The Lioness of Morocco

by Julia Drosten

  “I could probably foist a sack of marigolds on you today,” André remarked with a smile.

  “I wouldn’t bet on it.” She unlocked the cabinet in which she stored the saffron until it was shipped. They could hear muffled shouts, the clatter of crates, the squeaking of a winch, and a door being slammed shut in the warehouse below.

  He took the earthenware vessels from her and placed them on the tabletop. “I just ran into Emily.”

  The young woman had been lying in wait for him. She knew that he would be coming to Mogador around this time and had instructed a beggar sitting at the Bab Doukkala to inform her as soon as Monsieur Rouston rode by. He had only just dismounted from his horse in front of the French consulate when she had appeared in such a state of agitation that for a moment he had feared something had happened to Sibylla. He had been completely unprepared for what Emily did say.

  Sibylla fetched the scale from the cabinet and slammed it on the table. “We should be discussing the quality of your crop and not my family.”

  “Sibylla.” André gently placed his hand on her arm. “Emily told me what happened. Don’t you think that twenty years is long enough to live with a lie?”

  “How dare you?” She jerked her arm back.

  “I can imagine how painful this must all be for you, but I am glad Emily finally knows I am her father.”

  Sibylla’s face twitched. For a brief moment, he expected her to throw him out along with his saffron. However, she only noted, very softly, “I expect you have known for some time.”

  He thought back to that day when he had first met five-year-old Emily. He was standing on the city wall, looking out at the ocean and allowing his thoughts to drift like clouds across the sky when he caught sight of them: Nadira and Sibylla on the beach, playing with a little girl. The first thought that flashed into his mind was that that girl with the black curls could not possibly be Hopkins’s child.

  He had asked around in town and been relieved beyond measure to discover that Sibylla had never remarried, that she lived alone with her children and was running her father’s shipping business. But he simply could not stop thinking about the child. A short while later, he had been successful in reestablishing his contact with Sibylla by way of his saffron and managed to meet the little one. Over the years, the certainty that he was Emily’s father had only grown stronger.

  “You would never have told me, would you?” he asked gently.

  She covered her eyes with her hand and said nothing. When he stepped closer and touched her shoulder, she flinched.

  “What did you expect me to do?” she asked angrily. “You preferred your life with Aynur to a life with me. She bore you a daughter mere weeks after Emily was born!”

  “I would have preferred a life with you, Sibylla . . .” He stopped. Aynur had lured him into her arms with a ruse back then. But later, he had understood her reasons, and she had become a good companion for him. He did not wish to speak ill of her. “Emily has asked if she might stay with me at Qasr el Bahia for the time being. I told her that she may.”

  She spun around. “That is out of the question! I won’t allow it.”

  “This is Emily’s decision. You must respect it.”

  “Never!” Sibylla felt deeply wounded—by Emily, who had turned her back on her, and by André, who was helping her do so.

  “You have withheld the truth from me for twenty years and denied me the opportunity to be a father to Emily. But now that she really needs a father, I must be one for her!”

  “Do you believe that I would surrender Emily to your . . .” Sibylla could not bring herself to say the word “wife.” “To Aynur?! She will refuse to accept her because she’s my daughter. She will attempt to harm her, she will—”

  “Please calm down, Sibylla! First of all, Aynur will do nothing of the sort. Secondly, I will be there as well. And thirdly, it is Emily’s wish.”

  “But she is still a child and has no idea!” Sibylla protested.

  André gingerly wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. For a few seconds, all they heard was the distant breaking of the surf and the sounds of the harbor until Sibylla burst out, “Oh, that Sara Willshire, I could kill her! She has turned my whole family against me! Emily has thrown away her chance to study at the Royal Academy of Arts, and now she hardly speaks to me at all. The minute I say something, she leaves the room.”

  “Give her time. The news has been a shock.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one she’s treating like a criminal.”

