by Judith Tarr
And yet it was Joanna whose body he knew in its every detail; from whose bed he had come, and to whose bed, God willing, he would go. She would never understand why he seized her then and there, where anyone might see, and kissed her thoroughly, and left her gasping and tousled and beginning, astonished, to laugh.
12.
Damascus grew like a mirage across the northern horizon. Mountains walled it, desert besieged it, yet in itself it was a vision of the Muslims’ Paradise. The caravan had been lost for an age, it seemed, in the bleak bare desert, taking refuge in the rare patch of grudging green, prey to wind and sun and hordes of stinging flies. Here was peace. A city of orchards and gardens, alive with the song of water; walls and minarets, domes and towers mantled in greenery, pale gold stone seeming to grow out of the earth. No city in the world was older, no place more blessed. The roads of gold and silk and spices came together here; kings had made it their dwelling place, and princes taken their ease among its gardens. Here, blinded by the light on Kaukab that looked upon the city, Paul had begun his preaching; here Abel died at his brother’s hand; here, if legend were true, had been the Garden of Eden.
It was human enough as one rode close to it, a babel of clamor and stenches. But beautiful still; and the green smell was all about it, the scent of living things. It was utterly foreign. Yet, for a moment, to Aidan it recalled nothing so much as the deep places of his own forest of Broceliande.
oOo
In Damascus the House of Ibrahim had its own caravanserai, a great space like a palace, half of it just beyond the walls, half just within, so that the wall itself was part of it. It had its own wells, its own gardens, even its own finger of the river. A king might have claimed less; in the west, certainly, many had.
Determined though he was to cling to his pride, Aidan was hard put not to gawp like a yokel at the splendor of the inner house. Not the King of Jerusalem himself had carpets half so fine, or furnishings so exquisite in their perfection.
Here at least, it seemed, he had his proper rank. He was damnably slow to understand what it meant. The silent, perfect servants, the long luxurious bath, the delicacies laid before him to assuage his hunger, all conspired to make him forget what he should never have permitted: that from the moment he passed the door, he had not seen Joanna.
This, truly, was Islam. He was a man; here was his place. She was a woman and a great lady. The harem had her. And there, quietly but most firmly, he was forbidden to go. He was not her close kin, or her master, or—as God and the world well knew—her husband, to be granted the honor of her face. No matter that he had seen it every day since he came to Jerusalem. The custom was different here, and even a prince might not easily stand against it.
The master of the caravanserai was no menial; he was a prince of merchants himself, brother to Margaret’s mother. He apologized with eastern profuseness, and agreed that it was insufferable, but he would not revoke the prohibition. “Yes,” he said over the dinner which Aidan could hardly touch for fretting. “Yes, O prince, truly I understand. But I pray you humbly to consider where we are, and what rumor will make of your insistence. You are young, and she, and her husband far from here, and honor is much more delicate a thing among our people than in the land of the Franks. Would you dishonor her for no good cause?”
“What use will honor be to her when she is dead?”
Hajji Mustafa raised his plump ringed hands in protest. “Allah forbid!” he said. “And we, as He will allow. Be at rest, O prince. She is safe here. Her guards are of the best; my wives and concubines will watch over her and make her welcome. We are all her kinsmen. We will defend her, if need be, with our lives.”
And so they might. Aidan chose not to say it. This soft-seeming man had Margaret’s core of steel; and this was not, as he had so courteously pointed out, Aidan’s world. He had no place here except on the sufferance of the house, nor would he be wise to begin by testing it to its limits.
Joanna was not suffering. She was not even thinking of him; she was exchanging gossip with her uncle’s senior wife.
Hajji Mustafa was excellent company, even for a sullen and snarling prince. It was little enough credit to Aidan that he muted his snarls and mustered a smile, albeit with clenched teeth. That was merely prudence, the instinct of the courtier waking almost too late. It would ill serve Joanna to have her uncle wondering why her guardsman was half mad at being parted from her.
