Page 33 of Do Not Awaken Love (The Moroccan Empire #3)

“A fair enough assumption,” she says. “But you know nothing of my own story. And I do not have the time to tell you. Only that my choices have not always been right. Neither in the past, nor more recently. I will only tell you this. That there is more to healing than you know, and that a woman like you, gifted with such skills, should know of it. And as for Yusuf…” She sighs.

“Try to put him aside in your mind. He is as drawn to you as you are to him, but Zaynab is a dangerous enemy. And besides, he needs her by his side, she is everything a leader needs to create a kingdom.”

“You serve her,” I say. “It is you who makes her dangerous.”

“I serve her for my own reasons,” she says. “Do not cross her, with or without me when I am gone. She has a past of her own and it has made her ruthless.”

“Is that all your advice?” I ask.

She is silent, as though thinking. “Love can be found in many ways,” she says at last. “And hidden in many guises.”

“I doubt you know what love is,” I say.

“Do you?” she asks.

“I am a Christian,” I say. “I seek to follow God’s teachings on love.”

“And what have you learned so far?” she asks.

I do not answer.

“Sometimes we have to learn for ourselves,” she says. “Not everything can be taught.” She struggles with her breathing for a few moments, I stand and watch her, uncertain of whether to help her, although when I step forwards, she waves me away. “You may go now,” she says.

The brightness outside her darkroom makes me blink, I stand, pondering her words.

I wonder what Zaynab will do without Hela by her side, whether she will grow more or less ruthless.

Is it Zaynab, who gives dark orders to Hela, or Hela who carries out Zaynab’s wishes no matter what it takes?

If Hela dies, no doubt we will all find out soon enough.

Aisha is waiting at the foot of the stairs.

“What did she say?” she asks.

“She was confused,” I say. “I believe she is dying.”

Within two days I am proved right, word spreads that Hela has died. Zaynab has lost her handmaid even as she has gained Fes.

We begin to shape our days a little more, to know what and when we should eat, when Ali will want to suckle and when he will want to sleep.

He is an easy child, content, and I marvel at this, after such an entrance to the world.

We prepare a little food for him, so that he may taste fruits and grains, he explores them, wide-eyed.

He chuckles at the smallest things, from a bird landing nearby to the sound of a spoon banging on a cup and Rebecca and I end up giggling at his antics.

It is not Yusuf who comes to tell me that I have a new house, but one of his men.

“Follow me,” he says, briskly.

I look back at Rebecca, nod to her and hurry after him, wondering what is going on.

“The Commander says you’re to have a new house,” says the man as we walk. “He says you’re his healer.”

I can hear doubt in his voice but do not correct him.

The man does not care, anyway, if his commander has a slave woman as a mistress, as he no doubt thinks of me.

Plenty of men of importance have slave girls here and there, hidden away in houses or even kept in their homes, whether their wives like it or not.

Yusuf has already had two wives; a slave woman added to the list is hardly a surprise.

We walk down a narrow street a few moments’ walk from where I now live, then come to a stop outside a poorly painted orange door, set into a high wall, newly built.

The shabby door is an odd contrast to the newness of the wall.

I think that this house may be bigger than where I am now but that it will be as simple.

But I am mistaken. The creaking gate hides a secret.

Inside is a courtyard, tiled in glorious colours, a fountain at its centre.

The house is two storeys high, and there are ten rooms in all, including a spacious kitchen and its own bathing room, a ludicrous extravagance of a house.

It is fit not just for a mistress, but for a wife.

I walk from room to room when the man has left, wondering what Yusuf means by giving me this house.

I am a slave, not even his mistress, and yet he has given me a house worthy of a wife.

I think again of the creaking gate and the way it conceals what this house truly is.

I know that Yusuf, for all his love of Zaynab, is aware that I need protection from her, that she must not know of my existence.

I know this without being told, without him saying a word.

The peeling paint of the orange gate tells me this even as I walk from room to room and look down into the beautiful courtyard.

When Rebecca sees the house, her mouth stays open and I catch her looking more than once at me, her eyes full of questions that she does not speak aloud. I do not try to answer them, for I do not know what the answers are.

The man who brought me here left me with a leather pouch that contains more money than Yusuf has ever given me before.

I fill the courtyard with my plants and with a tree.

I give Rebecca a bedchamber of her own and set aside a room for when Ali is older.

Besides my own bedchamber, I now have a room in which I may write and pray, a room sparse and simple enough to make me believe I am back in the convent.

Rebecca ignores this monastic impulse and hangs bright covers and drapes in all the other rooms. Water splashes in the fountain, we fill the house with Ali’s contented gurgles and our shared laughter at his antics, with the good smells of cooking and my drying herbs.

I set aside a bedchamber for Yusuf, should he ever wish to stay here, and even as I do so I know, as Hela said, that I would rather this room did not exist, that he should come to my bedchamber instead. But that is a step too far into the darkness that calls to me, louder every day.