The Fourth Queen, page 6
“My dear brother, you have cured me! All this talk of food has quite distracted me from my—er—trouble—” Whereupon he casts a dubious eye downward, to the folds of white cloth gathered between his thighs. And confesses that the winces I'd witnessed were the result of one of the women hoicking up her haik to inspect a tick bite on her ankle.
It turns out that our poor giant is like those men who, having lost a leg to gunshot or gangrene, are driven insane by a phantom itching of the absent limb. Likewise is Lungile tormented by a Lust he cannot assuage. It seems his tender goujons had been hacked off but scant weeks earlier and the rest of his immense body is still a-roiling in confusion. So his Horse still rears up at the sight of our fresh fillies, but there are no Sacks of Seed (as it were) on his Cart. What's more, the wretched Cart's as raw as a burst gumboil, and stings like stoury whenever the stallion stirs.
“I wake in agony every morning,” groans he. “Before my eyes are even open, I'm doubled over with the pain of it. Then again, numberless times during the day. If he'd put me to work in the kitchens it wouldn't have been so bad. But in the Harem! When I've been so long away from my own wives. Brother, I do not know how I will survive. Oh no—” and he creases up once more, clutching at his ankles with mammoth brown hands. “Quick, speak to me of food again.”
So I oblige and we proceed in this manner, alternating true conversation with inane extemporization on our native cuisines, until we are both hiccuping with laughter. And when the time comes to remount, I realize I have found me a friend in this crestfallen Colossus, the first man in four years who has reached through my ribs to touch my heart.
Since then we have journeyed together, me aloft on my mild-mannered white stallion, he alongside on foot, trailing his rangy nag by the rein (for I need hardly remind you how sitting astride would inflame his poor wound). Proceeding in this manner, our two heads are on a level, which gives ample opportunity for strengthening our acquaintance.
It seems he was trussed up like a monstrous chicken, after some tribal skirmish in his Nuban homeland, and sold off to a Berber merchant with a sullen dromedary to freight him across the desert to Marrakech. Polished up like best ebony, he was resold into the ranks of the Emperor's Black Guard. This battalion, or Bokhary, is the Emperor's personal army: ten thousand fierce tribesmen, dark as peat bricks and sturdy as oaks. He keeps them, much as your laird keeps his curs: to guard his house and savage his enemies. Aye, and breeds from them too, selecting several hundred on a whim, and mating them with the bulkiest slave girls his procurers can find. The giant cubs that are born are then taken into the army in their turn, and raised so that riding and fighting are all they know.
So how, I can hear you ask, did this proud member of the Bokhary transform to this glum gelding a-plodding by my side? It happened one morning late in March, when the Emperor summoned the Bokhary in order to select the few he wished to breed from. “He was surveying us from his horse, trotting between the rows with the Umbrella Bearers running behind to shade his head. Then he stopped suddenly—I can't remember why—and they ran straight into the back of his horse.”
I closed my eyes when he said this, and let my head fall forward into my mount's mane. The scene burned itself on my mind: the toppling Royal Umbrellas with their spokes tangled; the Royal Stallion rearing and trampling the tumbling green turbans; the Royal Person sliding backward, in a slither over his horse's tail.
“No one laughed. But it didn't make any difference. He remounted and ordered us to kneel. I fell to my knees as quickly as I could. But it wasn't fast enough. Or maybe I was too tall even when I was kneeling. Whatever the reason, it was enough for him to send for the tabibs.”
I saw Lungile's neck tighten. “He watched the whole thing, you know,” he went on through clenched teeth. “The cut itself, and after, when they smeared on that hot black stuff. He wanted me to beg for mercy, but I bit my tongue to stop myself screaming, and swallowed the blood, gulp after gulp of it, so he wouldn't know how bad the pain was.” He squared his shoulders for a moment, then slumped again. “You know, Fijil, sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I'd howled on my belly like a whipped dog. Maybe then he wouldn't have gone on to do the others.”
This is the Emperor, dear Reader, who makes Harem hinnies swoon. If you met him, you'd judge him the noblest man alive. Yet all our fates are predicated on his pleasure.
