Page 24 of Do Not Awaken Love (The Moroccan Empire #3)

Jealousy… the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.

I am preparing Yusuf’s food when the tent darkens. I look up and see Hela, Zaynab’s handmaid, standing in the doorway, blocking the light.

“My mistress sends a drink for your master, to be taken with his evening meal,” she says. Her voice is deep for a woman.

“What drink?” I ask, standing to face her.

“This,” she says, holding out a wooden cup. It is worn, perhaps it used to be red once but much of the colour has been rubbed away with time.

I don’t reach out for it. “He only drinks water. What is it?” I repeat.

Her mouth twists a little, as though she is suppressing a smile. “Ah yes,” she says. “You are trained in herbs. Perhaps you can tell what it is for yourself.”

I reach out and take the cup. For a brief moment I hear what I think is a sigh, feel a heat within me, rising upwards.

I would let go of the cup, but Hela has already released it, it would fall and break if I did so.

She is watching me closely. I smell the contents, then set the cup against my lips.

“Careful,” she says.

I allow the liquid only to touch my tongue.

Hela watches me. “Well?” she asks.

I frown. “Houseleek? Cow parsnip? Lady’s Mantle?”

Hela smiles. “And more.”

I hold the cup back out to her. “These inflame lust,” I say.

“Indeed,” she says.

“My master has no need of this remedy,” I say.

Her eyebrows raise up. “Is that so? Are you speaking from experience?”

I can feel heat rush to my cheeks. “I have taken holy vows of chastity,” I say.

She nods. “So I understand. Then you will hardly object if my lady wishes your lord to drink this before their marriage. It can be no concern of yours, what goes on between them.”

“Take it away,” I say.

She shakes her head. “Give it to him each day when I bring it,” she says. “I will know whether he has drunk it or not. If you do not give it to him, I will. And I will make it stronger. Tell him it is from Zaynab and he will drink it.”

I want to refuse, but I am afraid of both Hela and Zaynab.

Of what they could do to me, if they wished.

I am a slave, they could get rid of me in an instant, on no pretext at all.

I think that perhaps if I give this lust-inducing drink to Yusuf myself I could also lessen its powers. “Very well,” I say, reluctantly.

Hela smiles a slow smile that makes my skin cold.

“Thank you,” she says. “I will bring it each day until the wedding takes place, less than three months from now. You will return the cup to me each night.” She pauses, as though waiting for me to say something else, but I stay silent.

“Do not interfere with what you do not understand,” she adds, her face grave.

“I know herbs as well as you,” I say boldly.

“You are a gifted healer,” she says. “I know this. But there are other things you do not understand.”

“Such as?” I challenge.

“Why I serve Zaynab. Why Zaynab desires your master. What the…” she pauses, looking at the cup I am holding, then swallows, as though suddenly afraid. “…What the drink may do if you interfere with it,” she finishes.

“I have agreed to what you want me to do,” I say. “You may go.”

She does so without speaking further and I am left holding the cup at arm’s length.

Yusuf will be back soon and, in an effort, to diminish the power of what Hela has made I add plantain, which can cool a man’s lust, to a syrup of pomegranates and dates I already possess.

I wonder, as I do so, why Zaynab wishes to increase Yusuf’s lust. It can only be because she does not believe he actually desires her.

I find some comfort in this. One cannot simply increase a man’s lust for a woman he does not already desire, love philtres are only nonsense, as Zaynab will no doubt discover for herself.

I am about to pour away half of the cup’s contents and add my own mixture to refill it, when I hear footsteps and, fearing Yusuf’s approach, I hold the cup to my lips and drink half of its contents myself, then hastily stir in the syrup.

The drink will be warm rather than cool, but I cannot help that.

I give Yusuf the cup. I tell him it is from Zaynab and hope he will refuse it but instead he takes it without question and I watch him drain it, although he makes a face at the excessive sweetness and follows it with water while I hurry to serve his evening meal.

Night comes and I cannot sleep. I try to say my prayers, to still my mind and yet all that comes to mind are my over-keen senses.

I can hear Yusuf turn first one way and then the other in his bed, can hear his breath as it rises and falls, smell the scent of him in these close quarters.

