The Sultan's Wife

by Jane Johnson

  ‘It is not “just a city”, Alys. It is a devotion to God. Our religion is a civilization-building religion: it came out of the desert and within a century it had created the greatest civilization in the world. Allah commanded us not to let a desert remain a desert, or a mountain to remain a mountain. The world must be transformed to the divine pattern; and it is in that transformation that we find our connection to the divine. Meknes is a prayer to God, a single song of praise, and Ismail is both architect and praise-singer. We all play our part in the grand design.’

  I shiver as I sit back down in the carriage, beside two girls determined to die for the Catholic cause, while Sidi Qasem speaks of murder as part of a divine pattern. I am surrounded by fanatics. The question remains, am I one too?

  9

  Third Sabbath, Rabī al-Thānī 1087 AH

  Three weeks I have been rotting away in this dark cell, surrounded by madmen and criminals. Three weeks is not very long in the greater scheme of things, I know: but time in the pitch darkness drags like perdition itself.

  The qadi had me fetched to him in the first week, very pleased with himself: another foul crime solved, another criminal to be dispatched. The punishment for murder is to have a nail driven through the top of my skull with hammer blows. He told me this with relish. A short, squat man, he had that softness to him that comes only from a good living had from receiving plenty of baksheesh up the sleeve. Unfortunately, I had nothing with which to bribe him. I am a slave, no matter how elevated, and slaves do not get paid.

  I asked him if the sultan was aware of my plight and he laughed in my face. ‘Why should the sultan give a fig’s pip for one more black felon in this town? We have executed thirty already this month, and like rats there are always more.’

  The very fact that I am still languishing in the gaol after three weeks away from my duties tells me everything I need to know: that I am expendable, forgotten. I wonder who is attending Ismail at his prayers, checking his babouches for scorpions or his food for poison, delivering messages, keeping the couching book. I torture myself at the thought of my replacement being given my room, throwing out my few possessions: the little my life has been reduced to. I wonder if even now he is taking a few minutes between his duties to sit in the courtyard where I so foolishly hid the spoiled babouches, enjoying the warm caress of the sun on his upturned face and the scent of the jasmine tumbling from the catwalk. All I can smell here is shit and piss and sweat made sour by terror, and I can assure you none of it smells much like jasmine.

  When the muezzin calls I turn to pray along with the other unfortunates. But who knows the direction of Mecca in this place, in such darkness? I think of Ismail making his rounds with his army of astronomers armed with their astrolabes and calculations, fiddling with their rules and angles, aligning the alidade with the degree of the sun to tell them precisely in which direction the Holy City lies, before the sultan can kneel and pray. All I can do is turn away from the bucket of shit and hope for the best.

  *

  One morning I run a hand across my jaw and find bristles there. Can it be that a spell in gaol is turning me back into a man? I allow myself a mirthless smile, then put my head in my hands. God loves a joke.

  Suddenly the viewing window shuttles open and a voice calls, ‘Nus-Nus? Which one of you is the court official known as Nus-Nus?’

  There are a few titters; but they stop when I stand up. ‘I am he.’

  The guard opens the door and beckons me out. ‘And don’t try anything or I’ll take your leg off.’

  Seated at a table in a side-room, sipping tea and swathed from head to foot in black, is a woman. I know who it is at once, despite the veil, by the thickness of her wrist and the colour of her skin, even though she is not wearing her usual jewellery. I am alert enough to say nothing. The guard shows no curiosity, and shuts the door behind him. I wonder how often women come to this noisome place for their last conjugal visits, and shudder.

  ‘So, Nus-Nus, this is where you are,’ she says in Lobi.

  ‘So it would seem,’ I reply in Senufo.

  ‘No one took the trouble to tell me until yesterday,’ Zidana says. ‘I thought you were ill.’

  I do not believe her: Zidana’s spies are everywhere. ‘Why are you here?’ She is taking a risk, and I doubt it is for my good. If Ismail discovers she has flouted his will by slipping outside the palace walls, even being his chief wife is unlikely to save her. I have seen him strangle one so-called favourite with his own hands for the heinous crime of picking up a fallen orange from the ground to eat. ‘We are not paupers, to stoop to such behaviour!’ he chastised as he choked the life out of her. ‘Have you no dignity? If you would shame your sultan by doing such a thing, what more would you do?’ He had nightmares the following night, calling her name over and over again in his sleep – Aicha, Aicha – and the next morning his pillow was wet.

