The Bird King

by G. Willow Wilson

  “As what?”

  Luz only smiled. “What about you?” she asked. “Where are your people from? You’re no Berber.”

  Fatima divided Luz’s heavy hair into three parts and began to plait them together.

  “My mother was an Abzakh tribeswoman,” she said. “From the mountains that border the Black Sea.”

  Luz looked blank.

  “I’m Circassian,” said Fatima.

  “Ah! Of course you are. A real Circassian concubine! You’re a very long way from your homeland.”

  “I’ve never been there. I was born here, in the palace. My mother was pregnant when she was sold to the sultan. That’s what they tell me, anyway.”

  “Born into concubinage,” said Luz, tilting her head back like a cat. “In the North, we have a hundred naughty songs about women like you. You’re supposed to be a naked, immoral, ignorant creature, yet here I find you speaking three languages and completely clothed. And a little spoiled, if you don’t mind me teasing you about it.”

  Fatima did mind. “An immoral, ignorant creature would be a poor match for a sultan,” she said, and then paused with Luz’s hair between her fingers. “But I was naked enough just before you arrived.”

  Luz burst into laughter, her face an improbable shade of red. Fatima didn’t see what was so funny. It was a statement of fact.

  “Shut up—you shut your mouth.” Catalina was suddenly talkative. Her voice was sonorous and fat. “Don’t you have any shame at all? How dare you speak about your sin with her own lovely hair in your hands?”

  Fatima was on her feet before she knew it, brandishing the comb. Luz caught her by the arm.

  “Quiet, Catalina,” she said sharply. “Keep your own mouth shut if you can’t say anything useful. She doesn’t know any better. Sit, please, Fatima—please. I apologize for Catalina. She knows nothing about your ways.” She let go of Fatima’s arm.

  The anger that welled up in Fatima had nowhere to go; she stood for a moment longer, forcing herself to ease her grip on the comb, the teeth of which dug into her flesh like thorns.

  “He’s my king,” she said when she trusted herself to speak. “Why should I be ashamed to serve my king?”

  “You’re not married to him,” muttered Catalina. She began unpacking the leather traveling trunk with great energy. “That’s a sin, is all I’m saying.”

  “Do you think your king goes to bed every night with his own wife?” snapped Fatima.

  “That’s enough,” said Luz. Her voice was gentle, but there was a chilly authority in it. “Everyone is tired. It’s time to sleep.”

  Fatima set the comb on the hammered brass tray near the bed that served as a nightstand. Once upon a time, the nightstand of a lady guest would be crammed with ivory-handled brushes and silver kohl pots and stoppered bottles of perfume, but these had all been sold off or appropriated by the palace women as their own supplies grew scarce. The serving woman had strewn the empty tray with dried rose petals instead. It seemed everyone thought they could disguise the palace’s insolvency with handfuls of flowers. Soon enough, they would all be naked and pathetic, just as in Luz’s naughty songs, and then they would need nosegays as big as washing buckets to satisfy their offended honor.

  “Is there anything else you need?” Fatima asked. “Before I return to my sin?”

  Luz had been knotting her braided hair with a leather thong, and now she shook her head and sighed.

  “No,” she said, “only come here and kiss me before you go. I won’t sleep if we part with bad feelings.”

  “I’m only a slave,” said Fatima. “You don’t need to kiss me goodnight.”

  Luz gave her a measuring look.

  “I’m not sure how to treat you,” she admitted. “Slave means something different among your people from what it does among mine. You’re more like a beloved mistress, or a trusted lady-in-waiting, than what we would call a slave in my own country.”

  Fatima leaned against the doorframe, communing with the dying moon as it fell beyond the walls of the harem. She knew little about the laws in the North, but Lady Aisha had once told her that when it came to the rights of slaves, the prophet of the Catholics had been silent.

  “You should go to Egypt,” she said. “The sultan there is a slave, and so are all his viziers and generals. The state could sell them, but they are the state, so they are both slaves and masters. My own master hates them—they’re your allies, or they might as well be. They just sent us a shipment of grain, but it was really meant for you, wasn’t it? They must have known it would be stopped at the blockade. This siege is all anyone ever talks about.”

