The Sultan's Wife

by Jane Johnson

  Slavery has always seemed to me a deplorable practice. The idea of owning a person like a stick of furniture seems to me morally wrong and I have refused to buy anyone. Mother berated me for my lack of economic management: Amsterdam is the slave capital of Europe and we could buy slaves for a bargain price. But after Father’s death I kept the books and I dug my heels in, though she complained bitterly not to have a parcel of little black boys she could dress up in fancy clothes as an enhancement to her person when her frightful friends visited with their own sorry retinues. But, to my shame, I have never even considered the possibility of a white person being sold as a slave – least of all myself.

  I have heard about slave-vessels, of men chained in their own filth and disease below-decks, of more corpses being thrown overboard than arrive alive at the destination; but it seems that is not to be my lot. I am taken to a small cabin, which, although cramped and dirty, affords me some degree of privacy and dignity, and I lie there in the dark contemplating what might have been had our ship reached England. Once married, I would have lived with my husband, Mr Burke, in his newly built house in London’s Golden Square – a place that sounds magical, but that I have never seen, and now probably never will see.

  I have not met Mr Burke: the union was arranged between our families, though it was not, I fear, the alliance for which my mother hoped. She cherished grand dreams, told me I would marry into the nobility and thus remake the fortune my father lost when he fled from the Parliament men to Holland at the outset of the English War. Why she married him, I do not know, for it was clear to me even as a child that she did not greatly care for him. She too was an émigré, daughter of a family living on the edge of court life, mixing with the rich and famous, without the wherewithal to do so. There was some scandal, I believe; she married Father as a result.

  Throughout my youth I was thrown with ever greater urgency at a succession of visiting gentry, but with King Charles restored there were sufficient girls of greater beauty, substantially larger fortunes and better family at home in England to supply the marriage market, and so my mother became an increasingly disappointed woman. Disappointment turned to bitterness; bitterness to a sickness of the spirit that soon became a sickness of the body; and I have been her attendant ever since. It was only because our debts had mounted and she had a ‘hankering to see my beloved England before I expire’ that she had accepted on my behalf the hand of Mr Andrew Burke.

  The closest I had ever come to my fiancé was a small portrait that he sent, but, since I had seen the one made of me for the purpose of the betrothal, I rather doubted its honesty. In my own portrait I was petite and fair, my eyes larger and bluer than they are in life, my skin porcelain white, with no trace of freckle, and a good ten years erased by the lack of detail, as if someone had shone a bright light upon me that washed age and care away. Seeing it made me laugh out loud. ‘He’ll send me back when he sees what he’s actually bought!’ Mother was not amused.

  Mr Burke’s portrait offered a ruddy, black-bearded man of middle age, substantial of belly, dressed in sombre clothing, with a roll of rich fabric spread before him and a yardstick in his hand to indicate his trade as a master draper: a mile lower down the social ladder from my mother’s dreams of glory.

  However, enlivened by the prospect of being shipped back to England once I was safely married, Mother actually managed to sit up in her sickbed and pronounce him ‘a most handsome package’. So it was all weights and measures and merchandise: and now perhaps that system of commodity has found its truest possible expression. Instead of being parcelled off to a fat, ageing draper in London, I will be sold to some other man in another foreign land.

  *

  We are many days at sea – far more than the three it takes between Scheveningen and the English coast. I have never in my life had so much time to myself. When Father died I was thirteen. Mother took to her rooms on the day they buried him and never stirred from them again, but spent her time dozing, or reading poetry, staring out of the window and sighing for her lost youth; or playing execrably on her spinetten.

  We had staff while Father was alive: a cook, a housekeeper, a valet, two ladies’ maids, a gardener; but upon his death the true state of our finances was revealed, and in short order they left, one by one, as credit ceased and debts were called in and we could no longer pay their wages. At last we were left only with old Judith and her daughter Els. Judith cooked, after a fashion, and Els could just about handle a peeling knife and knead dough. So, young as I was, I stepped into the role of housekeeper. We did not live well, but I was forever occupied with the small things that make a household run – the sweeping and cleaning and sewing and mending, the tending of the garden, which I turned over to the production of legumes and espaliered fruit trees.

