Sultan's Wife (7 page)

The last time I heard the song I was in the service of a doctor, Scottish by origin, African by choice. In the few years he owned me, I learned to read and scribe in four languages; to tell the difference between mandrake and ginger root; to play a fair tune on the Spanish guitar and the oud. I knew both the Qur'an and the poetry of Rumi by heart (my master being a convert to Islam, saying jokingly that it was a more Christian religion than Christianity). I had conquered hearts from Timbuktu to Cairo, from
Florence to Cadiz; I thought myself a grand fellow. My cousin Ayew would have said I had got above myself …

Ah, it is painful to think of Ayew. His fate was worse even than mine.

The doctor was a good master to me, more of a teacher than a master by the end, which came cruelly. We were in Gao, guests of the so-called king there (in truth no more than an ambitious chieftain, seeking to resurrect the great city from its sacked ruins), when half the household came down with some unusual sickness. Doctor Lewis succeeded in saving three of the king's children and two of his wives before succumbing himself to the sweating and shaking, and finally the raving hallucinations. I tried to smuggle him out of the palace; and failed. He died and I was left friendless and prey to the monstrous ingratitude of that so-called king, who packed me off to the slave-market in case I too carried the seeds of the sickness. And there I was sold to a monster.

Black John's song comes to a close and the ladies ululate their approval. I detach myself from the shadows and enter the courtyard. There is Naima and Mina, pretty Khadija and Fouzia; and there is Fatima, the Hajib's sister, toting her boy on her hip. As always, I am taken aback by how features shared by brother and sister can be so repulsive in the one and so seductive in the other. Fatima wears her extra flesh lushly at breast and hip, but despite her childbearing keeps an elegantly narrow waist. Where his mouth seems vast and slug-like, her lips are pillowy. The blackness of his eye seems as dead as that of a shark; but Fatima's eyes are bright and wicked, promising all manner of bed-tricks. When she sees me they go wide with surprise; then she looks away quickly. Interesting, I think, and file away that look for future reference. I bow to Zidana. She gives me a smile that is one part sugar to two parts sheer malice. ‘Still alive, then, Nus-Nus? Clever boy.'

I give her back a sharp look that says,
No thanks to you
, but all she does is grin wider. Then she claps her hands. ‘Go away, John, all of you. I need to talk to Nus-Nus.'

‘I hope you appreciated the skill of the repair,' she says when they are gone, and when I do not reply, she laughs. ‘It could have been a lot worse, you know. The other book I considered binding into those pretty covers
had
pictures
. Most instructive and inventive pictures.' She pauses. ‘Did he make you read to him from it?'

I nod, seething.

‘I wish I could have been there to see it. And did he nod wisely, Ismail, and mouth the words as you recited?'

She knows her husband too well. ‘You could have had me killed.'

‘Oh, Nus-Nus, you underestimate yourself.
I
don't underestimate you: I knew you'd pass my little test. You're a resourceful man. But it was a good joke all the same.'

‘I have come to ask your aid in another matter.' I explain the problem with the wolf, though I say nothing about Zidan's torment of the beast. There is no point: she will not hear a word against him.

‘If it were me, I'd have chosen a lion, not some mangy old wolf,' she sniffs. ‘What does that say about us to outsiders?'

‘That its fate will be the fate of any attacker who dares venture near?' I hazard.

‘More likely that we are like sheep in a fold.'

‘The wolf is his symbol,' I remind her, but she isn't interested in pursuing the discussion, instead taking herself off and coming back a while later with a small phial of purplish liquid. ‘Coat some meat in this and give it to the beast just after sundown. It'll liven it up for a while.'

‘Not too much, I hope.'

‘Then it would be more of a fair struggle, wouldn't it?' Her eyes gleam. ‘Quite the spectacle. I do hope I've got the quantities right.' She gives me a sly smile.

I make to leave, then turn back. Should I mention the pattens? She will be furious at me for my stupidity, and anyway what can she do? None of the women are allowed to leave the palace and unless she can command her spirits to manifest themselves in flesh, even Zidana's magic cannot retrieve them.

She watches my indecision with a raised eyebrow. ‘Off you go, Nus-Nus, but remember the next favour will be mine.'