Aidan escaped as soon as he might, with as much courtesy as he could muster. It seemed to be enough. Fatigue excused it, and the strangeness of a new place to senses trained in the west. He was aware that he was being studied. Some of the servants seemed disappointed that he looked so ordinary, except for his height. They had been hoping for red hair, or yellow at least, and a shaven jaw.
They would have been interested to see him in his chamber, pacing like a leopard in a cage, weighing his chances of slipping into the harem. Not so difficult for his powers, that. But if she was heavily attended, as she must be, his entry alone would do no good at all.
Someone scratched at his door. He opened his mouth to call out a dismissal, but snapped it shut. He sprang to loose the bar.
Dura stood outside in her veils and her fear and her tongueless silence, her eyes like a rabbit’s when the hawk flies over it. Her reluctance was as clear as a cry, but with it an odd, twisted approbation. She loved her mistress; she took a perverse pride in her mistress’ choice of lover. A demon prince, it seemed, was preferable to a Norman baron.
She pointed to Aidan’s cloak that hung by the door, and beckoned. Her mind bore an image of water and of greenery; of a place well hidden from unwelcome eyes: a grotto in the garden, patently designed for such trysts as these.
Joanna was there, sitting on the grass in a glimmer of lamplight. She was no Joanna that he knew. Not the Frankish lady in the black that so ill became her; not the trousered rider of the caravan, sitting her horse with the light free carriage of a boy. This was a princess of the House of Ibrahim, her hair washed with henna and combed into curls and scented with rosewater, her eyes painted with kohl, her body clothed in silks that did its richness justice.
Her swift blinding smile was Joanna’s, her arms about him, her quick darting kisses. So too the way she pushed him back, searching him with her eyes. She laughed her light clear laugh, which always startled him, husky as her voice was when she spoke. “They’ve made an Arab prince of you!”
He had not even noticed what they dressed him in, except that there was a great deal of it. Her embrace had dislodged the jeweled cap. He made no move to regain it. “And you,” he said. “You’ve become an odalisque.”
She paused and sobered wholly. “You don’t—”
He pulled her to him. “You look splendid. You smell like heaven. You feel…” His hands lost themselves in silk. “You feel like a queen in Araby.”
“I am a queen in Araby.”
They had done something to her skin. Scented oils, powders of improbable richness. Something in him wanted to hate it. His hands reveled in it.
She had to show him how it all came off, his own as much as hers. Naked in the nest of it, her hair tumbled out of its bindings, she was as splendid as this land they lay in.
“You’re smooth,” he said, startled. “All of you.”
He had not known all of the places a woman could blush. “It’s the custom here. For cleanliness. When they started, I—I didn’t think to argue.” She looked angry. “You hate it. I can tell.”
“It’s different. I’ve never imagined…” He knew where a man could blush. He was doing it. So: that was what they had been offering, in the bath. He had been indignant in refusal. Shaggy barbarian, they would have been thinking him.
He must have said it aloud. She was shaking her head. “Not you. You’re as clean-skinned as a boy. Except…” Her hand was in the thicket, teasing him into pleasure. “Don’t let them shave your head, my love. You have beautiful hair.”
That was not where her hand was. “How strange. Ever
ything but the beard. Whereas the Franks—”
“Nothing but the beard.” Her free hand tugged at his. This, too. I think I like it. It gives your face a certain air.”
“Age.”
“That, yes. You look all of twenty-three.”
“I was hoping for twenty-five.”
“Maybe in an inch of four,” she said. She was doing wanton and wicked things. Some of them were as new to him as the kohl on her eyelids; and much more distracting.
oOo
“Did you learn all that in an afternoon?”
She was drowsily sated, but she had strength left for a grin. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Somewhat belatedly his mood impressed itself on her. She peered at him, near blind as always in the dimness. Her fingers found his knotted brows. He would not smooth them for that. “Is something wrong?” she asked him. “Is it something I’ve done?”
“You,” he said, “no.”
It took her alarmingly little time to understand. Which, he reminded himself, was why he loved her. “Aidan,” she said, half laughing, half tender. “Aidan, love, I should have warned you. I thought you’d know. It was evident enough in the caravan.”