  One by one, I sold Father’s collection of antiques: his Italian glassware and porcelain, his books and curios and his collection of scientific instruments. Then I started on the pretty Turkey carpets, and at last the furniture in all but the reception room, where guests occasionally still came. The rest of the house was stripped to the bare minimum: less to clean, I reasoned, and applied myself to the household accounts. (How I wished I could have sold Mother’s wretched spinetten: the sound of its misstruck notes echoing through the rapidly emptying house was most jarring on the ears.)

  When Mr Burke’s proposal arrived, I should have felt relieved that at last we would be taken care of, that I would not have to concern myself with such base matters any more. But, in truth, I enjoyed the practicalities of such a life, the simple logic of knowing that if I did not stir my bones when the sun came up to help Judith and Els in the kitchen, there would be no bread for breakfast; if I did not sow my seeds in May, there would be no beans in September; if I did not mend a torn petticoat as soon as the tear appeared, in no time it would be of no use for anything but cleaning rags. How we managed to maintain the façade of genteel living, I do not know, but I believe no one was aware of the extent of our penury. Every night I went to bed satisfied that all was in good order; only when I slept were my hands still.

  So as I lie here in this little cabin my mind wanders greatly. I ponder the identity of our captors and wonder whether we are heading through the Gates of Hercules into the Mediterranean, to the slave-capitals of Algiers or Tunis; or maybe even further east, to the Grand Turk himself in Constantinople.

  Barely a week passes before my curiosity is satisfied.

  *

  When we finally put into port and the ship is disembarked, I find myself on the shore with tears running down my face – my eyes being now so accustomed to darkness and the light in this new place being so sharp. They take me from the ship by mule through narrow alleyways in which we pass a multitude of brown-skinned men in turbans or point-hooded robes who watch us go by – mainly in silence, though some hurl imprecations, or maybe blessings, in their strange, guttural tongue. We pass rib-thin donkeys and dark-eyed children, and women swathed from head to toe in fabric (a draper’s dream). At last we stop at a tall white house without a single window but just a vast, iron-studded door. There I am put into a room with half-a-dozen other women, none of whom speak a word of English, though one, Saar, speaks a little Dutch. She tells me that she and the other women have all been taken from Spanish or Portuguese villages.

  All are younger than me by more than a decade, even though the sun has weathered their skin and etched deep lines in their faces. These are girls who sat on wharf sides and sea walls mending nets and packing pilchards into hogsheads of salt. They are tough and pragmatic: there has been no talk of romance or nobility in their families, and so they have no illusions as to what awaits us, and appear resigned to their fate.

  ‘Just think: what do we all have in common?’ Saar asks.

  ‘We are all women.’

  ‘Beyond that?’

  It does not take long to realize what she means. ‘We are all maids.’

  ‘All virgins, yes. That makes us valuable.’

  The
re is only one reason why an entire hymen might make one a valued commodity. I firm my jaw. ‘Well, at least that means they will wish to preserve their investment until we are sold.’

  ‘It is worse than that,’ the one called Constanza says.

  What could be worse?

  ‘They are Mahometans: they will make us turn Turk.’

  I stare in disbelief. ‘That I shall never do.’

  ‘That is what you say now.’

  A dumpy woman in local garb comes in and starts to fuss about us, examining our hands and teeth, as if we are cattle. When she comes to me she grins and pats my hair. Then she says, quite clearly in Dutch, ‘What a gem: he’ll be pleased with this one.’

  I answer her in the same language, which surprises her. She tells me she is called Yasmin, and that her mother ‘used to be Dutch’, whatever that means. ‘You don’t look Dutch,’ I say, for her skin is a deep olive-brown and her hair dark and wiry.

