Sultana: A Novel of Moorish Spain

by Lisa J. Yarde

  The bristles whipped through her hair, tugging strands from the scalp. Her anger lingered. Faraj had ignored her for ninemonths and then expected her joyous welcome at his return. His arrogance embittered her. He wasn’t worth her attentions. Yet, she had thought of him so often during his absence and even more now since his return. With a sigh, the brush hung in her hands.

  Terror suddenly implanted itself in her mind. At first, she did not understand what it meant, but it squeezed at her heart like a mist of dread that enshrouded her. Grandfather. The reality of his fading mortality struck her.

  Her reflection in the mirror became unclear as a chill shuddered through her. The brush slipped from her loose hold and clattered on the tiles. It cracked in half.

  “What has you so pensive, Fatima?”

  The unexpected sound of her brother’s voice forced her from her reverie. Startled, she slid from the wooden stool where she sat, and landed on her buttocks with a sharp thud. The wool robe she wore fell around her shoulders. She clutched it tight. Muhammad’s bemused expression infuriated her even more than Faraj’s arrogance.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I called for you. One of your slaves told me you were within.”

  Holding the robe closed, she stood. “This is my bedchamber and you shouldn’t be here. It’s unseemly.”

  “You’re my sister, how can it be unseemly that I should visit you here?”

  “I’m wearing only a robe, Muhammad.”

  His eyes glittered with a widening smile. “Your maidenly modesty isn’t necessary. What you have under that robe is the same as every one of my jawari.”

  “I’m not one of your concubines. I’m your sister. Please wait outside.”

  Muhammad laughed and sketched a mocking bow. “As you wish.”

  Alone again, she cast off the robe and threw it on the floor. Dressing with haste in the garments Leeta had arranged on the bed, she shoved her feet into leather slippers and went to Muhammad. He stood in the central chamber, trailing his long fingers through the water fountain in the midst of the room. She gestured toward the cushions arranged around the square-shaped room and joined him.

  Over the years, she and her brother had grown further apart. The estrangement pained her deeply. Try as she might, in her heart, she could not forgive him for his harsh words spoken at their mother’s death, seven years before.

  Muhammad grasped her slim hands in his larger ones. She fought against her instinct to pull away and returned his intent, probing gaze.

  “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you earlier, sister.”

  “The moment is past, but please do not do it again.”

  He sighed. “I’ve missed you, Fatima, the friendship we used to share, in which we confided everything to each other.”

  “I did not end our friendship, Muhammad, you did.”

  “Yes, I know it was my fault. Please believe that I am sorry. I wish that we would be friends again. I have missed you very much.”

  He laid his head against her shoulder. When she flinched, he rushed on. “Forgive me, Fatima, be my sister again.” His voice was a low murmur. “Let this anger end between us.”

  He drew back and looked at her again, with eyes so like her own. She turned away but Muhammad persisted. “You must forgive me and let us be brother and sister again.”

  Her heart and head warred inside her. He had treated her cruelly for so long, but he was her only brother, the beloved heir of their father. She couldn’t hate him forever.

  “Yes…we are brother and sister.”

  “Good! Now, let us seal our pledge with the kiss of peace.”

  Words trapped in her throat, she turned her cheek to him. Muhammad’s warm, wide mouth pressed against hers, lingered on her lips. She pulled back and stared at him, her heart pounding with uncertainty and fear. Something about his fervent embrace troubled her.

  He smiled and kissed her hands. “You’ve made me so happy, Fatima. I’m glad you have forgiven me.”

  She stammered, “I haven’t said I forgive you…” but Muhammad interrupted.

  “No, say no more. I know you need time, but at least you may try. For that, I shall always be grateful. I have so much to tell you, but I must share the most important thing now. I have told no one yet, not even our father, because I wanted you to be the first to hear the good news. I am to have a son.”

  She stared in silence while Muhammad continued. “In less than seven months, I shall hold my firstborn son in my arms, at sixteenyears of age! Imagine our father’s surprise when he learns he is to be a grandfather so soon.”

