by Jane Johnson
There is a lot more of this: privately I think Alys looks like one of the angels in the paintings I saw in the great houses of Venice, but wisely decide to hold my tongue.
‘Even if she manages to produce an infant, can you imagine what it would look like? I’ve blended walnut cankers with arsenic paste: I know what happens when black and white are mixed! Does Ismail want a grey worm as a child?’ Zidana raises her hands to the skies and her bangles rattle deafeningly. ‘Ah, Thagba, take her from this life!’
*
I am soon to be brought to full understanding of the root of Ismail’s fascination with Alys. Finished with his coupling that very night, he calls me out from behind the screen before she even has time to dress herself. I watch as he lays a hand upon her bare haunch and moves it caressingly; they exchange a look no witness was ever meant to see and for the first time jealousy washes through me like lava.
‘Is it not remarkable with what fortitude this fragile creature bears my attentions, Nus-Nus? She has such a force of will: she reins in her passions! She is clever: she understands the true nature of survival and takes a long view: instead of flying at a man with teeth and claws like the little Berber bitch, she masters herself, keeps her emotions in check, like a master horseman forcing his will upon a wild stallion. Imagine the strength such reserve requires. She is magnificent! She will give me such children: sturdy of body, powerful of mind.’ He turns to me, his eyes lit with triumph. ‘I have a plan, Nus-Nus, and it too is magnificent. I shall fortify my army, increase it a hundredfold, and with that army I shall expel the foreign invaders, every one of them: the Portuguese from Mehdiya, the Spanish from Mamora, Larache and Asilah, the English from Tangier. I shall purify my kingdom of the infidel and dedicate it to the glory of Allah. The only foreigners who will be permitted to stay shall be yoked to my command. My corsairs shall scour the seas and coasts for ever more white women and I shall breed them with my bukhari and create such an army as the world has never seen, an army which will combine the best of all races, the black and the white.’
He strides about the chamber, his arms outflung, his voice filling even the vault of the high ceiling. He talks of spreading Islam once more throughout Iberia; taking it to the very door of the Catholic Sun King in France, a new caliphate, greater even than the reign of the Almohad Dynasty. His rhetoric is sweeping, persuasive, theatrical. Doctor Lewis took me to the playhouses of Italy, and there I saw such grand gestures as these, gestures designed to reach out to an audience. Here, there are only two of us for him to play to: I look across to Alys to see how she fares in the face of such wild drama, but her face is turned towards Ismail like a flower towards the sun. She cannot understand more than a word here or there of his oratory, but she is captivated by his energy. The sultan has a near-magical charisma: he draws others into his orbit. It is what makes him so powerful, and so dangerous.
The bukhari he speaks of are the elite force of Black Guards he has brought from the lands to the south, captured in Saharan raids, traded for salt and iron. He captures or buys them, converts them to Islam and makes them take an oath of allegiance on a copy of the Salih al-Bukhari, the holy sayings of the Prophet, after which he presents them with a copy of said volume – a precious object indeed – and thus ensures their undying loyalty. He has been breeding them with black slave-women for some time now, marrying them at an early age and encouraging frequent congress so that they produce many offspring. There are thousands of these children being raised in the provinces where he stations his troops while the barracks here are completed: when they reach ten years of age the boys will be trained in the arts of war, the girls in domestic duties; and as soon as they reach puberty they too will be married and encouraged to breed. For years Ismail has been proclaiming that the troops thus produced will be the best in the world. But this is a new twist on his old idea.
He turns back to me now, thrilled by his own invention. ‘Imagine, Nus-Nus: just imagine what children you would make – were you entire – with one such as Alys!’
The surge of hatred I feel for him when he says this takes me by surprise. Even when terrified by the sultan – especially when terrified by him – my loyalty has been unquestioning. But something has changed in me, and the catalyst of that change is Alys.