I deliver the dose and instructions to the menagerie keeper, with a dire warning so that he is in no doubt that I will come looking for him if the
wolf does not behave as expected that night, and head back to the Dar Kbira, running through the rest of my duties in my head, until I reach the dangerous impression that everything is just about under control. But as I stride through the long vine-covered walkway leading to the sultan's pavilions, someone calls my name. I turn: it is Yaya, one of the guards posted on the main gate.

‘There were some men here earlier.' Sweat sheens his face: has he run after me just to tell me this? I sigh. There is always someone seeking a bribe, or an audience. ‘What did they want?'

Yaya looks solemn. ‘They were making inquiries. There was a man murdered in the souq yesterday.'

My heart stutters, and my insides go cold. ‘Murdered?' I echo feebly. A drop of sweat bursts out of my hairline beneath my turban, rolls down my forehead, makes a track along my nose.

Yaya watches me, his eyes bulging with curiosity. ‘They questioned all the guards about everyone's comings and goings yesterday, and we said there were not many braving the rain …'

‘But you told him you had seen me,' I finish, feeling sick.

‘Well, I had to,' he says, as if lying was not an option.

‘And?'

He makes a face. ‘They wanted to talk to you. I said you were running errands for the sultan, helping him prepare for the inauguration, so they went away again.'

Pent-up breath escapes me. ‘Well, that's all right, then.'

‘They're coming back tomorrow.'

I go hot, then cold. ‘But I shall also be very busy tomorrow.'

‘I'm not on duty tomorrow.' There is a note of selfish relief in his voice as he says this. Seeing my expression, he adds doubtfully, ‘But I'll ask Hassan to turn them away.'

‘Wonderful.' I walk quickly away, cursing under my breath. The
qadi's
men are not usually this persistent: they know the qadi's jurisdiction stops short of the palace walls. Did someone see something that implicates me directly? Sidi Kabour must have been better connected than I had thought, so assiduously are they pursuing his murderer.

As I perform my duties that evening, anxiety gnaws at my guts. I find myself asking, ‘Is this the last time I will lay out the sultan's babouches? Is this the last good food I will taste?'

The wolf goes to its death in a dignified fashion – heralded in by long Fassi trumpets and musicians all in white. It rears up and growls and snarls and gives every impression of being the wild beast it is supposed to signify, and Ismail quells it with less ease than I expected, given the state it was in that morning. I feel a pang of sorrow as he squeezes the life out of it, and when it slumps and he draws the ceremonial blade to cut off its head, I have to look away.

A name, a date, the briefest of descriptions: such sterile words on a page to represent the enactment of fertility. The couching book is maintained with rigorous care in order to establish the birth and legitimacy of the sultan's children, to keep a schedule that will settle all arguments, and prevent jealousies and disputes. He is but six years older than me, Ismail, and has been sultan for only the last five, and yet he has already engendered hundreds of infants upon his wives and concubines. The sultan lies with a virgin almost every night, although he has a few favourites to whom he returns from time to time. Unlike King Shahriyar in the Arabian tales, he does not have his conquests strangled the following morning to ensure their fidelity. There is little chance of infidelity in this palace – the harem is fiercely guarded by the eunuchs.

Zidana maintains control over the harem, and over the sultan too. Almost every night, after fifth prayer, once Ismail has eaten and bathed, she will arrange a gathering at which a selection of worthy candidates will promenade in the gardens, or play music for him, or sing beneath the orange trees, or in his private quarters, or just lie on the divans looking seductive. For this opportunity, Zidana is well bribed by those seeking advantage: to sway Ismail's judgement, and to seduce him away from her rival Fatima, she will lead him to a certain girl and extol her virtues, indicating a delicately turned ankle or beautifully hennaed hands; even baring a breast to show off its curve and weight. The sultan, who is as headstrong as a charging horse in all other things, is surprisingly happy to be led by his Chief Wife in matters of the bedchamber.

