"Are you sure, Father?" asked Ali.
"As sure as I am that I love my sons, and know that all Malik and I have built is in safe hands. It is your turn now."
Kai nodded, but watching the workers tilling the fields, felt an unaccustomed anxiety stealing over him.
Chapter Forty-nine
The candles guttered low, flickering as to an unfelt wind, as Fatima writhed in childbirth, her brow wet and tight. Her fingers furrowed the crimson sheets. "Oh!" she cried. "Allah, deliver me!"
The doctor Jimuyu was grave. "Boil the instruments," he said to the nurse. "It is begun."
He had delivered hundreds of children, and knew every moment of the process well. But there was something about the position of the child in this woman's belly that disturbed him. When he probed with his hands he could feel that the infant was twisted wrong, and in his heart he knew what that meant. The midwives had massaged in Kikuyu fashion, trying to turn the baby around, but they had run out of time.
He tried to keep the fear from his eyes and voice, but Fatima, abnormally aware in her pain and fear, had already caught a glimpse of his true mood, and it had very nearly undone her.
Just outside the door, Malik paced restlessly, hand on his sword. His servants were terrified to approach him: never had they seen him in such a mood. Terrible screams echoed from inside the room, and he slammed his fist into the wall, cracking wood and plaster.
The servants scattered.
On and on he paced, until the first light of dawn rose in the east, visible through one of the castle windows as a rose blush seeping along the horizon. Finally, the door to his wife's bedroom opened. Jimuyu and the nurses filed from the chamber, their faces sad, eyes downcast. "You should enter now. Swiftly."
Malik felt his heart freeze. He entered the shadowed confines of his wife's bedroom, eyes swiftly acclimating to the absence of light.
Fatima looked drained of blood, and life. Emptied, barely conscious, fighting for each and every breath.
"Malik," she whispered. "I held on long enough."
He smoothed his fingertips along her cheek. "Shhh. Shhh."
She tried to gather strength, to rise to a sitting position, but could not. "Malik . . . hold your daughter. Please."
"Rest. Keep your strength for healing."
"It is too late to speak . . . to speak of healing." Her voice and spirit found the strength her body lacked. "Hold your daughter."
Only then did he notice the nurse standing to the side of the bed, or hear the wails from the blanketed bundle in her arms. Nervously, she stepped forward and handed Malik his girl child. He stared at the child, its tiny wrinkled face, stubby arms, hairless head. It felt as frail as a bird in his arms. So tiny. So helpless. What did one do with such a thing?
Fatima's wavering eyes found enough focus to fix upon him. "Is she beautiful?"
"She is your child."
"Malik. I'm sorry I was not stronger." She shuddered as if she was cold, or perhaps in the grip of a fever. "Malik," she begged. "Hold my hand." She groped her hand up toward him.
He clutched it. It seemed as small and frail as his newborn daughter. "Fatima . . ."
"Malik . . . please don't leave. Stay. Stay until . . ." She didn't need to finish, and he couldn't have borne it if she had. Fatima relaxed as he held his daughter, sitting on the edge of the bed, counting each and every breath. Finally there were greater and greater gaps between breaths, and finally, two hours after dawn, there was no breath at all.
The door of Sophia's small room burst open. Malik filled the doorway, vast and seething with a kind of cold power that, for a moment, convinced her that he meant her harm. The nurse stood beside him, carrying a bundle, and it took only an instant to realize what it contained. Why his mood? Surely this was a joyous . . .
The nurse thrust the bundle of blankets at Sophia, and she saw, within, a newborn black child. It seemed so impossibly small and tender, even as it cried and thrashed, that she lost her capacity for breath as compassion swept her.
She raised her face to Malik, meaning to reassure him in any way she could, but he was glacial. "Yuraddi," he said. "Suckle her."
Hesitating, and with trembling hands, Sophia unbuttoned her blouse and allowed the baby to nurse. It did, greedily, its tiny black lips settling over her brown nipple as if they had been made for each other. Instead of joy, she felt shame as Malik stared at her. His eyes glittered, and then he turned and left.
