The Fourth Queen, page 21
“And the Lalla Zara?” queries the Emperor, when his mirth has abated. “How are your investigations progressing?”
But his eyes wander off as soon as I begin elaborating on my investigations. And he interrupts me shortly with a weary, “Well, well, you must do your best,” as though I had just informed him that his tailor had been unable to acquire the silk brocade he had ordered for his waistcoat. By which I understand that the Old Queen has already been assigned to a back room of the Emperor's mind, with all the carriages and clocks he has no use for, where she will in time take on the character of an irritation, as taking up space which he would prefer filled with other treasures.
Even if she were to recover her beauty, I think it unlikely he will ever return her to his bed. The disease has continued too long, such that she now has the taint of Death about her. And though she has refused to admit him to her presence, he must suspect the disfigurements she is hiding. Indeed it seems likely that some malevolent wee cuckoo, with an eye on her nest, has twittered details of her transformation in the Emperor's ear and turned his squeamish heart against her.
“I have been enjoying the new Berber princess,” remarks His Majesty presently, probing his teeth with an ivory pick. “An interesting woman,” he muses, and flicks a morsel of gristle to the floor. “I gave her a necklace the first night and she thanked me nicely enough. But when I offered her a bracelet this morning, she refused it. The bint claims she isn't interested in jewelry. She'd prefer a horse—can you believe that? It seems her people allow their women to ride, provided they restrict themselves to the mares.” At which my cur's ears prick up with suspicion, for I have not forgotten the foolish dash the besom made for her freedom not three moons ago.
I recount the incident to the Emperor as a warning, but he just chuckles fondly over what he calls “her hot spirit” and dismisses my anxiety with a flick of the Royal Wrist. “That was before she met me,” scoffs he. “What reason could she have to escape now?” Which silences me utterly, for I would hesitate to explain to any man why a woman might seek deliverance from his embraces.
Meanwhile he is pondering the kind of mount he should pick out for her: “A bay, perhaps, the color of her hair? Or something white, like my own stallion? And a blue saddle, of course. You know, Fijil, she has the most amazing blue eyes—” And he is impatient suddenly to embark on his selection, clapping for his dressers, who swoop in to preen him for the day. “I wonder how much it would cost to have a white horse dyed blue?” he ruminates, as they wash and dry him, hopping around his extremities like sparrows, pecking at his fingernails and between his hairy toes.
Perhaps it was the pain of having a bristle plucked from a nostril, but his attention is suddenly diverted away from horseflesh. “Did you send the scrawny red-hair to Sallee?” he asks suddenly. “I should have received some kind of groveling response from the Governor by now.” And fixes me with a suspicious eye.
This flummoxes me mightily, for I'd quite forgotten his instruction to have Helen disposed of. And I start extemporizing wildly on the mishaps that had befallen first the guards I had selected to escort her, then the replacement guards, then the mules, while he gazes at me with his arms folded and one eyebrow quizzically raised.
“You never intended to get rid of her, did you?” he says eventually, when my flare of excuses finally sputters and extinguishes itself. He frowns most severely, so that I am quaking suddenly with fear, for I have seen slaves garroted for far less. At which point he relents, and starts to laugh, throwing back his head and slapping his thigh. “Oh, Fijil, Fijil! If you could see your face—” wiping his eyes, then leaning forward with curiosity. “So tell me, what have you done with the bint?”
So now I must reignite myself and sputter on some more, about Helen's uncommon aptitude in Arabic, and her skill at dancing, while my poor mind is see-sawing with “he mustn't send for her” alternating with “he mustn't send her away.” How relieved I was when he swept off to the stables!
The encounter left me quite agitated, for I fear I may have piqued his interest in the “scrawny red-hair,” despite his new enthusiasm for riding. If I could only rewrite the script of this encounter into something less tantalizing.
What then? What then would Microphilus do? Upturn the logic of his entire life? Topsy-turvy the world so that a king must wait for crumbs from his slave's table? Nay, this will never be. I am the Emperor's taster: no more, no less. And though the taste was sweeter than I could have imagined, Helen shows no inclination to further our togetherness.