Chapter 11
NEXT MORNING, BEFORE THE SUN WAS HIGH, THE FAT Matron opened for business. As Helen and the others were finishing their breakfast, she surged out of her private room in her layers of striped silk and spattered scented water over the newly swept courtyard. Then she subsided in the shade of a tree and began painting her brutish face until a thick black line joined her woolly eyebrows together, her button eyes were ringed with black, and there was a neat circle of red on each cheek.
When she was ready, she nodded to the three brown women, who slapped the Scots lasses into silence and hustled them into one of the curtained rooms with the flock of little local lassies. Flies danced drowsily in the warm air above their heads as they crowded together in the dim space, straining their ears to discover what was happening in the sunny courtyard outside.
A pattern soon emerged: a knock at the outer door and a brief low-voiced exchange, then the clatter of bolts being drawn back and shot home to admit someone through the dark entrance lobby. Next came tea. Helen could hear it being prepared: chunks chipped off the boulder of loaf sugar; the clink of cups being set on the brass tray. When it was ready, the Matron would heave her great bulk through the curtain and squint down at them all crouching in the gloom. Raking her eyes over their upturned faces, she'd consider a moment before tugging someone to her feet to carry the tray out to her guest. Half an hour later the bolts would grate back again to allow the visitor to depart. Then the process would begin all over again.
To begin with, only the local lassies were chosen, and they fidgeted with nervousness each time one scrambled to her feet and disappeared out into the sunlight. After three had gone, Helen began to realize that none had come back. She stared at the remaining girls, but they seemed resigned rather than afraid. So she caught the eye of one of the brown women and pointed to the wee lassies, raising her eyebrows in a question and miming scrubbing the floor. Were they going to be housemaids?
The brown woman gave a bark of laughter and shrugged her big shoulders, then made a series of unmistakable rounded gestures with her two hands. They were to produce babies, the gestures said; as many as possible.
The Scots lasses stared at one another, shocked. “But they're just bairns—” Helen whispered in Betty's ear. “Better a wee wifie than a wee whore,” she whispered back. Still, there was something chilling about the image of a grown man's body rearing up over one of those plump little pigeons. What kind of man would want a bairn for a wife?
It wasn't until the next morning that the Matron ordered the first of the Scots lasses out into the sunlight. She chose the two whose gappy gums had so angered her when they arrived. Terrified, the two lassies clung to Helen and the others. But the brown maids, obviously used to this kind of reaction, calmly clamped flat hands over their mouths and yanked them to their feet by the hair. A couple of vicious pinches later they stepped meekly out through the curtain.
Helen craned her neck trying to glimpse the men they were going to, but the curtain dropped shut before she could see anything. Pulling on one of the brown women's blouse, she made the gesture she'd used before to mean “babies.” The big woman sniggered and shook her head; then formed a circle with the thumb and forefinger of one hand, and thrust the forefinger of the other roughly in and out of it.
The following day two more Scots lasses were sold together, followed, in less than an hour, by Betty, then the two fair-haired sisters, one by one. By midmorning Helen was the only Scots woman left.
She sat against the wall in the dim room, hugging her knees to her chest. She was on her own now. The thought flattened her lungs until her breath came in small gasps.
One of the wee lassies stroked her arm and passed her a dish of sweet-smelling red fruit. But Helen just stared straight ahead. There was a tiny hole near the bottom of the white curtain and her eyes seemed to be fixed on it. Betty had gone. Already she missed her blether and her buck-toothed grin; missed knowing she was there. She could see a leaf on the other side of the courtyard. Each time the curtain moved, she could see a different fraction of the bush outside. She tried to work out what kind of plant it was.
Soon some man would come and take her away. To a whorehouse by the port, perhaps. Then what? She tried to block out the images that crowded her mind: of nappy beards and brown teeth, hot tongues and hot meat slabbed inside her—
There: a flash of pink. It was a rosebush.