Fatima's body was washed seven times and anointed with camphor, then wound in a burial shroud and, in the morning, taken south to the family graveyard. Kai thought the sky was almost damnably beautiful, too bright and cheery for such a somber occasion. There should have been rain clouds and a cold, sterile wind blowing from the east.
Only family attended the service, in which Babatunde spoke of hope and service, of the martyrdom of death in motherhood, and the love she had had for Malik. Afterward, he led the brief prayers that consigned her soul to Ar-Rahman, the Merciful.
When the formal words were complete, Abu Ali stood beside his younger brother. "I am sorry," he said.
Malik spoke slowly. "We married sisters. They are together again. We will all be together again."
Kai gripped Malik's shoulder. "Uncle."
Malik turned and looked at him with vast, dark eyes, almost as if he did not recognize the boy he had taught to walk. Then he seemed to pull out of it, and gave a shallow nod of acknowledgment.
They accompanied Malik back north to his estate, not a word exchanged during the entire ride. When they arrived, Malik nodded to his brother and nephews, dismounted, and handed his reins to a guard. Without a backward glance, he entered his home and closed the door.
As Kai rode away with his father and brother, they passed a fenced-off square of grass next to the greenhouse. Sophia stood beside the fence. Both babies, white and black, lay in a wood and ivory carriage beside her. She watched Kai as he passed, her face like a window onto a desert. He could feel the bond between them, stressed but in some way still unbroken, and felt a jolt of pain that went beyond that which he already felt for the death of his aunt.
Although the sun had set, Aidan was working still, as if the burning in his arms and legs would drive from his heart the images of love lost. Nothing he could do in the fields was enough. Although he fell into his bed exhausted, still his dreams would not come, dreams in which Sophia might have joined him.
He spent the days in a state halfway between sleep and waking, his body working and his mind wandering, remembering what his life had been only weeks before. He remembered feeling joy when Sophia would bring his lunch to him—her stride saucy, the full sensuous lips pouting as if chiding him for not feeling her approach, and he raised his hand to wave to her . . .
It was not Sophia, it was Molly. She still limped from the whipping she had suffered, and her eyes often seemed glassy, as if seared almost to blindness by what she had seen in the swamp.
The sight of her took him out of himself a bit. He was not the only one who had suffered. If anything, his relationship with Kai had protected him from the realities of slave life.
He took the water cup from her hands and drank, his eyes never leaving hers, as if her inner ice were a protection from the fire that threatened to consume him.
When he was done, she went to offer water to another man, and then another. Aidan had a fleeting thought—of childhood, of games of running and seeking. Molly had been his first, his very first, and she had given herself to him in the shadow of the grove, laughing and guiding him.
That special girl was gone, killed beyond that very grove. In truth, he wondered if he had not died there as well.
With the sun's approach to the horizon, the bell began to ring. The servants created an informal line, walking the two miles back to the village, and many of them laughed and joked and sang, slapping each other on the back.
"Saw ya whack yer thumb on the post. Swelled up like a melon, did it?" said Cormac.
"Still t
hrobbin'," Olaf replied. "Figgered I'd get yer wife to help me with it. Wouldn't be the first time Jenny's helped me swellin' go down . . ."
Aidan walked alone.
He returned to find a communal cookout in progress. Cormac offered him a jug. He pushed the man away and started to wander back to his solitary room, where he could lie on his back and stare at the walls, his habit for weeks now.
Then Brian clapped a hand on Aidan's shoulder and forced him to take the jug. Aidan looked at Brian as if he wanted to hit him, but then, almost desperately, upended the brown bottle and began to drink.
The other members of the tuath cheered their approval. Now, more than ever, Aidan was one of them.
In the corridor just outside Malik's training hall, the servants were terrified by the grunting and clanging emanating from behind the locked oaken door.
