Court of Lions

by Jane Johnson

  Of course the laces did not hold for long. We both gazed at the shed leg, Momo more glum than I. Then, “I have an idea!” he cried. He grabbed the foot and ran off.

  I hopped across the courtyard to retrieve my trusty stick, then stood propped against one of the slender pillars to gaze up at the Tower of the Moon looming over the Hall of the Ambassadors. The shadow of it had turned the waters of the pool a brooding umber, the colour of old blood. It was from the top of this tower that the astrologers had surveyed the night sky when Momo was born and made their grim predictions. I rather hoped they were right: I didn’t want him to be sultan, for I would lose him to endless meetings and matters of state. Already I had lost so much of him.

  Some of it was my own fault. I was ungracious about the constraints of my affliction, sulking when he chose hunting over a game of chess with me, sniping at his soldier’s training, refusing both assistance and sympathy. My tribe, for whom asshak, the dignified acceptance of fate, was a prized quality, would have been ashamed of me. But my tribe was far away.

  By the time he came back a chill was in the air. He looked strangely forlorn. There was no sign of the foot and for a moment I thought (hoped) he might have lost it somewhere. Dropped it in one of the deeper pools, or over a rampart.

  “Apparently, I’m getting married,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Qasim did not answer for a long time but sat there paring his nails with a small knife he kept for the purpose. At last he said, “Walls have ears, Blessings,” which seemed a ridiculous statement.

  When I persisted, he sighed. “Come with me, then. And bring a basket so that it may at least appear we are doing something useful.”

  Out in the gardens, we walked from rosebush to rosebush, Qasim instructing me to cut, very carefully, only the most perfect budded roses. Each of them he inspected so that he had the excuse of placing his head close to mine so no one could hear him speak.

  “Isobel de Solis has cast her net around the sultan, binding him close with every trick she can devise. For ages she refused to convert to Islam, knowing the sultan could not lie with her until she had.”

  It was one thing to lay claim to a captive taken in war, quite another to place an unconverted infidel in your harem. So this, he explained, was why she had originally been housed apart from the other concubines, making it harder for me to escape, impossible for him to have me released.

  “If the bitch had just said the shahada like any sensible captive, I would still have my foot!”

  “Keep your voice down, Blessings.” Qasim looked around quickly. Two gardeners were leaning on their rakes, paused in their task of tidying the flower beds. As soon as they saw him watching, they swiftly went back to their work. He took me by the elbow, his fingers pinching to deliver deliberate pain, and guided me farther from them. “When she relented, it was on the promise that he put aside the Lady Aysha and make her, Isobel, his chief wife, to house her always in the greatest splendour; that she be called from now on Zoraya, Star of Morning.”

  This last was no news to me: it was what everyone called Isobel now.

  He lowered his voice yet further. “Hasan was also supposed to declare the sons she vowed to give him his heirs and to disown princes Mohammed and Rachid.”

  I frowned. “But he didn’t put the sultana aside or disown his sons.”

  “Not yet, no. When he married her, she was placed on an equal footing to the sultana. And her baby boys are still unacknowledged. But I know her wiles. She will not rest until she has her way. So we must shore up our position.”

  “‘Our’?”

  “The Lady Aysha and her sons. Hence this marriage.”

  It was a political alliance, he explained, but that didn’t make it any better. The girl was the daughter of the pasha of Medina Lawsa, also called Loja, an old fortress town in the hills to the west of Granada. Her father, Ali Attar, had made his money trading spices, and his reputation fighting infidels. All this I took in with the dulled comprehension of a dying man.

  I knew vaguely that the sultan’s heir must marry and have children of his own to prolong the Nasrid line for the good of Granada and the defiance of the infidels. I knew that one day this would be Momo’s duty and his fate, but I had managed to persuade myself it would never happen. I had come to believe that the world would somehow change shape to accommodate my love for him. But the world seemed intent on teaching me cruel lessons. I tried to learn them, and to keep my ears and eyes open, and earned extra coin, which I spent on small treasures—silver bracelets and pretty rings (“It is always good to have portable wealth,” my mother always said)—by reporting back the whispers of the court staff.