  ‘I take after my father. My mother worked for Sidi Qasem for many years. She came from Amsterdam with her husband, a renegado sailor who joined the corsair fleet here; but he died in a sea-battle off Gibraltar, and she converted and married a local man, a Berber from the Rif.’

  ‘It seems to be a most cosmopolitan place,’ I say wryly.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ she exclaims proudly. ‘We have captives from all over the world.’ She says the town is called Sale and that it lies on the northern coast of Morocco, a word until now I have associated only with the fine tooled leather goods in The Hague’s central market. It is, apparently, the chief port for the trading of foreign slaves in all of Barbary. ‘The sidi’s matamores are full of slaves from Spain and Portugal, from France and Sicily, from Corsica and Malta, and even as far as Ireland and the northern lands beyond.’ She tells me that in the time of her mother there was a famous raid on the Arctic city of Reykjavik, when over four hundred captives were taken in a single day. She reaches forward and touches my cheek. ‘They were even paler than you, those girls: my mother said they looked as if they had been carved out of ice. Ever since, the aristocracy here have been mad for pale women with yellow hair. They’re a status symbol, you see: only a rich man can afford such a rare creature.’ She pats my hand again, made familiar by our shared tongue. ‘You’ll fetch a good price.’

  So this is why, despite my age, I have been separated out from the other women on the ship. ‘And who is this Sidi Qasem?’ I ask.

  ‘He is very venerable.’ She murmurs something in her heathen language, runs her hands down her face, kisses her palms and touches them to her heart, as if he is some sort of icon, or saint. ‘Sidi Qasem is the leader of the corsair divan. The number of foreign captives his ships have brought in, Allah be praised! You have great good luck to be captured by one of the sidi’s captains,’ she says, without a hint of irony. ‘His wife, Lalla Zahra, was also a captive. She came from England, and was called Catherine there. But here we call her the Rose of the North. She took the name of Zahra when she converted.’

  I recoil. ‘She became a Mahometan?’

  ‘She is a very great lady, an example to us all. You will meet her shortly: it is a great honour for you.’

  I fold my lips and say nothing to that.

  Later I am taken downstairs to a large salon lined with low couches. The furnishings are simple, yet rich. My mother is a first-class snob. Raised to appreciate minute calibrations of wealth and taste, I can tell at once that the proprietor of this house has money to spare but uses it wisely, and not for ostentatious show. I am made to leave my shoes at the door of the salon: the carpets I cross are silky underfoot, and in the colours of a muted sunset. There is a carved plaster frieze that runs around the tops of the walls that is as intricately fretted as a honeycomb. The ceiling is of some carved dark wood, the walls are white and the couch coverings of plain cream linen, but the cushions ranged upon them are bright silks and velvets, and the wall-hanging above it is enough to take your breath away. I touch it with wondering fingers, turning up the corner to see the stitching on the back, which is as exquisite as that on the front: the mark of a true craftsman. It is strange to find such beauty in a place that thrives on cruelty.

  ‘I see you have an interest in embroidery.’

  The cool English voice makes me start. I turn to find a stately-looking woman of sixty or sixty-five regarding me with a half-smile. Her eyes are a wintry grey-blue, but the inner eyelids have been painted with some dark concoction which makes them leap out at you in a way that is at once very foreign and very direct. I am not used to being scrutinized so; it makes me uncomfortable. I take in the detail of her large silver earrings, and the intricate beaded necklace she wears high on her throat. Her robe is a rich dark blue, its facings and cuffs embroidered with silver wire threaded with seed pearls. She is tall and holds herself straight: she is impressive. But, as she lowers herself on to the cushions, she grimaces as if her joints are stiff, and I realize she is older than I thought.

  ‘Welcome to our house,’ she says, gesturing to me to sit, as if I am a Sunday afternoon guest come by for tea and chatter. ‘My name is Lalla Zahra, and I am the wife of Sidi Qasem, whose house this is.’

  ‘My name is Alys Swann of The Hague, though my family came originally from England.’

