Sultan's Wife

by Jane Johnson

  ‘Why do you smile?’

  It will hardly do to explain the source: I try instead to essay an explanation of the word but I cannot remember the name of the bird in Arabic. I resort to mime: my hand makes a flowing line in the air and his hand follows the arc of the creature’s graceful neck.

  ‘Al ouez abiad. The White Swan. That is what I shall call her.’

  Samir is no scribe, that much is certain. His entries in the couching book are in a poor hand, and include many crossings-out and ink smudges. On a clean page untouched by his uncouth hand I write:

  Third Gathering Day, Rabī al-Thānī

  Alys Swann. Converted English captive, twenty-nine years old. Virgin. A gift to his majesty from Sidi Qasem ben Hamed ben Moussa Dib.

  My hand shakes as I make the entry, there is such turmoil in my mind. It is a savage irony that the task of maintaining this chronicle of lust and potency should fall to a eunuch, is it not? More painful still, to a eunuch who was entire till recently, and had already tasted the glories to be found between a woman’s legs. Did I ever make any children of my own? I fear I was never around for long enough to make serious attachments: my master rarely stayed in one place for more than a month or two, but was always on a quest for knowledge that took us all over North Africa, to Spain, and once even as far as Venice. Those Venetian courtesans, with their soft white arms, those provocative dresses that all but bared their breasts, their rare perfumes, knowing eyes and surprising tricks. Ever since my cutting I have veered my thoughts away from such things: but surely nothing can be so useless as desire to a eunuch.

  And then there came Alys Swann …

  Even the sound of her name in my mind stirs that part of me I thought long dead, and I have to quell the surge of blood that beats in my groin. It is surely unnatural; and yet, and yet, I cannot help but wonder if I have somehow been singled out, the recipient of some kind of miracle …

  To divert my rioting thoughts, I riffle through the book that has been my pride to keep both accurate and elegant. Most of the couchings listed took place in Fez, before the court moved here to Meknes. I remember the old palace chambers, so grand and sumptuous, but somehow gloomy despite their soaring arches and rich ornamentation. That was a place that had seen too much: it was as if a miasma of suffering imbued the very plaster on its walls. I flick through the entries and remember the women one by one: Naima and Habiba, Fatima, Jamilla and Yasmin, Ouarda, Aicha, Eptisam, Maria and Chama – some of them little more than girls. One or two wept when he took them, not understanding what was expected of them. There is even one very early entry in which the ink was blotched where I cried in sympathy for one child. I look for it now. I will never forget the look on her face after the event: her pupils more like holes than eyes, as if her spirit had been pushed out of her by the force of the coupling.

  Back I go, to the start, then forward again, towards the present, my life and the life of the women here mapped out in daily stark entries. I frown. Where is that page? Before Samir laid his hands on the book it was the only one that was not pristine.

  I locate the Emira Zoubida, who knew exactly what she was about: a proper little temptress with skin the colour of an aubergine. She bore the sultan twin boys; there were noisy celebrations. Of course, they did not last long, sickly to begin with and probably helped on their way by Zidana. Nearly all the rest around that time produced girl children; of the boys, none appear to have survived. Save Zidan, of course, the apple of his father’s eye. I turn the page, and find … not the page blotched by sentiment, which should have followed, but an unfamiliar page. I stare at it, confused, for a time. On closer examination I realize the writing on it is not my own, though it is a very fair copy: such a fair copy, in fact, that probably only I would ever know the difference. There is a faint line down the gutter, and near the foot of the page a little mark. I carry the book out into the fading light of the courtyard, but I do not need its confirmation. I know … I just know.

  A page, very cleverly altered, has been moved from its original place. No untruth told in it, except for the date: a son, leapfrogging a number of other sons, placing him higher in the succession, a pawn for a game-player to move into position. You can barely see the join, it has been so carefully done: torn, rather than cut, the warp and weft of the linen meshing almost seamlessly. A very time-consuming process. Perhaps three weeks’ worth of work, to practise my hand, revise the entry and make the switch …

  Did they really think I would not notice the forgery? But of course if everything had gone to plan I would be dead of a nail through the skull by now, or, having accepted his unholy offer, been tucked away in a safe house, prisoner to the grand vizier’s every depraved whim.

