“Who are they?” asked Fatima, her voice cracking.
“The tall one is Deng,” said Gwennec. “The not-so-tall one is Mary. They’re all right.”
“But where did they come from?” pressed Fatima, feeling suddenly wary.
“We were shipwrecked,” said Mary, whose smile was unaccountably cheerful. “On the boat from Calais. A straight shot across the Channel, it was supposed to be. But there was a storm, a big storm, and then a calm that was even more terrible, and no land in sight. People began to talk. Someone said the ship was bewitched, and since Deng is very black and I am very small, they figured it must have been one or the other of us as cursed the ship. So we set off, just us two, in a shore boat in the dead of night. Deng had some fancy notion of navigating by the stars, but we got turned around anyway, and ended up here.”
“And not before we were half dead from rowing,” said Deng in a dry voice, tossing aside the stick he had picked up to threaten Vikram. “I still have the blisters to prove it. I’m used to cutting out cataracts, not pulling oars.”
Fatima, still only half awake, looked from his hands to his face and back again.
“Are you a doctor?” she asked dully.
“Yes, I’m a doctor.” Deng paused and burst into on odd laugh. “I’m a very, very good doctor. I don’t say so to brag—only it’s strange that I should be here in this unnamed place and not treating kings and delivering princes. I didn’t think people like me were destined for journeys like this. Then again, I never thought I’d be accused of witchcraft by toothless old sailors, either.” He patted his hands on his robe to knock the sand off and sat down facing the waves, laughing again.
“You can still be doctor to a king,” said Mary, her smile unbothered. “We’ve got a king right here.”
“Stop it,” snapped Deng.
“No, I mean it. You might’ve been snatched from a life of renown, but for those of us as were laundresses, this beach isn’t so unpleasant. I suppose I can wash clothes just as well on Avalon as I could in Cornwall.” Mary flung her hair over her shoulder and walked down the beach with a stiff, uneven gait. Just beyond her, huddled against a sun-bleached log, was a rough sort of encampment: a series of damp canvas sacks, their contents spilling out onto the sand, and the fragmented remains of a campfire in a shallow pit.
“If I’d a needle and thread,” called Mary, pulling garments out of one of the canvas sacks, seemingly at random, “I could even sew myself some proper clothes instead of wandering about in your unmentionables, Deng.”
“We lost her pack when the boat capsized,” muttered Deng, rubbing his eyes. “I grabbed my own kit without thinking, but not hers. Now she won’t let me forget it.”
Hassan laughed, his voice high and light. Fatima turned to look at him: his eyes looked very wide, as they always did when he was flirting. Stung, Fatima tried to rise. Hassan pulled her back again.
“Don’t,” he whispered into her hair. “Not for another minute yet. I’m still not sure you’re real.”
The invitation was irresistible. Fatima closed her eyes and buried her face in the front of his shirt, smelling salt and the dense, acrid sweetness of old sweat. She thought of the night she had come to his room in the Alhambra and told him to flee, and how much younger they had both seemed then, though it hadn’t been so long ago—the miles and not the days had aged them. How very small had been the chance of survival. To be here, with all the empty space of the map between them and the Holy Office, seemed less a victory than a gift. Fatima breathed the milky air and realized her face was wet.
“Here.” Gwennec’s rough hand grazed her cheek; he settled something across her brow. “A king needs a crown.” He laughed in his hoarse way. Fatima reached up and touched a circlet of sea grass crudely woven with small yellow flowers.
“Hail Fatima,” said Gwennec, rising and shaking the sand from his habit. “King of the Birds. You idiots were right after all—you were right about everything, only not in the way you thought.” The air was growing cooler; much of the light had left the sky. Fatima stood, one hand on her prickly crown, and surveyed the empty beach. The others watched her, waiting, just as Vikram had said, for someone to tell them what to do.
“We’ll need a fire,” she said.
“I’ll get one started,” said Mary, moving toward the little encampment. “We collected a good bit of driftwood this morning.”
“No,” said Fatima, surprised only for a moment by how readily they all responded to her suggestion. “Not here. We’re a royal household now. We sleep in the palace.”
