The Sultan's Wife

by Jane Johnson

  Making provision for so many stretches the resources of even the grand vizier. I swear in the last week he has lost the equivalent of a sheep in weight running here and there about the palace to meet with this supplier or that, organizing transportation and habitation, and making bargains with the tribal chiefs, whose support will be required as we make our progress. I hear that the sultan’s gold in itself will require a dozen wagons and four dozen oxen to transport it (the rest, I believe, is buried in secret chambers guarded by ghosts and curses). And Zidana’s demands are even more exigent. I have already been back and forth to the souq for sacks of henna, olive soap, herbal remedies – and a hundred other ingredients, largely poisonous. Then there are bales of silk and stacks of haberdashery and finding thirty seamstresses to accompany us into the mountains, which, given the plague, proves more problematic than you might expect.

  At night I cannot help but turn Daniel al-Ribati’s words over and over. If I am to escape my servitude, this will be my best opportunity. Already the court is in chaos. Strangers come and go; functionaries are sending their families away to stay with relatives in the south, where the plague has yet to strike, and my errands take me in and out of the palace at all hours of the day, unchallenged. I could walk right out of here. Find Daniel, accept his help. Leave Meknes, and never come back. Make a new life somewhere else. Anywhere else. As a free man.

  One morning, when Ismail’s frustration with his perceived laziness of the builders boils over and he bodily drags one away from his task and throws him to the hungry lions, who make short and bloody work of his body, I find my thoughts returning inexorably to the idea of escape.

  All morning the idea nags at me, until I can stand it no more. As soon as I am dismissed, I run back to my room, open up my wooden chest, sort through my things in a kind of blind fury and a moment later find myself striding purposefully along the colonnaded walkway towards the Bab al-Raïs with a makeshift sack over my shoulder. I wear a djellaba whose hood will disguise me once I make it into the medina. Beyond which lies the rest of my life. Wrapped in a length of turban cotton: my copy of Rumi, my Qur’an, a clean tunic, a pair of long qamis, my best pen, a small bottle of ink. If worse comes to worst, I shall offer my services as a scrivener or a public letter-writer. On a belt against my skin, a small pouch holds every coin I possess. Enough, maybe, to purchase a mule. How much does a mule cost? I have no idea. More than it did since the plague struck Meknes, no doubt, with so many desperate to escape the city. Well, I think, if a mule is too dear, I shall make good use of my own two feet…

  ‘Nus-Nus!’

  The words are barely audible, she is so out of breath. She bends, hands on thighs, chest heaving. Straightens up, laughs a little embarrassedly. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’

  It is Makarim, the slave-girl assigned to Alys.

  She holds something out to me and I stare at the coriander, its pretty leaves wilting from the warmth of the girl’s hand.

  Coriander.

  People stream past us as if we are twin boulders in a river. Trying to stop my voice from trembling, I ask, ‘Your mistress, is she well?’

  ‘I don’t know. She’s anxious. Jumpy. Paler than usual.’

  We go via my room, where I leave my things. At the harem gate I am surprised to find no sign of Qarim but an older guard whose name is, I think, Ibrahim.

  ‘Where is Qarim?’

  Ibrahim grimaces, runs a finger across his throat.

  ‘Dead?’

  The guard gives me an open-mouthed grin so that I can see the stubby root where his tongue has been cut out. I shiver, not at the mutilation, which is common enough, but at the memory of how ill Qarim looked when last I saw him; how he made to speak to me, how I hurried by. As I pass through the gate I say a small prayer for his soul; and hope he will forgive me for being a poor friend.

  Alys is as white as a jasmine flower. When I bow, formally, she bursts into tears, which is not like her. I frown. ‘Why have you summoned me?’ Suddenly, I feel as aggrieved as the djinn in the lamp, disturbed from its rest for no good reason.

  With a shaking hand she indicates on the carpet at the other side of the room a square of lace upon which sit four or five dark patches. ‘The woman is a monster! Not content with trying to poison me with her potions, now she sends me this…’

  I stride over to the piece of lace and stare down, uncomprehending. What are these things? Slices of dried fig? Fragments of tree resin?

  ‘“Wear it next to your heart,” she said. “It will bring you luck.” She did not say, of course, what order of luck she meant!’

