Page 40 of A String of Silver Beads (The Moroccan Empire #1)

Yusuf’s warm hands slipping over my body, his hardness melding with my softness, his sudden unexpected laughter and his smell, of horses and leather. His smile, his face at prayer.

My two lost children, the red, red blood creeping down my thighs and the sinking pain of helplessness.

My third child gone from me when I had only held him, smelt him, fed him once.

Zaynab. The blackness of her eyes, clothes, tent, deeds.

Darkness.

***

It is dawn when I stagger to Zaynab’s rooms. My heart seems to beat loudly in my chest, and I falter, hesitating at each step or uneven surface in the tight streets, for every time I put my foot down it does not seem to touch the floor.

I sway as I walk. People draw away from me, whispering.

The amir’s wife, swaying as though drunk, her eyes rolling back or even closing as she walks, clutching at anything close to her hand as she tries to take a few more steps to her husband’s house.

Some of Yusuf’s servants see me. The guards hurry forward and take me inside, away from prying eyes, calling for Yusuf.

But I stop them, asking instead to be taken to Zaynab’s rooms.

Two of the guards almost have to carry me up the tight stairs to Zaynab’s own bedroom.

Once there, they sit me down on a thick rug piled high with cushions, facing her great bed.

They bring water and food, which they offer me, perhaps thinking my faintness is through fasting.

I refuse and ask instead that they bring Zaynab to me at once. They look doubtful but obey me.

I wait and look around me. Zaynab has recreated her great tent here.

The walls are white now, the plasterwork intricately carved with the names of Allah, with passages from the Holy Book.

The floor is a thousand thousand tiny chips of tiles, making up a simple geometric pattern.

There are great wooden chests against the walls, but they are unpainted or painted only with the simplest of flowers.

Their wood, however, is precious. Cedar, ebony and citrus wood are used as inlays.

The room is austere at first glance, dazzlingly complex and costly when looked at again.

Her great bed is the same. It still smells of power and sex, of ambition and lust. It is glorious and frightening. I cannot keep my eyes away from it.

I smell her before I see her or hear her, that strange perfume she wears wafting towards me as she comes up the stairs.

I hear the soft rustling of her silk robes, the gentle tread of her fine leather slippers on the steps.

I close my eyes and wait, a wave of fear washing over me.

When I open my eyes again my fingers are crushing a silken pillow and Zaynab is seated on her bed opposite me, looking down on me with interest, as though I am a rare specimen of some strange beast from foreign lands, brought here for her amusement.

She sits on the edge of the bed, her feet tucked neatly under her long lean thighs, her black robes draped becomingly all around her.

Her slippers lie to one side, discarded.

Her hands lie loosely in her lap, and she leans forward, her elbows resting on her knees.

We gaze at each other until I moisten my dry mouth and speak.

“What have you given me, Zaynab?” I ask.

She looks at me in silence.

I go on. “I thought the perfume was from Yusuf, but now I know it was from you. It does strange things to me, I see visions of terrible things and I hear things I do not wish to hear. My feet stumble and I feel that I might fly like a great bird if I were only to leap from my window. I talk and talk, telling all that is in my heart, no matter who is listening. I feel light, and then the colours grow so bright they hurt my eyes until I grow afraid.”

She gazes at me silently as though I speak a foreign tongue. Then she frowns, straightening up as though she has much to do. She speaks briskly.

“You are stronger than I thought,” she says.

“I thought if you rubbed it in day after day, thinking to please your husband –” she allows herself a quick smile “– that you would surely die. But you seem to be stronger than that. The man who sold it to me showed me what only a few drops would do to an animal.” She smiles. “It was unpleasant, but quick.”

I shake my head. “Why do you hate me so much, Zaynab?” I ask in despair.

“I have not tried to fight you. I want only to help my husband succeed in his mission, to bear him children, to build a great country. Yet you treat me as your greatest enemy. What more can I give you? You have taken my husband. You have taken my children – one from my womb, one from my arms –”

Her eyes narrow to slits and she closes the space between us with a single leap. I see a cloud of black silk flying through the air and draw back with a shriek. Her hand comes quickly across my mouth to silence me. When she is sure I will be quiet she withdraws it and brings her face close to mine.

