be sure you are not observed.”
As if she wouldn’t be certain, Nafissa thought scornfully, bowing in submissive acceptance as she took the parchment. Surely the lady Aicha didn’t imagine she would be fool enough to court discovery on such an errand. Aiding and abetting a treasonous correspondence within the walls of the Alhambra would mean death without question, even when a slave or servant was simply obeying orders, even when disobedience to those orders could bring reprisals of unthinkable severity.
Aicha went to the window when the soft-footed Nafissa had slipped away on her errand. The full moon filled the sky with a brightly diffused radiance, a brittle silver clarity unlike the heavy golden moons of summer. The night was made chillier by the moon’s light, and the snow peaks appeared much closer, the air seeming to carry the cold of their glittering caps.
The palace compound was quiet. It was that deeply silent time of night when only the watchmen on the ramparts and in the alcazaba kept vigil. Her uncle and his party would be at their rest, unless they were passing the night hours in the arms of the houris of the Alhambra. Such entertainment was freely available to guests.
And Abul … was he in the arms of his houri? Not for much longer, Aicha thought, wrapping her arms around her body in a gesture that mingled satisfaction with the need for warmth. Boabdil had told her of the confrontation over the woman that morning, and her uncle had hinted at his anger during her meeting with him, although only the most commonplace familial and domestic subjects could be overtly exchanged within earshot of her silent chaperones. But Aicha knew the confrontation had fallen on readily prepared ground and could only fertilize the shoots of enmity. Her father would listen well to Kaled.