I nod and smile, composing my expression to some semblance of admiration; as soon as I am dismissed I go quickly, the couching book tucked under my arm. I walk with my head down, paying no attention to my surroundings. Once inside my chamber, I lay the book down on my divan and turn around. The cool air of the courtyard, its floral perfumes and pristine night sky beckon me. Wrestling with my churning emotions, I am quite unprepared for the attack.
They are upon me in an instant, four at once. The first blow catches me on the shoulder, which flares with sudden heat. Some devil has hit me with a club! Pain awakes a demon in me. With a scream, I rush at them, lashing out with wild, ecstatic abandon. It is a bliss to hit someone, hit him so hard he flies backwards and crashes into the wall. ‘Get the book!’ someone else shouts, and one of them tries to land a blow to my head: he is shorter than me and it glances off, merely serving to enrage me further. My arm is a club, a weapon fuelled by fury: my fist connects with some soft part of his face that gives beneath the knuckles, then renders up bone to the force of my blow. There is a crunch, then a bubbling sound, and down he goes and I kick and kick and kick, oblivious to the fact that I am probably doing more damage to my feet, unprotected in their soft babouches, than to his ribs. The third man stares at me. His face is white beneath the moon and I recognize him as a bruiser I have seen around the court on occasion. I cannot recall his name – Hamid or Hamza or something. We lock eyes and he sneers at me, but there is fear as well as contempt there, and as I make a step forward, he makes a shrug of his shoulder, as if to say ‘This is not my fight’, and walks away; and I am left staring at the fourth man.
‘You!’
I am so startled to see him that I am hardly aware of the knife he suddenly produces. Perhaps, I think, even as I duck away from his first strike, it is the same knife with which he slit poor Sidi Kabour’s throat. It looks sharp enough: its wicked blade gleams in the semi-dark.
‘You fucker. You black bastard,’ he hisses, advancing again. ‘Who would have thought a slave would have the balls to stand his ground?’ His southern accent is pronounced. His thin face breaks into a reptilian grin and I see that his teeth are small and pointed, like a dog’s.
I know him. ‘I know you!’ I cry, and the realization is so immense it fills me from head to toe. I quiver with the knowledge. ‘I know who you are; your uncle took my balls, just as he took yours!’
He lunges at me then, a murderous lunge. For some reason, instead of backing away and ceding him the advantage, I take a great stride towards him, and as the knife comes at me, I grab his wrist with both hands, turn and pivot my back into him, using the arm as a lever. The limb cannot withstand such torsion: I have helped dissect enough corpses in my time to know the workings of the human anatomy. Besides, he is smaller than me, and suddenly (for the first time in my life) I want to hurt someone: hurt him badly. Because of this man – pawn though he may be – I have suffered all sorts of hell. With grim satisfaction I hear the shoulder socket give way with a wrench of gristle. The knife clatters from a hand unable to grip any more, and now I have him backed up against the wall (there is very little room in my small cabinet for such brawling), my other hand across his throat till his eyes bulge. There is loathing there, not fear: you have to give him that. He really hates me, it seems, for the loss of his testicles. That much I can understand: but there is no fellow feeling in the understanding. I take in the pointed features, the fancily cut beard. ‘I know who you are,’ I say again.
‘It took you long enough.’ Beads of sweat are standing out on his forehead, popping one by one out of his pores.
‘You killed an old man who never hurt another soul, and left him lying in a pool of his own blood.’
‘
Never hurt another soul? Not with his own hands, maybe, but think of all those other hands, which purchased his evil merchandise; think of those countless victims. That she-devil poisons all who stand in the way of her precious brat – and you, you help her! But one day she’ll poison you too – she’s a sorceress, a witch—’
I can hardly disagree, but suddenly I feel very weary. I lean on the arm barring his throat, stopping his words. ‘All this I know. You can tell me nothing. I know your uncle had you cut so that he could manoeuvre you into position at court; he had you kill the herbman to implicate me, so that you could replace me and he could lay hands on the couching book and make the amendment. He had Fatima’s entry moved forward, so that her child moves up the order of succession—’ It pleases me no end to see his eyes widen. ‘So’ – I am thinking out loud now – ‘Abdelaziz’s next step must be to do away with Ahmed, a child of only three…’
‘The child is a monster and the child of a monster.’
