Page 16 of Do Not Awaken Love (The Moroccan Empire #3)
Terrible as an army with banners.
I am laying out herbs on the airy rooftop to dry them, turning each bundle, each leaf and flower every day under a shaded awning, to avoid them turning musty.
The awning shelters them from the too-hot sun which would diminish their powers.
I hear footsteps and panting, and Aisha joins me.
She drags me away from my chores to the edge of the rooftop.
“They say an army is coming,” she says, pointing beyond Aghmat’s city walls.
I look out at the empty plain and then back at Aisha. “An army? What do you mean, an army?”
“The Almoravids!”
“Who are they?”
“Desert warriors,” breathes Aisha. “From the south.”
“Should we be afraid?”
“They tried to cross the mountains before, years ago, but they failed. But now they say there are more of them, and that they have a greater leader, named Abu Bakr.”
“If they failed before, it is likely they will fail again,” I say, exasperated with Aisha’s gossiping. “I have work to do.”
But it is not long before fear spreads in the city.
The Almoravids have succeeded in crossing the mountains.
It seems that their new leader Abu Bakr is indeed a strong man, and word has it that his second-in-command, a man named Yusuf, is also a redoubtable warrior and leader of men.
Their army has taken Taroundant, a strong city, a city almost as big as Aghmat.
Suddenly armed men are everywhere in the streets. The Amir’s army prepares for battle, we see guards and soldiers in the streets, we hear of their preparations, the armourers in the markets deafen passers-by with their hammering, sharpening swords and fashioning spears.
“King Luqut will beat them,” says Aisha, with certainty.
“How can you be sure?” I ask. “Everyone says they are stronger this time.”
“He had better beat them,” says Aisha, looking less certain. “No woman will be safe if an army conquers this city.”
I think that anyway, no woman is safe in our own household, considering the Master’s behaviour. I want to say that I will take my chances with a new army, although I know that this is nonsense. A conquering army, soldiers, will certainly be worse than a single man.
“Well, there is nothing we can do,” I say. “It is God’s will what will happen.”
“Allah be praised,” says Aisha. “I give thanks that we have a strong Amir; he will protect us.”
We hear whispers, rumours, gossip, nonsense.
But at last, there comes a day when the nonsense becomes truth.
The Amir and his army are heading out to fight the Almoravids.
He is a fearsome warrior, this land is his, he knows it well.
He has a strong army; there is no reason why he should lose the coming battle.
Still, I find myself whispering prayers under my breath as I work, praying for this heathen king to defeat the coming army.
I should not care what happens to him, but certainly if he loses, I and all of this household, this city, will be at risk.
The city withdraws into itself. People retreat to their houses, close their shops, the market falls silent.
We gather on the rooftops, straining our eyes to look out over the plain to see anything, though we can see nothing.
The army rides out at dawn. Aisha and I buy food at the market, as always, but there are only a few stalls open.
The main shops are shuttered, the merchants are hurrying either back to their own homes or to places of safety, herding their animals with brisk shouts.
One by one the gates set into the high city walls close, pushed to by guards who stand waiting, hoping to welcome our army back into the safety of the city, once they have defeated the Almoravids.
Darkness falls. The Master is still away on a trading trip and we are unsure whether this is of benefit to us or not.
For once, perhaps, we would have liked to have had a man in the house.
If, God forbid, Luqut is defeated, what will a conquering army do to a houseful of unprotected women?
We stay inside, keeping only a couple of lanterns with us, but first one and then another of us hears a sound, looks to the others to see if they, too, can hear it.
It is a low sound, so far away that it is hard to hear it.
We can only feel it, as though it were a heartbeat.
It comes again and again and again, like a heartbeat indeed.
We look from one to another and when it becomes clear that all of us can hear it, we make our way up the stairs, moving towards the windows, which we dare not open, looking upwards to the stairs which would take us to the rooftops, which we dare not ascend.