Images run through my mind, of Yusuf when he laughs, of how his eyes, which seem so dark on first sight, hold within them tiny glints of golden brown next to darker tones, which are only noticed in the sunlight.

How his eyes crease at the corners when he is amused, how his mouth, which I have never seen, hidden as it always is under a veil, must curve when he smiles.

The glimpses I have had of an ankle, a calf, of his forearms, which are sinewy with muscles, when he reaches out to me to take food or drink.

My mind will not let go of these images; it will not let me sleep.

In my mouth I can taste the drink that was in the cup and I wonder, if Yusuf’s lips were set against mine, if our mouths would taste the same.

I turn away in my bed, clasp my hands together even as I lie under the blankets and pray for God’s help in setting such sinful thoughts aside.

But God is not listening. I wonder whether He has stopped listening to me forever or whether, if I were to somehow atone, if He would make His voice heard again, find a way to set my feet back on a righteous path.

I am trying so hard to pray that I am startled when I hear Yusuf rise from his bed in the darkness.

I think that he may be going outside to relieve himself but instead there is a long silent pause.

I am about to turn over and see what he is doing when I hear him move again and then feel his hand on my hair.

I freeze. Yusuf has never touched me, never allowed more than a finger to brush mine by accident if I pass him a dish of food.

Now his hand is on my hair and he is stroking my cheek.

My heart is beating so hard I think he must hear it.

And then, just when I think that I cannot pretend to be asleep, I hear him curse under his breath and his touch is gone from me.

I hear the tent flaps draw apart and when I roll over, he is gone into the night.

In the morning, when there is a cool breeze and Yusuf has left the tent, I try to pray.

I kneel; I fold my hands together. I try to pray, and nothing comes.

Nothing that would be acceptable to God.

All that comes, unbidden, are images in my mind and sensations across my body.

I close my eyes so tightly I see stars; I clasp my hands so fervently my knuckles turn white.

And yet all I feel is Yusuf’s touch on my hair and cheek, and all I see are his eyes.

When I take deep breaths, trying to still my beating heart, all I smell is his scent, too well-known to me.

I stay on my knees as the sun rises and sets, and still, I cannot pray.

Still, I feel his hand upon me, I smell his scent.

And then I smell something else. Something that reminds me of myself, the smell of herbs and roots that lingers around a healer.

“You must not drink from the cup.”

I nearly scream. I open my eyes and stumble backwards, ending up on my behind, looking up at Hela, who is standing in my room, without my having heard her enter.

She regards me with her large dark eyes, her emotionless face.

I clamber awkwardly to my feet, so that I may face her. “What are you doing here?”

“You must not drink from the cup. It is not intended for you.”

“I know that you are trying to drug my master,” I say, trying to regain my dignity.

“Do not interfere. The drink is a matter between my mistress and your master.”

“How can it be a matter between my master and your mistress, if my master does not know what he is being asked to drink?”

“He desires her. The drink will only enhance what is there already. As you already know.”

“I know only that you have made a love potion for my master, that you intend to make him drink it every day, without his knowing.”

“And I know that you drank from it,” she says.

“How would you know that?”

“I know.”

“How?”

She does not answer. Instead, she reaches out her hand and touches mine, only for a moment, her fingers cool. She nods, as though this has told her something, as though I have spoken to her.

“What?” I ask.

“You burn for him,” she says. She speaks as though what she has said is of no consequence, as though it were simply a statement of fact.

“I have taken a vow of chastity,” I say. But even as I speak, I can feel the heat in my cheeks.

“Then stop drinking from the cup,” she says. “You are only making your own life harder; your vows will be impossible to keep if you continue to drink from it.”

“You think you are so gifted with herbs?”

She shakes her head. “I am warning you,” she says. “Take heed of what I say.”

“Or what?” I ask, trying to sound bold. “What will you do to me?”

Her eyebrows go up. “I? I will do nothing. You are doing it to yourself.”

“Doing what?”

“Building up lust within yourself for a man who is not yours, for a man whose company you have forsworn. You say you have taken vows of chastity. The cup will make you break them, if you continue to drink from it.”

“Why do you keep saying ‘the cup’ will make me lust for him?” I ask. “It is what you have put in the cup that might lead me astray.”