Page 11 of Do Not Awaken Love (The Moroccan Empire #3)
Fair as the moon…
I am not sure how many days I have been in the room.
I have almost grown used to the silence, the small dark space, the unending prayers I offer up, having nothing else to do and no way of knowing what the outside world holds for my future.
I almost begin to think of myself as an anchorite, locked up forever to pray for the world’s sins, this tiny room my reclusory.
Perhaps it is a life I could grow used to, although I would miss my garden, miss tending both plants and people.
But I am only fooling myself with such ideas. Instead, after a handful of days, the door opens and rather than a quick silhouette appearing to bring me food and dispose of my waste, it stays open and I have to adjust my blinded eyes to the light streaming in, until I can see who has come for me.
There are two women. One is the black-skinned dwarf, behind her a sturdy older woman, wrinkled with age.
Behind the both of them towers a strange looking woman, taller than any I have ever seen before, her heavy shape lowering over the dwarf, making both of their heights more extreme through contrast.
The dwarf gestures that I should follow her. I shake my head. She shrugs and points to the tall woman, who takes a step forward, hands held in menacing fists.
I hold up my hands in submission. “I will come,” I say, my voice cracking from disuse.
I allow myself to be led through the doorway and along a narrow corridor. At the end of it is a fantastically painted door, bright colours swirled around a heavy metal handle. The giantess steps forwards and pushes the door open. We follow.
The room is dimly lit and hot, so hot that I gasp.
The air is thick with moisture, my lungs feel as though I am drowning with every breath I take.
I am reminded of the steam I would make my convent sisters breath in if they were afflicted with hoarseness and coughs.
The giantess lingers in the doorway for a moment but now that we are inside the room the dwarf waves her away and she closes the door behind her, leaving the room with even less light.
She has barely gone when the older woman has lifted my robe and shift over my head.
I clutch at them, but I am too late. Now I am entirely naked, standing before the women.
I hunch my shoulders and try to cover my nakedness with my hands, mortified.
I am about to speak, to request something to cover my modesty with, when a wave of hot water crashes over my head, overwhelms me, fills my half-open mouth.
I bend over double with the shock, coughing and spluttering as I seek to clear my lungs.
But another wave comes, then another. It takes me this long to realise that the older woman is throwing pail after pail of what feels like near-boiling water over me.
Even when I stand and turn to face her, my hands extended in front of me to make her stop, she does not cease.
She must throw more than eight pails of water at me before she stops, so that in the end I give up, eyes and mouth shut, trying only to remain upright in the face of her onslaught. I fail and sink to my knees.
At once she stops, but the dwarf, standing behind me, quickly has her hands on my head, rubbing vigorously across my scalp and then continuing over the whole of my body, much to my shame.
The sensation of hands against my bare flesh is shocking to me and at first, I push her away, but at last I realise that she will not be stopped, that I can succumb or fight but the end result will be the same.
The substance in her hands is a slippery kind of black soap, which has a strong smell, reminding me of olive oil when it is first pressed, the sharp fresh smell of the crushed fruit like fresh-cut grass at haying time.
She rubs this all over me and then takes a small rough cloth and proceeds to scrub me with it, so fiercely that I can see my own skin peeling away, the new skin beneath it scarlet with the heat and her rough treatment.
I feel faint. The heat, the drowning sensation of my lungs, the excess of sensation across my untouched body.
I stagger and the women catch me, then lower me to the floor, murmuring to one another.
I feel something hard scrape against my skull and realise they are shaving my head of what little hair had grown back.
I am happy for this, at least, to be done, it feels like the only familiar thing that has happened to me since I was taken.
When they are done, I lie on the warm wet floor tiles and hope that they have finished.
They have not. Now they crouch by my side and suddenly there is a ripping pain moving across my leg.
I shriek but the older woman holds me down.
I try to raise my head and see the dwarf doing something strange with a thread in her mouth and hands, moving back and forth across my leg.
It takes me a moment to realise that she is, with her thread, somehow pulling out all the hairs on my legs.
My head spins again and I have to lower it back to the hard floor.
I lie there, held by one woman while the other pulls out every hair on my legs.
When she has finished, I feel my shoulders slump in relief as the pain stops, before, to my horror, she begins the same work on my most intimate parts.
The pain is indescribable. I scream aloud and at once, a rough warm hand presses down over my mouth as the pain continues.
Then comes cold water, thrown over my prone and shaking body.
They roll me onto my stomach so that they can throw more cold water, then hoist me to my feet and rub a scented oil over every part of me, which I believe contains rose perfume in it.
They wrap me in a large cloth, which I clutch at.
I stare at them, seeking an answer for their behaviour in their faces, but they are busy with their work.
Now they lead me out of the darkness through the doorway and upstairs into an enclosed courtyard, with a bright blue sky above it.
I do not even think that I am half-naked except for the cloth, for I am still shaking with the cold, or perhaps with my own fear.
We pass quickly through the tiled sunny courtyard. I am in such shock from my treatment that I can barely see properly, only enough to stop myself falling as we ascend more stairs and find ourselves on the upper level, looking down on the courtyard. A door opens to my right and I am pushed into it.
The room is large. After my prison and the bathing room downstairs, it is so bright that I blink as I look around it. There are long drapes at the window, through which I can see rooftops beyond, yellow-brown layers of different heights.
A push on my shoulder leads me to sit. I look down and see that I am sitting on the edge of a large bed, covered with bright blankets. My bare feet rest on soft rugs. The room contains little else other than a large chest in carved wood.
The dwarf opens and then rummages in the chest, removing several garments in bright silks, scarlet and orange trimmed in tiny discs of beaten silver.
She holds them out but I only stare at her as though my wits have left me and so she stands before me and begins to dress me as though I were a small child, tugging at my limbs, pulling me upright, pushing me back down onto the bed.
The silks feel very strange, touching yet not touching, warming instantly to my skin as they slip over me.
One foot and then another is pushed into a yellow leather slipper and then after consultation with her older companion, a long piece of yellow silk is wrapped tightly about my head.
The feel of it, the knowledge that my bare scalp is once again modestly covered, as it should be, brings tears suddenly spilling down my cheeks.
The dwarf reaches out and wipes them away, making a grimace as she does so, whether a smile or a reproach I am uncertain.
The older woman dabs something on me and a strong smell of rose perfume fills the air.
The headwrap brings me such comfort I barely realise what the dwarf is now doing to my face, working with a little tray of pots and a pointed wooden stick.
She rubs and pokes, then there is a sudden sharp pain through one earlobe and, before I can think, another in the other earlobe.
I yelp, but she and the older woman only shrug me away.
When I touch my lobes, I feel a hard, dangling, circle and look down in disbelief at blood on my fingertips. They have pierced my ears.
Warily I look beyond my bloodied fingers.
Down at my waist, now encircled with a thick silken belt dangling with larger silver discs.
There is no mirror here, but I am horribly aware that I have been dressed as some kind of rich man’s fancy, in bright silks and chiming jewellery.
I touch my lips and see that there is a red paint on them, rub my eyes and see blackness on my knuckles.
The women tut at my actions and take pains to tidy up the damage I have done to the make-up they had applied to my face.
I slap at their hands, wipe my mouth against the silk sleeves I am wearing and note with satisfaction that the red smear will stain the orange silk.
I will not be painted like a whore, paraded in gauzy silks as though I were suggesting to a man what might lie beneath them.