  It seemed that motherhood had not dulled Zoraya’s powers of seduction. She spent days locked in the sultan’s private quarters, seen by none but those bringing food and wine and taking away emptied dishes and goblets. Not even the musicians were allowed in.

  “I swear she’s killing him,” one of the door guards told me. “To hear his moans, you’d think it.”

  “Oh, she will oust our beloved sultana!” the cook declared.

  I did not know when the sultana had become beloved: before the ascent of the Star of Morning everyone had gone in fear of her, but now, as I reported back to Qasim, the household sided with the “wronged” woman.

  In an attempt to do away with the root cause of Momo’s forthcoming marriage, I made a little image of Zoraya from beeswax moulded around a thread of golden hair bought from one of the girls sent in to cook for her, and burned it in a brazier. The Star of Morning had a stomach ache for a day or two but recovered far more quickly than she should have, had the magic been working. I must have done something wrong. It must have been the gold of her hair, so pale and feeble. I tried to find some way by which I might obtain a little of her blood, even going so far as to pose as a washerwoman sent to take her monthly linen. Thank heaven it was not La Sabia who came out: the serving girl laughed at me. “Don’t be silly. She’s pregnant again!” So that was that.

  Before the month was out we were on our way to Loja: Prince Mohammed, his Special Guardian, the qadi and a troop of men handpicked by the vizier from among the Banu Serraj, who could, because of their blood alliance with her family, be completely loyal to the sultana (and indeed to the treasury, since it was Qasim who held the keys and paid their wages). Also with us was a curtained litter containing four maids to take care of the prince’s new wife.

  As we rode through the winter-sere hills, no one spoke, until at last Momo suddenly exclaimed, “I have no gift for my bride!”

  My bride. So proprietorial. I felt a thread inside me pull tight and painful. The girl—whatever her name was (for no one had accorded her a name: she was nothing but an object, a pawn being moved across a board to check a king’s progress)—was about to be a prince’s bride. Before she had been a pasha’s daughter: nothing in her own right except as defined by the man responsible for her. What would the women of my tribe make of that? I wondered. They would whistle and jeer and throw out of the tent the belongings of any man who dared to regard them as chattel; keep the children, declare themselves divorced and take a better lover to spite him.

  I felt a jolt of nostalgia for my faraway home and then, taking me by surprise, a fleeting sympathy for this nameless girl who was about to be uprooted from her home and dragged back to Granada into the middle of a buzzing hornets’ nest, to be an ally, a wife, a mother.

  She would share Momo’s bed, and his life.

  And just like that sweet despair flooded me again. I was about to lose him, and nothing would ever be the same. Already I hated the very thought of her, this girl with no name. And so, when my friend cried out about the lack of a gift, I said nothing, not a word. There was nothing I could say past the lump in my throat. I just looked down at my gold-chased foot, now cleverly fitted to the top half of a tightly laced boot.

  The prince saw me glance down and said at once, “No, no. I didn’t mean that. Yes,
all the money I had went on having your new foot made, but you mustn’t feel guilt at that. I’d spend the coin again and again to do this for you. To see you riding so straight and tall like a shining faris fills my heart with pride. Not for what I did,” he corrected himself swiftly. “Pride in you, for how you’ve dealt with your affliction. You’ve hardly complained at all.”

  My heart contracted at the unwarranted praise. To be called a faris, a chivalric knight, by this glowing young warrior was one thing; but to say I had not complained…Not a day—not an hour—had passed without my thinking evil thoughts about the rest of mankind. His faith in me pierced me through. “Here, give her this,” I dragged at the neck of my mail shirt, lifting my tribal necklace out from under it and over my head, and held it out to him. “It was my mother’s.”

  “I can’t take such a precious thing from you.” Momo’s eyes shone.