It is a beat. It comes regularly, repetitively, so deep that it sounds in our bellies and our feet rather than in our ears.
“What can it be?” whimpers Dalia, shoulders hunched, making her smaller than usual.
“Drums,” says Aisha in a whisper.
“Drums?”
“The Almoravids carry drums in battle,” she says. “They will drum all night and all through the battle, however long it lasts.”
They do. The beat continues, coming closer and closer, until it feels as though even the city walls must be reverberating. In the darkness of the night, Aisha and I open a shuttered window one tiny crack and hear the sound come louder.
“They must be just outside the city walls,” I say, horrified.
“The Amir must have retreated,” says Aisha, squatting on the ground. She sits in grim silence for a little while. “If they storm the city, we must find a way out of here,” she says.
“There is no way out,” I say. “If a conquering army enters the city, we are all dead. Or worse,” I add.
She nods and is silent for a while longer. “We could dress as men,” she says.
“Then they will sever our heads from our bodies,” I say.
One by one, the other women of the household find us, seeking us from room to room. When they do find us, they huddle on the floor, robes wrapped around cold feet, in terrified silence occasionally broken by small whispers to one another.
The drums continue all night. When dawn breaks, there is no call to prayer, its absence deafening.
Still the drumbeat goes on. The city walls have not yet been breached, but the drums are so close that we know that Luqut’s army must be failing, that the men of Aghmat, the husbands and sons, fathers and brothers the city sent out to battle, are being killed, one by one.
We relieve ourselves in a pot and carry it at night down to the courtyard.
We take furniture from other rooms and push it against the door of the room in which we are huddled.
The seven of us wait, certain of a hammering at the gate below, certain that the door of this room will be shattered open, to reveal the Almoravids, these unknown and powerful desert warriors.
We do not even know what they look like, although Maadah says that she has heard that they wear only dark robes, carry shields almost as big as themselves and that all the men veil their faces.
Although there are plenty of local men who veil their faces, somehow the thought of conquerors whose faces we cannot even see is more frightening than if they were to show themselves.
In the end it takes three days and three nights.
By the third day, the city walls are breached.
We hear running and shouts, screams of people dying, both men and women.
We hear things being broken, whether by the city people throwing things such as pots to protect themselves or deliberate damage being caused by the conquering army.
It is clear that we are overrun, that our army has lost, and that we are now in the hands of the Almoravids.
We no longer dare to leave the room in which we have locked ourselves.
We relieve ourselves in a pot which has a lid, but as the hours go by without emptying it, the room begins to smell fetid from the waste of our bodies and our stale breath, tainted with our growing fear.
Sometime in the late afternoon, the room grown hot, our bellies crying out with hunger, our mouths dry with thirst, we hear shouts from the streets.
Not shouts of panic, as we heard before, but rather announcements, orders.
We stand close to the shuttered window and hear, over and over again, that there is a curfew being placed over the whole city.
No one is to leave their houses after darkness, on pain of death.
“Will we be safe tonight, do you think?” asks Maadah. “Can we leave the room once darkness falls?”
None of us are sure. On the one hand, perhaps the curfew means that our conquerors will leave us alone, so long as we obey their rule.
On the other hand, perhaps they wish for all of us to be shuttered in our houses so that they may visit each house in turn, take what they want, rape and loot at will.
Perhaps it is convenient for all of us to be immured within our walls. Perhaps they wish to burn us to death.
But night comes and the streets are silent.
After much whispered debate, Aisha and I push open the shuttered window and look down into the street below, holding ourselves back a little, afraid of being seen.
In the dark night, there is little light in which to see anything, but there is a dark shadow at the end of the street, holding a tall spear.
It stays motionless, even when we watch it for some time, and at last we can only surmise that it is an Almoravid guard, that there are guards set all over the city tonight to ensure curfew is being respected.
The open shutter allows in some fresh cold air, which all of us gulp in greedily, taking turns to stand close to the window, tiptoeing across the floor to exchange places.