Beck: a fairy tale

by Nina Clare

  “Now the princess thought that sounded like a pleasing thing to do, for she liked this handsome young man and his family of elephants, and she did not like the Prince of the Monkeys at all. So she climbed upon one of the elephants and they rode away as fast as they could to a faraway land where the Prince of the Monkeys could never find them. And they lived very happily ever after.”

  Bibi looked satisfied with her sister’s story.

  “What is this babbling?” said Emmi Rashida, coming into the room where they were sitting with their work. Lulu skittered across the tiled floor and scattered Bibi’s neat patterns of shells. Bibi made no sound, no protest, but patiently gathered up her shells again.

  Emmi Rashida tutted at the child – useless child, what was her brother thinking of bringing a half-wit who could not speak into the house, what was the use of a girl who was fit for nothing except scattering shells and beads over the floor?

  The rains went away for another year. The earth was temporarily softened by its long watering. It was time to start planting.

  Shula-Jane had sourced her plants from the traders she had given commissions to. As well as the native fire-lilies and jacintha trees, she had cartfuls of imported oleanders, lavender, phoenix flames and golden spires. They appeared day by day, rumbling up the path to the house in mud-spattered carts pulled by mud-spattered donkeys, for the ground had not yet dried back to dust.

  Every day Shula-Jane directed the planting. Zinga and Bibi carried the plants from the carts to the new gardens; Felix dug the holes and filled the marble urns with earth. Shula-Jane was anxious to see her shrubs planted and watered before they withered and died from their long travels, and this anxiety overcame her desire for the work to go slowly. She even insisted she would wear cotton while she worked, so she would not have her Emmi fretting over the mud on her silk robes. Emmi Rashida made her promise over and over that she would change back into silk before her father came home each evening.

  The days fell into a pleasant pattern; the four of them working in the gardens. Emmi Rashida did not keep seeking her niece out and demanding her time; the foundations for the new rooms were laid; the walls of earthen bricks were starting to grow from the ground upwards. That gave Emmi Rashida satisfaction, though Toufik harassed the men daily to hasten their speed. And so the work in the gardens must go on, though Emmi Rashida grumbled of how eccentric and unseemly it was that the daughter of Abu Sabri should be scrabbling about in the dirt with two useless girls and a great ugly dog in tow, and wearing cotton.

  Shula-Jane found Felix staring at a row of shrubs that he was to plant. He had that look on his face she often saw, a look that tugged at her heart in a way that was most uncomfortable. It was his look of sorrow.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  He started at her voice, he had been lost in thought. He looked back at the lavender plants.

  “My grandmama has fields of these growing near her home,” he said. “I was thinking of her.”

  “Your grandmama is in Angliana?”

  “No. My mother is in Angliana. My grandmama is in Portgua.”

  “My mother was from Angliana,” Shula-Jane told him.

  “So that is how you come to speak Anglianese.”

  “Yes.”

  “I have not seen your mother since I came here.”

  “She died when I was seven.”

  “I am sorry. My father died when I was two.”

  “I am sorry also.”

  “It is good to hear Anglianese. I thought I would never hear it again.” The sorrowful look deepened. Shula-Jane wanted to ask more, learn more about him and his life before he came to the house of her father in the royal city of Tombutu. But it was not appropriate for her to be conversing with familiarity with a male slave. So she quenched her curiosity.

  For the present.

  The Garden

  “Shula, where are you? What are you doing, child?”

  “I am planting, Emmi.”

  “Look at you! Get up, get up. What are you doing on your knees in the dirt? Go and dress properly – Toufik is coming!”

  Shula-Jane did not move. She kept planting the fire-lily bulbs in the holes that Zinga was making, scooping out the earth with her small hands.

  “Did you hear me, child? Get up and get dressed – Toufik is coming!”

  Shula-Jane still took no notice. “Emmi, there is no reason why I should not carry on with my work. And I do not dress in silk for any man except Papa.”

  “Shula! He is your husband!”