  She had said more than she meant to say. Anger had made the temptation too great. The first and greatest lesson Lady Aisha had ever taught her was never to disclose what the sultan might confide in bed. She worried for a moment that her slip might lead to real trouble, but Luz had a canny look about her, one that promised conspiratorial silence.

  “You’re quite a puzzle, Fatima of Alhambra,” was all she said. “Quite a puzzle.”

  It was a dismissal. Fatima touched her lips and her forehead in the gesture of peace and slipped out of the room, crossing the darkened, empty courtyard toward Lady Aisha’s room. The air was fresh: dew would fall soon, beading up on the yellow rose hips in the garden, the low bushes and little trees, the sun-faded cushions scattered on the ground. A few more weeks would bring the light frosts that presaged winter. Fatima paused at the threshold of Lady Aisha’s room, unbalanced by the sudden silence. She was alone in a borrowed dress after a long evening: for Nessma, in better years, such a moment would be the end of some triumph, a wedding in which she had shone to perfection, a feast for a large party of guests she had hosted impeccably. For Fatima, it signified nothing. No one had gone to bed wondering where she was, giddily waiting to discuss the night’s events with her. She had practiced being alone, and she had grown adept.

  Fatima tugged irritably at the cuff of the dress, resisting the urge to pull it off, ball it up, and throw it into a corner. She hissed when her nail grazed the underside of her wrist, leaving a stinging line. Did she also want to strip off her skin? When she was a child, everyone in the palace wanted to touch her, from cooks to kings: they all marveled at the profound color of her eyes, the evenness of her complexion, yet they joked with each other about taming her hair and her temper. It rendered all their praise suspect: even compliments were infuriating. When Fatima caught sight of herself in the polished brass of a lantern or the still water of the reflecting pool in the Court of Myrtles, her beauty was indivisible from her anger. Fatima raised her wrist to her mouth and sucked on the scratch until the sting subsided. She would change nothing about herself. It was lucky, she thought, lucky she had learned so early that there was no solid ground.

  A soft cry of surprise came from the far side of the courtyard, breaking the silence. Fatima squinted across the garden. Luz stood at the threshold of her room in a loose linen nightdress, her feet bare. She was staring at something dark and boxy a short distance away. It was the dog. It was standing perfectly still, looking up at Luz with its unblinking sulfuric eyes. Fatima caught her breath in alarm. The animal was not precisely tame, and might even be dangerous to someone unfamiliar—for all Fatima knew, it had scabies, or the spittle sickness, or the plague. Yet she didn’t dare call out, worried that any sudden sound would frighten the dog into lunging or snapping.

  Luz did not seem afraid. She drew up one foot. It was milk-white on top and rosy underneath; the foot of a saint from a sacked altarpiece. Sneering, she delivered two savage kicks, one after the other, to the dog’s ribs.

  The dog wailed once, sprawling on its side, feet scrabbling against the ground. Luz said something to it that Fatima could not hear: it sounded like Latin, though she could not be sure. She stood frozen outside Lady Aisha’s chamber, unsure of what to do or what to feel. Luz, white-robed and silent, retreated into her room. For a moment there was no sound. Then Fatima heard a series of stuttering gasp
s, like someone crying silently. Making up her mind, she slipped through the garden, pausing briefly behind a convenient pot of rosemary until she was sure Luz was not coming back. The dog, when she reached it, was attempting to stand, favoring one leg as it tried to make do with the other three. Ugly as it was, Fatima felt a stab of real pity: it was a happy creature and had done no one any harm.

  “Sh-sh,” she soothed, squatting down in front of it. “Be quiet and I’ll help you.”

  The dog immediately ceased its odd little gasps and looked at her expectantly. Fatima hooked one arm under its chest and another around its hindquarters and braced herself, prepared for the thing to be heavy. It was not. She lifted it so fast that she almost fell over, clamping her mouth shut to keep from shrieking in surprise. The dog was as hot as a fever and just as intangible.

  “You must be starving,” she whispered to it, carrying it across the courtyard. “You weigh nothing at all.”

  The dog only grunted. Warmth and snoring issued from Lady Aisha’s room: Fatima hesitated in the doorway.