Gwennec helped Deng carry the bags up the stone steps to the clifftop. Fatima followed with Hassan, their arms full of skeletal driftwood, rendered so leached and dry by salt and wind that it weighed almost nothing. Vikram offered no help: he scaled the cliff face, complaining under his breath, and disappeared over the top before the rest were halfway up the slanting staircase. Mary came last, for the short, rough steps hit nearly at her knees. Fatima knew better than to offer help, but slowed her pace and paused every so often, as if to catch her breath, when Mary fell behind.
“You needn’t wait,” Mary panted. “I’ll get there eventually. Faugh! I’ll never set foot on that beach again, that’s for certain.”
“We’ll find another way down tomorrow,” said Fatima. “The elevation wasn’t nearly so steep where I washed ashore.” She scanned the horizon: the little strip of beach bent away and disappeared into the deep blue of the harbor, then reappeared again in a distant haze against a fringe of trees. She wondered whether the perimeter of the island was fixed, or whether, like the interior, it rearranged itself according to some unknowable law, or no law at all.
“Do you suppose that serpent’ll come back?” asked Mary, following Fatima’s gaze. “I don’t like to think of it running loose somewhere nearby. I’ve never been so terrified in all my life. It was like one of those evil tales mothers tell children to keep them close by.”
“Evil?” Fatima stopped and frowned. “Is that what it was?”
“What else might it have been?”
Fatima considered: she saw again the creature’s eyes, the unmistakable contempt, the malice, but these things, though dangerous, were not evil in themselves. Vikram had the same look often enough. It was less frightening, Fatima supposed, to be confronted by something that was honest about its capacity for violence than to dread the smiles and false assurances of something that believed in its own goodness even as it murdered and mutilated.
“I think it was testing us,” she said, shifting the load of driftwood in her arms. “I think—I think the people who were here before, the ones who built the cities, didn’t understand this place, or at least, didn’t try hard enough to understand it.”
Mary leaned against a dusty outcrop, her brown hair plastered against her forehead.
“Do you understand it, then?” she asked.
Fatima hesitated. The wind was picking up and pressed her robe around her knees; Mary, clad only in Deng’s shirt, started to shiver.
“I won’t say I understand it,” she said finally. “But I think—I believe it understands us.”
Mary smiled at this. She looped one hand through Fatima’s elbow and leaned on her as they started up the steps again. The pressure of her hand, though slight, filled Fatima with silent pleasure. She slowed her steps, shifting the bulk of the firewood again, and led the way up the last few steps to the clifftop and the wall of the little keep, which the last blush of twilight had set afire.
Chapter 21
Fatima awoke the next morning to the scent of frying fish. She didn’t move: her neck was stiff from her fall the day before and from her night’s sleep on the bare stone of the main hall, where she had lain down, without seeking anything to pillow her head, as soon as the fire was lit. It was deliciously warm. Gwennec had scraped the crusted soot from the fire pit at the center of the room and bored them all with detailed instructions about the best way to build a fire in such a structure; it invol
ved wadding up kindling and arranging the wood to face in a certain direction. Fatima had fallen asleep by the time he finished, suffused by the heat that crept toward her across the ancient flagstones, waking only when Hassan lay down beside her and Gwennec claimed the spot between her and the fire. Then she slept again, more soundly than she had since she was a child, her fingers wound in the tapered end of Gwennec’s cowl, breathing to the concussive rhythm of the waves on the beach below.
Gwennec was up now: Fatima could see him bending over the fire with his sleeves rolled up, tending to a bowl that sat among the coals. Deng stood beside him. They both smelled of dew and open air and seemed very awake given that the light filling the room was still a solemn blue. On the other side of the fire, Mary lay snoring in a pile of canvas sacks with her feet curled up. Hassan was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is he?” asked Fatima, her voice throaty with sleep. She sat up slowly and stretched her neck.
“Where’s who?” asked Deng.
“He’s upstairs,” said Gwennec, “opening and closing doors. Come and have some fish.”