  Her lips quirk. ‘So did I, once. From a place called Kenegie in west Cornwall. It is not often I have the opportunity to speak my mother tongue these days.’

  ‘Not that many English slave-captives passing through, then?’ I ask acidly.

  She slaps her hands on her thighs and laughs out loud. ‘Well, Alys Swann, what a shame we have to pass you on. It would have been fun to keep you here for a while. It’s nice to see someone with a bit of spirit, though I should warn you that it may not be wise to show too much of that where you’re going.’

  I swallow. ‘And where would that be, I wonder? I should like to know my fate. I find it helps in accepting one’s lot to have time to assimilate it first.’

  She raises an eyebrow. ‘You have been earmarked for Meknes.’

  Tagged for the marketplace, like a sheep. ‘And who or what might “Meknes” be?’

  ‘Can it be that our great sultan’s fame has not spread as far as Holland’s high society?’

  ‘I do not move in such circles,’ I say stonily. She is toying with me, and I do not like her for it.

  ‘You have been set aside as a prize for our most holy majesty, the Emperor Moulay Ismail, who holds court in the imperial city of Meknes, which he is, according to my husband, in the process of reconstructing in a most sublime manner.’

  I digest this silently. When Mother spoke of marrying me into the nobility, I do not think this is quite what she had in mind.

  ‘You will be welcomed into the royal harem, if you behave with sense and propriety, and you will never want for anything for the rest of your days. You will be housed in a palace of marble, porphyry and jasper; your meals will be eaten off platters of gold and silver, you will be garbed in the finest silks, and in winter the softest wool, and perfumed with all the rich scents of Araby. What more could any… girl wish for?’

  ‘The Emperor of Morocco wants me as a courtesan?’ The idea is quite absurd.

  ‘You are pretty enough, with your pale hair and skin, so you will be presented to him as such: what he does with you after that is his own affair.’ She smiles sweetly, as if it is quite normal to be sitting here like this, discussing such matters. ‘Come now, Alys, it is not so bad. Foreigners may paint the sultan as a monster, but he is a man like any other. As a woman in his harem you will live a comfortable life, and will probably have to lie with him only a handful of times in your life. Maybe even once only.’

  I cannot hide my outrage any longer. ‘Once is one time too many!’

  ‘It is hard to accept, I know, this loss of choice and will. I was luckier than you, though I too was taken captive by the corsairs.’

  ‘If you were also taken by pirates I would expect a little more charity from you.’


  ‘They are corsairs, Alys, not pirates. There may seem little difference to you, but within this culture these men are heroes, not criminals. They do what they do not for their own personal gain but for the benefit of the community.’

  I gesture at the sumptuous room. ‘So your beautiful house does not count as “personal gain”, then?’

  She bridles. ‘I understand that it is hard to be robbed of what you think of as your freedom; but answer me truly, Alys, are women ever truly free? In England, and I imagine in Holland too, we are bought and sold, parcelled off in marriage to consolidate a family business here, political aspirations there, to shore up a failing country estate, or simply to get us off our family’s hands. It must have come as something of a shock – I quite understand – to be taken at sea as you were and find yourself amongst people whom you regard as heathen. I know that it can be very frightening. I was taken prisoner during the raid on a church in Penzance in 1625 and sold on the slave blocks here in Sale. I thought my life was ending, but it had only just begun. The man who bought me took me to wife, and it has been the happiest of marriages. You will say that I have been lucky, but I say to you, Alys, that these people are much the same as all other people: some are God-fearing and respectful, even kind; while others are wicked and hateful. All we can do is to hope for the best—’

  ‘And prepare for the worst.’ I finish for her, annoyed by her proselytizing.

  She spreads her hands. ‘It may all turn out far better than you fear. But it is good to be pragmatic and to accept the situation that presents itself with the best grace you can muster; and that way you may preserve yourself and minimize the… difficulties.’

  ‘I will not convert.’

  ‘You must make your choices according to your conscience. But, Alys, it is what you keep in your heart that matters. Do not be stubborn, I beg you. For your own sake.’