  “But, how do you know it may be a boy?”

  “It must be a boy. That is what I wish for and that is what shall be.”

  “Muhammad, our father has six daughters and only one son. God willed it. No man may ask for more than God gives him.”

  “I’m not Father. Why should I be cursed with daughters? I must have sons, Fatima, strong sons worthy of our family name.”

  She withdrew her hands from his grip. “I do not think our father considers himself cursed for having more daughters than sons.”

  Muhammad laughed and traced a line across her brow with his fingertip. “You’re still so easily offended. I didn’t mean Father regrets you or my sisters. But, as his heir, I must have sons to succeed the throne of Gharnatah. No female could ever rule al-Andalus. The Traditions of the Prophet, may peace be upon him, forbid it. I must have a son, I cannot accept a daughter.”

  “What of your jarya, the mother of your child?What are her sentiments?”

  “Zuleika wants what I want. She knows the value of a son to me.”

  “Surely, she has thoughts and opinions of her own. What is she like?”

  “She is beautiful, with dark, honey-brown skin and eyes like a cat’s own. That is all that matters to me. Her thoughts and opinions don’t concern me. She is a pleasure slave. Her sole duty is to entertain me, in and out of my bed. If I had tired of her before this pregnancy, she would have been sold, like others in the past.”

  “She carries your heir,and needs your gentleness and care. A midwife has already confirmed her condition?”

  “Zuleika has had no show of blood since I first bedded her, three months ago.”

  “Allow me to send for a midwife to confirm her pregnancy.”

  He nodded and continued speaking. He was not the childhood playmate of their days in the harem. The same dangerous undercurrent of emotion in him, as at the time of their mother’s death, still existed. Something ugly had festered inside him over the years - as plain to the eye as the winsome smile on his lips.

  “Grandfather would not let me go on his raid,” he said, sulking. “He’s old and one day soon, he shall die. Then Father would be Sultan and I would be the Crown Prince of Gharnatah.”

  She recoiled from him. “Don’t talk about Grandfather dying.”

  “Why? We must all die someday. One day, I shall be Sultan in Father’s stead. I’ll raid the Castillan border towns and make their people my slaves.”

  “But Muhammad, each time we fight them, many of our soldiers die. When you are Sultan, you should strive for peace with the Christians. Gharnatah cannot survive without peace.”

  He rolled his eyes heavenward. “Peace is boring, Fatima. When I’m Sultan, my enemies shall never know peace.”

  She believed him and the thought frightened her.

  “To think, you were married first, so long ago,” Muhammad said, “but I shall be the one to give our father his first grandchild. You must be capable of bearing children by now.”

  “That is not your concern. I shall be a mother when God chooses….”

  Another sudden, but painful, sense of her grandfather filled her mind and heart. She gasped and her brother shuddered, clutching his chest, his eyes faraway. His reaction didn’t frighten her. She knew, at once, the source of their shared premonition. She whispered a soft prayer and rubbed her arms against a deathly chill.

  His expression was be
wildered. “Fatima…what is it? You feel it, too?”

  “Yes. Our mother once told me our maternal grandmother Saliha was like this.”

  “Then it is true, what I sense.”

  “Yes, I believe the Sultan is dead. I don’t understand how or why I know.”

  Her brother nodded. “I felt such emotions when…the Princess Aisha died, perhaps at the very moment of her passing.”

  She nodded and waited in silence with him.

  The great brass bell high atop the watchtower of al-Quasaba pealed a sonorous, mournful tone. Rain battered the roof of the harem.

  Her brother clutched her hand. While she did not welcome the contact, she soothed him. The tremors coursing through his body passed through her like waves of sorrow.

  She whispered, “Be at ease, they shall come to us soon.” Niranjan entered with his clothes sodden and his expression somber. As he sagged on one knee, he looked older than his twenty-one years.

  “With regret, I announce the death of our master, the Sultan,” he said. He stood at Fatima’s gesture. “Are the other princesses in the harem, my princess? Your father has asked all the family to convene in the throne room at once.”