Thus I have waited in vain these past four nights with my flagon brimming for her to come again, patting anxious sweat from my oxters and retying my queue de cheval. Until midnight comes and I can bear it no longer. Then I upend the wine straight into my gullet to numb the pain in my foolish heart.
September 29, 1769
It is midday and Batoom has just discovered me slumped forward from a kneeling position, where perhaps I had been praying, and snoring peacefully with my nose in a dish of sugared almonds. She lifts me up in her big arms and bathes me like a wean, and tells me gently that Helen has just come to her asking when she can be paraded before the Emperor.
Chapter 33
IT WAS BATOOM WHO'D SUGGESTED SHE WEAR white—“so he will notice you, like a pale moth among all the gaudy butterflies”—and had plaited her wet hair, then brushed it out into a mass of golden tendrils. But when the time came, and they were all craning their necks toward the entrance, panic had surged through her veins and she'd squirmed her way through the forest of slippery silk until she'd reached the very back.
“I don't believe it—you tried to hide?” Naseem clutched her hair in mock exasperation.
“I was so nervous, and the others were all glaring at me.”
“But he saw you anyway?”
“Well, he was looking for you really. But Malia told him you were ailing—” But by then he hadn't been listening. Helen hugged her triumph to herself. Because he'd caught a glimpse of her standing at the back by herself: plump and copper-haired, dressed all in white. He'd made them all stand aside so he could get to her.
“And he wants you tonight? Oh Aziza, I'm so excited for you!” Naseem grasped Helen's shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks. “What are you going to wear? Let me help you get ready.” She flung Helen's trunk open and began pulling things out.
“Don't you mind?” Helen knelt down beside her. “After last week, I mean.”
“Of course not! I've got my horse, haven't I? That was all I ever wanted from him. And I'll be glad to get some proper sleep for a change.”
Was she joking? Helen looked at her friend. Naseem was smiling, but her eyes were wild and bloodshot.
“You really are sick, aren't you? I thought you were lying this morning. So I'd have a chance with him.”
“I feel much better now, but this morning I couldn't keep anything down. And my mouth still tastes terrible, like rusty nails.” She pulled a face, then smiled again. But she didn't look well. Her skin was dull and dry, and there were brown smudges under her eyes. “It's just tiredness, I expect. Come on, we've only got a few hours. Which of these are you going to choose?”
“I thought the green one.” Helen held a vivid kamise against herself.
“Oh no, Aziza.” Naseem was adamant. “You need something much darker than that. Something to show off your skin. And your hair. A deep purple, maybe. Or—what's this?” She retrieved a pair of deep red salwars from the bottom of the trunk, and a matching kamise. “I've never seen you in these.”
Helen looked at them doubtfully. She'd bought them without realizing how dark the silk was; like plum skin, shot through with a russet sheen. The color reminded her of kirk vestments and spinsters' frocks. She was about to say as much when Batoom swept into the room and plumped herself down on the divan.
“Ah yes! This is perfect for you!” She pounced on the dark silk.
“I was just saying that I liked the green,” Helen protested weakly.
“No, no. Far too bright.” Batoom snorted her disdain. “It will be nighttime, remember. Your skin will look wonderfully pale against this, and the lamps will adore this coppery shine. It will be marvelous with your hair.”
“That's what I said!” Naseem was laughing. “And no rouge, yes? She should be pale as a lily. Except on her lips. And her nipples, of course.”
“Of course.”
Chapter 34
October 3, 1769
SHE IS GOING TO HIM THIS EVENING. THERE, IN black and white, it is written. I am not sure how I will endure the long hours until—
Until what? Until he rejects her again? And she is set upon a mule bound for Sallee? Until she emerges from his quarters, flushed with love? No, Microphilus, there can be no happy end to this night for you.
I HAVE SPENT THE AFTERNOON with Lungile in the stables, where he has been charged with the sole care of Naseem's mare.