  “Not yet he’s not.” And she beat down harder than was necessary to tamp down the earth.

  A low growl from under the shade of the date palm tree told Shula-Jane that Toufik was already come. She did not look up.

  “See, Toufik,” Shula-Jane heard Emmi saying to her son, “see how diligently Shula works to have the gardens ready. See how concerned she is to see all things ready in your new home.”

  Shula-Jane scowled into her flowerbed. She would not look up.

  “It is most gratifying,” said the smooth voice of Toufik. “Though I would not have my wife on her knees grubbing in the dirt.”

  Shula-Jane felt she could spit in disgust into the earth like a camel-herder if it were not such a disgraceful thing for the daughter of Abu Sabri to do.

  Toufik stepped closer to Shula-Jane, but a familiar growl from close by halted him. Now it was his turn to scowl. That beast would most certainly be disposed of the day following his wedding. There were many ways of making an animal mysteriously disappear.

  He stepped away and looked around at Shula-Jane’s work. Quite an extensive area had been cleared, and there was certainly an abundance of trees and shrubs where before there had only been spiny bushes. He could see the symmetrical patterns of her designs taking shape.

  “I have come to tell you that the mosaic artists will be arriving soon,” he told Shula-Jane.

  “Is that so,” she replied.

  And the stone mason will be bringing the tiles for the fountain.”

  “I see.”

  Toufik wandered to another corner of the garden to see what was being done.

  “Shula, why are you being so disrespectful?” hissed Emmi Rashida, bending down to speak near her ear. “Toufik has gone to much trouble to arrange for the artists and the mason.”

  “I said I would manage the work myself,” Shula-Jane hissed back. “He is interfering.”

  “Interfering! Troublesome child! A young man goes to trouble and expense to give his bride the gardens she desires, and she says that it is interfering! You ungrateful little...” she did not finish her words for Shula-Jane let out a cry of protest of her own. Lulu had come into the garden and was frantically digging up the newly planted fire-lilies. Two lay limply on the ground while he was unearthing a third in a white-furred frenzy.

  “Lulu!” shouted Shula-Jane, “Catch him!” she said to Zinga. A chase ensued as Zinga threw herself at Lulu and Lulu escaped to run yipping around the garden.

  “Don’t frighten him!” shouted Emmi Rashida.

  “Catch him!” called Shula-Jane.

  Lulu and Zinga disappeared from view and then a yelp was heard, but not from Lulu.

  Zinga had cried out in pain. Shula-Jane jumped up and ran towards the cry. Bibi, her dark gazelle eyes widened in terror at the sound of her sister’s voice, and she clung to Keita’s neck.

  Toufik appeared from beyond the border of phoenix trees and could be seen to throw Zinga to the ground.

  “What are you doing?” cried Shula-Jane.

  Felix also appeared at the sound of the child’s cry. Zinga was scrambling away from Toufik in fear.

  “Why did you strike her?” demanded Shula-Jane.

  “Shula!” hissed Emmi Rashida.

  Toufik gave Shula-Jane an angry look. “She ran into me. Why are you questioning me? What is it to you how I treat the slaves?”

  Shula-Jane had to clench her teeth as hard as she could to keep from say
ing any more. She knew she should not be questioning a master before the servants. She knew she had angered and dishonoured him. She saw Felix move towards Zinga and put out a hand to help her. Zinga was crying and holding her arm. Toufik turned his head and saw Felix’s movements and for a terrible moment Shula-Jane was certain by the thunderous look on Toufik’s face that he was going to vent his anger on Felix.

  Keita, sensing the violence in the air, was growling louder and looked about to spring up. But Toufik did not strike Felix. Not this time. He pushed Felix away from Zinga with a sharp shove to his shoulder. Then he turned and stormed out of the garden back into the house. Emmi Rashida scooped up Lulu who had reappeared with a fire-lily stem in his mouth, and she hurried after her son, saying in passing to Shula-Jane, “Your father will hear of this.”