  ‘I needed to ask you about the list,’ Zidana says simply. ‘Have they mentioned it? Do they have it as evidence?’

  I sigh. ‘No one has spoken of it.’

  ‘Good. Well, that is something, at least.’ She sips her tea and we sit in silence. ‘How is the sultan?’ I ask after a long while.

  ‘Ismail is Ismail, but in a worse temper than usual. He sent Zina away last night without touching her. That’s a first.’

  ‘He has not asked for me?’

  ‘He has not mentioned you to me.’

  ‘But who is keeping the couching book for him? Who is tasting his food?’

  ‘Do not torment yourself so,’ she says, and rises to go.

  ‘Will no one intercede for me? You know I am innocent of the charge.’

  ‘When did innocence save anyone? Knowledge is far more useful.’

  ‘Indeed. I would not wish to be tortured,’ I say suddenly, made bold by desperation. ‘For fear of what I might say, about my reasons for visiting Sidi Kabour.’

  She laughs then. ‘Oh, Nus-Nus, show a little fortitude, a little Senufo spirit.’

  And then she taps the door and the guard lets her out into the light and takes me back to the darkness. I am so caught up in my own thoughts that I eat mindlessly, like an animal, when they bring food. Forgetting that there may be stones in the barley bread, I bite down hard and crack a grinding tooth, and thus have a new woe to think upon.

  *

  The next day the guard comes for me again. ‘You’re suddenly very popular,’ he leers. I know something is up when he brings me a bucket of cold water, a handful of olive paste for soap and a knotted rag with which to clean myself in the corridor outside. I turn away, trying for some degree of modesty, but he just laughs. ‘I’ve seen all sorts in here: nothing shocks me.’

  Even so, his eyes fix themselves curiously on my crotch as I strip, but when I straighten and stare him in the eye he looks away. I wash and put on the clean linen breeches and long grey tunic he gives me.

  As soon as I see the rich silk of the back of his turban, I know my visitor. He turns and looks me up and down. ‘Ah, Nus-Nus, it pains my heart to see you so reduced. Obscurity comes quickly, does it not? One moment you are at the centre of all things with the blessed light of the sultan shining upon you; the next you find yourself in the outer darkness. It is chill there, is it not?’

  ‘Have you come to taunt me?’

  The grand vizier smiles. ‘Come, come, Nus-Nus. Won’t you beg for your life? You know I have the power to save you.’

  I fold my arms. ‘I doubt my life is worth the bargain you would strike.’

  ‘You value yourself too low.’ He puts out a hand and touches my thigh, his fingers kneading the big muscle there as if he will make bread with it.

  I school myself to ignore it. What was it Zidana had said? A little Senufo spirit. I gather my resources and attempt to summon the lost warrior within.

  His hand creeps closer to my groin, shielded by the long tunic and I know at once he chose the garment carefully and for this purpose. His fingers close on me through the thin fabr
ic of the breeches, caressing. I shall see you dead, I promise – if by some miracle I should survive.

  ‘I would rather take my punishment than be your plaything.’

  He smiles unpleasantly. ‘An innocent man prepared to die horribly for a crime he did not commit?’

  ‘What do you know of it?’

  ‘Enough to save your ungrateful black hide. Think about it, Nus-Nus. A place in my household, the best of everything: a life of luxury. That or a nail driven through the top of your head. It doesn’t seem like much of a choice to me. But take your time. I shall ensure the qadi doesn’t carry out the execution for a few days, to give you the space to consider your decision.’

  ‘What about my trial?’

  ‘What trial? The qadi has all he needs by way of proof of your guilt. Unless he decides to torture you for a fuller account of your visit to the herbman, of course. That would be most unpleasant, to go through the bastinado, the pincers and the rack, before ending up with a nail in the skull.’

