The Fourth Queen, page 40
Chapter 66
June 12, 1770
I AM LONELY. I HAD BEEN WONDERING WHAT THIS odd feeling was, where the body seems to shrink in on itself, to something hard and tight yet with a void inside. Thus I am trotting around as usual, a perky puppet with tilty head and flicking hands, blethering here and there with the women. And all the time I can feel my shell thickening. The layers crust over as I scuttle from rock to rock, pool to pool. Soon I will be a crab again.
I believe it is the touch of human skin that keeps the Cancer at bay, that strokes light in and suffuses our souls with exuberance. And when we lack its healing light, Mother Nature must armor us, like the caddis does in its hotchpotch of a shell.
The armor protects, aye, but also repels the touches we need. So the crab becomes awkward in his movements, and barges and nips his fellow creatures, and cannot kiss without an unseemly muddle, and frights the bairns by being too rough, or irritates by maudlin softness—all for the lack of love's touch. I fancy my fingers are already stiffening to clumsy pincers. Soon I will be fumbling the simplest contacts, spilling my mint tea and clamping the Emperor's hand when I bend over it.
These last few days it has turned hot again. The sun, which has been unwonted gentle this Spring, peeping coyly from her lacy cloud collars, has today revealed herself a Tyrant Queen with a fierce white ruff. We are all prostrate before her on the hot tiles, while she thunders above us. Summer stretches into the distance, as far as the mind can see. My shell is dry; my eyes dull; my pincers heavy. I am weary, so weary of this place.
Helen I haven't seen: save in the garden of a Thursday, where she sits serene under her green awning, cool as a lily in the white silks she has taken to wearing. They are calling her the White Queen, as though Salamatu never existed. How short memories are in this place.
Perhaps it is the sameness of our surroundings that encourages such forgetfulness in the women; the sameness of the weeks, with their twin peaks: market day and garden day. So they live from week to week, focusing first on the perfect scarf which may appear by magic on some side stall, that will catch the Emperor's jaded eye. And each week, when the scarf fails, is a week consigned to oblivion; for will there not be another market in a few days? So History's record is crumpled and discarded, never to stain the blank parchment of Memory.
I have heard it said that fish cannot remember. So you may catch one and discard it over and over, and from the very same pool, until its lip grows ragged where you have wrenched out your jagged hook, and splits, and grows cankerous, until your hook will hold no more and the fish must butt forever, hopelessly mouthing at the thing that would ensnare it.
Thus are these shoals of women in the Emperor's loch, ever gaping for his hook, ever thrown back to the seething water. And each, when she is discarded, sinking lower, thinking: my legs are too short, my breasts too large, or too small, my lips too wide, my salwars the wrong color. And nothing else in their fishy minds save the hook, the hook ripped out, the dive back, the hook again.
So Helen is caught and hauled onto the deck. And is thrown back and caught again. When her scales lose their shine, she will be cast back again. But this time Mudskipper will not be waiting. His mouth is torn and sore. Mudskipper has found his button. He has found a way of remembering.
I HAVE JUST COME FROM THE EMPEROR. What a rage he is in! Like a bull in the holding stall with his nostrils red and his eyes bulging. It seems the incursions have begun along our southern border.
Batoom! Your garnets are turned to gunpowder, your malachite to muskets and spears. They have been unwinding the dulbends of each shrinking sheikh and hanging them, blood-heavy, from the minarets to flap as flags of their rebellion. Four kasbahs are fallen and looted, and others have sent riders galloping for help.
“Fijil, what do you know of this?” demands the Emperor when I appear. “They say the Emperor's wealth has furnished their weapons; that Queen Batoom sent her jewels to buy arms.”
“No one knew, Master,” quoth I, explaining her rooms were always kept locked and no one was allowed to venture inside.
“Jackal bitch!” shrieks he, but can find none to punish. So he must flail about, and kick his slippers across the room to make a slave scramble after them, and then kick the slave for looking ridiculous, and another slave for appearing shocked, and so on and so forth, until they are all cowering back against the walls with their knees trembling. But this inflames him the more until he is calling for the Royal Cutlass-bearer and would have had them beheaded like a row of thistle-tops had three high ruffians from the Black Guard not at that moment appeared at the door.