  Sibylla haltingly told André that Emily wasn’t the only one angry with her. Thomas was resentful that she had not confided in him and John felt personally disgraced. “And to think that all our acquaintances knew,” he had fretted. “What a fool the other traders must think me!”

  And Victoria, the instigator, stayed hidden in her room. Whenever Sibylla crossed paths with her in the house, the young woman quickly hurried away.

  Sibylla looked into André’s eyes. “Victoria is ashamed, but she still has not asked for my forgiveness. To be perfectly frank, I’m not ready to give it yet. You must be upset with me as well.”

  “Mon Dieu, no! What else could you have done? I was the one who made a grave mistake. I betrayed your feelings. And mine.” He drew a deep breath. “You wanted to protect Emily, as did I. So I said nothing for all these years, even though it wasn’t always easy.”

  “I fear that Emily will be called a bastard if you publicly acknowledge her as your daughter. I couldn’t bear that, André.”

  “Anyone who even thinks about uttering that word will have me to deal with,” André replied. “That’s another reason for Emily to go with me to Qasr el Bahia. People will gossip, but soon they tire of it and accept that I am Emily’s father.”

  Sibylla leaned against him. “Had I known how you felt, many things would have turned out differently.” She sighed softly.

  “Would you have forgiven me?” he asked earnestly.

  She said nothing, but permitted him to stroke her hair.

  One week later, Sibylla and Emily left the city at daybreak, riding through the Bab El Mersa and headed in a southeastern direction to the mouth of the Oued Igrounzar river, where André was waiting for them. He had left through a different gate to avoid attracting attention. After a brief greeting, he rode off with Emily and a pack donkey carrying his purchases from the souk. Sibylla stayed behind. Before the riders disappeared behind a bend, André turned around to wave. Sibylla squinted, not because of the rising sun but the tears stinging her eyes. At last, she slowly rode back to town. Emily had not turned and she had not bade her farewell.

  “We’ll be there soon.”

  Emily shot up in her saddle. André smiled. “You’re not accustomed to riding all day, are you? It won’t be long now before we reach the Oued Zeltene tributary and, from there, we’ll be home in half an hour.”

  Home, Emily mused. Mogador has always been my home until now. “It’s getting dark,” she said. “What if we get lost?”

  “Don’t worry. There is a full moon and I know every rock around. I could find my way from here blindfolded. Look, the evening star has risen.”

  Emily looked up into the lavender sky and saw a single bright star over the jagged mountaintops.

  It had been a pleasant day for riding. At one point, a light rain had fallen, leaving the air mild and soft like balsam. Next to them, the Oued Igrounzar gurgled over the rocks. They heard some rustling in the shrubs and a nocturnal bird called out from a jujube tree. Emily’s horse snorted. She patted it on the neck and listened to the rhythmic clip clop of the hooves on the hard soil. Her heart beat faster as she thought about the people at Qasr el Bahia, her father’s family, who were now her family.

  “Father?” It was difficult for her to address the man who had so long been “Monsieur Rouston.”

  “Yes, ma petite?” He turned to her in his saddle.

  “Does your family know about me?”

  During
their journey, André had told Emily about his family, that his wife, Aynur, was a Berber from the Glaoua tribe and that they had four children. The eldest was almost as old as Emily and was named Malika. Her name meant “angel” in Arabic, but André insisted that there was nothing angelic about her and that she was full of mischief. His three sons, Frédéric, Christian, and André, who was called André Jr., had been given names from their father’s country according to Aynur’s wishes. They were seventeen, fourteen, and ten years of age. There had also been two other girls who had died in infancy.

  André considered his answer carefully since he did not want Emily to misunderstand. “My family does not know about you,” he eventually admitted. “But that is only because, until just a few days ago, I could not be sure you were my daughter.”

  “I simply can’t believe that Mother lied to us for so many years!” Emily said.

  He looked at her very seriously. “She had your well-being in mind. You must not judge her so.”

