Sultan's Wife (20 page)

As he worked Zanchi told us about San Rocco, the Italians' patron saint of the plague. We had seen images of him all over the city: attending the plague-stricken in the hospital, where of course he too had succumbed to the disease; lifting his robe to show the plague-mark on his thigh. According to Zanchi, the saint then crawled into a wood and lay there awaiting death, attended only by his little dog, which brought him daily loaves stealthily robbed from the city's bakers; but in reward for his goodness in tending the sick, an angel came down to tend him, and so, miraculously, he was saved.

I could see that my master was sceptical, though he waited until we were outside before declaring, ‘More superstition. People do recover from the plague: make it through to the fifth day and your body's humours have won the battle. Nothing to do with prayer or goodness: I've seen more sinners than saints fight their way back to health! But it's not called the Great Mortality for nothing – they say it carried off one in three in this place in 1630.'

One in three. I remember this dire pronouncement now.

Alys. Zidana. Ismail.

Alys. Zidana. Me.

Alys, Ismail. Me.

Night after night I torment myself with dread.

Messenger birds arrive from Fez bearing terrible reports day after day. People are dying in the souq, in the street, falling off their mules stone dead on their way to market. At the tannery, where it is thought the noxious smells of the guano and urine used to cure the hides must surely keep the pestilence at bay, a man keels over into one of the dyeing pits unseen by his fellow workers. His corpse comes to light dyed such a virulent yellow that at first it is thought to be a demon from a lower hell. The pest is no respecter of status or goodness:
sherifs
, nobles and marabouts are amongst the reported dead; imams and muezzins too. Ismail returns messages ordering a census, instructing the Fassi kaids to divide the city into sectors and count the number of dead in representative streets to suggest a mean. By this method
it is soon calculated that over six thousand have already perished; the number is doubling and redoubling week by week. The Tinker seeks an audience with the sultan. ‘Sire,' he says solemnly, ‘this pestilence is deadly and out of control. We should decamp from Meknes into the mountains.'

Of course, Abdelaziz, positioned at the sultan's right hand, opposes him. ‘Meknes is perfectly safe, my lord: no one is infected here and we can make sure it does not enter our gates.' He takes Ismail by the arm – the only man who could ever dare to touch the sultan without his permission – and leads him away. Ben Hadou watches them go, then turns and catches my eye. ‘Still alive, then, Nus-Nus?' he asks softly. ‘I thought you might like to know that Abdelaziz's nephew has gone away. I've had him sent to Fez.' His eye twitches: a wink or a tic? Hard to tell with the Tinker.

Ismail has the gates of the palace locked and issues orders that Meknes is to be completely isolated and that all travellers arriving from infected towns are to be put to death on sight. He is vehement: he will not leave his new capital, though he frets constantly about the omens and makes us check his body night and day for any sinister signs of the disease. He even spends two consecutive nights sleeping alone, for the first time in the five years I have served him, and when he chooses a girl after this the coupling is perfunctory, as if he has his mind on other things.

Some days later comes the first fatality in Meknes. Is it coincidence that it should be the wife of the keeper of the messenger-birds who succumbs? Ismail has all the birds slaughtered: he believes them to have flown through infected air. We wait. Perhaps it was some other malady that carried her off, some sickness that mimicked the signs of pestilence. We are all still speculating when three more suddenly die, quite unconnected with the dead woman.

When Ismail hears this he turns pale. He makes me tell him all I know of the plague in Europe, all I learned from my former master, saw on my travels. He has bird masks made for the court and insists we all wear them in his presence. Masks over masks. Food is prepared for him only by Zidana's hand. She sits with her head bent over her cooking pot while he sits opposite her, telling his prayer beads. This would make for a homely sight were it not for the fact that Zidana has a big white beak strapped to her face,
while the emperor sits there, watching her every move like a gigantic bird of prey. He eats away from the court, which means that Amadou and I are accorded the same privilege, and though the diet is monotonous (chickpea couscous day after day) we do not sicken.