At which the Emperor whirls around, nostrils flaring, and sets to devising his counterattack.
I have never seen him in the guise of General before and it is a revelation. His cruel intelligence is perfectly suited to the role. Indeed, while his Lieutenants are there, and they are discussing the placement and provisioning of the troops, he is calm, as a bairn with a toothache is distracted by a favored toy. But as soon as the soldiers are gone, up his rage wells once more.
So now he falls to scrutinizing his apartment, and discovers that furnishings he found quite adequate yesterday now seem altogether too tawdry for an Emperor of his standing. And shouts for his carpenters and goldsmiths, and when they do not miraculously materialize, grows yet more restless until his eye falls again upon me.
“So there you are, Fijil!” carps he pettily, as though I had kept him waiting an hour or more. “I am minded to be married again. It is not good for an Emperor to have so few wives. And don't suggest one of the harridans in the Harem. I am sick of looking at them, with their stupid smiles and dog eyes. Go, find me some fit women. And get rid of Zara. I will not have it said I have a hag for a wife.”
So I am to go on another journey, almost to the day when I embarked before. The thought fills me with a kind of elation. To be out in the air again! To the mountains and the sea. How I long for the taste of salt on the wind. This is just the tonic I have been needing: the jolt of travel to crack my sad shell and shake some life back into me.
If I am brisk we may set off on the morrow. I will visit the bat Malia in her cave and urge her to rustle up her wings and hock up her sesterces. Thence to the stables to requisition the guards and check on my stallion. Perhaps this journey will cure me at last of my madness, peel its last few shreds from my mind. I will take Kath's button and my pimp's emerald. And my scribbler's tools, of course. I am John the Baptist setting off for the wilderness.
I shall not bid Helen farewell. Let her think of me one day, and want me, and discover I have gone.
Chapter 67
“HOW DARE YOU! WAIT UNTIL THE EMPEROR HEARS about this—”
It was early morning, after breakfast. Helen had never heard Zara's voice raised in anger before. Curious, she hurried across the queens' courtyard toward the older queen's open gate. Inside she saw one of the senior eunuchs standing with his feet apart and a great leather-bound ledger under his arm. Zara was barring the stairway to her dayroom, chin high, hands on hips.
“I'm sorry, Lalla,” the eunuch shrugged insolently. “But it was the Emperor himself who ordered—”
“So, what is this list you are speaking of?” Zara's five slaves were standing in a silent line against the wall, watching with wary eyes.
“An inventory of the contents of these rooms, Lalla, so that His Majesty can decide what he will allow you to take.”
“I don't understand. Where is Fijil? Does he know about this?”
“Fijil is occupied with other business. The Emperor has put me in charge of—”
“Of what? Stealing from the Empress of Morocco?” Zara squared her shoulders and tossed her head, but the eunuch ignored her.
“These samovars, for example.” The eunuch walked over to the kitchen and peered in through the door. “You will not need so many when you are in Tafilalt. And there are carpets. I have been informed that your storeroom is half-full of carpets.”
“They're mine, bought with my own money.” Helen stepped closer, suddenly alert. Surely she'd be allowed to keep her own things?
“And the jewelry, of course.” The eunuch jerked his head casually toward her chamber. “The Emperor will probably allow you to keep some of the smaller items.” Helen thought of the sapphires nesting at the bottom of her trunk, and her favorite emeralds. How many queens had worn them before?
Zara backed away and leaned against the wall. “I don't believe this,” she whispered.
“We will have to paint over these—er—markings.” He flapped a hand at the blue hands on the walls. “But that can wait until the rooms are empty. Have you decided which two slaves you are taking? If you can let me have their names, I can begin reallocating the others.”
Opening the big book, the eunuch walked purposefully into the kitchen and began opening cupboards. Zara began to follow him, then looked up and spied Helen at the gate.