Does he mean Zidana, or Ismail, I wonder? I am sure the world would be a far better place without the little horror in it, but, even so, my duty is to uphold the true succession. I am, after all, the Keeper of the Book. ‘I could call the guards, it would take no more than a moment. I could call them and have you taken to the sultan. I could show him the book, show him the forgery…’ (Of course, I cannot: Zidana’s book-binder has already restored the book to its original state, but he is not to know that.) ‘I would hardly need to explain its significance to the emperor: he is an astute man, and cruel. He would have you all executed, and no doubt tortured first. But for my own reasons I have decided not to do this. Go to your uncle and tell him that I know everything, and that he is to keep away from me or I will tell the emperor all.’
He curls his lip at me. ‘The Hajib and the emperor are like brothers. Ismail will not hear a word against Abdelaziz. He will never believe you.’ But despite the bravado of his words, there is uncertainty in his eyes.
I tighten my grip, and at last he nods. I release him. He massages his throat with his one good hand, then bends to retrieve his knife, but I place my foot on it. ‘Just go,’ I say again, and he does, taking the other two men with him.
*
As I lie abed later that night I replay the fight in my head, relishing the unchecked violence of it, the unleashing of the warrior within me who till that moment I had not known existed. I do not regret my bruises: I cherish them. The grand vizier will surely kill me now, object of his desire or no, but I shall no longer be a witless pawn in this game of nobles: I shall safeguard myself. I think of all the ways he will try to do away with me and decide that poison is bound to be his preferred method. The next day I go to the market and buy a monkey – a well-set-up Barbary ape – from a trader of livestock. A tailor runs up a robe for it like my own and a little red tarboush that it wears on its head, secured with a ribbon under the chin. The ape makes no complaint at this frippery, happy to be out of its cage and given fruits. I lead it back to the palace by a cord, and when it pulls on the cord and chatters at me I stop and it squats in the gutter to relieve itself. Already it has some training, which makes my task easier.
Ismail is charmed by it (he prefers animals to people); the harem ladies love to feed it nuts and dates. It comes with me wherever I go. I am teaching it little tricks and mannerisms, which make Ismail laugh, especially when it takes on my role of food-tasting and I in turn pretend to be the sultan (a dangerous conceit, but he takes it in good part). I have named him Amadou, ‘little beloved’.
Thus far, Amadou and I are both still alive.
15
Rajab 1088 AH
Summer comes on like a wave, submerging us all beneath its stifling heat. The women in the harem lie around half clothed, half asleep, their silks staining where they touch the skin; but the building works continue apace. Workers die like flies: they are not used to these temperatures, to sweating their lives away, driven and scourged by their overseers, given little or nothing to eat or drink. The matamores, the prisons where the slaves are kept, stink to high heaven since water is scarce: there is none to spare for cleaning such low quarters. The lions in the menagerie try to burrow their way into the nearest matamore. Who knew that lions could dig? They must have developed an avid taste for human flesh from the poor wretches who are tossed into their enclosure for punishment and the sultan’s entertainment. The hole they make – more of a tunnel – is the length of two big lions: they manage to drag one man into it (a Frenchman: he cried Mon dieu, m’aidez!, then lost his legs to a lioness’s jaws and fell into unconsciousness) before the other slaves beat off the attackers, with stones and fists, and no doubt their rock-like bread. No one decides to risk the tunnel to the lions’ pit in an attempt to escape their prison; instead they scream for the guards, who throw down sufficient mortar and rubble to fill the hole. The menagerie is fortified. The sultan is much amused by the incident.