  I had guessed my enemy already: what I did not understand was his motivation. But at least now I know the game and the stakes, which are high. His investment in the scheme to remove me from my duties has cost him dear: he will not be happy that I have escaped his clutches and am back in charge of the couching book again. I wonder how long it will be before the next attempt on my life comes.

  12

  The next day my usual duties resume as if there has been no lacuna. It is as if the whole affair of Sidi Kabour has, as ben Hadou promised, never existed. And yet the world has changed shape: am I the only one who can see this?

  But, as we tour the building works that afternoon, Abdelaziz watches me out of the corner of his eye, when he thinks me engaged in the taking down of notes. There has been an explosion of lime and four workers dead in it; and one of the huge vats of tadelakt – the plaster made from marble dust and albumen – has mysteriously been ruined: three months’ work and twenty thousand eggs wasted. Ismail is much exercised over the matter, rattling off instructions and making dire pronouncements; but, despite my apparent attention to my scribing, I can feel the vizier’s eyes, like an insect’s, on me.

  When I look up and catch him, he looks away and engages in deep conversation with the chief astronomer. But he seems perplexed, as if he has perceived the change in me. He must, I remind myself, be alarmed at my sudden reinstatement. I wonder what has become of his nephew. I wonder too about Alys. Is she well? Has she been kindly treated by the sultan’s women? Does she blame me for her decision to convert and hate me for my part in her ordeal?

  We are heading back to Ismail’s quarters when a functionary comes running to announce that one of our generals has come riding into the palace complex, covered in dust, requesting an urgent audience. We find him in a receiving room, still filthy, attended by a group of his men, equally unkempt, bearing a dozen huge sacks. They have been putting down a Berber rebellion in the Rif, and meeting stiff resistance.

  Until recently the campaign has not been going well, for they are a wild and woolly people, these people of the mountains, and well known for their independence of thought. It took more than two hundred years to persuade the Berbers to submit themselves to Islam, and some say they’ve never fully given up their old animism and goddess worship on the quiet, and have even been known to eat the wild pigs that run in their mountains, though the only Berbers I have encountered have been tough, honourable men, astute and intelligent, though superstitious and prone to magic and curses, and far too proud and too partisan to bow the neck to any not of their own tribe. Ismail loathes them with a fervour and is personally affronted by their refusal to accept his rule. He is, after all, God’s own representative on earth, directly descended from the Prophet himself. How dare they not submit to God’s holy will?

  Usually Ismail would not countenance such lack of ceremony or propriety as to stand in the same room as unwashed men, but he is avid to know their news; his eyes light up. ‘Show me what you’ve got for me!’ he demands even while the men are on the ground in prostration. ‘Quick: jump to it!’

  I expected captured booty: gold and silver, fine cloths, treasures taken from the fallen chieftains of the Rif. Well, I suppose that was exactly what he’d brought: their most precious possessions of all. There is a collect
ive gasp as the heads roll out of the first sack and trundle, ghastly, across the marble floor. That’ll take some clearing up, I think. The heads are so fresh they are still leaking blood and fluids. They must have marched the prisoners most of the way here and butchered them this morning. I wonder what the sultan will make of that, if he realizes it: he would have, I am sure, preferred to have dispatched them himself, and not quickly either. But it does not seem to matter: he is down on his hands and knees amongst them, oblivious to the ooze and muck, turning each one over and regarding it with satisfaction as the general reels off names and tribal affiliations. ‘Excellent,’ Ismail keeps saying; ‘excellent. Another of God’s enemies dead.’ When last I heard, the Berbers were Muslims like the rest of us; but apparently you can’t be a good Muslim and oppose the sultan.