She stiffened suddenly. The bolts were being dragged back again. She heard the Matron gabbling a welcome. Then she noticed that the brown women standing by the curtain had become quite nervous. She sat up straighter, scanning their faces. A moment later the curtain parted and the Matron appeared. She was flushed and a kerchief trembled in her dimpled hands as she patted trickles of sweat on her cheeks.
A flurry of hissed orders sent one of the brown maids hurrying from the room. She came back carrying the purple dress.
Fear clogged Helen's throat when she saw it and she wrapped her arms tighter around herself. Then a thought struck her: Why were they dressing her differently from the others? Hardly daring to hope, she pulled urgently at one of the brown women's arms and made the sign that meant “babies.” The big woman nodded grudgingly and gave her a withering look. Her meaning was clear: Who'd take this much trouble over a whore?
FIVE MINUTES LATER HELEN STEPPED OUT through the curtain. The sun felt suddenly hot on the top of her head and beads of sweat sprang out on her upper lip. She looked down at herself: at the great swaying tent of purple silk around her hairless legs; the tight-boned bodice quivering with the thud of her heart. Shuffling clumsily forward in the stiff pointed slippers she'd been given, she stared across at the figures waiting beneath the tree, searching out the man who was to be her husband.
But no men were there. Just an old woman and an ugly wee boy of about seven, dressed in a long white shirt and baggy breeks. She frowned, puzzled. Perhaps the boy's mother had died and his father wanted to let him choose a new mother for himself.
The boy scrambled to his feet and bowed in her direction, whisking off a small red hat. Then he was walking jauntily toward her, rocking strangely from side to side on his bandy wee legs. It was then that she realized that it was not a boy she was looking at, but a man. Only a man like no other she'd ever seen, with a squashed face and swollen forehead and tiny shrunken limbs.
He came and stood before her, his bulging head no higher than her thigh, and reached out a small bony hand. Numb with horror, she looked down as he took hold of her hand and tilted his gargoyle face up toward it. His eyes were closed, his sandy-colored eyelashes trembling, as he brushed his lips gently along the tips of her fingers.
Chapter 12
Sallee, July 2, 1769
ALAS, I AM SMITTEN! A KIND OF BREATHLESSNESS PALPITATES MY breast and rustles my papers in my lap. I might have suspected the mal air, but these tremors have more of the bon about them. It is as though my senses had been unpeeled, like a bunch of wee grapes, and left quivering and wet as a pack of beagles' noses.
It came upon me all of a sudden at Madame Jasmine's today. We had gone there following a rumor that this was the source of some new white-skinned whores in Sallee's salons des divertissements. The Crone and I were growing anxious, vous comprenez. For though we had gathered ripe morsels of many colors for the Emperor's delectation, we were still lacking one sweet pale Ingredient. And he would have deemed it a flat pudding indeed if our recipe had not been leavened by the yeast of fair skin (for nothing is better calculated to make his dough rise).
So we arrive, and La Jasmine ushers us in, quite suffocating us in a pall of welcoming frankincense and then straightaway dousing us with orange water, as though our garments had actually been conflagrated by the smoke. Then goes she immediately into a great blether about the young French Countess she has been saving for the Emperor, naming a preposterous price, then ordering her Amazons to reach the merchandise out through a curtain.
And suddenly there she is, swaying gauche as a harebell, all decked out in some ghastly purple dress that La Jasmine must have ordered from an addled seamstress in the Jewish quartier. So I watch her shuffle forward in those pointed red slippers all the women here wear, smoothing down the dreadful dress with her hands, and I feel my throat start to ache with a tenderness I vowed I would never feel again.
She didn't see me to begin with, or rather she was blinded: first by the sun, which made her squint like a dazzled newborn; then by her expectation of finding some tall bearded Moor waiting to greet her. I swear I must have loved her even then, for I leaped up and bowed as low as a primping Englisher, cavorting like a stupid lapdog to entertain her.
It was in vain, of course, my pathetic puppying. She had already recoiled by the time I'd gamboled across the yard. And when I tried to greet her in the polite Moorish manner, her face became so suffused with revulsion that I was compelled to close my eyes.
