by Jane Johnson
‘You dare to come to me covered in the filth of your feeding!’ Ismail rages. ‘There is honey all over your fingers and pastry in your beard! Have you no respect, for me or for the Holy Qur’an?’ And he thumps the book down again and again and again, until the vizier is a cowering heap on the floor.
‘Mercy; have mercy on me, majesty. Nus-Nus told me to come at speed and I thought it a matter of urgency …’
The next blow is less violent; and the one after that glances off the vizier’s shoulder as if Ismail has lost interest. The sultan steps away, examining the book for damage, but it is a sturdy object, and whoever has repaired it has made a good job of it. ‘Go away. Pay the bookseller whatever he asks.’ He passes the Qur’an to me. ‘Place it on the topmost shelf, Nus-Nus: it is defiled now.’
How truly he speaks, did he but know it!
Fetching the wooden library stairs, I fit the Safavid Qur’an between two other ancient volumes on the highest shelf and hope Ismail will never change his mind and wish to take it down again.
I turn to find Ismail kneeling on the floor with his arm around the Hajib’s shoulders. ‘Get up, man. What are you doing down there? You need not genuflect to me: we are like brothers, you and I, are we not?’
Abdelaziz staggers to his feet. His eyes look glazed and there is blood on his cheek. I watch in horrified fascination as the sultan takes the end of his sash and wipes it tenderly away. ‘There, that is better, is it not?’
‘Yes, O Great One.’ The vizier manages a wobbly smile.
Ismail turns to me. ‘Have you been to look at the wolf yet?’
Damnation. In the midst of my other woes I had forgotten about the wolf. ‘I will go now, majesty.’
The wolf looks more dead than alive. There is a large and bloody swelling on the poll of its head. Two children are standing by the cage, the eldest with a stick in its fist. Both have shaven heads but one long braid on the crown, by which the angels may catch them if they fall. No angels are ever likely to attend these children, though. The massive gold ring each wears proclaims him to be one of Ismail’s many little emirs who roam unchallenged and undisciplined about the court. And I know all too well which they are: Zidan, the empress’s eldest, six years old and rotten to the core; the other barely more than a toddler, Ahmed the Golden, a small monster-in-training.
I sigh. ‘Well, now, Zidan, what are you doing here?’
The older child regards me with defiant black eyes. ‘Nothing. Anyway, if I want to play with the wolf I can. Father said so.’
‘I am sure your father did not give you permission to batter the poor thing to death.’
He sneers. ‘I only gave him a little tap.’
Ahmed laughs delightedly. ‘A big tap!’
‘No need to pretend innocence with me, Zidan: remember how I found you last week.’ I give him a meaningful look. Last week I found him by the stables with an older boy, a slave, cutting out a cat’s claws by the root. The slave looked sick: the cat had raked Zidan and he had obviously been ordered to hold her down while the little demon wielded his dagger. I had berated them both roundly and whacked the slave-boy over the head, harder than I’d meant, since I’d wished to administer the blow to Zidan, but dared not. Like his mother, he bears a grudge; like his father, he enjoys the power to deprive a man of limb or life. The cat died anyway. I buried it myself.
‘If you tell I will have you killed.’ He taps the stick against his leg. It leaves bloody smears on his qamis. ‘I might have you killed anyway, Half-and-Half.’
‘Your father prizes his cats, and the Qur’an says that those who torment them will themselves be tormented in Hell,’ I remind him.
‘It does not say anything about wolves,’ he says, baring his teeth at me. They are already rotting, from the sweets he cons out of everyone.
Thankfully, the menagerie keeper comes out now. He looks cowed, as well he might. Able to vent my spleen, I yell at him. ‘What the hell happened to it?’
He shrugs. ‘It went for Prince Zidan when I was putting it in the cage. It seemed it would tear out his throat, but the little emir was most brave.’
Patently a lie: the wretched creature looks as if it would have had problems even gnawing the throat of a chicken and the child had evidently been battering it through the bars. Zidan crows with laughter and runs off, towing his little brother after him, confident that he is inviolate.