Within, stripped to the waist, Malik slashed and thrust with his sword. His attacks were eye-baffling in speed, heart-stopping in both implicit and explicit violence. Gathering intensity, Malik worked himself into a deeper lather, screaming with each new stroke. His chest was gilded with sweat. Spittle flew from his lips with the effort, as if he were trying to push himself hard enough to kill his body.
Suddenly he froze and turned. His eyes were tight, bloodshot, frenzied. He screamed and lunged again. Stopped.
Distantly, a baby's scream echoed through the halls.
Sword in hand, he stalked from the room.
In the isolation of her room, Sophia struggled to quiet the infants. Side by side, one white, one black, they wailed as if glimpsing the end of the world. "Hush, Mahon," she said to her own. "Azinza, please. Shhh."
She heard the footsteps before her door flew open. There stood Malik, sword in hand, glaring at Mahon. "I hear my daughter cry," he said. "Perhaps you have not milk enough for two children."
The thinly veiled threat staggered her. Would Malik do such a thing? Or order it done? "No. I do," she stammered. "She just knows I am not her mother. It is natural."
"Is it?"
Sophia stood, putting herself between Malik and Mahon.
Malik took another step forward, closing the distance between them. "Then perhaps it is your heart," he said. "Perhaps your heart is not large enough for two."
Malik brushed the tip of his sword along the underside of her jawline. Sophia closed her eyes, expecting death at any moment.
"How large is your heart?"
She shuddered. Malik grabbed her, "pulled her close, threw her to the bed, and descended upon her. In their twin cribs, the babies screamed.
"No . . ." she said, a single pitiful, inadequate syllable.
And then there was only pain, and humiliation. She could not even remember the craft taught to her in Alexandria's house of submission, the methods of walling her heart away. Malik was too demanding, his assault too overwhelming, giving her no time to find her balance.
She could not think of Aidan, lost Aidan, or the home that she had struggled to build in Ghost Town. Or of her brief and intense happiness there.
As Mahon and Azinza yowled their hearts out, Malik thrust his irresistible weight onto her, pinning her to the sheets with a driving, merciless rhythm.
Please, she could only think. Not in front of my child . . .
As usual, even before the sun crept across Aidan's window, he was up and awake, washing his face in his basin with water drawn the night before. He scrambled eggs over the coals of the previous nights fire and ate them, staring into the ashes. A week's growth of beard darkened his face. His eyes were flat and lifeless.
He had heard of Fatima's death, and knew that Sophia now cared for both infants. You have nothing to fear, Kai had said. But Malik was no longer married. Malik was a thing of war and blood, and that frightened Aidan all the more. He knew that a man such as Malik pushed all of his strength to the surface, to deal with the worst the world could offer. But that could leave a fragile core, an emptiness that could only be filled by the love of a woman. He had seen the toughest fishermen in his tuath break down sobbing when their wives died, never whole again. He knew that slaves on Berhar's estate had torn out their hair and eaten broken glass when their wives and children were sold away.
Strong men. Brave men. Aidan knew himself no coward, but the images of Sophia, alone in Malik's castle, were enough to make him want to cut his throat. Malik was the strongest man he had ever seen in his life. What aching void might he even now be seeking to fill. . . ?
After eating he dressed, joining the stream of workers heading to their daily labor.
Barely paying attention, he noted a wagon heading in from the north, and for a moment hoped that Sophia was on it. He had not seen her since her departure four weeks ago, punishment for his attempted escape.
But that faint hope of reunion died. She was not on board, although he recognized a few faces, including a house girl named Tuti, who hopped down and approached him.
She stood before him, and his heart trip-hammered even before she began to speak. "Malik has taken your woman," she said, the words unadorned and scathing. "We thought it best that you knew."
Tuti hurried away, leaving Aidan standing alone. He felt nothing, the words he had dreaded hearing seemed to have consumed his heart, leaving only ashes.
The fields to either side were filled with workers who sang, their efforts in rhythm with their words as they began a new day.