  I bend to examine the items more closely.

  ‘Do not touch it!’ Alys cries in anguish.

  They are scabs: I see it now. Dried pus and blood, crusted solid. Instinct tells me these are the leavings of poor Fatima’s plague-boils, and I recoil violently. ‘Maleeo, Ancient Mother, protect me!’ The words escape me before I know it.

  When I turn, Alys is smiling at me through her tears. ‘Old habits die hard.’ So saying, she crosses herself.

  ‘Alys—’ I say warningly, and she drops her hand.

  ‘We are not so different, you and I, despite every appearance to the contrary: we both pray to our own gods in extremis.’

  ‘In extremis, and in secret, if you value your life.’

  I send the girl, Makarim, for tongs from the kitchen and when she comes back I make a fire in the courtyard and burn the kerchief and its contents and we watch till it is nothing more than ash; even that, I bury.

  ‘I thought you had gone away and left me,’ she says in a low voice.

  I hesitate, then concede, ‘I very nearly did.’ How nearly she must never know. While I was packing my few things and planning my escape, she was opening a kerchief full of plague-poison. The thought brings bile into my throat.

  ‘I could not blame you for doing so. We must all look to ourselves in these times. You should go, Nus-Nus. Leave now: it may be your only chance of freedom.’

  When your heart and your conscience are in chains, what freedom is there? I just shake my head. ‘I cannot go.’

  ‘I would be lying if I said I was not glad.’ She gazes at me steadily, and though her blue eyes are endlessly expressive, I do not know what I read there, only that I cannot look away. At last, she extends her hand, an English gesture, and I take it, lightly, between my own. It feels hot with life, with two lives. I bend my head and press it to my forehead; and then I have to leave quickly, for my eyes are wet.

  *

  The transport stretches for miles: dozens upon dozens of carts and wagons for Ismail and his personal clothes and jewels and gold and weapons; his bed, carpets, covers and favourite items of furniture; his travelling hammam; his incenses and perfumes, braziers and flagons, his Qur’an, his prayer mats; his favourite cats. Abdelaziz, Doctor Friedrich and ben Hadou travel with Ismail, surrounded by the elite bukhari troops and the cavalry. I travel with the household slaves and our pitifully small needs: clothing, bedding, our few personal possessions. Behind us come the women and children and the palace guards of the inner court, some five hundred of them, all eunuchs. Behind them, the astronomers, the court lords and higher functionaries; their families and households. Next are the store-wagons; Malik and his kitchen staff; the seamstresses, tailors, grooms, smiths and other artisans. The baggage train winds over the hills behind us and far out of sight. Somewhere at the back I know there is an army of slaves on foot, mostly Africans; the Christians remain in the city to continue work under the supervision of the most trusted (thus cruel) overseers. Ismail has left with his master builders a long list of tasks he expects to see accomplished on his return, and woe betide them if they are not carried out to his full satisfaction.

  After five days riding south we reach the cooler foothills of the Atlas Mountains, and there, by the limpid green waters of the Melwiya River, we make camp. Stripped to the waist in the hot sun, I labour with the other slaves to set up the sultan’s tents, a matter
that is complicated by the fact that the ground is not perfectly flat and so the pavilions – black and white on the outside, green and red and gold inside – are more crowded together than is ideal, and everyone is getting in everyone else’s way. Already a scuffle has broken out because someone got accidentally clouted on the backswing of a mallet and the victim has taken exception to the blow; and the astronomers, finding it hard to set their instruments to their satisfaction in unfamiliar territory, have split into two factions and are arguing amongst themselves about the precise direction of the qibla: a vital detail, since the sultan must at all times lie down with his head towards Mecca. It is at this point that Ismail bears down upon us with Alys at his right hand and Zidana at his left.

  We all make the prostration on to the grass and keep our gazes down.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ Ismail has ears like a bat’s: he has picked up on the altercations.

  I see the stargazers exchange panicked glances and immediately heal their rifts. ‘The slaves will not listen to instruction: they have taken it upon themselves to pitch the tents in quite the wrong alignment. The Qaaba is precisely in this direction—’ The chief astronomer shows the sultan his qibla indicator, and Ismail bends to pore over the complex markings on the etched brass discs. When he straightens up, his face is purple with fury. I should not, after all these years, be surprised by how quickly his mood can change, but even I am not prepared for the violence of his temper.