You would think there was an incalculable alchemy to the piquing of desire, but either she knows him too well or he is indiscriminate. Certainly, he has a prodigious appetite. Even the most energetic of men would be surfeited within weeks of such boundless plenty, but not Ismail. It is another of the reasons he is so revered: the women adore him to the point of idolatry. They creep up behind him to touch the hem of his robe for good luck; if he touches them they do not wash the hand or cheek for days; they keep talismans they have gleaned from their time with him – a hair from his head or beard, the seed that has dried on their thighs, or that they have kept all night in their mouths – in little phials or amulets that they wear so that its
baraka
, that mysterious force of blessing and luck the sultan exudes, will ward off illness and the evil eye. Those whom he beds will be carried in procession about the harem the following morning. The greatest baraka of all is to bear his child: though after his initial enthusiasm – accompanied by the firing of cannons, the proclamation and trumpets (for the birth of a boy), or the fireworks or strewing of flowers (for a girl) – he soon loses interest. Zidana makes sure of that too, for always she keeps her firstborn – Zidan – to the forefront, and although the child is both a brute and a dunce, Ismail dotes upon him, carries him around the gardens on his shoulders, spoils him most horribly and has named him his heir, for all that his mother was a slave.

Of course, there is a high natural mortality rate and many do not make it past the first few months, but it is worthy of note that there is a marked preponderance of boy children born to mothers for whom the sultan has shown more than a passing interest dying of various colics, gripes and vomiting disorders. Often their mothers follow them to the grave: dead of grief, I've heard the empress declare, quite impassively, even as the other women weep and wail and tear their clothes. I say no more.

I put the couching book back in my chest and am visited once more by a shudder of horror. The pattens should be standing in their accustomed place to the right of the chest. But they are not there. Dread fills me as I wonder if they are still where I left them, or whether they have as yet escaped notice.

I do not have long to wait to find out. Later that morning I go to inspect the newly inaugurated Bab al-Raïs so that I can report back to Ismail that his orders have been properly carried out. Sure enough, the poor wolf's head has been set above the gate and is grimacing away in a suitably ferocious fashion. On my way back to the inner courts my way is barred by two men wearing the coloured sashes that mark them as officers of the qadi and they are accompanied by a pair of palace guards, who carry the guns they have taken from the qadi's men before guiding them into the palace grounds. No one but the imperial guards may bear arms within the palace walls, a sensible precaution in a kingdom Ismail has himself described as ‘a basketful of rats' – always ready to rebel, and bite the hand that feeds.

‘Are you the court official known as Nus-Nus?'

Behind them, Hassan shrugs at me. ‘Sorry.'

‘I am.'

‘We wish to question you over a certain matter. A man has been most foully murdered in the souq.'

I try to look shocked. I try to look innocent. I
am
innocent, for heaven's sake: so why do I feel so guilty?

‘Where were you between the hours of eleven and two the day before yesterday?'

I look him in the eye. ‘Running an errand for his majesty in the bazaar.' And I tell him about my appointment with the Coptic Bookseller.

The second officer steps closer. I do not like the look of him: he is young and well fed and clearly thinks a lot of himself, judging by the care with which he has trimmed his beard into a fancy shape. I suspect he has plucked his eyebrows too. ‘We already interviewed the book-trader so we know you were there after noon. At what time did you return to the palace?' He asks me this in a way that suggests he already knows the answer.

‘Just before the emperor's daily rounds,' I concede.

‘And what time might that be?'

‘Around two.'

‘There is a large gap of time unaccounted for. While you were in the souq, did you happen to visit the stall of one Hamid ibn M'barek Kabour?'

The mask is firmly in place. ‘That name is not familiar to me.'

‘We know you were there. You were seen entering his stall at' – he examines the tablet on which he has written his notes – ‘just after eleven, wearing a “white burnous richly trimmed with gold”.'

My heart starts to thunder. ‘Ah, Sidi Kabour. I do apologize: I have never been on first name terms with him. And you say the poor man is dead, murdered? That is terrible news indeed. What will the emperor do now for his incense? He cannot do without his agarwood and frankincense, and he refuses to buy it from anyone else. I don't know what Ismail will say when he hears this news, he will be most upset. Is there a widow to whom he could make a gift?' I think I am doing well in acting the part of concerned factotum, but the younger officer is not taken in by my babbling.