Sultan's Wife (15 page)

For a long moment she holds my gaze. I do not know what I read in those blue depths. Accusation? Disappointment? Anger? She keeps her eyes fixed firmly on me as she shrugs the remnants of the kaftan down from her shoulders. Beneath it she wears nothing at all. Even pinned by her regard, my peripheral vision takes in every inch of her bare skin, the delicacy of her clavicles, the narrowness of her upper arms, the full swell of her breasts.

Ismail pushes me aside. ‘Stop gawping, boy. Not that I blame you: she's a peach, is she not? A little thin for my liking, but a peach nonetheless.' I swear he is salivating.

The sound of the muezzin calling the faithful to fifth prayer shivers through the candlelit air and the sultan hesitates. He closes his eyes for a long moment and I see his lips move as he whispers, ‘Forgive me, Merciful One.' Then in a single swift movement he tears his tunic up over his head and stands there stark naked. I avert my eyes; too late, and see more than I intended.

It's not that I haven't seen his august majesty naked before: I have attended him a thousand times at the hammam. I have scrubbed his back and rubbed liniment into his limbs after the hunt. He is wiry, this king, wiry and well knit. His muscles look like knotted wood: in a man-to-man fight, I should be able to break him in two. But power radiates from him, from his smallest movement, as if he were born to kingship, though he came to power but five years ago. That sensation is compelling, even when he is in his most relaxed state; but rampant it is overwhelming.

‘Get behind the screen, Nus-Nus, and tell her to get on the bed.'

I feel Alys's gaze on me as I cross the room, retrieve the couching book and take my place behind the carved cedarwood. Her eyes remain locked on my face even through the fretwork. My voice shakes as I say, ‘Please get on the bed, Alys.'

Wordlessly she gets to her feet, letting the torn kaftan pool around her ankles. She should look vulnerable, defeated; but her dignity is like armour.
She turns towards me as if offering herself and I find I cannot take my eyes from her, or even blink. Time feels suspended so that my heart feels caught between one beat and the next.

‘Tell her to get on the bed, damn it!' Ismail barks, breaking the spell. ‘On her knees.'

Particularly with the Christian apostates, he does this: makes them present their hindquarters to him like an animal to be mounted, allowing for no human contact but the sexual act itself. It is his way of reducing them; making them know that he values those who convert under duress or out of self-interest less highly than those born Muslim. It is another of those strange contradictions in him, that he should be the one forcing the apostasy, yet prizing the strength of their conviction. I have seen him shed genuine tears for women who have chosen martyrdom rather than apostasy.

I pass on his order in faltering terms and see her shudder. ‘I am sorry, Alys,' I start; but she stays me with a look. ‘It will pass. I shall pray for a son, a good strong healthy boy.'

She arranges herself on the white sheet that has been spread across the great bed, face towards me. When he enters her, without niceties, I see her grimace, but she masters herself and as I relay his instructions she makes the mechanical adjustments required, as if asked to move a chair or open a drawer.

I hope the coupling will be swift, for all our sakes, and before long Ismail is growling, his head thrown back, every muscle tense with lust. All the time her eyes remain locked on mine and I know I am her refuge, the still point into which her spirit flows even as her body is abused. It is as if a red-hot wire has been stretched between us: I feel her pain like a fire in my own abdomen, every nerve in me alive with empathy.

And then suddenly, even more disconcertingly, I feel myself swell and harden. The phenomenon is so shocking that I break eye contact and look down. There can be no mistaking the tenting of my djellaba. What unholy magic is this? Have I been possessed by a demon? Is the sultan's potency so singular that it has infected me? But I have witnessed a hundred – a thousand! – of his couchings and experienced nothing before but distaste and
detached boredom. It must be a miracle! I feel like crowing in triumph; but then a profound shame falls upon me. Am I so perverse that I should come alive only at the cost of another human being's humiliation and pain? The erection wilts as quickly as it rose and when I force myself to look up again, the sultan has finished his business and Alys is turned away from us both, the bloodied sheet clutched against her.