  ‘As a member of the palace staff I can’t be executed without a warrant signed by the sultan,’ I say stiffly.

  Abdelaziz snorts. ‘Did you not know, Nus-Nus, that I am in charge of such warrants?’

  I hang my head, defeated.

  ‘Ismail has not even noticed your absence, my dear boy. Well, no, that is something of an exaggeration: he noticed when you were late appearing the first day you went missing and went roaring around, demanding your head. He beat his two body-slaves almost unconscious when they said they did not know where you were, and after that he never mentioned you again, no doubt thinking that in one of his fits of madness he had lopped off your head. Have you noticed this strange habit of his? Killing someone one day and pretending the next that nothing has happened? I remember when he beat Raid Mehdi black and blue over his failure to quell some small rebellion in the Rif: the man lost an eye. The next time Ismail saw him he was wearing a patch over it, and Ismail took him by the arm and asked him most solicitously what had caused the loss of the eye. The poor man stammered out some lie about falling from a horse and the sultan heaped gifts upon him, no doubt to assuage his conscience. But guilt will out. They say he has bad dreams after such bouts, from time to time. Is it true?’

  It is, but I don’t answer.

  ‘No matter. My nephew Samir Rafik is taking care of him now.’

  And with that dagger to my heart he leaves. When the guard comes to take me back to the cell, he winks at me, and, though I washed thoroughly a bare half hour ago, I feel dirty to the depths of my soul.

  *

  Early the next afternoon the guard calls me out again. What now? The grand vizier must think me feeble-minded indeed that a single night of reflection should sway me to his will.

  ‘They say the third time’s the charm,’ the guard mutters cryptically and, unlocking the door to the side-room, pushes me in.

  I stare at Raid Mohammed ben Hadou Ottur and he looks back, faintly amused. ‘You were expecting someone else?’

  ‘You are my third visitor in as many days, sidi.’

  He barks out a laugh. ‘Zidana and Abdelaziz, I believe?’ He has a reputation as an astute man and I suspect that he runs a battery of spies. ‘Get undressed.’

  I have not heard he is a sodomite, but clever men learn to hide their vices in Ismail’s palace. But when I start to undress, instead of staring frankly, he tosses me a bundle of clothes: a pair of cotton trousers and a plain wool diellaba. ‘Put the hood up,’ he advises. ‘I’ll explain as we walk.’

  Walk?

  Two minutes later, just like that, we are outside. I stand there with my head tipped back, blinking in the hot ochre light, suddenly overwhelmed by the blue of the sky; the eye-hurting green of the new fig leaves in a nearby courtyard. The last time I saw the tree, the leaves were in bud, their silken undersides barely visible against the silver bark.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask, running to catch up with my liberator, who is moving away at speed towards the medina with his long, loping stride.

  ‘We have need of you. The sultan and I.’

  My heart soars: not forgotten, after all! ‘I shall be for ever grateful to you for restoring me to the service of my lord…’

  ‘Do not be too quick to thank me, Nus-Nus. You will not like the reason for your release. There is a task for you to perform. It is, shall we say, unpleasant.’

  I cannot imagine what can be so onerous. We pass a group of women comparing braids and beads at the haberdasher’s stall. They watch us with interest, batting their eyelids over their veils.

  ‘And what of the… matter… of Sidi Kabour?’

  The Tinker puts a finger to his mouth. ‘If you achieve this task, Sidi Kabour will never have existed.’

  I frown. ‘But… but, his family—’

  ‘Everyone necessary will be paid. Reports will be burned. Learn some discretion, Nus-Nus. If I tell you it is night while the sun shines, don your night robe and light a candle. Do as you are bid and no one will ever speak of this matter again.’ He says something else, and I think I hear the name of the grand vizier, but now we are passing through the metal quarter, where men are sitting in the sunshine beating out giant copper bowls and couscous vessels so vast they must be destined for the palace kitchens, and the noise of their hammers drowns out his words.