  I am dispatched with a contingent of slaves to gather up the grisly specimens and carry them to the Jews, while Ismail inspects the horses and other chattels his soldiers have brought to him. The mellah, the Jewish quarter of the city, derives its name from the Arabic al-mallah – ‘the place of salt’, and that is why we are here, for it is only the rich Jews of the quarter who have sufficient salt with which to preserve these tokens of triumph, so that when Ismail has them impaled on the city walls they will last a sufficient time and not drop bits of their traitorous flesh on the heads of the good citizens of Meknes.

  The Jewry of Meknes is easily distinguished: inside the city, the men must by law wear red caps and black cloaks and nothing on their feet; but in their own sector (which is close to the palace, for ease of access for the sultan to their money) they dress as they please. The women walk about bare-faced, and are handsome and bold; the men are clever in trade, which is why they are here, and mix easily enough for the most part with the Moroccans. There are a number of them at court, for they are more respected and less reviled here than in other parts, though the sultan taxes them mercilessly. It’s said that without them he would be like a man with no hands: they pay for his army and his renovations. In return they are left to pursue their business interests and their religion in some degree of peace.

  I take the heads to Daniel al-Ribati, a well-respected merchant who runs a dozen Saharan caravans the size of small villages, and a fleet of ships to sell the wares he brings out of the desert – ivory and salt; indigo, ostrich feathers, gold and slaves, amber and cotton – to Europe, the Levant and Constantinople. He is a man in his later years, perhaps his late fifties, dark and foursquare, with a neatly cropped beard and bright blue eyes. He has contacts everywhere and a reputation for being both shrewd and fair, which is a rare thing in business. It is also said that his fortune is buried in caves beneath the mellah, that he pays barely a hundredth of what he earns as tax, that he is as rich as Croesus, or Sheba.

  He takes a head out of one sack and regards it solemnly. It is a ghastly object, ragged at the neck, with a great sword-slash bisecting the face. Al-Ribati clucks his tongue: it’s going to be an expensive business (for him, obviously; never for the sultan), but he does not quibble at the work; his continued existence here depends on give and take, though it probably seems to him it’s more give and give. ‘Two weeks,’ he says succinctly. ‘Come back in two weeks and they’ll be perfect.’

  I express my doubts that Ismail will wait so long for his trophies and he laughs. ‘Even the sultan cannot hurry salt.’

  That night Ismail takes one of the fallen chieftain’s daughters to his bed, a pretty girl of fifteen with unruly eyebrows and a bush of black hair. She seems docile enough when she is brought in and I am dismissed from the royal presence, but am only few paces towards my chamber when a great roar issues from my lord’s apartment and I run back in to find the door-guard wrestling a knife off her. How she managed to smuggle that in, I cannot imagine. Or, rather, I can. Good heaven, she must be a determined creature. Ismail sees me and waves me away with a laugh. ‘No damage done, Nus-Nus, off you go.’

  I slope off, feeling some relief, first at not having to witness the coupling, which I am sure will not be pleasant; second, that she is not Alys. I leave a gap for the Berber princess’s name, which I did not catch, in the couching book and go to bed, where I sleep like a baby, right through the night. Until, that is, I am rudely awoken.

  As soon as I open my eyes, even without the lad shaking my arm, I know something is amiss: the light, it’s the light that’s wrong. Too bright, even for these summer months: first prayer must have been and gone by an hour or more.

  I sit bolt upright. ‘The sultan?’

  Abid nods, hardly able to find his words. ‘Not well. Asking for you.’

  I throw on a robe and run. He is lying on his divan, looking pale. Beads of sweat stand out on his forehead. I am alarmed: Ismail is rarely sick, though he complains frequently about imagined ills. And he never, ever, misses first prayer.

  ‘Fetch Doctor Salgado,’ he all but whispers.

  The doctor – a Spanish renegade – is asleep when I find him, and wakes slowly, red-faced and bleary. His breath stinks of garlic and hippocras. When I tell him the sultan requires his services urgently, his eyes bulge in panic. I dash out into the nearest courtyard and pick a handful of mint leaves for him while he dresses. He chews them like an animal, mouth open, breath rasping, as we make our way back to the sultan’s apartments.