“Not to me.” His body was knotting dangerously. Grimly he quelled it. No; no rage here. Not with her honor as its price. Though she dared—she dared—to speak to him in that tone. Warm. Indulgent. As if he had been a child.
She tried to soothe him with kisses. His lips were set against her. “Do you think I like it, either?” she demanded. “It’s a nuisance. But you see how easy it is to evade. Easier than the caravan. Here, no one will trouble us, and no one will suspect that either of us is in any bed but the proper one.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I can. I have a room with a bolt on its door, and Dura is guarding it. And this isn’t a harem with intrigues. Not of that kind.”
“So,” he said, “here. And what, when we come to Aleppo? Will it be as easy there? Or will I ride out with my ballocks for a necklace?”
She gasped. It was trying not to be laughter. “Believe me, my dear lord, whatever comes of this, that will not be how you pay for it.”
“You haven’t answered the rest.”
Nor did she, for a long moment. “I…don’t know. Can’t we leave it for when we face it? We have a fortnight here, or more, if the caravan’s business warrants. Then the road again. Maybe by then we’ll be at each other’s throats.”
“Not I.”
She stroked his cheek. “Nor I,” she confessed softly. “Please, love. I was so miserable, and suddenly I’m so happy. It can’t last, I know that. But while it does, I want to savor it. Will you give me that? I’ve never asked for a gift from you. I’ll never ask another.”
She was too wise. Too wonderfully, damnably wise. He laid his hand over her heart. It beat like a bird’s beside his own, mortal-hard, mortal-swift. “Have I told you that I love you?”
He never had. She had always known without telling. But words were strong; they had power. With a cry almost of pain, she flung herself upon him. Hot tears scalded his shoulder. They were not tears of grief. Not entirely.
“For this little while,” he promised her, holding her, “I shall be joyful. For you.”
She raised a tear-stained face. “With me?”
“With you,” he said.
She smiled, damp and luminous and immeasurably happy.
oOo
Poor prince, Joanna reflected. He was not only wild with fear for her safety. He was jealous; and, however briefly, out of his element. He would settle to it. This was a fine wide world for a man of rank, and a high adventure.
For a woman it was different. Stranger, more secret. Yet not, as the ignorant might think, altogether like a cage. The bars were gilded, and the key was in her hand, if she took care to wield it wisely.
Men had their world under the sun, their bright swords, their wars and their conquests. Most of them never knew, or chose to forget, that there was another world, an inner world, a world of veils and lattices and curtained litters. No swords glittered there; the sun was shaded, or trapped in walls. Yet a kingdom could rise and fall on words spoken within those hidden places.
Joanna was no mistress of the inner realm. For that, one needed to be born and raised to it; and she was distressingly prone to fits of rebellion. Still, her mother had taught her all that she could learn, and she had spent two years in the harem in Aleppo. She knew how the game was played, if not the fullness of its complexities.
Frankish blood and breeding would earn pardon for some of what she lacked. Her standing in the House of Ibrahim would serve for the rest. Trade, at least, she knew, and some of the ways of courts.
She had always got on well with Uncle Mustafa’s wives; Umm Jafar in particular, who was older than he and eminently sensible. It was she as much as he who managed the House of Ibrahim’s affairs in Damascus.
It was she who took Joanna to call on the ladies of her acquaintance. Not all were merchant’s wives. Nor were all Arab or Syrian. Seljuk ladies were not, like Franks, overproud of the division between war and commerce. To these, of late, had been added a Kurdish khatun or two, the new sultan being of that nation, and as given as any other man to filling high offices with his kin.
As was only logical. Whom else could one trust, if not one’s family?
They were all intrigued by the Frank who spoke Arabic like an Aleppan noblewoman. Damascenes, however, had grace. They did their best not to make her feel like a hulking foreigner. They did not, out of delicacy, ask her why she traveled without her husband. They were quite willing, even eager, to hear of her escort, the Frankish knight of whom their husbands were speaking with no little interest.
She should have been better prepared. She kept wanting to blush and stammer: and these eyes, trained to intrigue, would reckon up every slip and stumble, and know exactly what it signified.
