Page 21 of Do Not Awaken Love (The Moroccan Empire #3)

“You will see me every day,” she promises and she is true enough to her word, not a day passes but she comes to see me, even if only briefly, and I am glad not to have lost her altogether, I have come to think of her as a good friend.

“I am not sure there is a need for another slave,” says Yusuf to me after a few days. He has finished his evening prayers and is sharpening his sword, sat on his blankets on the floor of the tent. He still does not wish for a bed. “I have you, you are enough.”

I am not sure how to answer. I am uncertain of properness surrounding the two of us sharing this tent, alone together. I only bow my head in agreement with his decision and wait to see what will happen.

What happens is nothing, at first. Things go on as they did before. But slowly a new intimacy grows between us. Where before, Aisha and I would sit together sewing, weaving, cooking or only speaking together, now I am alone and Yusuf begins to talk to me, in the evenings.

“Tell me about the convent you lived in,” he says one evening.

I stiffen a little. I cannot imagine what a Muslim would want to know about living in a convent. I mention a few of the prayers, the readings that our Mother Superior would relate during evening mealtimes, but he waves this aside.

“I mean daily life,” he says.

And so instead I talk of the sparrows who nested in a crumbling wall in the garden, the herbs I planted and cared for.

The cool stillroom where I prepared and stored remedies, the pilgrims who came and went and the stories they told us of the outside world.

I tell him about Sister Rosa, the wheezing old nun who taught me everything I know and who died in my arms, all the remedies she had taught me useless at that last moment.

How she looked at me and smiled, as I busily ground some new attempt at a cure, how she reached out from her bed and took my hand away from the pestle and told me that it was time to stop, that she was ready to leave.

I feel my voice grow choked as I describe this and stop speaking.

“She was right,” he says, keeping his eyes steady on me. “There is a time to stay and fight, and there is a time to leave. And it is Allah Himself who must tell us which is which, for we are not always wise enough to know for ourselves.”

I nod and wait for my eyes to clear. “My name was Sister Juliana in the convent,” I tell him.

“And before that? As a child?”

I hesitate, then speak my Christian name, the name my mother and father gave me. “Isabella.”

He nods gravely at what I have shared.

“Tell me more,” he says. “Tell me of happy times.”

I tell him of spring, the plants leaping back into life, of summer, when the cool chapel walls were a blessing sheltering us from the heat of the day.

Of autumn, when we gave thanks for a good harvest and kept our hands busy with preserving.

And harsh winters, when we were warmed by the sense of sisterhood, of community.

He begins to tell me things about himself. He tells me of his life as a child, roaming the sweeping desert dunes far to the south. He tells me of joining forces with his cousin Abu Bakr and their realisation of what might be, when they succeeded where others had failed and took Aghmat.

“You do not have a wife?” I ask, wondering at my boldness in asking.

“I do,” he says, chuckling as though this is an amusement to him.

“Where is she?” I ask.

“On the other side of the mountains,” he says. “She will come here soon enough, but I would want a more comfortable life ready for her. She is very young, and I was afraid to bring her with me whilst there was a chance that I would fall in battle. I would not want anything bad to happen to her.”

“Who is she?” I ask, surprised by him describing a young woman.

“A runaway,” he says, chuckling again. “A girl from my own people, who lived a strange life as a child, dressed as a boy of all things, trading along the routes with her father and brothers. They tried to make her settle down and learn women’s skills, but she would have none of it.

She dressed as a man again and followed my army. ”

I stare at him. “How did you find out?”

He laughs out loud at the memory. “Oh, I saw her at once. I waited to see how long she would follow us, but when she’d been with us a whole day and night, I had to find out why.”

“Was she badly treated at home?”

“No, she was treated well enough. But she had a spirit for adventure that could not be contained.” He looks away, thinking about her, his eyes warm at the thought.

“I liked her spirit; I liked her desire for adventure. And I thought she would be safer with me than if she ran away again alone. I thought she might make a good wife when we founded a new kingdom. I married her then and there.”

I try to reconcile this severe leader with a man who finds a runaway girl amusing and takes her as a bride without further thought. “When will she come?” I ask, thinking that it will be strange to have a mistress instead of just a master.

“I will wait a little longer to send for her,” he says. “There is much to do here, and I want to be able to give her some attention when she does arrive.”

I want to ask what will become of me when she arrives, but I assume that I will be given a little tent close by and will serve both of them.

I wonder what she will be like, this woman from his tribal lands, this wayward adventurer who sought out a life of war and travel, of excitement, when I tried so hard to avoid such things, safe in my convent.

And yet somehow, we will have arrived in the same place, at the same time, finding ourselves living in a city of cloth that will one day turn into a city of towering rooftops, if Yusuf and Abu Bakr have their way.