  Ismail is not fooled by our ruse: he recoils from the man and sends me to fetch Zidana instead. It is as well he is feeling weak, or Salgado’s head might be on its way to joining the Berbers’.

  I find the empress squatting in her inner courtyard, poring over a pile of chicken entrails, watched over warily by a group of women. She looks up. ‘There will be a death,’ she proclaims cheerfully. She places her hands on her vast thighs and pushes herself upright: at once the flies swarm in to settle on the hot meat.

  It does not take chicken entrails to tell me this: there are deaths every day here.

  ‘The sultan is asking for you: he is unwell.’

  She does not ask me what is wrong with him: it is as if she already knows. As she gathers her things, my eyes dart everywhere, but there is no sign of Alys. I am not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed; my nerves seem as alert as a cat’s, too close to the surface. I do not know what I would say to her even if I found her. But she is not here, and now I begin to worry that something has happened to her. Gripped by sudden terror, I turn to Laila and ask after her health and she simpers prettily and says she is well, ‘but a little lonely’. It is not unknown for eunuchs to pleasure the ladies of the harem: people are inventive in their quest for rapture – fingers and tongues and male parts made from wax, from stone, from gold, even the occasional well-formed vegetable. If the sultan knew what went on beneath his nose, he would be apoplectic; it is in everyone’s interest to ensure such things remain discreet.

  Laila has been trying to lure me to play with her for the best part of a year. I think it is more the pursuit of the unattainable that thrills her than any genuine fondness for me, but I smile and say I am sorry for her plight and then ask about various other favourites of the harem and the health of the various children whose names I can remember, and only then, after listening dutifully to the catalogue of small ailments and aggravations, do I ask after Alys – or the English convert, as I call her.

  Laila rolls her eyes. ‘She avoids company. Anyone would think she was a nun, the way she behaves.’

  Two nuns were presented to Ismail in the last raiding season and had been so steadfast in their repudiation of Islam and the sultan that, strangled, they had died with smiles on their faces, as if achieving everlasting bliss. Two Irish girls who were presented at the same time as Alys collapsed in such hysterics at the first threat that they were sent to the palace in Fez to serve as skivvies. I could almost wish the same fate for the White Swan, but at least she is still alive. There is no time to ask more, for Zidana returns now, properly dressed and with an armful of potions and unidentifiable items.

  Back in Ismail’s chamber the cause of his
malady becomes clear: stripped to the waist, the bite marks stand out livid against his skin. They are no mere scratches either, but deep and torn, the skin around them puffy and infected. I cannot help but feel respect for the Berber girl: first the knife, then teeth and claws.

  ‘Love bites?’ Zidana asks playfully and Ismail growls at her. ‘Poor lamb,’ she coos, ‘has he been mauled by the little wolf cub, then?’

  They have a curious relationship, the imperial couple: she treats him like a child and he rarely bridles. They still share nights, even after all these years; and the rest of the time she helps him choose his bed partners, selecting them for qualities that will pique his jaded palate; it is another form of power. But perhaps the Berber princess was a step too far into the wild.

  ‘She is a savage! A barbarian! I shall strangle her with my own hands.’

  ‘Hush, you will inflame the wounds further. I shall do it myself.’ She fusses over him, muttering chants and waving her hands around in a mystical fashion. Incense is lit in braziers to cleanse the air of whatever contagions still linger here. He is made to drink infusions from the potion bottles. Zidana sorts through her simples, her bangles clashing, then curses. ‘Nus-Nus?’

  ‘Yes, sublime majesty?’

  ‘Run and fetch me two wolf onion tubers and some comfrey; oh, and some thyme honey – you know where to find them.’

  Down in the secret chamber it is hard to see a thing. I search for a candle, for a flint; then for the items I have been sent to fetch. There is so much down here, and no apparent order to any of it. Everything seems to take an age. I find the honey first – so dense and dark it is almost black: not for eating, this stuff. It has a powerful, rank smell, worse than Doctor Salgado’s breath. Then the wolf onions, and I am still searching grimly for the comfrey when someone says, ‘What are you doing here?’