  “You must. You’ve given me so much more.” Besides, I had other amulets I could adapt to make another necklace, though none so fine.

  He held my gaze, then looked sharply away. His cheeks were flushed with some unreadable emotion as he placed the amulet inside his tunic. Let it be love, I wished at him. Say you will love no one except me.

  But of course he was a prince and he could not.

  9

  The walls of Loja cast their shadow over us as the sun fell away behind them, and suddenly we felt the true chill of the air. It was a grim-looking place, rough and foursquare, reflecting exactly every bad thing I felt about it on that long ride.

  We were challenged at the gates: Ali Attar was vigilant, even when expecting a royal visit. I was left to stable the horses while Momo was taken, without any great ceremony, to have tea with the old warrior.

  My stump ached from unaccustomed use after the long ride and I limped heavily across the yard, my sword banging against my leg. I oversaw the ostlers as they unsaddled the horses, watered and stabled them, and was shown to our accommodations to unpack Momo’s things. The pasha’s house was hardly any more embellished than the fierce fortress walls. Some effort had been made to cater to the comforts of a Nasrid prince, but the carpets were threadbare and of poor quality: wool, not silk, made by the Berber mountain tribes whence Ali Attar traced his heritage. A fire had been lit in the clay hearth and steam rose visibly from the floor, so that the smell of wet sheep competed with the brazier burning crystals of incense among its coals.

  I opened the wooden chest and laid out Momo’s wedding robe on the bed, feeling the slight lumps along the hem where I had sewn protective charms into it. I had also, with rather spiteful intent, wrapped a small knife inside his silk pantaloons to spoil his wedding night, a piece of magic learned from my mother. It had the desired effect, I am ashamed to relate, and other consequences, besides. My only excuse is that I was in despair, and not thinking straight.

  I was just refolding the clothes with some squares of amber musk to perfume them overnight, when Momo returned from his duties, looking solemn. “Blessings, I have a favour to ask of you.” There was a bundle of something in his arms.

  “Of course, my lord.”

  “The maids tell me that the Lady Mariam has been weeping, saying she has nothing suitable to wear for the wedding tomorrow. I fear they laughed at her and were not kind.” He held the bundle out to me.

  It was a plain black robe and a white head scarf such as servants dressed in. “She can’t wear this!”

  “Oh, Blessings!” Suddenly he was snorting with laughter. “That’s for you, not her. I thought you might take up your role of the Little Cat once more.”

  “You can’t mean it,” I said in dismay.

  “The maids are worldly and cruel. I don’t want her feeling inferior before we’ve even started. I thought you might go through the baggage and see what you can find for her. You’ve got a good eye for these things—you’ll uncover something suitable I’m sure. Then take them to her as gift from me: help her attire herself tomorrow. Please?”

  I looked at him aghast, but he made some excuse and slipped away before I could splutter out my objections.

  I laboured up the narrow stairs, trying to stop my djellaba from tangling with the false leg. I would have to keep the foot hidden: no woman ever wore a gilded foot attached to a man’s riding boot. The door of the bride’s apartment was opened by a fierce old woman with a bent back and swollen knuckles. Behind her a fretted wooden screen blocked out any view into the room.

  “God’s peace be upon you. I’ve come from the Emir of Granada,” I said, bowing low. My voice is quite light by nature: I hardly needed to modulate it. Even so the elderly serving woman gave me a suspicious look, then poked the parcel I carried.

  “What’s in here?” No greeting or pleasantry: she reminded me of La Sabia.

  “My lord has sent a gift to the Lady Mariam, for her wedding day.”

  “It’s very late.”

  “Who is it, Habiba?” called a little voice from inside the chamber.

  “Some…” The old woman studied me up and down, her head tilted awkwardly because of her bent back, her eyes as beady as a bird’s. “Some…woman with a wedding gift for you.”

  “Oh. But I’m not in a fit state to receive anyone.”