His business concluded, Ismail shrugs into a heavily embroidered robe and, striding quickly to the door, shouts for the women to take her away. They bustle in, coo over the bloodied sheet – as of course is their purpose (for now they will rush back to the harem and proclaim the purity of the Englishwoman and the potency of the sultan so that whatever offspring may result will be unquestionably his own), cover Alys in the extravagant gown reserved for those deflowered by the sovereign, and whisk her away.

My eyes follow her; but she does not look back.

She has survived the worst of it; what matters now will be endurance. But there is no comfort to be had from that cold fact. I feel bereft, emptied out – appalled. I feel, I realize, much as I did after sleeping with one of the whores in Venice. I did not admit it to myself at the time, or revisit it since, but those loveless encounters have left me with a good dose of shame, and I feel now as if it were I, rather than the sultan, who has used Alys, and then cast her away.

‘Nus-Nus!'

The voice of command shatters my reverie. I shoot to my feet in such panic that I drop the couching book and, in bending to retrieve it, bring the fretted screen crashing down between us. For a long moment we stare at each other, just two men revealed to one another as men; no more. Then the moment passes and the fear returns and I find myself wondering whether he will sense my lapse, but he simply smiles. His expression is unfocused, dreamy.

‘Magnificent, the Englishwoman.'

‘Alys.'

‘Was that her name?'

‘Yes, sire. Alys. Alys Swann.' And suddenly, as if plucking the memory out of the air, I remember where last I came upon this English word.
I will
play the swan, / And die in music
. I recall the words, though not their context. Doctor Lewis taught me English by reading with me from his much prized folio, fifty years old and battered by love and use. The words come from the play about the Moorish king and the white woman he had taken to wife: my lips curl.

‘Why do you smile?'

It will hardly do to explain the source: I try instead to essay an explanation of the word but I cannot remember the name of the bird in Arabic. I resort to mime: my hand makes a flowing line in the air and his hand follows the arc of the creature's graceful neck.

‘Al
ouez abiad
. The White Swan. That is what I shall call her.'

Samir is no scribe, that much is certain. His entries in the couching book are in a poor hand, and include many crossings-out and ink smudges. On a clean page untouched by his uncouth hand I write:

My hand shakes as I make the entry, there is such turmoil in my mind. It is a savage irony that the task of maintaining this chronicle of lust and potency should fall to a eunuch, is it not? More painful still, to a eunuch who was entire till recently, and had already tasted the glories to be found between a woman's legs. Did I ever make any children of my own? I fear I was never around for long enough to make serious attachments: my master rarely stayed in one place for more than a month or two, but was always on a quest for knowledge that took us all over North Africa, to Spain, and once even as far as Venice. Those Venetian courtesans, with their soft white arms, those provocative dresses that all but bared their breasts, their rare perfumes, knowing eyes and surprising tricks. Ever since my cutting I have veered my thoughts away from such things: but surely nothing can be so useless as desire to a eunuch.

And then there came Alys Swann …

Even the sound of her name in my mind stirs that part of me I thought long dead, and I have to quell the surge of blood that beats in my groin. It is surely unnatural; and yet, and yet, I cannot help but wonder if I have somehow been singled out, the recipient of some kind of miracle …

To divert my rioting thoughts, I riffle through the book that has been my pride to keep both accurate and elegant. Most of the couchings listed took place in Fez, before the court moved here to Meknes. I remember the old palace chambers, so grand and sumptuous, but somehow gloomy despite their soaring arches and rich ornamentation. That was a place that had seen too much: it was as if a miasma of suffering imbued the very plaster on its walls. I flick through the entries and remember the women one by one: Naima and Habiba, Fatima, Jamilla and Yasmin, Ouarda, Aicha, Eptisam, Maria and Chama – some of them little more than girls. One or two wept when he took them, not understanding what was expected of them. There is even one very early entry in which the ink was blotched where I cried in sympathy for one child. I look for it now. I will never forget the look on her face after the event: her pupils more like holes than eyes, as if her spirit had been pushed out of her by the force of the coupling.