Meanwhile Assayida Jasmine is clogging the very air with her chin-wagging, apologizing for the narrowness of the Countess's waist, claiming such a shape is the latest French Fashion, and so on and so forth, and on and on. But as soon as I touched the lassie's hand, I could tell this was no limp gentry paw. It was a working wench's hand I was holding, with strong fingers and broken nails, and an ingrained shadow of grime on the knuckles.
Then I heard her speak some few words, trying to communicate with one of the glowering madams at her side. Verily, I feared my heart would burst! For here were the long vowels and short consonants of my Homeland. I should have recognized that coloring immediately, for no Nation, I fancy, has ever produced that precise quality in the hair: a combination of red and gold strands, that is wavy and thick without being coarse; with skin like buttermilk and a cinnamon of unfashionable freckles.
Peggy Doig had that exact same coloration, and now I come to think on it, perhaps it is this that has unshelled my wee crab of a heart. For wasn't poor Peggy my first sweetheart? And aren't we humans just creatures of Habit, such that what excites the Boy continues to excite the Man? Why else would we be so enamored of a woman's breasts, when the purpose of our lusts should direct our attentions lower? We are but orphaned lambs sucking milk from a pig's bladder, fooled by a mere twist of dead ewe's wool tied around it.
So perhaps my fool's wool is this Scottish gold in the hair; though I must confess I never did get that suck I so craved. For pretty Peggy had an eight-month belly by the time I met her, and was so besotted with my brother James, who caused the swelling, that she scarcely noticed the concupiscent crab scuttling and sighing around her ankles.
She was blind, as this new lass is blind, to the gentle man that lives inside this gnome's skin. For what is a body except a clothing for the Spirit? And when we remove our clothes for the act of Love, do we not also hope to dissolve, for a few precious moments, this fleshly barrier which divides our Spirits one from another?
July 3, 1769
The lassie is sleeping: I peeped into her chamber just now and found her snoring softly nearest the wall, hunched away from the others. She seems none the worse for her sojourn in the Crone's chamber this morning, though the thought of that cruel talon clawing at her precious pinkness was almost more than I could bear.
I begged the Crone to spare the lass, but she was adamant, pointing out the wench is with child. “If you want the bint to come with us, I have to remove the other man's baby,” she says simply, and rattles her beady eyes curiously at me, no doubt wondering at my sudden concern. “But I'll be careful, I promise. The pain's fleeting.” And pats me with her bony mitt, and shuffles off to fetch the poor wench.
In my anguish, I nearly cast aside my resolution to keep my Scottishness a secret. For I have conceived of a Scheme to masquerade as a Moor until she has grown accustomed to my appearance. Now is too soon. I am too shocking. Later, perhaps, when she has ceased to loathe the sight of me, I shall surprise her with our common Heritage and hope to kindle something akin to liking in her heart.
If appetite is any indication, the Crone was true to her word, and the lass's recovery has been swift: I saw her put away a fair few handfuls of the mutton at supper (though she rejected the pigeon, on account, I surmise, of its being seeped in the bilious green argon oil so beloved of these people). Already she is supping like a native, digging into the bowl with the rest of the wenches and balling up the couscous with her fingers, before flicking it to the back of the mouth.
Your Moor abhors to touch his lips with his hands, due to a curious conviction that an ague is got by ingestion, by a sort of smearing of invisible matter from hand to mouth. Hence his insistence on distinguishing most obsessively between the functions of his two hands, such that the left is reserved pour les matières merdres and the right for everything else (Allah, of course, has two right hands).
Thus, at dinner, you will find your Moor sitting sideways-on to the great platter they all share, wrestling right-handed with fish bones and gizzard gristle, while his left dangles uselessly by his side. Indeed it is possible to perceive a definite withering in the left arm of your elder Moor, from a lifetime of virtual disuse, and a kind of petrifaction of the fingers into a cup-shape from scooping up the water he uses to sluice his nethers. Aye, they are a most cleanly race, washing as frequently and fervently as you might cross yourself in a normal day. Thus you can be sure that, however smirched be his soul, the Moor's arse will be clean when he meets his Maker.