  If her father heard of the incident he said nothing. Though Shula-Jane was not sure if there was not a new look in his eye when it rested upon her as she sat at his feet that night. A thoughtful look. A worried look. But he said nothing.

  The days and weeks passed by. The walls of the new rooms were completed; soon the roof would be put on. The mosaic floor of the new garden terrace was emerging jewel-like and beautiful. Zinga and Bibi had never seen anything like it. Bibi would trace the patterns of the tesserae with her small finger, and follow the outlines of the peacocks and peahens depicted. Felix had worked baskets and baskets of mulch and manure into the dusty soil, and had dug new channels for the irrigation. Zinga dug out holes for Shula-Jane to plant lilies and poppies, fragrant herb bushes, grassy shrubs and white flowering jasmine that clambered up trellises to release its sweet, heady scent in the early evenings.

  Toufik and Emmi Rashida did not bother Shula-Jane in her garden any more. It began to feel like a haven for her. She began to ask Felix his thoughts on where plants should go, where the seating should be, the best position for the fish pool. Talking with Felix in the language that only they could share, in the garden where no one else in the household came, made for a secret, almost sacred world for Shula-Jane, away from the griefs of home and the future before her. She even forgot that Felix, Zinga and Bibi were her servants in this secret garden, they had become her companions. Her family.

  She asked Felix many questions about Angliana. At first he seemed reluctant to speak of it, as though it were too painful. But she desired to know what the country of her mother’s birth was like. She listened in wonder to the descriptions of a green land, where the earth did not have to be cultivated and teased into supporting plants, but everywhere grew a ready abundance of green grass and wild flowers and trees of every kind.

  She heard of the changing of the seasons, of how sometimes there was something called snow that fell from the sky and settled on the earth turning everything white. It sounded magical. She asked Felix about the customs and the food and the clothes and about the king of Angliana who was said to be very brave, and the queen who was said to be very beautiful. It sounded like a wondrous kingdom, where ladies with pale skins wore gowns that billowed out over something called hoops and wore their hair piled up and looped and braided and decorated with feathers and jewels. She would dearly like to see such ladies at the court of the king and queen.

  “Have you been to the royal court?” she asked.

  “I have,” said Felix, “and the court of the king of Portgua, and also of Franca when I was travelling through the kingdom with...with my uncle.”

  Shula-Jane noticed how the sad, haunted look passed over his face whenever he mentioned any of his family. He would grow quiet and would no longer wish to talk to her, she had learned to ask her questions of Angliana carefully so as not to awaken this deep sadness that took him away from her.

  “I should like to see Angliana,” she said. “I think perhaps my mother’s blood in me longs for it as a longing for home.” She could see by the look on his face that he too longed for home.

  “How was it your mother came to be in Tombutu?” said Felix.

  “The same way as you,” said Shula-Jane. “She was captured by Corsas. Her family lived in a village on the coast of Angliana. She was the daughter of the lord of the manor. One day, while she was visiting in the village, it was raided by pirates. They took many of the young people of her village. She told me it was a most dreadful journey. She nearly died. So many of them died. She was taken to Agier in the north, and then the slavers brought her to Tombutu. She was sold to the king, because she was beautiful. The king gave her as a gift to my father. Papa said he always knew she was not a common person, but of an educated and noble family. He said he could tell, and so he would not let her be a common servant. Later he made her his wife, and when I was born, he freed her. But her health was not strong.”

  “It is a sad tale,” said Felix. “It is a terrible thing to be taken from your family, your home, and sold like a dog. It is a wicked thing to rob a man of his life and his will.”

  Shula-Jane had never heard anyone talk like this. All her life the servants she had grown up surrounded with had never dared to speak of their feelings or their opinions of their status as slaves. It was accepted that this was how things were. Every household had slaves. Every other person to be seen in the streets and the markets was a slave to someone. Somehow this young man with the dark, sad eyes in his handsome face did not suit being a slave. He was different. The way he held himself, his movements, his speech; despite his plain cotton robe and his bare feet, he was somehow more like an equal to Shula-Jane. She often forgot that she was his mistress, forgot that there ought to be a distance between them in their conversing. She spoke to him as an equal. As a friend.