  Fatima nodded. “Muhammad, go to our father. Your place is at his side. My sisters and I shall come.”

  When Niranjan and Muhammad left, she undid the first two strings of her qamis, fingering the blue prayer beads she wore underneath the cotton shirt. She woke this morning with the sense of the precariousness of her grandfather’s life on earth, but the foreknowledge didn’t alarm her. She had accepted it calmly, for who could go against the Will of God?

  Arrayed in veils and a hooded leather cloak, she fetched her sisters. Together, they walked through the rain to the throne room, where the family gathered. The wives and children of her uncles and their aunt Maryam sat together, wailing and rocking back and forth. Muhammad stood at Father’s side. To the left sat the Sultanas Hamda and Qamar. Beside them, the Sultan’s beloved honored concubines wept. Their cries echoed in the room. Then Faraj entered, his mouth pressed into a thin line. He precededseveral courtiers. Fatima spared him a glance, before she hugged and comforted her youngest sister, Nadira.

  Darkness covered al-Andalus. Silent servants set torches sputtering to life, illuminating multicolored tiles and incised decorations along the walls.

  The bells of the neighborhood of al-Bayazin pealed in competition with the unrepentant pounding of the rain. It seemed as if the very heavens wept for the passing of Gharnatah’s leader. The great bell of al-Quasaba had ceased, which signaled the return of the Sultan’s body to his beloved city. Hooves clattered on the cobblestones.

  Fatima looked at her father. He stood silent before a square patchwork of tiles inscribed with the blessed ninety-names of God, set a few steps before the throne.

  The echo of heavy hooves on cobblestones and marble faded. When the cortege arrived, the Sultan’s three younger sons led the way, while Gharnatah’s soldiers carried a still, silent shape on a wooden bier. When they set the body down, Fatima studied her grandfather’s form. He was Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn Nasr, the only Sultan of Gharnatah she had ever known. His arms were folded across his chest. His eyes were closed in death. His head had been positioned to face the Qiblah, the direction for prayer.

  Her father stood in the midst of his brothers. Words passed between them that could not be overheard. Then he prayed in a whisper.

  Tears pricked at the corner of Fatima’s eyes. Across the expanse of the throne room, her gaze sought Faraj. He watched her in silence. His lower lip quivered. She had lost her grandfather. He had lost the man who raised him from childhood like a father. Bound by grief, they offered each other silent comfort in the union of their stares.

  Chapter 13

  Deeds

  Prince Faraj

  Gharnatah, al-Andalus: Rajab 671 AH (Granada, Andalusia: January AD 1273)

  The princes of Gharnatah buried the old Sultan on a bleak, gray day, the second in the month of Rajab. The body shrouded in white linen, his bodyguards placed it in a grave at the heart of the rawda and covered the pit with earth. Afterward, the courtiers dispersed in anticipation of his son’s coronation. Faraj waited beside the Crown Prince.

  “Master, the full court awaits you.”

  The Crown Prince stood beside his father’s grave with the Sultan’s bodyguards, now his to command. With a weary sigh, he knelt in silence. Faraj did not wonder at the thoughts whirling in his mind. The enormity of the destiny that awaited him would have overwhelmed any man, even one whom the old Sultan had prepared for his new role.

  Then the Crown Prince stood. “I’m ready.”

  The men walked through a copse of trees. In silence, they approached the palace. Faraj contemplated many things on the quiet journey, for it seemed the loneliest he had ever taken. It paled only in comparison to the moment he had arrived in Gharnatah as a child, after the murder of his parents.

  The Crown Prince entered from the back of the throne room. The cacophony of sound in the city had faded. Faraj trailed at the end of his retinue. In a small, windowless chamber adjoining the throne room, the imam of the Great Mosque awaited them.

  A fountain inscribed with one of the Traditions of the Prophet stood in the center. A dull brass lantern hung on the wall. In this sacred place, reserved for the minor ablution, the Crown Prince prepared his ritual wash before entering the court. Water bubbled up and filled the shallow basin.

