by Wilbur Smith
‘Sometimes it is my duty to punish those who disobey the Prince’s commands.’
‘I recall the girl Fatima,’ Ben Abram mused.
‘She was a whore and a harlot,’ Kush justified himself.
‘She was sixteen years of age and in love,’ Ben Abram contradicted him.
‘She had a lascivious animal come in to her over the wall of the zenana.’
‘He was a young warrior, an officer of the royal guard,’ Ben Abram corrected him.
‘It was my duty, lord. I did not intend her to die. It was meant only to be a lesson to the others.’
Ben Abram raised his hand to quieten any further protestations of innocence. ‘Hear me, eunuch, and believe what I tell you. If any further harm befalls this boy – Nay! If in the future you treat him with less than the greatest consideration, I will see to it that you scream even louder than did little Fatima.’
Al-Allama had been listening intently to all this. Now he spoke. ‘All that Ben Abram has ordered, I endorse. The child and his nurse must be given decent quarters and well fed. You must not confine him nor place unnecessary restriction on him. He must be able to come and go like any other of the Prince’s sons. He will come to me for instruction every other day and I shall question him strictly on how he has been treated. Now get out of my sight.’ He waved Kush away. ‘Wait below to take the boy back when he is ready.’
As Kush crept away he shot a glance, rank with venom, at Dorian.
Ben Abram turned back to Dorian. ‘There is much I have to tell you. Did you hear of the fighting on the island after you had left?’
‘No. No! I have heard none of this. Tell me, old father. Tell me everything.’
‘Not all of it is good news,’ Ben Abram warned him, and he began to talk quietly. Dorian listened intently. He exclaimed with pride and excitement when he heard of the attack on the fortress of Flor de la Mar, and how Tom had killed al-Auf with his own hands.
‘Al-Auf was a beast. I am so proud of Tom. I wish I had been there to watch it.’ But he wept when he heard of his father’s wounding and how he had lost both of his legs.
‘Is he dead, old father? Please tell me he is still alive.’
‘In all truth, little one, I do not know. He was alive when your brother allowed me to leave the island. I think your brother planned to take him back to England.’
‘To England?’ Dorian was distraught. ‘That is so far away. He may never come back. Has Tom deserted me?’ The tears welled up and broke over his eyelids. He let them run unheeded down his cheeks.
Ben Abram took his hands, and found that the boy was trembling as though in the throes of a high fever. ‘Your brother is a good man, a man of honour. He showed me great kindness.’
‘But if he has gone back to England—’ Dorian broke off and swallowed painfully. ‘He will forget about me. I will never see him again.’
‘Then that will be the will of God. In the meantime, you are the son of the Prince, and you must be attentive to his wishes.’ Ben Abram rose to his feet. ‘Now you must obey the holy al-Allama, for he has returned from Muscat ahead of the Prince, and it is His Royal Highness’s command that you should submit yourself to the mullah’s instruction.’
Sipping numerous cups of coffee and sucking on the waterpipe, Ben Abram waited while the religious instruction went on through the hottest hours of the day. Once or twice he made a comment or asked a question, but mostly he listened in silence. Dorian was comforted by his quiet presence.
The sun was casting the long shadows of the palms over the beach below them when Ben Abram asked for the mullah’s blessing and took Dorian to where Kush waited in the bullock cart to take him back to the zenana.
Ben Abram stopped out of earshot of the eunuch and spoke quietly, ‘I will see you as often as I am able to,’ he promised, ‘whenever you come for lessons with the mullah.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Your brother showed me great kindness. If it were not for him I, too, would have been sold into slavery. Because of this I promised him to bring you a message. I could not repeat it with the mullah listening. It is for you only to hear.’
‘What was the message? Please tell me, old father.’
‘Your brother asked me to tell you that he would always hold true to the oath he swore to you. Do you remember that oath?’
‘He said he would come back for me,’ Dorian whispered. ‘He swore a dreadful oath.’