  She was also failing as a mistress to her two young maidservants. Bibi was not expected by Shula-Jane to work, she was so young, so fragile looking, and still, in all the months she had been with her, she had never spoken a word, nor made a sound. Shula-Jane would often waken to see her curled up beside Keita on the terrace outside her sleeping room. The little black-skinned child resting against the tan coloured fur of the massive dog.

  And Zinga was not the quiet, subdued servant that she ought to be; she grew livelier in her speech as the weeks passed. She told her stories and she chattered like a parrot. But Shula-Jane liked her chatter and her stories.

  She had to inwardly agree with her Emmi’s repeated remonstrations that Shula-Jane was indeed no good at training her own servants. And yet – why should she suppress her servants into silence and fear? Why could she not enjoy their company and feel affection for them, and they for her? She did not want to be like Toufik, whom all the servants feared, and, she was certain, for she felt it herself – despised.

  It was midday, and everyone, slave and free, human and animal, rested from the heat. Shula-Jane was fanning herself beneath the palm trees. Zinga and Bibi were lying close by, with Keita between them beneath the shade.

  “Keita is not a pretty dog,” commented Zinga, stroking the massive head that lay beside her. “But he is the best dog in all the kingdoms of all the world.”

  “Papa wanted me to get rid of him,” Shula-Jane told her, opening her eyes drowsily.

  “Why?”

  “Because he does not like Toufik. But when Keita saved me from the lion, Papa said he was sent to be my guardian, and he must always stay with me.”

  “He saved you from a lion?” said Zinga, her dark eyes wide with wonder.

  Shula-Jane nodded. “It was a young lion, but a hungry lion. I was walking home from the markets, and he appeared out of the cram-cram grass and stood in the road before me. He would have eaten me for certain, but Keita chased him away. He was like a great lion-eating lion-dog, his lips all curled back and his big teeth showing...”

  “Like this?” interrupted Zinga, pulling back her lips and baring her teeth.

  “Yes, like that, but he was a snarling, growling lion-dog.”

  “Like this?” said Zinga, widening her mouth as far as she could and adding a fierce growling noise to her facial gestures. Bibi hid her face in Keita’s neck
.

  “Yes, like that, and his hackles were up and his shoulders were hunched...”

  “Like this?” said Zinga, and she bounced up and dropped to all fours, hunching up her shoulders and prowling forward towards Bibi baring her teeth and growling. Bibi peeked through her fingers, and then hid her face again in Keita’s tan neck.

  Shula Jane laughed.

  “I don’t blame Keita for not liking Master Toufik” said Zinga, turning back into a girl. She glanced up sideways at Shula-Jane to see if her mistress was annoyed at her impertinence. But her mistress said nothing.

  Bibi tapped Zinga on the arm.

  “What?” said Zinga. “A story?”

  Bibi nodded and snuggled into Keita.

  “The snake and the mouse?”

  Bibi shook her head.

  “The three wishes?”

  Bibi shook her head.

  “The princess of the desert?”

  She shook her head.

  “A new story?”

  Bibi nodded.

  Zinga took a deep breath as though she were filling her lungs with story words breathed in from the air. She put on what Shula-Jane thought of as her griot face, which was a face far wiser and knowing than the face of a child of nine ought to have.

  “Once there was a little songbird.

  “A pretty little songbird. A happy little songbird. She lived in a mango-berry tree and she sang all day long. When she was hungry, she ate golden mango-berries. And when she was thirsty she went to the river that flowed nearby to drink.

  “One day a crocodile saw the little bird by the river bank, and he thought he would like to eat her. So he said to her, “Little Songbird, sing me a song.”

  “So the little songbird sat on a branch of a mango-berry tree and sang a lovely song.

  “Little Songbird,” said the crocodile, “I cannot hear you so far away up in the mango-berry tree. Come down and sit on the river bank and sing me a song.”