Back I go, to the start, then forward again, towards the present, my life and the life of the women here mapped out in daily stark entries. I frown. Where is that page? Before Samir laid his hands on the book it was the only one that was not pristine.

I locate the Emira Zoubida, who knew exactly what she was about: a proper little temptress with skin the colour of an aubergine. She bore the sultan twin boys; there were noisy celebrations. Of course, they did not last long, sickly to begin with and probably helped on their way by Zidana. Nearly all the rest around that time produced girl children; of the boys, none appear to have survived. Save Zidan, of course, the apple of his father's eye. I turn the page, and find … not the page blotched by sentiment, which should have followed, but an unfamiliar page. I stare at it, confused, for a time. On closer examination I realize the writing on it is not my own, though it is a very fair copy: such a fair copy, in fact, that probably only I would ever know the difference. There is a faint line down the gutter, and near the foot of the page a little mark. I carry the book out into the fading
light of the courtyard, but I do not need its confirmation. I know … I just know.

A page, very cleverly altered, has been moved from its original place. No untruth told in it, except for the date: a son, leapfrogging a number of other sons, placing him higher in the succession, a pawn for a game-player to move into position. You can barely see the join, it has been so carefully done: torn, rather than cut, the warp and weft of the linen meshing almost seamlessly. A very time-consuming process. Perhaps three weeks' worth of work, to practise my hand, revise the entry and make the switch …

Did they really think I would not notice the forgery? But of course if everything had gone to plan I would be dead of a nail through the skull by now, or, having accepted his unholy offer, been tucked away in a safe house, prisoner to the grand vizier's every depraved whim.

I had guessed my enemy already: what I did not understand was his motivation. But at least now I know the game and the stakes, which are high. His investment in the scheme to remove me from my duties has cost him dear: he will not be happy that I have escaped his clutches and am back in charge of the couching book again. I wonder how long it will be before the next attempt on my life comes.

The next day my usual duties resume as if there has been no lacuna. It is as if the whole affair of Sidi Kabour has, as ben Hadou promised, never existed. And yet the world has changed shape: am I the only one who can see this?

But, as we tour the building works that afternoon, Abdelaziz watches me out of the corner of his eye, when he thinks me engaged in the taking down of notes. There has been an explosion of lime and four workers dead in it; and one of the huge vats of tadelakt – the plaster made from marble dust and albumen – has mysteriously been ruined: three months' work and twenty thousand eggs wasted. Ismail is much exercised over the matter, rattling off instructions and making dire pronouncements; but, despite my apparent attention to my scribing, I can feel the vizier's eyes, like an insect's, on me.

When I look up and catch him, he looks away and engages in deep conversation with the chief astronomer. But he seems perplexed, as if he has perceived the change in me. He must, I remind myself, be alarmed at my sudden reinstatement. I wonder what has become of his nephew. I wonder too about Alys. Is she well? Has she been kindly treated by the sultan's women? Does she blame me for her decision to convert and hate me for my part in her ordeal?

We are heading back to Ismail's quarters when a functionary comes running to announce that one of our generals has come riding into the palace complex, covered in dust, requesting an urgent audience. We find him in a receiving room, still filthy, attended by a group of his men, equally unkempt, bearing a dozen huge sacks. They have been putting down a Berber rebellion in the Rif, and meeting stiff resistance.

Until recently the campaign has not been going well, for they are a wild and woolly people, these people of the mountains, and well known for
their independence of thought. It took more than two hundred years to persuade the Berbers to submit themselves to Islam, and some say they've never fully given up their old animism and goddess worship on the quiet, and have even been known to eat the wild pigs that run in their mountains, though the only Berbers I have encountered have been tough, honourable men, astute and intelligent, though superstitious and prone to magic and curses, and far too proud and too partisan to bow the neck to any not of their own tribe. Ismail loathes them with a fervour and is personally affronted by their refusal to accept his rule. He is, after all, God's own representative on earth, directly descended from the Prophet himself. How dare they not submit to God's holy will?