I glare at the menagerie keeper. ‘If it is not walking and snarling by midnight you will wish it had ripped your throat out.’ There is no point scolding him about Zidan: we both know this. I crouch to examine the beast. It really is a sorry-looking specimen, bedraggled and bitten about the legs and haunches by the dogs that brought it down. It regards me with not an iota of interest, neither raising a hackle nor even wrinkling its muzzle, as if all it waits for now is death. My heart contracts in sympathy.
‘Can it even walk?’ I stand up again.
‘It’s stronger than it looks,’ the keeper says defensively.
‘Get it out and let me see it walk.’
He gives me a look. How dare a jumped-up Guinea slave speak to him, a pale-skinned Arab, so? Contempt and loathing go hand in hand: I suspect I know which way it would go if he had to choose between killing me or the wolf.
Grudgingly he does as I ask, entering the cage with his stick at the ready, but the wolf does not even stir as he fastens the chain around its neck, and he has to drag it out like a sack of turnips, as if it has lost the use of its legs. Even so, the four wild asses of which the sultan is so fond take one look at it, bray shrilly and bolt for the far side of the enclosure, where they disturb the ostriches, which in turn set up a raucous noise. Still the wolf crouches, its nose all but touching the ground.
‘This is no good. Is it the only one the hunters brought in?’
‘It was the sultan himself who ran it down,’ the man says sullenly.
‘It’ll have to be in better fettle than this for the ceremony. You know the sultan will have your head and mine if the beast is not to his satisfaction and he is made to look foolish.’
The keeper looks pensive. Then he says, ‘Can’t you ask the witch for something that’ll do the trick?’
I stare at him. Does the whole palace know my business? I do not credit his question with an answer, but walk quickly away.
It is Zidana to whom I go now, availing myself of a basket of oranges on the way, knowing I require some sort of excuse for entering the harem without prior arrangement. The guards on the gate are not fooled: there are treefuls of oranges everywhere, even in the harem gardens, like mine still green. They search the basket suspiciously and I stand by, shuffling my feet, till they are done. I notice that Qarim’s eyes are red and swollen. Word has reached him of Bilal’s death, then – whispers racing through the labyrinth of passages. ‘I am sorry about your brother,’ I offer quietly.
He nods. It is not done to talk about the demise of those who fall foul of Ismail. They simply cease to exist. ‘Let the man through, they’re only oranges,’ he instructs his fellow guards. Qarim puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘Watch yourself, Nus-Nus,’ he says in that high, light voice that is so at odds with his stature. ‘No one is safe in this place.’
As I approach the inner courts of Zidana’s palace, the mellow strains of an oud reach me. The oud is a beautiful instrument, the forerunner of the European lute, and I love to play it when I can. It has a sighing, plangent quality, particularly apt for love songs and melancholic airs. I learned to play tolerably well: now hearing the oud strummed with such feeling, I feel my fingers itch to join in. Then a voice rises in harmony with the dark melody and I stop where I am, in the shadows of the vine-covered arcade, to listen.
When I was a man, what a man I was
I loved the ladies, and they loved me
Oh, far and wide have I travelled the world
Now I am a prisoner, woe for me.
A captive to your beauty, my dark maid
Your bright black eyes have captu
red my heart
But all I can do is watch you and sigh
A man I am no more, and so we must part.
I peer out into the courtyard, to see Black John, Zidana’s favourite eunuch, hunched over the pretty oud like an ape over a stolen fruit, his huge fingers moving nimbly as he takes the ballad to a minor key. The song is French, I believe, and did not speak of dusky maidens or black eyes in its original. We all have to shift for ourselves in our changed circumstances, to adapt or die, and John has prospered by his skills. When he starts in on the next verse, which tells how the lover must stand aside and watch his beloved wed another, since he has not the wherewithal to marry her himself (a reference in the original to money rather than diminished bodily capability), I find, quite unaccountably given the blandness of the lyrics, that tears are stinging my eyes.