  By now, it was almost completely dark. The bright moon was huge and seemed close enough to touch. The wind carried the scent of cedar down from the Atlas. Emily thought she could see shadows scurrying through the thicket. An owl silently glided directly over their heads and her horse reared back.

  “You don’t suppose there could be robbers here, do you?” she inquired apprehensively once she had calmed the horse down. The traders from Mogador relied on heavily armed mercenaries from the sultan’s Black Guards to protect their caravans. But Emily and André had no such protection.

  “There are no robbers here. We’re too far from the caravan route,” André reassured her. “And I get along well with the Ait Zelten that live here. In fact, many of them work on my estate.”

  During his early years at Qasr el Bahia, the Ait Zelten had not been disposed kindly toward him. The shepherds had driven their flocks across his fields, their goats and sheep grazing on his barley and trampling the saffron crocuses. At night, the people had stolen the fruit off his trees and tried to break into his stables and storerooms. It was not until his friend Udad bin Aziki had arrived with two dozen well-armed Chiadma that the Ait Zelten had conceded defeat and their sheikh had accepted the foreigner.

  They had become good neighbors over the years. During times of drought and famine, when they lost the greater part of their crop, André shared his food reserves with them. In return, they helped out in the fields and on the farm. A handful of young men objected to the unholy friendship with the infidel, but as long as the sheikh and the rest of the tribe stood by André, they were powerless to do anything about it.

  Emily listened intently. The rushing of the water seemed louder than before. “Have we reached the Oued Zeltene?”

  Her father nodded. “Qasr el Bahia is directly in front of us.”

  She followed his extended arm and beheld the elevated estate. A gigantic, angular building with two massive towers arose dark and majestic before her. Tiny stars sparkled above it in the infinite blue-velvet sky. Suddenly, lights began to glow in one of the two towers, swung several times from right to left, and disappeared. André turned to his daughter. “Those are flare signals. They have heard us arrive.”

  Soon after, the lights appeared again, dancing through the darkness in the direction of the two riders. Deliberately placing one hoof in front of the other, the horses and the pack donkey climbed toward them. Water could be heard running underneath them in the rhetaras leading to the terraced fields on either side of the narrow path. In the pale light of the moon, Emily could make out the round-edged stone walls bordering the fields in which one could still see the headless stalks of harvested saffron plants. In between, about a horse’s length apart, were rows of pomegranate trees, the branches of which looked like thin little black arms reaching upward.

  Emily heard the torchbearers calling out to them. She was about to meet her new family.

  “Will your wife welcome me, Father?” she asked him, her heart in her throat.

  André hesitated. He had been preoccupied with this question ever since Emily had told him that she wanted to live with him. He feared that Aynur would not exactly welcome Emily with open arms, but he did not want his daughter to know that.

  Aynur was jealous. She did not like it when he went to Mogador. Whenever he returned, she would be distant and unapproachable, making him court her anew and prove that he loved her and not the Engliziya to whom he sold his saffron.

  What would happen when he rode into the courtyard with his and Sibylla’s daughter? He would protect Emily and make it clear to Aynur that she must respect this child of his as well, but it would not be easy.

  “My life has taught me not to make grand plans. Most of the time, fate decides,” he said as airily as possible.

  “So you’ll let fate decide how I am received?”

  “Not entirely, because I am by your side.” He reached out and touched her shoulder. “Inshallah, my daughter.”

  “Inshallah, Father,” she muttered without much conviction.

  “Baba?” The voice of a young man came through the darkness. “Who are you talking to?”

  The torchbearers were approaching. Emily looked expectantly at the dark-haired young man who came jumping down the hill with the agility of a mountain goat. One of André’s sons, probably Frédéric. He was followed by two farmhands, also bearing torches. Emily tightened her grip on the reins. In Mogador, she had asserted herself against two older brothers. She would have to do that and more with three younger brothers, one sister, and their mother!

  Aynur narrowed her eyes in disbelief when she saw Emily ride into the courtyard behind André. Had her husband brought back a wife from Mogador?