  From the hoarseness of her voice I could tell she had been crying. “Please tell the Lady Mariam I am just a simple body-servant, no one of any consequence,” I said. Now I was overcome with curiosity to have a look at the girl who would be taking my beloved from me. I imagined her as a reverse-coin version of the zahira, dark where the other was pale; sloe eyed, round bosomed: every young man’s fancy.

  There was a rustling of clothes, then a face appeared around the edge of the fretted screen. Plump, snub nosed, round eyed; a mass of black curls escaping the hastily donned head scarf; barely more than a child. You could not imagine a creature less like Zoraya the Morning Star.

  “Come in,” she said in her tiny voice.

  I soon saw why she had been less than willing to allow me to enter. The chamber was scattered with discarded caftans and robes, all of them the worse for wear and dowdy beyond belief. No wonder she had been weeping. I presented my bundle of offerings and she shook them out like a child discovering wonders—the white silk, the coloured scarves, the rope of amber beads and the silver amulet that had been my inheritance. By the time she had finished going through them her cheeks were red and her eyes shone: she looked almost pretty.

  My heart hardening again, I prepared my escape. “I will not stay, madam, as the hour is so late, but I will come tomorrow and help you dress.”

  “Please, please do— Oh, I never asked your name, or gave you mine! I’m such a fool. How ever will I survive in the great palace?” Tears trembled again in her huge eyes.

  “The error was all mine,” I assured her. “I knew your name only too well and failed to offer my own. They call me Tudert,” I said, giving her my mother’s name. “And I bid you good-night.”

  My earliest memories are of crawling on the bright carpets in Tudert’s tent with all her jewellery strewn around me, or upon me. Silver amulets and Agadez crosses around my neck, long earrings looped over my ears, too-big bangles pushed up to my armpits. “These are camels,” I would tell her proudly, indicating a line of hairpins and brooches, “and these are goats”—polished beads gathered beside pieces of amber and cowrie shells traded with the travelling smith. I thought she was the richest woman in the world: certainly, she was rich in smiles and kisses, which she poured down upon me, especially when I proved my usefulness to her.

  She would send me out to spy at the campfires, to listen at tents in the night. No one paid much attention to a skinny child bringing camel dung for the fire, or fetching water for the pot. No one questioned a child peeing behind a thorn bush while the men made their plans, or tracing patterns in the dirt with stones where the women were gossiping. I would commit to memory all I heard, then report back to her in gabbled whispers, and she would sort the grain from the chaff and stow the information away for
future use. A day or two later she would prepare ointments and potions precisely formulated to address the problems she had learned of. “I’ve just discovered the perfect liniment for a strained back,” she would declare, after hearing that Moussa had twisted it chasing off a jackal. Or knowing that Suleiman could not keep up with his new wife: “I hear that a poultice of crushed beetle shells can do wonders for restoring one’s manhood.” Sometimes her remedies worked because they had an effect on the body, but mostly they worked because of a magic effect on people’s minds. It did not much matter, so long as clients paid up and came back for more.

  Occasionally, her work took a darker turn. I remember a weeping woman who covered her face in a manner unusual among our people, whisking aside her veil to show my mother the ugly cuts and bruises inflicted on her by a man who had taken her against her will. I was sent out to dig up some roots. “Wait till the moon shows the whole of its face over the oasis palms,” my mother told me. “Then dig in the space between the red rocks there, the ones marked with three scratches.” I knew exactly where she meant. “Don’t touch the plant with your bare hands but shovel it straight into this bag.” I did exactly as I was told and she took the roots and spent the night boiling them inside the tent, fanning the acrid fumes away through a hole in the hide roof. Then she dipped a piece of fabric in the liquid and, using a pair of sticks, wrung out the cloth and left it to dry. The next morning the woman came back and took the dried fabric away. It looked to me like a man’s turban cloth—tagelmust—but I might have been mistaken. And again my mother warned, “Be careful not to touch it with your bare skin.” The woman appeared scared. Then she removed a jewelled pin from her robe and offered it to my mother, who closed the woman’s fingers over it. “I’ll accept no payment for this.”