“Aziza!” She hurried over, panic twisting her features. “Did you hear him? The insolence! He's going to take all my things. Talk to him. Make him stop.”
“He's only making a list, Zara.” Helen tried to speak calmly, but the scene had shaken her. “The Emperor wouldn't take back everything he's given you.”
“That's what I said! It's a mistake. The Emperor loves me. He wouldn't send me away with nothing.”
Helen winced. Surely she didn't think the Emperor still cared for her? When had she last looked in the mirror? “Why don't you send for Fijil?” she said, longing to escape. “He'll sort it out.” She began walking away, though her feet wanted to run. This courtyard was a crystal ball; she was being shown her future. She didn't want to see any more.
“He said we'd grow old together.” Zara scurried after her, tripping out words. “‘We will count our white hairs together.' I can hear him now. ‘For every white hair, I will give you a pearl.'”
Helen sighed inwardly and slowed down to let the other woman catch up with her. She cursed herself for getting involved. “Can you remember what happened when Lalla Salamatu moved to Tafilalt?” she asked. “Did she take all her things with her?”
“It's because he doesn't know. He's so busy, he doesn't know half the things his slaves get up to. You talk to him, Aziza. Please. Tell him what they're trying to do to me.”
“But if the Emperor ordered it himself—” Helen breathed in through her teeth, then out again slowly. It was finished. Couldn't she see? Why couldn't she just accept it and go quietly?
“He didn't! That khaleh's lying! He wants my things for himself.”
They were in Helen's courtyard now; Reema was rolling out the carpet and setting out a tray of tea. Helen paused, hoping Zara would take the hint and leave, but she knelt down under the jasmine and picked up the samovar.
“‘A pearl for every white hair,' he said. But look—” Zara snatched off her kerchief and ran proud fingers through the tufts of chestnut fur covering her skull. “See? Even after that illness. Not a single white hair.” Helen looked up reluctantly, not wanting to look too closely at the blotched skin and moth-eaten eyebrows. What she saw made her recoil: a fresh purple bruise covered one side of Zara's forehead.
“What on earth happened to your face?” she asked.
“My son—” Zara's indignation crumpled into tears. “The eldest one. Yesterday, when I saw him. He was so disappointed, you see. He'd set his heart on becoming Emperor. He blames me for—for—not looking after my appearance.” She began to sob untidily, plucking vaguely at her pockets for a kerchief.
Helen stared in alarm at her red eyes and swollen nose. How much longer would she stay? For one cup of tea? Two? She didn't want to hear any of this.
“He says he'll kill me if we're dispatched to Tafilalt. Please, Aziza. You're my only chance. Speak to the Emperor, please. Beg him to let me stay.”
Helen closed her eyes and let out a long breath. The poor stupid woman. She still thought she had a chance. “All right,” she sighed. Anything to make Zara leave. “Tonight, if he sends for me, I'll talk to him about it.”
AFTER ZARA HAD GONE, Helen felt exhausted. She felt as though she hadn't breathed properly for the whole of the visit. She was afraid of being infected by the cloud of ill luck that floated around the older woman. She didn't want to inhale it, didn't want to think of it going deep into her lungs. She was glad Zara was leaving.
An image of her bruised cheek came into her mind. What kind of son would strike his mother just for growing ugly?
She moved a hand down to her belly. She was sure her son would never—
If it was a son.
Perhaps it was a daughter, a bonny wee lass curled up.
Then she stopped herself. There would be no son or daughter this time. She had to get rid of her baby.
“IF YOU WANT IT DONE, it has to be now. I'm leaving in an hour and Allah knows when I'll be back.” Malia pulled the curtain closed behind her.
“What?” Helen stared at the old woman in dismay.
“The Emperor's asked for you again tonight, but I'll tell him you're bleeding. That will give you a few days to recover.” She dumped her bag onto the floor and crouched over it, rummaging. Helen imagined the claw hooking and prodding away inside her. Needling into her son, her daughter, and ripping it out of her.
“No.” She sat down on the divan and wrapped her arms protectively over her belly.