This is the Emperor's latest prank. Having tired, I suppose, of taunting his pet giant with a cornucopia of unbeddable concubines, he has honed the humiliation more precisely by making him slave to a despised female nag. Never mind she is a creature of peerless beauty, having the black legs and face of an Abyssinian cat, fading to a shimmering silver on the body, with snowy plumes for mane and tail. Never mind she is as fleet as the wind, with a pedigree lost in the sands of time. She is still a mare, a lowly mare, and he must groom and feed and water her. She is a mare, and he must shovel her shit—aye, and keep it separate too, in its own special bucket that must be emptied on its own shameful midden, well away from the manly mountain of the stallions' steaming sog-balls.
Worst of all, he must ride her: lope his long legs over (of course they reach almost to the ground) and trot her out to the paddocks where the other grooms are all gathered; feel the sting as his poor scar is stretched, but keep his face straight lest it be reported to the Emperor that the giant was seen to wince.
And there is yet more salt in this wound, for now he is back among whole men once more, billeted with the other grooms in long dormitories where all the talk is of outings to the city whorehouses. Aye, whole men and whole beasts likewise, for the dormitories are situated in the stable buildings, above the serried stalls of a thousand Royal Stallions.
But there has been little sleep for any since the mare arrived. So pent up with lust are the stallions that the merest whiff of a nanny-goat in heat has their nostrils flaring and their sinews straining at their tethers. I wonder, then, if you can imagine the effect of a mature mare on this lecherous herd? Of course they have stabled her in the very last stall, with ten empty stalls as a bulwark. Still the air is rent by ardent whinnying and the crack of their saucer hooves against the splintering partitions. I swear they are biting chunks out of the doors with their teeth, and the carpenters have been working night and day to contain them.
I cannot describe how all this discomforts Lungile. Wherever he casts his eyes, they are confronted by male members in a state of engorgement. And these are no ponies, but stallions of eighteen hands or more. No wonder he speaks of suicide. Were it not for the date wine he has amassed in the mare's stall (no guard would dream of entering so contemptible a place), which drugs him insensible every evening, he would already have found a way to end his torment.
At least he can be private there, propped against the hay bales with his wine. We have been side by side in the fragrant bed-straw all afternoon, passing the flagon to and fro, with the mare crunching on her hay and the dust dancing in a shaft of sunshine, the cacophony of crazed stallions like thunder in the distance.
“So, the giant and the dwarf are both cuckolded by the same man,” says he lugubriously after a long silence (they have all been long silences this long afternoon).
“If he likes Helen, you may have your Naseem back again.” This is me now, some half a flagon later. There are already two empty at my feet, rimmed with sozzled ants.
“No. It is finished. I can never approach her now.” He tips his head back and his brown throat engulfs another flagon. “To be a mare's slave! I cannot even look at her now.” (I'm wondering now whether the Emperor had caught an inkling of the giant's love for Naseem. Perhaps not in the front of his mind, but at the back, in its cunning recesses. What if, with the corner of his eye, he has seen the giant watching the Berber princess, glimpsed the depths of devotion in his eyes? How keen that would have made him to bed the bint.)
“I have been thinking.” Me again some hours later: maudlin, slumped sideways against my friend. “I have been thinking I should marry Batoom.”
IT IS DARK NOW. I DO NOT KNOW what to do with myself.
If she had not come to me that night, if she had not unbuckled the armor I wear around my heart, I would be better able to bear this.
All my thinking life there has been this wee red crab crouched within my chest. I know not how it came there, or when. Perhaps in my cradle, looking up in my innocence for the love that is every wean's due, and finding consternation, revulsion instead. Perhaps then was when my shell first began to form.
The other weans called me “Mudskipper,” for my wee arms and bulbous head, my scrabblings on the mud flats with my mother. And they all so perfect—the least of them, the ugliest of them—all so graceful and long-limbed, compared with Mudskipper, whose blood-mother had tossed him back in the sea.
A mudskipper has no shell or claws; its entrails spurt onto the sand when it is stepped on. But all the while, deep inside, there was a wee Cancer in the making. Segment by segment, layer by layer, on went the armor around my heart. And so I have been ever since. Until the sight of a blunt thumb on a white pebble unshelled me.