The corsairs bring new captives all the time, men and women; but none of the women capture Ismail’s imagination. It seems that Alys has satisfied what appetite he has for Europeans: the rest are farmed out to his bukhari. He keeps her busier than ever, but still there is no tangible outcome of their meetings. She complains of the heat, which is extreme. She is not used to such temperatures, she says; she feels faint much of the time, heavy the rest. During the days she sleeps; she is listless, and bored. About the only thing that brings her to life is the sight of Amadou trailing around after me in his perfect copy of my robes. She coos over him, goes soft in the eyes as she watches his antics.
One day I go out to the souq and purchase her an ape of her own. It is an inspired gift. She names it Hercules, though it is a tiny thing: a vervet monkey as small and soft as a baby, and she carries it everywhere with her. To see her cradling the little creature, stroking its head, letting it grip her fingers with its tiny claws, pierces my heart: I have to look away. The beast is not just for mothering, though, for I still fear Zidana’s hatred of her rival. I instruct Alys to allow Hercules to taste a little of her food first and then wait some minutes to watch for any change in his demeanour before she partakes of the food herself. But I fear the gentleness of her heart: I think she had rather taste the food herself to ensure its safety for the monkey.
Soon, however, monkeys are all the rage in the harem: everyone wants one. The place is alive with their chattering and screeching and the smell of their shit. I am not popular with the servants, who have to clean up after them; or with the harem guards, who must put up with the noise of the beasts all day and night. Now that the women are not bickering and fighting amongst themselves, the monkeys have taken over. Every day there is a vicious fight; those who intervene risk being bitten. In the end Zidana has them all rounded up and slaughtered. With her own hands she harvests their brains and internal organs for her magic. Alys is inconsolable.
After that, I keep Amadou in my courtyard.
*
Months pass. Ismail takes Abdelaziz with him on a visit to his armies in the Rif and along the north coast as far as the English encroachment at Tangier to assess their needs and the taxes he must therefore extract from the Jews and the corsairs. Alys is curiously unnerved by his absence. She takes me by the arm one day, oblivious to the stares of the courtyard women. My nerves sing at her touch, even through the thin cotton of my sleeve.
She turns her heart-shaped face up to me and my head suddenly feels immensely weighty; it is all I can do to master myself and resist the urge to bend and kiss her. ‘He will come back, won’t he? Ismail? It’s not so dangerous in the north, is it?’
Disappointment kicks me in the gut. Stiffly, I assure her that the sultan is both blade- and bullet-proof. Who would dare to kill the Sun and Moon of Morocco? God would strike a man dead at the very thought. This is said only half in jest; half of me believes it. For the rest of the week I stay away from the harem, going about my duties mechanically, making my reports to ben Hadou and the other functionaries who have been left in charge in the sultan’s
absence. The Tinker is a hard taskmaster: he keeps the palace running like French clockwork. The court is calmer without the presence of the sultan and grand vizier; even the harem spats and rivalries dissipate.
But I cannot stay away for long: Zidana summons me to entertain her entourage since Black John is indisposed. But, as I strum my oud and punctuate the songs with poetry, I direct Rumi’s undying words to one pair of ears only:
My heart is like a lute
Each note cries with yearning
My Beloved watches me
Wrapped in silence.
When you reveal your face
Even the stones dance for joy
When you lift your veil
Even sages lose their wits.
The reflection of your face gives
The water a shimmer of gold
And turns the heat of flames
To a gentle glow.
When I see your face
The Moon and Stars lose all their glory.
The Moon is too ancient and too dull
To be compared with such a mirror.
Alys watches me intently; even when I do not look back I can feel her eyes on me. I wonder, is she thinking of me? I think so often of her it feels almost a reality. Almost, I can imagine lying with her, skin to skin. But then my mind shies away from the charade that would follow and I chide myself for my stupidity.
*
At night I take my beloved leather-bound volume of Rumi to my bed and seek solace in the long-dead poet’s words.
I am the black night that hates the Moon
I am the wretched beggar who is angry with the King…
I have no peace but I will not sigh
I am angry at sighing!…
I run away from the Magnet
I am a straw resisting the draw of the Amber.
We are just tiny particles helpless in this world