“ Taken your second child?”

I gasp. “He is dead.”

She shakes her head. “You said I took him. He is alive ?”

I shake my head slowly, terrified. Zaynab stands, looking down on me, then reseats herself on her bed as though she has all the time in the world. She smiles, a loving, kind smile.

“He is alive. That is why you stopped your grieving so soon. Where is he? Your son . Ali. Where is he? He is alive somewhere in this city. Not with you, I know that.”

I tighten my lips.

“No matter,” she says, still smiling. “I will find him. I know what a son of Yusuf looks like, for I have my own. Soon he will be Yusuf’s only child.”

I whimper, unable to stop the sound.

Zaynab relaxes. “So. I need to find your son. Then I will simply… watch you. I have spies everywhere. I will know when your womb is filled, and I will kill all your children, one by one, whether in your womb or in your arms. I will not trust my servants again, not even Hela; I will do it myself. In time everyone will know that you are barren and that your children do not live long. Who would want such a wife? What ill-luck. Yusuf will set you aside, or perhaps being such a pious man, he will simply send you away, to live alone in one of his many cities. Who knows?”

“Why?” I ask.

She shrugs. “You are a threat to me,” she says. “You diminish my own status. I will be Yusuf’s only wife.”

I hold out my hands to her. “Why did you even let me come here?” I ask. “Yusuf sent for me. You could have arranged it so that I never received the message, so that I was killed by bandits. Why let me come?”

“I thought you were old and barren,” she says as though it was obvious.

I frown. “What made you think that?”

“Yusuf said you had lost a child in the first months of your marriage. I thought you had lost it naturally. It was only later that he told me about the camel. I thought you were much older than you are. I thought you would come here, a poor simple desert woman, withered and barren. That you would be no kind of competition to me.” She gestures at me.

“Then you arrived. Ten years younger than me. Beautiful. Innocent to the point of foolishness. Dressed in your bright robes, your shining silver. His first wife. He spoke of you with tenderness, your trading skills, your vision matching his for the future of this land. Your womb filled with life so quickly, so easily.”

I rise, unsteady on my feet and look down on her. “I am leaving, Zaynab. You have tried to poison me. No doubt you will try again. What do you want – my life in exchange for my son’s?”

She smiles. “I might consider such a bargain,” she says.

***

My son is alive. Zaynab knows this now and I know that she will not stop until she has found and killed him, this time with her own bare hands.

If I were dead, Zaynab might let my son live. She might believe that with my death his identity will be lost. If I am gone, who can name him as Yusuf’s heir? And who can prove it if his mother cannot vouch for his paternity?

I shake my head as the darkness comes closer. I must think.

I could take Zaynab’s poison in a larger dose and surely die. Then she might spare my son.

***

That evening Yusuf calls me to him. Zaynab sits by his side, and I try to avoid her gaze, keeping my eyes fixed on him alone.

“When Fes falls, as it will shortly,” he begins, “there will be a time of rebuilding, of making it into a great city. But we have many men, and it will not take long. One of the buildings that I will order to be constructed will be a great palace where I will take up residence in due course, for there will be many campaigns in the north. I must be able to be closer to my generals when they set out to conquer new lands.”

I steal a quick glance at Zaynab. She rules Murakush with an iron grasp. Will she take kindly to moving to a new city?

Yusuf continues. “It is my wish that when I move to Fes my two wives will accompany me. You will both live within the palace, for I wish all my family to be together under one roof. In this way we can share meals together and welcome guests together. You will of course have your own rooms within the palace,” he adds.

“Zaynab has requested that you and she have your rooms close to one another, for she believes that as sisters you will draw on one another’s strength and love to become used to a new city. ”

I feel my heart sink. I am certain that I have escaped many of Zaynab’s plots and schemes on a day-to-day basis by living in a different building, and even so she has managed to do me more damage than I would have thought possible.

What could she do to me if we were under the same roof, her servants preparing my food?

How much easier it will be for her to poison me, to blame an unlucky slave perhaps, who might be killed for having dared to harm me, while Zaynab looks on and weeps false tears for her ‘sister’.

I shudder inside but keep a smile on my face as I answer Yusuf.