  “You have to be very quiet,” she said. “Otherwise, I’ll be in a lot of trouble.”

  The dog put its chin on her shoulder. Fatima maneuvered awkwardly to her sleeping mat and set it down. She was so tired that she threw herself beside the dog with a thump, and without bothering to change out of Nessma’s dress, though she knew this would be a source of mild hysteria in the morning. She didn’t care: the heat radiating from the dog’s body lulled her heavy limbs into a stupor. She was dreaming before she even shut her eyes.

  Chapter 4

  She awoke to strong sunlight. Her hair was damp with perspiration, her dress—Nessma’s dress—clinging to her torso like a silk noose. The heat was unbearable and suggested a very late hour of the morning; so late, in fact, that it might well be afternoon. Fatima sat up and ground the heels of her palms against her eyelids. Why hadn’t anyone woken her? Lady Aisha’s divan was awash in rumpled coverlets but otherwise empty. The dog, too, had disappeared.

  Fatima struggled to her feet. Her head was pounding; she needed a tincture of willow bark. She peeled Nessma’s dress over her head and draped it across Lady Aisha’s divan to dry. There was a basin of rose-scented washing water and a towel, only slightly damp, on the floor near the foot of the divan; availing herself of these, Fatima washed her face and her hands and underneath her arms and between her legs. She yanked a plain tunic and trousers from the dressing pole and hurriedly pulled them on.

  Laughter came from the garden. Shuffling out, shielding her face from the sun with one hand, Fatima saw Luz seated next to Nessma on a pile of cushions, plucking experimentally at a lute. She had forsaken her widow’s gown for Andalusian dress: a light chemise beneath a long tunic like the one Fatima herself was wearing, the same loose trousers gathered at the ankle. She was even barefoot. Nessma was leaning toward her like an old friend, pointing at this lute string and that one, praising Luz’s efforts.

  “Just so,” she chirruped. “Give me another two weeks, and you’ll be playing ghazals.”

  “You’re an excellent teacher,” said Luz, laughing. “But I’m a very clumsy student.”

  Nessma’s ladies tittered politely around her. A short distance away, in a safe patch of shade, Lady Aisha was reclining on a sheepskin with a book, ignoring her guest in a way that suggested there had already been an argument. Fatima padded toward her and lay down, setting her head in her mistress’s lap.

  “You got dressed without me,” she yawned.

  “I’m not yet incapable,” said Lady Aisha, stroking her hair. “You were so fast asleep that I took pity on you. And I was somewhat alarmed to see that scrofulous canine in my very own bedchamber, as relaxed as if he was lord of the—”

  Fatima sat bolt upright and looked Lady Aisha in the eye, pleading silently. She tilted her head toward Luz. Lady Aisha paused, eyes narrowed, and nodded.

  “You’ll tell me later,” she said in a quieter voice. Fatima’s back was suddenly cool; a shadow had fallen over it.

  “There you are,” said Luz with a smile, standing above her. “I’m freshly amazed to see you in the sunlight. You know, Lady Aisha, I think you’ve managed to acquire the most beautiful girl since Helen laid eyes on Troy. Such cheekbones, such eyes—”

  “Her cheekbones and her eyes are regularly praised,” said Lady Aisha, leafing through her book. “If she hears it too often, it’ll go to her head. Praise her good sense, if you must praise anything. It will serve her much better than her cheekbones will.”

  “You’re absolutely right.” Luz pulled up a cushion and sat down with a happy sigh. “My abbess would agree with you. She always says that beauty is a test, a temptation to the sin of pride. The nuns cut off all their hair when they take holy orders, and never touch a pot of rouge or white lead ever again. Yet they radiate beauty of another kind. Their faces are always full of light.”

  “You didn’t become a nun,” said Fatima, feeling suddenly shy. Her own face was not full of light.

  “No,” said Luz, eyes flickering a little. “Only a lay sister. I’m too restless to spend my days in a cloister, though the other vows came easily enough. That’s my great failing. I need to move, to have many tasks and many uses. We are all made for different things—sometimes not the things we want.”