Fatima sidled toward the fire, wincing as she unbent her cramped limbs. The bowl Gwennec was tending contained a row of smelts with blackened skins. Without further invitation, Fatima plucked one up by its tail and began sucking the meat from the bones.
“Deng and I have been up since first light,” said Gwennec cheerfully. “I made a sort of net from an old scarf I found, and Deng made a very excellent fishing spear out of some green wood, and we went down to the harbor to see what might come up out of the deep water at dawn. We did all right. I caught a lot of smelts, and Deng hooked his spear into a little cave between two rocks and got an octopus. An octopus. That’s lunch.”
Mary sat up in her berth of canvas and rubbed her eyes, sniffing appreciatively.
“Is that a proper meal I smell? I haven’t had hot food since—how long has it been, Deng?”
“Since France,” said Deng drily. “I ate a meat pie straight out of the oven from a bakeshop near the wharf in Calais. It was good, too. I don’t know what you’d have had, Mary. I don’t remember seeing you at all until the ship was becalmed and the madness broke out.”
“Most people find it easier not to see me until they have to,” said Mary with her broad smile. “How funny that we should be such good friends now, yet not have known each other at all just a few short weeks ago! There’s nothing like being threatened with death to make you feel close to someone. I saw you well enough, though, Deng, from the very beginning.”
“I’m hard to miss at this latitude.”
“That’s the truth! I’d never seen anyone like you before. There were others aboard the ship who were frightened by those scars, but I thought they were very jaunty, and I said so whenever anybody got sniffy about it.”
Deng touched the carved chevrons that arced across his forehead and smiled wryly. Fatima, unthinking, mirrored his gesture, touching the seam that ran across her own face, and felt, for the first time, something like regret.
“May I?” asked Deng in a softer voice, reaching toward her. Fatima stiffened instinctively. But something about Deng’s expression, an alloy of sympathy and brisk interest, made her stop and take his hand and rest it upon her cheek. His fingers were still and weightless.
“This is new,” he said in surprise, pressing gently at the edge of the seam. “It’s closed so neatly that I thought it must be older. Someone very skilled at treating wounds must have dressed this for you.”
“It was Vikram,” said Fatima. She frowned, looking up without moving her face. “Vikram isn’t here. Was he here?”
“The awful naked man with too many teeth? I didn’t notice him leave,” said Gwennec, stirring coals with a fat stick of driftwood.
“That’s how he is,” murmured Fatima, closing her eyes as Deng felt along the length of the scar. “You don’t notice when he’s gone, but when he’s here, you can’t notice anything else.” The pressure of Deng’s fingers was hypnotic. Fatima had never been touched this way, as a patient under the care of a doctor; as a body cherished for itself and not for the tasks it performed for others. She was almost disappointed when he pulled away, and thought fleetingly of inventing some unspecific pain for him to address, forgetting and then remembering the very real pain that still throbbed dully in her feet and her neck.
“You were gently raised,” said Deng, sitting back on his heels. “I can tell by the softness of your hands and the pallor of your face. But not a noblewoman, I think.”
“I was a concubine,” said Fatima.
“Ah,” said Deng. It was not the same ah that had always accompanied this revelation in the past: when Deng said it, it was wry and resigned and made Fatima smile.
“And now you’re a king,” he said.
“And now I’m a king,” said Fatima. “And you’re a doctor from France.”
“I’m a doctor from Timbuktu,” Deng corrected, “in the empire of the Songhai, where the great library is kept. I was trained at the university there. I was only in France by accident—I was on my way to England to treat the son of a wealthy man. The boy had childhood cataracts. No one in his own country could treat him without blinding him. I was to be paid a very handsome sum of money if I could manage it. Instead, here I am.” He touched her face again at the spot where the seam met her jaw in a sore, raised point. “This little bit pulls against your jaw when you turn your head—that’s why it’s not closing up. I have some salve that will help. It’s healing beautifully otherwise. But how did you come by such an injury?”
Fatima thought of the great wave and of the sea inverted overhead.