  ‘Shoot them all!’ he screams to the attendant guards. He sweeps an arm to indicate every man of the tent-pitching team, forty or more of us. ‘I want them all dead. They insult the Prophet! They insult me! Shoot them all!’

  I am desperate to propel myself to my feet and run. But, as if some sorcery pins me there, I am unable to move. All I can do is shift my head minutely to watch my doom come upon me.

  The guard closest to the sultan hesitates: fatally. In an instant, Ismail is upon him, wresting his gun away. The poor fool holds on to it for a moment too long and it will be the last thing he does, for now he looks down in some surprise to find the jewel-studded hilt of an imperial dagger standing proud from his chest. His mouth drops open, revealing a stub of tongue. Then, silent, he crumples, relinquishing the weapon. Ismail takes the gun and cocks the hammer and, barely aiming, discharges it into the prone body of the man next to me, who cries out in shock and bounces a foot off the ground, pouring blood, much of which splashes hotly on to me. As if this is their signal, other guards begin shooting wildly. At once, all is mayhem.

  I hear a woman scream, and though I have never heard her scream before, I know it is Alys.

  ‘My lord, no!’ A man’s voice: the Tinker: the Kaid Mohammed ben Hadou Ottur. ‘We need the ammunition, sire. The hills are full of Berbers.’

  He is a clever man, the Tinker; brave too. There is never any point in appealing to Ismail’s gentler side: he does not have one. Ben Hadou takes it upon himself to gesture for the guards to stand down. There ensues a short exchange between the sultan and his kaid, and then Ismail comes amongst us, violence emanating from him like a volcanic cloud. I see his gold-embroidered babouches flash past me, and then, a little space away, there is a wet crunching sound and a man howls like an animal. I cannot help but turn, to see Ismail laying violently about him, arms swinging in a whirlwind of brutality, a tent mallet in each hand, crushing skulls to the left and right.

  I am going to die. The certainty is lead in my stomach. Here, ignominiously, on my belly on a scrappy bit of grass in a land not my own, for no good reason, I am going to die.

  I have been close to death many times. Every day in the imperial palace someone dies, often at Ismail’s own hand. Some regard it as an honour, to be dispatched by the sultan himself: he is, after all, a sherifian, of the line of the Prophet and thus as near to God as any of us is likely to get. They say that anyone whose life is taken by the sultan will surely be rewarded in paradise with shady gardens full of roses in which run rivers of milk, honey and wine, and fountains scented with ginger and camphor, surrounded by virgins perfumed with frankincense. The trouble is, in times of panic it is Maleeo and Kolotyolo who command me, and sadly they do not offer such inducements.

  I try to prepare myself to meet my ancestors, but all I can think of is the crushing blow, the subsidence of my fragile skull, the rushing out of blood and brains, and that I will die here on the ground, mashed by a tent mallet, right in front of the woman I love.

  That is the thought that shocks me to action. I look around. Ismail is ten feet away from me, his frenzy unabated. He is coming closer. I see him kick the body of the next slave; the man is unresponsive, clearly dead, and he moves on. The man lying beside me is the victim of the shooting, half his head exploded over the grass. Covertly, I reach out and cup a handful of the poor soul’s blood and matter. I plaster it swiftly over my head and neck, adopt a tortured pose, neck awry, and lie there, waiting for the end.

  *

  I lie there till the warmth goes out of the day, till the darkness falls and the moon rises.

  ‘You can get up now, Nus-Nus.’

  I blink and turn my head and my face feels odd: cold and stiff. Abdelaziz is standing over me, hands on his hips. Moonlight illumines the jewels in his turban. His face is in shadow, but I can feel his smile hovering in the dark air between us.

  ‘Clever boy. I saw what you did.’

  ‘Is he gone?’ I try to move but my body is unwilling. With great effort I manage to haul myself upright. Still my face feels strange, as if it is not my own, and then I remember. ‘Oh.’ Revulsion washes through me.