‘Yes, little one. To me he affirmed his promise. He will return for you. I should not tell you this. It is against the interests of my master, but I could not deprive you of the comfort of your brother’s words.’
‘I knew he would never forget that oath.’ Dorian touched the old man’s sleeve. ‘Thank you for telling me this.’
Ben Abram’s and al-Allama’s threats had a profound effect on Kush. The next day Dorian and Tahi were moved to more spacious quarters in a better part of the zenana. Now they had their own small courtyard with a freshwater fountain. Kush sent a slave-woman to help Tahi with the cooking and the heavy housework, such as changing the latrine buckets. He also sent Dorian a fresh wardrobe of clothing, and Tahi was allowed to meet the carts when they came up from the town each day laden with fresh produce and supplies. She was able to take her pick of the fresh meat and fish. Most importantly, during the day Dorian was allowed the run of the zenana. However, even though he complained bitterly, Kush would not allow him to leave the walled enclosure except to visit the mullah at the fort.
Even this changed when Dorian complained to Ben Abram. After that Dorian was allowed to roam the port and the entire island, although one of Kush’s guards followed him closely and never let him out of sight. So great was his freedom that Dorian started to think once again of escaping from the island.
His plans were more a game of make-believe than of serious intent. When he started frequenting the beach where the fishing-boats came in to land their catches and tried to make friends among the fisher-folk, he discovered that Kush had forestalled him. He must have warned all the islanders not to speak to the infidel. With his guard always hovering close at hand there was not the slightest chance of stealing a boat, or of receiving any assistance from the local fishermen and sailors. Finally Dorian resigned himself to the futility of his plans to escape. He started to devote more time and effort to making friends among the soldiers at the fort, the grooms of the royal stables and the Prince’s falconers.
Yasmini greeted his release from confinement with patent delight, and as soon as she divined that there was no obvious objection from Kush, she became Dorian’s shadow. Of course, she was never allowed to place a foot outside the gates to the zenana, but she followed Dorian around the gardens and was a constant visitor to the quarters he shared with Tahi.
Her voice and laughter mingled with the chattering of Jinni to make the gloomy rooms seem brighter. Tahi started to teach her to cook over the smoky wood fire. This was something that Yasmini had never tried before and she took huge delight in the novelty, and she pressed her creations on Dorian. ‘I made it just for you, Dowie,’ she piped. ‘You do like it, don’t you?’ Anxiously she watched each mouthful disappear. ‘Is it good? Do you like it?’
When Dorian left the zenana for his visits to the beach, the harbour and the fort, she pined. She hung around Tahi’s skirts waiting for his return and her monkey face lit up as he walked through the door and she ran to him.
At times her devotion became so cloying that Dorian made an excuse to leave the walls of the zenana simply to be away from her. He would go down to the royal stables and spend hours feeding, watering and grooming the magnificent animals of the Prince’s string, for the privilege of being allowed to ride one. All his instruction by his father and elder brothers at High Weald came back to him. In the cool of the evening the grooms played the game of pulu, the Persian name for a ball, which was a passion among the royal Moguls, and had been adopted by the Omanis. The ball was carved from a bamboo root, and was struck by a mallet of the same material. When the
head groom came to know Dorian better, he allowed him to join the younger boys on the practice field. Dorian loved the feel of the horse’s sweating back between his legs and the thundering, shouting charge down the field, elbowing and jostling the others in the mêlée around the ball. Soon his aggression and skill made the old syces nod with approval. ‘If Allah allows, he will be a worthy horseman.’
One of his other favourite retreats was the royal mews where the Prince’s falcons were kept. Around the fierce yet lovely birds he was quiet and attentive, and soon the falconers accepted his interest, and began to impart their lore and wisdom to him. He learned their colourful language and terminology, and sometimes, at their invitation, rode out with them when they flew the birds along the edge of the mangrove swamps at the north end of the island.
At other times he would give his guard the slip, and sneak away alone to explore the shores of the island, finding coves and deserted beaches where he could throw off his clothes, plunge into the ocean and swim out over the reef, driving himself to the point of exhaustion. Then he would swim back and lie in the white sand, staring out into the south and imagining the topsails of Tom’s ship coming up over the horizon.