  Faraj studied the words inscribed around the circumference of the bowl. “God does not judge you according to your bodies and appearances, but He looks into your hearts and observes your deeds.”

  He wondered what God might perceive in his actions. Would He look into his heart and see the worth of his desires? Were all Faraj’s hopes a sin of pride and vanity?

  The Crown Prince removed his garments and spoke the traditional words of the washing ritual. “In the name of God, I intend to perform the wudu.”

  At the fountain, he washed his face and arms up to the elbows. Then he smoothed beads of water over his head and lastly, washed his feet up to the ankles. He raised his palms heavenward, touching the sides of his head and spoke the declaration of faith. “There is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God. Amin.”

  He put on undergarments and then took the robe of state the imam offered. The khil’a was the same his father had worn at his coronation. Three decades later, it remained in pristine condition; a red silk garment sewn together with gold thread, ermine lining the hem and cuffs and tiraz bands sewn on the wide, full sleeves.

  He donned a pair of red leather traveling boots and faced the imam again. The religious leader bowed low, touching his forehead to the ground. At the Sultan’s gesture, his companions entered the throne room behind the lattice purdah where the women of the court waited. During the old Sultan’s reign, his wives had attended daily court proceedings, sometimes with his kadin. Now, the newest generation of Sultanas joined them, Fatima and her sisters.

  The girls greeted their father. Fatima stood closest to him, resplendent in a gold brocade khil’a, her warm smile discernible through the gauzy yellow veil covering her face. Faraj drank in the sight of her.

  “May God be with you this day and forever, Father,” she whispered.

  “May he be with us all, my child,” her father replied.

  The royal women took their seats on plump cushions. A lull descended in the room. Sultana Qamar tugged at Sultana Hamda, who regarded her with a narrowed gaze.

  “Hamda, you must remove yourself from the forefront. The position of honor belongs to Sultana Fatima, since she is the eldest female of the current Sultan’s harem.”

  Sultana Hamda frowned and in a huff, she left her seat with obvious reluctance and took up her opium pipe again. She faded in a haze of sickly sweet smoke. Fatima hesitated but took her place, her head held high. Pride in her grace and beauty suffused Faraj.

  The court herald Ibn Ali recited the profession of faith. Then he li
sted the new Sultan’s titles and praised him to the heavens, in much the same manner as he used to do for the old Sultan. Faraj could not help but chuckle, when his master yawned at the end of the oration - it was just what his father would have done.

  The new ruler entered the throne room. At his gesture, Faraj joined his counselors on the left of the room. The guards fanned out. Conversations among the courtiers, who were dressed in their finest robes of state, ended abruptly. The Castillan lords were among them, Doñ Nuño Gonzalez de Lara at the forefront. As the herald proclaimed him, the Crown Prince surrendered his given name of Abu Abdallah Muhammad and claimed the regal title of Sultan Muhammad II of Gharnatah evermore.

  Despite the happy moment, filled with cheers and merriment, Faraj could not wholeheartedly enjoy it. The Castillan presence at such a grand occasion infuriated him. He could never forget that Doñ Nuño’s family had aided the Ashqilula, which resulted in tragic deaths and painful losses for him. He silently vowed, one day, Doñ Nuño would pay the debts incurred by his father’s treachery with his blood. Faraj would have his revenge against all who had conspired to rob him of the bright future he once envisioned, first Doñ Nuño and then, Abu Muhammad of Ashqilula.

  Later in the evening, Faraj dined with the Sultan, while he and the chief eunuch, Hasan, discussed the old ruler’s plans for the women belonging to the old ruler.

  Hasan hefted his bovine bulk off the floor where he had been prostrate. At the Sultan’s gesture, he unrolled a sheet of parchment from which he read. “There are thirty jawari who were the slaves of your late father, my Sultan. The women are from Abyssinia and Nubia, Ionia and Salonica, Genoa and Corsica, Provençal France, Castilla-Leon and Galicia. The eldest is in her mid-forties approximately and the youngest is perhaps nineteen, at most. The senior women, of whom there are nine, might make suitable rewards for loyal chieftains, my Sultan.”