“Our boat was smashed,” she said. “I thought I was drowning. There were spars of wood everywhere in the water—one of them must have cut me.”
“We saw the two ships go under,” said Gwennec. He wiped sweat from his forehead, leaving a streak of white ash. “Hassan and I did, clinging to that damned barrel. They were shattered, both of them, masts in splinters, like wood being mashed up for paper. I’d never seen such a wreck. I thought for sure you must have died instantly. But Hassan wouldn’t listen to a word of it—just swore at me for even suggesting such a thing. And he was right, because nothing works as it should where the two of you are concerned.” He snorted and began poking the fire again. Fatima felt a little chill flow across her shoulders like an eddy of air from an open door.
“Do you think—do you suppose anyone else might have survived?” she asked the black cowl bent over before her.
“No—I’d say not,” said Gwennec, knitting his heavy brows. “The Castilian boat was up and sideways on that rogue wave. Anyone on board would’ve been knocked clean off the deck and then pulverized. Ugly death. Though I’d have reckoned the same thing had happened to you, and here you are.”
Fatima was unsatisfied by this yet could not say why. She heard movement overhead: Hassan was walking along the second floor and could be heard moving heavy objects and giving cries of surprise or approbation. Presently, several wadded bundles of cloth were flung down into the main hall from the vicinity of the stairs, landing in clouds of dust.
“Look what I’ve found!” called Hassan. “There’s a big wooden wardrobe up here that looks as though it hasn’t been opened in a million years. That’s thread-of-gold embroidery I just threw at you. My eyes almost fell out of my head just looking at it. It’s got to be worth a fortune.”
Fatima picked up one of the bundles and shook it out, coughing as a plume of dust enveloped her. Hassan was right: she was holding a sort of cloak or overdress of fine wool dyed a deep blue-purple, upon which had been embroidered repeating patterns of vines and flowers in gold wire so delicate that it almost disappeared in places, giving the garment the look of a landscape receding away from the viewer. Not even Lady Aisha had ever owned anything so extraordinary. Beside her, Mary was unfolding a second bundle, a quilted winter cloak dyed a lighter blue and trimmed in gray fur, with stars and clouds billowing across its width.
“The color hurts my eyes!” she exclaimed, wiping them a little giddily. “I’ve never seen such fabric. This was the lifework of some master tailor. Tell him not to throw anything else—don’t throw them, please! You’ll warp the wirework! I’ll come collect the rest just as soon as I can face more stairs.” She got to her feet and began to refold the cloaks, patting them and reassuring them as she did so.
“Soap,” she said, more to herself than anyone else. “Today, I’ll make soap, and get some white ash from the fire to clean the things as can’t be washed. Shears and thread! If they left their best clothes behind, they must have left their tools somewhere …” She wandered toward the stairs, skirting the fire, and nearly collided with Hassan, whose entire torso was concealed by the pile of clothing he carried. There was a great exchange of shrieks as the two of them went through each of Hassan’s finds, holding up lush, faded velvets, stiff folds of raw silk, leathers grown rigid with age, and argued animatedly over the best way each might be revived or refurbished.
“I’m going to collect more firewood,” said Gwennec. He stooped and dropped a kiss on Fatima’s forehead. The pressure was at once tender and remote: he had repented after all. “You might walk around and see if there’s a likely stream nearby and haul some water, if that’s something kings do. We’ve a cistern just outside, but it’s empty. You fill the first pool and drink from the second one once the water filters through. Don’t reverse it, or we’ll all get sick.” With that, the monk trundled out the eastern archway toward the stone steps.
Fatima rose and stretched and made her way across the hall in the opposite direction. She was certain the sultan had never hauled a bucket of water in his life and thought vaguely about what precedent she might be setting, but she was thirsty, and moreover, the others were too. Outside the western archway, where the keep met the cobbled streets of the city on its northern side, there was a round stone building, quite low, with a vaulted roof, and when she entered through a small door, she came to a silent, windowless room. It had a prayerful quality, yet contained nothing aside from two empty pools carved into the limestone, one set slightly lower than the other.
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