The last time I heard the song I was in the service of a doctor, Scottish by origin, African by choice. In the few years he owned me, I learned to read and scribe in four languages; to tell the difference between mandrake and ginger root; to play a fair tune on the Spanish guitar and the oud. I knew both the Qur’an and the poetry of Rumi by heart (my master being a convert to Islam, saying jokingly that it was a more Christian religion than Christianity). I had conquered hearts from Timbuktu to Cairo, from Florence to Cadiz; I thought myself a grand fellow. My cousin Ayew would have said I had got above myself …
Ah, it is painful to think of Ayew. His fate was worse even than mine.
The doctor was a good master to me, more of a teacher than a master by the end, which came cruelly. We were in Gao, guests of the so-called king there (in truth no more than an ambitious chieftain, seeking to resurrect the great city from its sacked ruins), when half the household came down with some unusual sickness. Doctor Lewis succeeded in saving three of the king’s children and two of his wives before succumbing himself to the sweating and shaking, and finally the raving hallucinations. I tried to smuggle him out of the palace; and failed. He died and I was left friendless and prey to the monstrous ingratitude of that so-called king, who packed me off to the slave-market in case I too carried the seeds of the sickness. And there I was sold to a monster.
Black John’s song comes to a close and the ladies ululate their approval. I detach myself from the shadows and enter the courtyard. There is Naima and Mina, pretty Khadija and Fouzia; and there is Fatima, the Hajib’s sister, toting her boy on her hip. As always, I am taken aback by how features shared by brother and sister can be so repulsive in the one and so seductive in the other. Fatima wears her extra flesh lushly at breast and hip, but despite her childbearing keeps an elegantly narrow waist. Where his mouth seems vast and slug-like, her lips are pillowy. The blackness of his eye seems as dead as that of a shark; but Fatima’s eyes are bright and wicked, promising all manner of bed-tricks. When she sees me they go wide with surprise; then she looks away quickly. Interesting, I think, and file away that look for future reference. I bow to Zidana. She gives me a smile that is one part sugar to two parts sheer malice. ‘Still alive, then, Nus-Nus? Clever boy.’
I give her back a sharp look that says, No thanks to you, but all she does is grin wider. Then she claps her hands. ‘Go away, John, all of you. I need to talk to Nus-Nus.’
‘I hope you appreciated the skill of the repair,’ she says when they are gone, and when I do not reply, she laughs. ‘It could have been a lot worse, you know. The other book I considered binding into those pretty covers had pictures. Most instructive and inventive pictures.’ She pauses. ‘Did he make you read to him from it?’
I nod, seething.
‘I wish I could have been there to see it. And did he nod wisely, Ismail, and mouth the words as you recited?’
She knows her husband too well. ‘You could have had me killed.’
‘Oh, Nus-Nus, you underestimate yourself. I don’t underestimate you: I knew you’d pass my little test. You’re a resourceful man. But it was a good joke all the same.’
‘I have come to ask your aid in another matter.’ I explain the problem with the wolf, though I say nothing about Zidan’s torment of the beast. There is no point: she will not hear a word against him.
‘If it were me, I’d have chosen a lion, not some mangy old wolf,’ she sniffs. ‘What does that say about us to outsiders?’
‘That its fate will be the fate of any attacker who dares venture near?’ I hazard.
‘More likely that we are like sheep in a fold.’
‘The wolf is his symbol,’ I remind her, but she isn’t interested in pursuing the discussion, instead taking herself off and coming back a while later with a small phial of purplish liquid. ‘Coat some meat in this and give it to the beast just after sundown. It’ll liven it up for a while.’
‘Not too much, I hope.’
‘Then it would be more of a fair struggle, wouldn’t it?’ Her eyes gleam. ‘Quite the spectacle. I do hope I’ve got the quantities right.’ She gives me a sly smile.
I make to leave, then turn back. Should I mention the pattens? She will be furious at me for my stupidity, and anyway what can she do? None of the women are allowed to leave the palace and unless she can command her spirits to manifest themselves in flesh, even Zidana’s magic cannot retrieve them.
She watches my indecision with a raised eyebrow. ‘Off you go, Nus-Nus, but remember the next favour will be mine.’