Just as it seems the epidemic will not take hold in Meknes, the plague claims its first victim in the harem: Fatima. It is the headache first, then pain in the joints, and no one thinks much of it to start with, since Fatima is always complaining about something or other, seeking attention. But when the sweats come and the buboes swell, her screams can be heard from one end of the palace to the other. Ismail is distraught: she has given him two sons, though one is dead. He sends for Doctor Salgado to attend her.

What can the poor physician do? The pestilence has its claws deep into her vitals by the time he arrives. He cools her, he bleeds her, he wraps her in cold towels. When this fails to have any useful effect, he consults with Zidana, who makes up poultices to draw the evil humours out of the boils. The pus that spurts out is so foul-smelling that even the doctor must go out into the courtyard and vomit. An hour later she is dead, and so, by curious coincidence, is her boy. And so, in one fell swoop, the Hajib's succession plans come to naught.

When word reaches the sultan, he storms to the harem, meets Salgado hurrying away and, in a moment of madness, or grief, takes his sword and runs him through, there and then, for failing to save her.

So here we are, trapped inside the world's most magnificent palace, stalked by death and ruin and with no one to tend to us in our peril. I am sent into the medina to find, by whatever means possible, another European doctor. Wearing my bird mask stuffed with herbs, I leave the palace and go out into the city. It is a strangely changed place. The central square is deserted, by people at least. Thin cats skulk in the shadows and mew plaintively as I pass; feral dogs lie boneless and exhausted in heaps, there being no one to chase them off. I find a mule wandering in the abandoned spice quarter: all the stalls and
funduqs
are closed up. In the alleys of the medina there are just blank walls and locked doors. Although all family life in Moroccan houses goes on behind these closed façades, it is eerily quiet; even the pigeons seem to have flown. As I near the mellah, a piercing shriek
sets my heart racing and suddenly a woman comes running around the corner of the street, stark naked. To see a woman unclothed in a public place is so unprecedented that I simply stand transfixed. She runs right at me, her long black hair snaking around her head, her mouth open in a wail. Blood runs from her cheeks: she has torn them with her nails. The signs of plague are upon her: dark roses on her thighs and chest. Terrified, I flatten myself against a wall, and she runs past me, unseeing.

Maleeo. Ancient Mother, preserve me!

I walk on quickly towards the mellah. At the house of Daniel al-Ribati I knock loudly on the door. The sound echoes down the narrow street, an intrusion into the silence. It is so still I can hear my own breathing, made stertorous by the mask. For a long time I stand there, waiting, and hear nothing within. Then a shutter opens on the window above, and I see, indistinctly, a figure. Impossible to tell whether it is Daniel himself or one of his household, until a voice says, ‘Who is it?'

I pull the bird mask up for a moment to show my face, and a moment later a set of heavy iron keys come clattering at my feet. I let myself in to the cool, dark interior.

‘You look like a demon from a Hieronymus Bosch painting.' Daniel appears at the turn in the stairs. He looks amused and alarmed in the same degree.

Feeling faintly ridiculous, I remove the mask, and the merchant comes running down the steps and embraces me warmly. It is an odd feeling, to be enveloped so by another human being. I cannot remember the last time I was so embraced. For a long moment I stand there, unable to respond, not knowing what to do, then I hug him back.

‘I am very glad to see you, my boy. These are terrible times.'

I ask after his household and he tells me he has released the servants so that they can be with their own families. His wife is upstairs, asleep, having been up all night tending to the birthing of a cousin's child. ‘Some would say it was an evil omen to be born in a time of pestilence, but I say God has given us a sign that nothing is stronger than love, not even death.'

To this, I can only nod. We take tea, which the merchant makes himself with the careful deliberation of one who has to concentrate hard over an
unfamiliar task, and I explain my mission. Daniel's regard is hooded, unreadable, as I tell him that Ismail requires a European doctor, one well versed in treating the afflicted in Rome, Paris or London.

‘The sultan wants what the sultan wants.'

‘And I must find it for him. Or face the consequences.'

The merchant purses his lips, considering. After a long while he says, ‘Why do you do this, Nus-Nus?'

‘Do what?'