  *

  Sometime later we emerge from the warren of alleyways into the Sahat al-Hedim – ‘The Place of Rubble’, for all the building detritus that has been dumped here outside the palace walls. The first thing my lord Ismail did when he decided to make Meknes his capital – rather than nearby Fez (which, apart from being cramped and dank and stinking, is rife with dissidents, marabouts and Qur’anic scholars too ready to voice an unwanted opinion) or Marrakech (which is held by his rebel brother, and is always an untrustworthy place) – was to send in thousands of slaves to raze the old town to make way for his grand new design. That was five years ago, and although the first stage is nearing completion, chaos still reigns. He is a great man, Moulay Ismail, Emperor of Morocco, Father of the People, Emir of the Faithful, Overcoming of God. Yes, a great man; but he is no architect.

  A mule train is being unladen on one side of the square, the animals tended to as they are disencumbered of their packs. Traders sit around them, dickering with their tally sticks and weights. A swallow dips and twists over their heads, as if flies were released when the goods-packs were opened. I see the flash of a red as dark as old blood on its throat as it swoops past, the forked plume of its tail, and then it is gone.

  I do not recognize the guards on the gate, but they yield quickly enough at the sight of the man with me, and it strikes me how quickly the world has changed since I was incarcerated. As we walk at a fast clip through the marble corridors, I work up the courage to ask about my room. ‘In that place, the quiet and comfort of it was much on my mind. I know it is a small thing, below your notice, sidi…’ I trail off, hopelessly.

  ‘Your quarters are your own again, Nus-Nus: your things I have restored as best I was able. If I have overlooked something, forgive me. If you find anything missing, let me know and I will do my best to replace it for you.’

  Such kindness is unexpected. Gratitude warms my heart; then I remember the onerous task. ‘So what is it you want me to do?’

  He gives me a flat-lidded, enigmatic look. ‘I am led to believe you can converse most persuasively in this heathen tongue,’ he says to me in perfect English.

  I am unable to hide my surprise. ‘A previous master educated me in many things, amongst which was a passable fluency in English.’ I pause. ‘But, sidi, how is it you speak it so well?’

  ‘English was the mother tongue of my mother,’ he replies shortly, and looks aside.

  That explains those curiously light eyes. I remember it is whispered that he had a European slave for a mother, but thought it malicious slander. If it is true, he must have had to work hard for Ismail’s favour.

  ‘Is there something in English you wish t
ranslated?’

  ‘You could put it like that.’

  As we approach the harem gates, he stops. ‘You may take your hood down now. Announce yourself to the guards. They know what to do.’

  Strange. I watch him walk quickly away and wonder what linguistic problem can be so important as to have prompted him to rescue me from gaol and risk the wrath of the grand vizier. The guards on the gate usher me through; the boy sent to guide me drags me by the hand, past Zidana’s pavilion to a building I have never visited – or even seen – before. ‘Wait here,’ he tells me, and runs inside.

  Leaning back against the sun-warmed plaster, I close my eyes and turn my face up to the sun. Somewhere, a peacock sounds its melancholy cry, but all I can think is: I am free! Every night, amid the stench and babble of that foul cell, I imagined the cold iron nail entering my skull, and now here I am with the sun on my face, and the backs of my eyelids glowing vermilion, breathing in the scents of neroli and musk.

  My nose twitches. I know that scent… I open my eyes, but the sun’s after-images confuse my vision. I blink, and find Zidana bearing down upon me. A little black slave-girl runs panting alongside her, fanning her wildly with a fistful of ostrich feathers. I sneeze loudly, the fan having wafted dust into my nostrils.

  ‘Why, Nus-Nus, is this how you greet your sovereign? Down you go like the dog you are!’

  I prostrate myself, since it seems expected. Why so formal? Zidana does not usually stand on such ceremony with me.

  There is a cat in front of me: a sleek blue-grey thing with slanted amber eyes. It lowers its wedged-shaped head to regard me curiously. Then it turns and winds its body sinuously around a pair of legs behind it and I see that the fur on its back is spotted dark red, as if paint has been dripped on it. When it moves behind the legs I see a pair of feet clad in slippers embroidered with gold wire and studded with gems. I know the style: I buried the last pair he cast off in a plant pot in my courtyard, covered in Sidi Kabour’s blood. I press my forehead into the tiles.