I deliver the dose and instructions to the menagerie keeper, with a dire warning so that he is in no doubt that I will come looking for him if the wolf does not behave as expected that night, and head back to the Dar Kbira, running through the rest of my duties in my head, until I reach the dangerous impression that everything is just about under control. But as I stride through the long vine-covered walkway leading to the sultan’s pavilions, someone calls my name. I turn: it is Yaya, one of the guards posted on the main gate.
‘There were some men here earlier.’ Sweat sheens his face: has he run after me just to tell me this? I sigh. There is always someone seeking a bribe, or an audience. ‘What did they want?’
Yaya looks solemn. ‘They were making inquiries. There was a man murdered in the souq yesterday.’
My heart stutters, and my insides go cold. ‘Murdered?’ I echo feebly. A drop of sweat bursts out of my hairline beneath my turban, rolls down my forehead, makes a track along my nose.
Yaya watches me, his eyes bulging with curiosity. ‘They questioned all the guards about everyone’s comings and goings yesterday, and we said there were not many braving the rain …’
‘But you told him you had seen me,’ I finish, feeling sick.
‘Well, I had to,’ he says, as if lying was not an option.
‘And?’
He makes a face. ‘They wanted to talk to you. I said you were running errands for the sultan, helping him prepare for the inauguration, so they went away again.’
Pent-up breath escapes me. ‘Well, that’s all right, then.’
‘They’re coming back tomorrow.’
I go hot, then cold. ‘But I shall also be very busy tomorrow.’
‘I’m not on duty tomorrow.’ There is a note of selfish relief in his voice as he says this. Seeing my expression, he adds doubtfully, ‘But I’ll ask Hassan to turn them away.’
‘Wonderful.’ I walk quickly away, cursing under my breath. The qadi’s men are not usually this persistent: they know the qadi’s jurisdiction stops short of the palace walls. Did someone see something that implicates me directly? Sidi Kabour must have been better connected than I had thought, so assiduously are they pursuing his murderer.
As I perform my duties that evening, anxiety gnaws at my guts. I find myself asking, ‘Is this the last time I will lay out the sultan’s babouches? Is this the last good food I will taste?’
The wolf goes to its death in a dignified fashion – heralded in by long Fassi trumpets and musicians all in white. It rears up and growls and snarls and gives every impression of being the wild beast it is supposed to signify, and Ismail quells it with
less ease than I expected, given the state it was in that morning. I feel a pang of sorrow as he squeezes the life out of it, and when it slumps and he draws the ceremonial blade to cut off its head, I have to look away.
5
First Gathering Day, Rabī al-Awwal Massouda, black Sudanese, daughter of Abida, slave previously kept in the Tafilalt. Thirteen years old. Virgin.
A name, a date, the briefest of descriptions: such sterile words on a page to represent the enactment of fertility. The couching book is maintained with rigorous care in order to establish the birth and legitimacy of the sultan’s children, to keep a schedule that will settle all arguments, and prevent jealousies and disputes. He is but six years older than me, Ismail, and has been sultan for only the last five, and yet he has already engendered hundreds of infants upon his wives and concubines. The sultan lies with a virgin almost every night, although he has a few favourites to whom he returns from time to time. Unlike King Shahriyar in the Arabian tales, he does not have his conquests strangled the following morning to ensure their fidelity. There is little chance of infidelity in this palace – the harem is fiercely guarded by the eunuchs.
Zidana maintains control over the harem, and over the sultan too. Almost every night, after fifth prayer, once Ismail has eaten and bathed, she will arrange a gathering at which a selection of worthy candidates will promenade in the gardens, or play music for him, or sing beneath the orange trees, or in his private quarters, or just lie on the divans looking seductive. For this opportunity, Zidana is well bribed by those seeking advantage: to sway Ismail’s judgement, and to seduce him away from her rival Fatima, she will lead him to a certain girl and extol her virtues, indicating a delicately turned ankle or beautifully hennaed hands; even baring a breast to show off its curve and weight. The sultan, who is as headstrong as a charging horse in all other things, is surprisingly happy to be led by his Chief Wife in matters of the bedchamber.