When he went back to the zenana, where he knew Yasmini would be waiting for him, he always took a small gift with him to assuage his guilt. Sometimes it was a falcon feather from one of the moulting birds, or a bangle he had plaited from horse-tail hair, or sea shells that he had brought up from the reef. He strung these into necklaces for her.
‘I wish I could come with you,’ she told him wistfully. ‘I would love to swim with you, or watch you ride the horses.’
‘Well, you know that you cannot,’ Dorian told her brusquely. He had realized what her life would be like in the years ahead. She would never be able to leave the zenana, except veiled and chaperoned. He was probably the only friend of the opposite sex who was not a blood relative she would ever know. Even that would end soon, for both of them were on the threshold of puberty. As soon as she became a woman she was to be married. Tahi told him that it had been arranged when Yasmini was only four years old. ‘She is to be given to one of her cousins in the land of the Great Mogul across the ocean, to cement the ties between the two royal houses.’ She watched the emotions that crossed Dorian’s face at the thought of his little companion being sent away to a man she did not know in a land she had never seen.
‘She is my sister. I don’t want her to go,’ Dorian blurted out impulsively. He was surprised by the strength of the responsibility he felt for her.
‘It will make no difference to you,’ Tahi told him roughly, hiding her compassion in her tone. ‘Within the year the change of manhood will come upon you. Kush will be watching for it. He never misses it. At the very first sign you will be banished from the zenana for ever. Even if she were to stay here, you would never see Yasmini’s face again after that day. Perhaps it is best that your friendship ends as cleanly as the stroke of the knife that will celebrate your own manhood.’
The reference to the knife perturbed him. He had heard the other boys discussing the rite of circumcision, and making crude jokes about it, but he had never thought that he himself would have to undergo it. Now Tahi had rudely brought it home to him. ‘I am not a Mussulman,’ he protested. ‘They cannot do that to me.’
‘You will never find a wife if you keep that bit of skin,’ she warned him.
‘I don’t want a wife, and I don’t want anyone to cut pieces off me.’
His fear of the blade was exacerbated by the incipient guilt he felt towards Yasmini at their enforced separation from each other. ‘What will she do without me to look after her?’ he worried. ‘She is only a baby.’
He came home from his wanderings about the island one afternoon just after the afternoon prayers. His hair was still damp and stiff with sea-water. Tahi was squatting in front of the cooking-fire and she looked up as he stood in the doorway. With a long-suffering expression he answered her questions as to where he had been and what he had been doing, giving her only those details that he felt she need know. Then he looked around casually. ‘Where is Yasmini?’ he enquired, as though the answer was of no real concern.
‘She was here until prayers, then she went to see Battuta who has a new pet. I think it is a grey parrot.’ Dorian leaned over her shoulder and snatched one of the hot rounds of unleavened bread from the coals in front of her. She slapped his hand. ‘That is dinner. Put it back at once.’
‘May the Prophet open the doors of mercy to you, Tahi.’ Laughing, he headed out into the gardens, breaking off pieces of bread and stuffing them into his mouth. He had a gift for Yasmini, a large spiral shell with an opalescent pink interior. He knew where to find her. There was a ruined tomb at the east side of the gardens that had been built in honour of one of the Islamic saints centuries before. There was a stone tablet on the wall of the tomb, whose text Dorian had deciphered laboriously: ‘Abd Allah Muhammad Ali, died in the year of the Prophet 120.’
There was a high dome surmounted by a bronze symbol of the crescent moon, thick with verdigris. Below it was an open prayer terrace that faced in the direction of the Kabaa in Mecca. At one end there was large open rainwater cistern where once the faithful had performed wudu, the ritual ablutions, before prayers. Now it was disused and attracted flocks of wild birds in the afternoons.
Yasmini and her special friends among her half-sisters liked to play on the terrace. Here they gossiped and bickered and played fantastic games, dressed up their pets in infants’ clothing and nursed them, pretended to run a household and cook for their imaginary families.