Chapter 35
THE EMPEROR WAS SITTING ON THE FLOOR WHEN Malia ushered Helen into his apartment. There was a tray of some reddish fruit in front of him.
“The first durra-ens of the season,” he announced, waving Malia away.
“Come and taste—Aziza, isn't it? Who chose that name for you? It means ‘beloved,' did you know? Here, sit beside me.” He peeled a swath of downy red skin away to reveal the yellow flesh underneath. “See how easily it comes away? That means it's perfectly ripe.” He unsheathed a long silver dagger from his belt and sliced a crescent of flesh from the fruit. Impaling it delicately on the tip, he held it out toward Helen's mouth.
She flinched away, staring at the blade. “Don't you trust me, Aziza?” His eyes were mocking. “Are you afraid I will cut off your nose? But why would I want to do that when it's such a pretty nose, with all these small golden flecks?”
“I'm sorry, my lord.” She bit into the fruit and sweet juice dribbled down her chin.
“Here, let me—” He leaned forward and caught the dribble on his finger. “You see, perfectly ripe,” he said, holding his finger to her lips.
Helen hesitated and he drew his breath in impatiently. “I ordered Fijil to send you away,” he said. “Did he tell you?” She shook her head and licked the juice off hurriedly. “No, I thought not. You know, I could have had him executed for that. But when I saw you this morning, I was glad he'd disobeyed me. I hope you won't make me change my mind.” He finished the durra-en and held his sticky hands out expectantly.
Helen glanced around the room: Where were the slaves? He must have sent them away when she'd arrived. Spying a bowl of water nearby, she scrambled quickly to her feet to fetch it.
She knelt beside him with her head bowed while he washed. Was it the same bowl he'd kicked over when she was here before? She squeezed her eyes shut to block out the memory. He mustn't send her away this time.
“Would you like to bathe properly, my lord?” she asked cautiously. “It is such a warm evening, perhaps it would cool you.”
“I see you've learned some manners at last.” He smiled at her solemnity. “Yes, Aziza, I would like to bathe. I would like everything. Let's see how well you've been taught.”
He led the way into an adjoining room, where wall lamps reflected back from three separate mirrors and the tiled floor sloped into a neat gutter. Several pitchers of hot water were waiting ready, along with the usual giant cold-water jars. Kicking off his slippers, the Emperor strode into the center of the room and held his arms out toward her.
Helen stared blankly at him for a moment, then understood: He was waiting for her to undress him. Kneeling, she took hold of the hem of his djellabah. “Be quick,” Batoom had warned her, when they'd practiced this before. “It's not dignified for the Emperor to have his head tangled in his clothing.” Pulling the djellabah swiftly up over his head, Helen found herself staring at his naked chest.
The hair there was even thicker than she'd imagined. A sleek pelt of black, almost obscuring the skin, tapered down in a broad “V” toward his waist. Additional tufts sprouted from his shoulders and upper arms, and a strong smoky scent seeped from thick wads in his armpits. Helen felt she couldn't breathe. Her head seemed a long way from her hands. She watched her fingers untying the knot in his salwars and letting them fall to his ankles. He stepped out of them and she knelt to whisk them away.
Dear God, he was naked. A smell of damp leather came from between his long toes. The bones of his ankles were bald as crows' eggs. Fetching the stool for him, she began busying herself with the water, mixing it to the right temperature as she'd been taught.
“So tell me, Aziza—” He was sitting down now, relaxed and elegant with his knees apart and his hands on his long hairy thighs. “How are Moorish men different from Christians?”
“In the body, sir?” Why was he asking? Helen lathered soap in her hands and began working it into the hair on his chest. “I think the men here are browner and of a more even color,” she began carefully. Was he playing with her? Trying to trap her into insulting him? “Where I come from, the men are white on their legs and bellies, where the skin never sees the sun, and red or brown on their arms and faces. And their hair can be of any color: yellow, brown, red, black. Moorish men all seem to have black hair.”