  She had been dreading this for a long time. Although her face was still smooth and her body still slender and lithe after six pregnancies, she was no longer young at the age of thirty-seven. But she had not become pregnant in the two years since the tiny newborn body of her youngest daughter, Thiyya, had been laid to rest next to her sister, Izza. Perhaps her husband did want more children, even though he assured her time and again that he had enough.

  But did he have to humiliate her with a wife young enough to be his daughter? The stranger was beautiful, supple like a young cedar tree and with regal bearing. She could not be Berber because she wore neither traditional clothing nor bore tribal tattoos on her forehead and cheeks. And an Arab woman would wear a veil. She had to be a foreigner.

  Another foreigner! Jealousy flared inside Aynur. She would have liked to yank the strange woman off her horse and press her face in the dust. Wherever the creature came from, she would learn not to intrude into Aynur’s home!

  “Frédéric!” She took her eldest by the shirt and pulled him closer. “Who is the guest that Baba has brought?” she hissed in her native Glaoua language.

  The dancing torchlight lent him an insolent, rakish look. “He said he’ll introduce her at dinner. But she’s pretty, isn’t she, Imma? Perhaps she’ll become my bride.”

  Aynur playfully punched her eldest, secretly relieved by a possibility she had not considered. “Don’t stand around and talk all night! Go and help your brothers unload the donkey.”

  André jumped off his horse and threw the reins to a stable boy. Then he helped the young woman dismount. Aynur watched him hold the stirrup steady with one hand and extend the other. The young woman smiled nervously, slid out of the saddle, and stood close to André.

  Aynur grasped the locket with her children’s hair that she wore on a silver chain around her neck. Then she resolutely lifted her chin.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Emily sat next to her father on one of the two sofas in the dining room and tried to look as confident as possible. She was glad that a flat cedarwood table separated her and Aynur, since the lady of the house had given her a cool reception indeed. Now she sat enthroned on the opposite side of the table, demonstrably surrounded by her sons. Cowering on a chair in a corner was a frightening figure: a very old Negro woman, her talon
-like fingers clutching the armrests and her gaze unremittingly fixed on Emily. André had introduced her as Tamra, Aynur’s servant. Still, Emily felt uneasy at the sight of the almost-bald old woman, who continually made disagreeable grunting sounds.

  The dining room was not furnished in the European style like her home in Mogador. This one had low sofas with colorful throws. A wool rug covered the blue, green, and red floor tiles, bowls of fragrant dried flowers filled in the alcoves, and iron chandeliers threw flickering shapes on the whitewashed walls. The arched windows were large, with elegant colored panes that dated back to the previous owner, the late Sultan Moulay Abd al-Rahman.

  The hearth gave off cracking sounds, the old woman in her chair went on mumbling to herself, but everything else was shrouded in explosive silence. Aynur sat very straight on the sofa. With her embroidered blouse, her wide, colorful skirt, and her opulent silver jewelry, she reminded Emily of a pretty doll, if not for her tight lips and the hostility in her brown eyes.

  However, Emily was determined not to be intimidated. If she had succeeded in standing up to her own formidable mother, she could surely do the same with this woman.

  The door was opened and Emily’s half sister, Malika, entered, followed by two servants. The women brought platters with steaming couscous, fresh flatbread, and tureens from which emanated the tempting aromas of mint, honey, and lemon.

  Malika was a younger version of her mother, so small and dainty that Emily felt like a giant. Her skin glistened and her shiny pitch-black hair reached down to her hips. Whenever she moved, the silver bangles she wore on both wrists jingled. Like her mother, she was dressed in a tunic, a wide calf-length skirt, and boots made of soft leather. She reminded Emily of the dancer in the music box her stepgrandmother Mary had sent her from England years ago.

  Malika daintily placed the heavy platter on the table and threw an inquisitive glance at Emily with her gorgeous kohl-rimmed eyes. Emily found herself hoping that they would be not only sisters but also friends.