  The next thing I know, hands have closed around my arms and I am hauled to my feet. A piece of cloth is wound about my face, and it is cold and damp and smells of some strong chemical, and then suddenly the world is upside-down and I am being carried like a slaughtered sheep. They take me to a tent on the edge of the encampment. It looks like any other soldier’s tent from the outside; but within…

  Someone has equipped this place for one purpose alone. It is piled with mattresses and cushions, ringed around by French mirrors, and it stinks of strong smoke, sweet incense and spilled seed. A stake has been driven into the ground amongst the cushions. I start to struggle, but my limbs lie slack and useless, overcome by whatever I have inhaled through the cloth, and I think then what a devil he is, to have found some concoction that leaves the mind alert while the body is put to sleep.

  They throw me on a mattress and bind my hands to the stake, and all the while I tell my feet to scrabble on the ground so that I can lever the stake out of the ground and use it to club my enemy to death; but every muscle in my body seems deaf to my bidding. I hear one of the slaves being ordered to fetch water and soap and a washcloth, and a few moments later a lad comes back and cleans the blood and matter off me. I have seen the boy about the camp, but I do not know his name, and couldn’t speak it even if I did. Instead, I widen my eyes at him, trying to communicate my lack of assent to this vile indignity, the wish that he run to fetch help, but he keeps his gaze downturned, closed off: it is no doubt not the first time he has seen such a thing. Probably, poor child, he has been subjected to worse himself.

  The grand vizier goes about the tent lighting candle-lanterns and singing softly to himself – ‘The Hunter and the Dove’, that tender, pretty song beloved by the harem women – and I feel my guts clench in disgust. That is how he sees me, is it: as helpless prey, about to be skewered by his arrow?

  At last, he is finished with his preparations. He squats beside me. ‘So now, Nus-Nus, this is pleasant, is it not? Just the two of us. He thinks you are dead, Ismail – if he thinks of you at all. So now you are mine to do with as I wish.’ He pushes up my robe, exposing me, and gazes at what is left of my genitals. Then he takes my penis in his hand and begins to fondle it gloatingly. ‘It is a fine, neat job, is it not? And so it should be: I paid for the best man in the business, having seen the butchery carried out on others, the botched excisions, the infections, the
poisoning of the blood. There were choices to be made.’

  His eyes flick lazily over me: he is enjoying this exertion of power over one who in other circumstances would kill him in an instant. ‘Spadones, the dragging off of the testicles; or thlibaie, the simple crushing of them; or sandali, removing both the member and the testes, which is the usual course with blacks. Many die from that sort of castration, and of those who do survive many are left with so little they find it hard to make water.’ He leans in closer. ‘Black John wears a great silver pin with an emerald set atop it in his turban: you may have seen it?’

  I have, but I just stare into space over his shoulder as though he is not there. I hear the sly smile in his voice as he says, ‘It’s not a pin, you know: it’s a hollow tube. He uses it to piss through.’ The squeeze he gives me makes me wince. ‘You were lucky: I decided against taking everything – I saw your potential as an investment for the future.’

  Dead! I shall see you dead, with your head caved in and maggots in your eye sockets.

  ‘Xenophon tells us that vicious horses, when gelded, have their worst tendencies curbed and will no longer bite or buck, but are still fit for service in war; and that dogs, when castrated, lose none of their strength or capacity for hunting, but no longer run away from their masters. I believe the same and more can be said for men. The removal of their balls alone will render them more placid. More grateful too, I hope. I have also heard that the procedure may actually enhance rather than hinder the sexual performance; and that if the cutting is done after puberty, there may be no diminishment of desire. And I am sure, Nus-Nus, that with the right degree of encouragement, it will prove to be thus with you.

  ‘It’s not exactly the way I would have wished for us to come together, but you can’t blame me for taking the opportunity when it is so neatly presented. A passage of sweet love-play, and then we shall take you back to where we found you and smash your skull in for real. And no one will know that you survived the massacre for a few short hours. It really is such a shame it should come to this, Nus-Nus. It could all have been so different had you been less… obstinate. All I have ever wanted to do was to instruct you in the art of pleasure. You are such an accomplished boy in so many other ways: it would have rounded out your education beautifully. Such a waste of this glorious body.’