Dorian had reached the foot of the staircase that led up to the terrace, when a scream from above froze him with one foot on the bottom step. Instantly he recognized Yasmini’s voice, but what slashed his heart was the high-pitched agony that filled it. He sprang forward and flew up the ancient staircase driven by a series of those terrible cries, each shriller and more chilling than the one before.
Jinni, the vervet monkey, sat on the top of the dome of the old tomb. When he grew tired of being nursed and dressed like a human baby, he would escape to this favourite perch where Yasmini could not reach him. Now he scratched under his arm sleepily, his blue eyelids drooping over his big brown eyes. Every few minutes he would sway and almost fall from his perch, then jerk awake and blink down at the gardens spread below him.
Suddenly he smelt something that brought him fully awake: cinnamon cakes. There was nothing in all the world that Jinni loved more. He stood to his full height, using his long tail to balance on the rounded plaster dome, and looked around him eagerly.
Two boys came down one of the paths through the shrubbery. Even from this distance Jinni could see that their jaws were working and that the biggest of the pair carried a covered silver dish. Jinni did not need his eyes to tell him what was under the cover. He made a small, greedy, chittering sound, and skipped down off the dome and swung into the top of the peepul tree, which spread its wide branches below the terrace.
Hidden by the thick foliage, he watched the two boys J settle down in a hidden corner of the gardens and place the silver dish between them. Zayn al-Din lifted the cover, and Jinni stiffened his tail and rolled his eyes as he saw the mound of yellow cakes. He was torn between greed and fear. He knew Zayn al-Din only too well. He had a healed scar over one eye where a stone had struck him. Zayn was an expert with a slingshot. On the other hand, the cakes were still warm from the clay oven and their aroma was tantalizing, irresistible.
Jinni shot down the trunk of the peepul, keeping it between him and the boys. When he reached the ground he peered out from behind the tree. When he was sure he was still unobserved he left his hiding-place and darted across the lawn. From the depths of one of the shrubs he stole another look. He puffed out his cheeks and wiggled his nose. The scent of cinnamon was much stronger here. He watched Zayn lift one of the cakes to his mouth and bite into its fluffy yellow delights.
Ibn al-Malik Abubaker was the other b
oy, one of Zayn al-Din’s numerous half-brothers. He stood up and went to one of the casuarina trees near the outer wall, and pointed up into the branches. ‘There is a hawk nesting there,’ he called to Zayn, who stood up and waddled across to join him. They had their backs turned to the silver dish and their heads were thrown back as they discussed the shaggy nest in the branches high above them.
‘Perhaps it’s a peregrine,’ Zayn said hopefully. ‘We can take the chicks when they are fledged.’
Jinni gathered his courage. He shot out from under the shrub, and covered the open ground in a grey streak. He reached the dish and filled both fists with the sticky cakes. He stuffed them into his mouth until his pouches bulged to the point of bursting. Half the cakes remained in the dish and he tried to fill his paws, but he couldn’t manage them all, so he dropped those he already held and started again.
‘The monkey!’ Zayn’s dreaded voice screeched behind him and Jinni knew he had been discovered. In his haste to escape he sent the dish flying, and raced away back to the safety of the peepul tree. He scattered a trail of broken cinnamon cakes across the lawn behind him.
As he sped up the trunk and reached the safety of the first high branch he ducked his head and looked back. The boys were in close pursuit, shouting their protests and outrage. ‘Shaitan! Devil monkey! Pig animal!’
Jinni reached the top branches and crouched in a fork. He felt safe here, and started to munch the remnants of the cakes that had survived the flight and the climb up the tree.
Below him Zayn opened the pouch on his belt and brought out his slingshot. He unwound the leather thongs and stretched them between spread arms, then he selected a perfectly rounded pebble, and fitted it into the pocket at the end of the double thongs. He moved around the base of the tree until he had a clear shot at Jinni. The monkey bobbed his head and opened his eyes wide, making a terrifying face to frighten him away.