And what if they did? What could they prove? Why should they want to? She would have wagered that she was not the only woman in Damascus who found contentment elsewhere than in the marriage bed.
She did not stop blushing for that, but her voice steadied admirably. “Handsome?” she would repeat when they asked. “If you like the Persian beauty, plump and toothsome, no, not at all. But if you like them long and lean like hunting cats, oh, yes, he is a handsome man. Like the young moon in Ramadan. Like a hawk in the desert.” Then she would smile, white and wicked. “No, not like a Frank at all. He actually looks civilized.”
Then they would all laugh, and the sweets would go round again, and sometimes she would have to go on and tell one or two of Gereint’s less perilous tales, but more often they would tell their own tales of beautiful men whom they had seen or heard of or dreamed of. Some of the tales would have burned a man’s ears, could he have heard them. Women in the harem saved their prudery for their menfolk.
oOo
This morning Umm Jafar was particularly insistent that Joanna pay proper attention to her toilet. Joanna was never at her best in the morning, even when she was allowed to lie abed until the sun was high; and last night had been rather more strenuous than usual. She wanted to lie about the garden and dream, not play politics in the guise of harem gossip.
She submitted with poor grace to prinking and preening and painting. There was a new wardrobe for her, from drawers to cloak, even finer than the one she had been wearing. This had gold thread all about its edges; the overgown and the cloak were the same cloudy blue as her eyes. Alia insisted that Joanna — Jahana, they said here — borrow her lapis necklace, and of course the eardrops must go with them, and the fillet to hold the veil. When all of them were done, she was hung with jewels like a sultana, and her mood was, in spite of itself, beginning to lighten.
If he could see her now...
Tonight.
Umm Jafar was waiting. There was the ordeal of the litter to face, the rocking and swaying in stifling confinement, each of them doing her best not to fall into the other�
�s lap. Umm Jafar, even at her age, had a dancer’s balance. She never lost it, not once.
Joanna was learning to treat it like a horse or a camel. Ride with it, yes. Distract herself with chatter. Resist strenuously the urge to rip the curtains aside and leap out into the street.
“Where are we going today?” she asked when they were well on their way, the porters settled into their jouncing stride, the eunuch clearing a path with a voice like a war trumpet.
Umm Jafar was a stout comfortable woman, her figure long since gone in bearing her brood of sons, but there was spirit in her yet. It made her black eyes sparkle. “To the palace,” she answered.
Joanna gave that the pause it deserved. “You have friends there?”
“Kin,” said Umm Jafar without excessive smugness. “You wouldn’t know my cousin Rashida who married an emir from Baalbek. Her daughter married an emir from Damascus, who happened to be related to Muin al-Din, who was ruler of the city before the old sultan seized it. Muin al-Din, of course, is father to the Emir Masud, and to Ismat al-Din Khatun.”
Joanna had been keeping track of the spate of names. It was easier than it might have been a week ago: she was learning rapidly. “Ismat al-Din? The old sultan’s widow?”
“And the new sultan’s wife. They were married just before you came.”
Joanna sat back among the cushions. Here, indeed, was a coup.
Umm Jafar smiled at her expression. “The men might wait a year for a private audience with the sultan. We — why, we make a social call on connections of the family, share our gossip, tell a tale or two, while away an afternoon. What could be simpler?”
Joanna laughed and applauded her. “As simple as sunrise. You should have been an empress.”
“What, and leave Mustafa to manage by himself? He’d be selling gold at barley prices, and then where would the House be?”
oOo
It was possible, with practice, to see the city with one’s ears, and with one’s rump on the litter’s cushions. Joanna knew enough not to peer out. She would likely see nothing but the sweating shoulders of the porter in front. She was aware that the crush of the city had changed, muted, cleared somewhat. That would be the gate of the citadel after the knot of the market about it. Somewhere a camel roared. Hoofs clattered: a horse; a donkey would never make that swift arrogant sound. They did not pass any of the inner gates open to the men. There was another for them, smaller, and more secret, and its guards called the challenge in eunuchs’ voices.