Malia sighed and sat back on her heels. “So. You decide. I can do it now, and it will be over in a few minutes. Or you can drink this potion.” She thrust a tiny vial of brown liquid into Helen's hands. “It will make you very sick, and if the baby is strong it may not work,” she warned. “And I won't be here to help you. Mind you drink it all. In a few days you should start bleeding. Otherwise—” she shrugged, like bones shifting in a sack.
“DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH in money and gifts I've given Batoom over the years?” The Emperor was pacing up and down, still in his daytime clothes, when Helen pushed open the double doors to his quarters that evening. “I had the Alim total it up. Enough to keep an entire army in weapons and food for six moons.”
He unsheathed a dagger and hurled it at the wall. “I can just imagine them laughing at me in their primitive villages: the Emperor who gave his wife money to buy guns for his enemies.”
Helen had never seen him hot angry like this before. Cool angry, yes, when someone was slow to obey. Irritated, often, at the endless fussing of his officials. But never furious like this.
“Calm yourself, my lord,” she said, smiling. “Will you let them intrude on your evening as well as your day? Come, sit beside me.” She put a tentative hand on his arm. His whole body was tense with anger, hard and unyielding beneath her hand. He raised his arm impatiently, shaking her off, and for a moment she thought he might hit her.
“That's what a Christian would do, isn't it? Swallow his anger like a bad oyster, then sit meekly beside his one wife, in full view of his neighbors in his stupid little house. You insult me, Aziza, to suggest the Emperor of Morocco should behave like this.”
“I'm sorry, my lord. I didn't mean—”
His eyes narrowed. “I know what I'll do. Send the Bokhary to each of their villages in turn, and steal their women from under their noses. They can rape the wives and bring the daughters back as wives. By the time they've finished no man in the province will know whether his children are his own.” He threw off his djellabah and began tugging his kamise over his head. “I'll show them what happens to people who laugh at the Emperor of Morocco!
“Last time I tried to be civilized—” he sneered at the word “—I married the princess Batoom to make peace with her father. I even fought her, in front of all her kinsmen, to prove I was a worthy husband. An Emperor fighting a woman! No wonder they're laughing. Well, this time there'll be no savage rituals. I'll take the daughters by force and make the fathers beg for peace. I'll make the bints slaves in my Harem.” He laughed suddenly. “How would you like to have a princess as a slave, Aziza?” He walked toward Helen and began undoing the buttons on her kamise.
Helen wanted to back away from him. “I don't know.” She looked into his eyes. They were glittering with anger and lust. Would he really send his men to rape all those women?
“Wouldn't you enjoy seeing a princess emptying your chamber pot?” He ripped open the last few buttons, then buried his hand in her curls. “Washing your clothes, combing this wonderful hair.”
“Zara came to see me this morning.”
“Yes, she came to me too, stupid bint.” He tugged off her kamise and threw it across the room.
“One of her sons has been beating her.”
“That would be Mahmud,” he chuckled affectionately, fingers busy on the sash of Helen's salwars. “He's a good, strong boy. I expect she was blubbing all over him. I felt like hitting her myself.”
“But you loved her once.” She felt cold.
“You've seen her. She has the face of a ghoul. What man could love a creature like that?” Tightening his fingers, he yanked her head backward so that he could kiss her throat. Helen could feel his teeth grazing her skin. His thing was prodding at her through his salwars.
She could feel herself closing up, tight as a mussel when the tide goes out. An urge to push him away began building inside her, making her bite her tongue with the effort of letting him back her across the room and down onto the divan, letting him open her with his knees and knuckle into her.
“You are tight tonight, Aziza,” he grunted, pushing in. “And dry,” pushing deeper. “Why is that?”
“I don't know.” His thing felt huge and hot, a red fist stretching her skin. “It makes me frightened to see you like this.”
Arms braced either side of her head, he began moving. “Like—what—?” He was smiling, timing the words, one for each thrust.
“Angry. Cruel.”
“And—how—would—you—have—me,—Aziza?—Soft—like—your—men?” His breath was coming faster. She was stinging, burning. “Is—that—what—you—want?”