‘Continue to work for Moulay Ismail. The man is, not to put too fine a point on it, mad.' The back of my neck prickles with heat as if there may be spies in the wall behind me. When he sees I am unable to frame a response, Daniel smiles sadly. ‘It is treason to speak the truth, is that it?' He leans forward, touches me lightly on the knee. Have I misjudged his interest in me all these years? There are men all over the city with wives and children and the outward show of respectability who keep a boy in the medina. ‘Nus-Nus, listen to me. I have seen plague cities before: I grew up in the Levant. Everyone fears it, and rightly so: but plague is like war – it creates many opportunities. Where there is plague, there is also greater freedom of movement, fluidity – even chaos. A man can disappear without much fear of pursuit.' His blue eyes are intense. ‘Get out while you can. Leave Meknes, leave the mad sultan. You may be a eunuch, but you don't have to be a slave. You're an intelligent man, cultured, educated. You could easily find work elsewhere: I could help – I have contacts in Algiers, Venice, London, Cairo, Safed, Hebron: merchants like myself, traders and businessmen who would appreciate a man of your talents – you could make your way to any of these cities and make a new life for yourself. Ismail has far too much to concern him than the whereabouts of one runaway slave. Get out while you can, or you'll regret it for ever.'

All I can do is stare at him like an idiot. He is right, of course. And I have seen enough of the world of which he speaks, the fluid world of international trade in which questions about origin are seldom asked. I have often dreamed of escape from Ismail's yoke, from Abdelaziz, Zidana, the horrid intrigues and vendettas of the court: but with a slave-bond in my ear and this colour of skin, without money, influence or friends, I
knew I would not get far before someone took their opportunity to return me to my master and claim his favour. But now: now, in this time of chaos, perhaps I
could
make my escape, set myself up as an amanuensis, a translator, a go-between … I feel suddenly weightless, buoyant with possibility. And then my heart reminds me: I cannot go anywhere, without Alys.

He reads my answer in my unguarded face. ‘You are too loyal.'

‘It is not loyalty, precisely, that keeps me here.'

‘Fear, then?'

‘Not that, either.'

‘Ah, then it is love.'

I feel the heat rise in my face and struggle against it. ‘It is love,' I concede at last.

Daniel al-Ribati looks wistful. ‘Whoever it is who keeps you here should think themselves lucky to have such a stalwart heart at their command.'

‘She knows nothing of it: I have not spoken.'

‘Ah, Nus-Nus, love one-sided is a pathetic thing. At least speak your heart and see how she answers you. Maybe she will leave with you: and, if she will not, then you have your answer and should leave on your own.'

‘I wish it were so simple,' I say fervently.

‘Love is always simple. It is the simplest thing in the world. It sweeps all before it, makes a straight, clear path.'

I give him a wry smile. ‘How well I know it. It has made a straight, clear path through my heart.'

‘I hope she is worth it, Nus-Nus. You're a good man.'

‘Am I good? Sometimes I am so filled with rage and fear, I think I am the world's greatest sinner. As for being a man, well –'

‘It takes more than the cutting away of two small pieces of flesh to change that state.' He presses his palms against his thighs, pushes himself to his feet. ‘Come, then, let us see if Doctor Friedrich is at home.'

We walk the maze of deserted streets. The merchant moves with determined vigour, arms pumping, robe swinging, his leather shoes slapping the cobbles. He keeps them on even when we pass the Great Mosque, which is
illegal and would earn him a beating, were there guards around to punish him. But the city has been taken back by its true inhabitants, the feral animals and the populace: everyone else has either fled or perished. I follow Daniel, one loping stride to his two, the bird mask swinging from my hand, feeling a freer man than before, if only in my own head.

In the back streets behind the central market, Daniel takes a right, then a left, and stops at a dusty, iron-studded door, its paint flaked away to a ghost of its original blue. He raps loudly and we wait. Silence stretches out and no one comes. My newfound optimism begins to ebb.

The sound of footsteps approaching, noisy in the resounding quiet, makes us turn as one. A solitary figure rounds the corner. It is a tall man wearing a flat, round, black hat: no hood, tarboush or turban, thus no Moroccan.