  Discomfited, Fatima studied the pattern of tiles on the ground. A small beetle was making its way toward her, its carapace iridescent in the sun. It hesitated when it reached the sole of her foot. Fatima laid her hand flat against her heel and coaxed the beetle onto it, then held it up close to her face. What was she made for? The beetle’s carapace split apart to reveal ash-gray wings: it unfolded these and was gone in a moment, possessing no answers.

  “What would you like to do today, Baronesa?” asked Lady Aisha. She clapped her book shut with an air of finality, as if the silence had become onerous. “How do you intend to spend your time with us? You’ll forgive me for being blunt, but I’m still not certain why you’re here. Whatever terms Ferdinand and Isabella have to offer us will surely be discussed by the general and my son, for I’m in no position to negotiate independently.”

  “Please call me by my given name,” pleaded Luz. “I’m no more a baronesa than Fatima is. We’re both servants who own nothing—I serve Our Savior as she serves your house.”

  “Very well. Luz.” Lady Aisha’s voice was getting dangerous. Fatima cast about herself for something to do or say. “I’m relying on your honesty.”

  Luz considered Lady Aisha’s face for a moment, her own expression inscrutable. “I’m here on behalf of Queen Isabella, just as the general told you,” she said finally. “She wanted to send you a personal emissary, queen to queen, mother to mother, as a show of good faith. I hope you’ll consider me your advocate, even your friend. You will need friends in the weeks ahead, if you’ll forgive my candor.”

  Lady Aisha threw her book at the ground. Fatima seized her arm.

  “Would you like to see the rest of the palace?” she asked Luz, her voice louder than she had intended. “It’s very large, and you should see it while the light is good.”

  Luz hesitated only a moment. “Of course,” she said brightly. “If Lady Aisha will allow it. Are you permitted to leave the harem, then?”

  “She may, and often does, provided she is chaperoned and guarded,” said Lady Aisha, disengaging her arm. “I will trust you to chaperone her—as for the guards, they are just outside the doors, probably sleeping. Only the oldest and most lethargic soldiers are assigned to the harem. We like to avoid unrequited love stories when possible.”

  Luz took Fatima’s hand.

  “Do we have to bring guards?” she asked. “How likely is an assassination attempt in the next hour and a half? It’s so hard to appreciate a view when there’s a man with a pike standing behind you.”

  Lady Aisha pursed her lips.

  “Take her to see the pretty gardens and the fountains and the baths,” she said to Fatima in Arabic. “But keep her awa
y from the Mexuar. Keep her away from my son.”

  The heat of the day intensified. Fatima longed for one of Hassan’s maps, so she could take Luz somewhere unseen, preferably with good shade and scenery that would keep her occupied. She felt pensive, and when she was pensive she was silent; Luz seemed to understand this and did not press her for conversation. Fatima led her through one set of corridors and then another, and then a portico, making for the tower they called the Captive, where, according to legend, a particularly possessive sultan had marooned his favorite wife.

  On the way, they passed the private rooms of those high functionaries and royal cousins lucky enough to be quartered in the palace itself and not down the hill in the city. Knots of men congregated in the shade, fanning themselves with the ends of their turbans, their quilted outer coats discarded beside them. Their voices were low and tense. Here and there was evidence of a distressed bureaucracy: papers carrying official seals lay in shredded heaps on the ground or burned in braziers, the smoke jutting up toward the cloudless sky in plumes. Conversation ceased when Fatima and Luz passed, and some men, the obsequious ones, pressed their hands to their hearts and bowed their heads.

  “They treat you with a great deal of respect,” Luz observed quietly.

  “They treat me with caution,” said Fatima. “I might be carrying the sultan’s child, in which case I’m very important, especially if it turns out to be a boy. Or the sultan might sell me tomorrow, in which case I’m not important at all. They hedge their bets.”

  “He wouldn’t really sell you, surely.”

  “No, he wouldn’t. But he could.” Fatima shouldered open a brass-studded door at the far side of the portico. “This way.”

  The Captive loomed above them, square and unsympathetic. No one lived in it now. Fatima had played in the shabby rooms near the top as a child, watching the swallows that roosted in the eaves shed dander and droppings on stacks of discarded furniture from grander eras. She could hear them now, the males trilling in their nervous way, the chicks that had fledged in the spring darting up and down through the air, preparing to abandon their parents.