Cut us low, swing us 'round
Iron shackles tightly hound
Thresh your soul by the mornin' lark
Lie in your dreams in the dead of dark—
Laddie are ya workin'?
Brian shielded his eyes against the glare of the morning sun. There was no shade to be found up here, atop the half-fleshed skeleton of the new barn west of the main stables. For the last week he had directed the gang applying shingles to its roof. It was hard, dangerous work. Due to his careful management, they were on time and without a single accident, and that was something to take pride in.
He looked down to see Aidan standing in the barn's shadow, staring up. There was something in Aidan's eyes that he hadn't seen before, something cold and merciless. Brian sensed that the moment which he had awaited so patiently had arrived at last.
Without a word, Brian climbed down. As he came closer he could see that the young man's face was as pale as milk, his eyes wild and unfocused, his hands clenched into fists.
Brian touched down, and looked at his friend carefully. "What is it, boyo?"
Aidan's mouth moved without words, and Brian saw the tracks of dried tears in the dust on his cheeks. Aidan swallowed hard, and Brian had a sudden, terrible feeling that he knew what the boy had to say. The wagon had just come from Malik's castle. Yes. Malik's wife was dead now. Yes. Beautiful Sophia was there with no one to protect her.
Yes.
Brian rested a strong hand on Aidan's shoulder as the younger man dropped his eyes to the ground.
"Well?" Brian said, as gently as he could.
"I'm ready," Aidan said, his voice swollen with misery. "For whatever you want."
Chapter Fifty
Dressed in a robe of unbleached Egyptian cotton, Kai crouched over his desk, sipping lemonade and studying maps, the most important of which displayed the current position of the Aztec battle lines. The closest were less than fifty miles outside the incorporated territory of New Djibouti. So close—but not close enough to draw the aid of federal troops. If the Djiboutans wished to repel the threat, they would have to muster troops loyal to the Wakil and the other nobles . . . and seek aid from the Zulus.
His heavy thoughts were disturbed by a knock at his chamber door. Kai called for the supplicant to enter.
To his surprise, it was Aidan who answered his call. Aidan, with eyes cast down and his hand over his heart in a bow. "May I?"
The familiar face warmed him. It was uncommon for servants to come to the third floor of Dar Kush without a pass, but long custom allowed Aidan that privilege, although he had not used it since
their altercation. "Please. It has been too long. Refreshment?"
"Please."
Kai poured him a glass of lemonade. Aidan sipped, and made grateful sounds.
"It is hot today," Kai said.
Aidan sat his glass down. "I want to ask your advice, Kai."
Kai stiffened, expecting the inevitable. "You know that there are matters in which I am helpless."
"I understand. Not. . . that."
"What, then?"
Aidan touched a black leather-bound copy of the Qur'an sitting on Kai's desk. "I need answers, Kai. I don't know why the world is as it is, and I need to be able to live in it. I can't do it with just my own strength."
"There are men and women of spirit among the servants. Perhaps you should speak to them."
"I have. I can't believe in Jesus. God smiles on those who walk His path. He isn't smiling on my people."
Aidan's words pained Kai, but he felt a trill of hope. Perhaps it was not too late for their friendship after all. "Aidan . . ."
"Kai—I'm not looking for special privileges. For my wife to be returned. Or to be free. Just help me find peace with my lot in life. Help me to Allah."
Kai sighed. "Allah speaks to each of us in His way. In His time. If you have heard the call, I must help you to answer."
He took Aidan's hand. "Repeat after me the Sbihadah. A’Sbadu an la ilaha illallah wa ashadu anna Muhammadan rasul lilah."
"There is no God but Allah," Aidan repeated. "And Muhammad is His prophet."
In the courtyard, Babatunde watched as Aidan and two other slaves recited their prayers, and knelt in obeisance to Allah. Babatunde watched, his face studiedly neutral. The scholar had no words for his student, but he did have thoughts.
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