Page 34 of Do Not Awaken Love (The Moroccan Empire #3)

Blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out.

A li is growing. He learns to walk. Rebecca and I clap our hands and rejoice, although now nothing is sacred.

Not my plants, from which he rips leaves and flowers, threatening to stuff them into his ever-eager mouth.

I must remove those which are poisonous if misused and keep them on a high wooden shelf in the courtyard, specially built to withstand his interest. He splashes water from the courtyard fountain everywhere and slips and slides as a result, wailing when he hurts himself and rushing to one or the other of us for comfort.

He enjoys walking through the market, pointing to everything he sees to hear its sound, to taste or smell whatever it has to offer.

I tell him the names of my plants and he repeats them back to me, stumbling over the longer names.

He calls both Rebecca and me ‘Mother’ and we accept his naming, although officially we always say that he is Rebecca’s son to anyone that asks, we brush away further questions by saying only that she was in difficulties and that I offered to help her raise him.

I sometimes see Zaynab’s son, Ali’s brother, in the markets with his nursemaids. I marvel at how similar the two boys look. I wonder that Yusuf cannot see it, but perhaps men do not look so closely.

The first time Yusuf visits us in the new house he walks round the rooms, nodding at Rebecca’s bright and inviting decoration of each room, at the domestic warmth she has brought.

His mouth twists a little when he sees his own bedchamber.

“I will only end up sleeping in the courtyard, as you well know,” he says. “Where is your room?”

I feel heat in my cheeks. I show him my own bedchamber, strewn with little signs of Ali’s presence, such as the ivory rattle Yusuf sent for him.

“Do you not have a prayer room?” he asks. “I thought you would.”

I lead him next door to the bare room I work in. A table and chair set under my wooden cross. A pile of paper, ink, pens, the pages of the herbal I am trying to complete.

He lets out a snort of laughter. “Exactly as I pictured it,” he says, as though satisfied.

“I cannot tell you how grateful I am,” I begin, but he cuts me off.

“It is nothing,” he says. “How is the child?”

I lead him back to the courtyard where Rebecca is waiting with cakes and fruits, tea and Ali, who is eager to taste the unexpected treats.

“A fine boy,” says Yusuf, patting Ali on the head as he waddles unsteadily towards him.

“He grows well,” I say.

“Suckled by a Jewess and cared for by a Christian,” he says, chuckling.

Fathered by a Muslim, I want to say, but I do not. I watch Yusuf lift Ali and dip his toes in the fountain’s clear bubbling water, hear Ali’s shrieks of glee, and Yusuf’s deep chuckle. I wonder what it would be like, to be Ali’s mother, to sit by Yusuf in the sunshine and feel such love.

A man comes to me with a carved chest. It is plain, unscented. When I lift the lid, it is full of books. I stare at it in amazement.

“Who is this from?” I ask.

“The Queen’s handmaid,” he says. “Hela.”

“She is dead,” I say.

“Yes,” he says. “She sent the chest to a scholar before she died. There was a note to say that it should be sent to you, once she had gone.”

“To me? What did it say?”

The man shrugs. “Send these books to the healer who used to be a nun,” he says.

I can hardly argue that there must be many such women. Clearly, Hela intended me to have these books. I look down at them. They are huge tomes, very many of them. “There was nothing else in the message?” I ask.

The man shakes his head and leaves.

I look through the books. I cannot read any of them, but the illustrations are exquisite, in many colours, like the holy books in our convent.

Some concern medical matters, for I can see illustrations of herbs, of people’s bodies.

Some seem to be about astronomy, mathematics, and other scholarly subjects. I wish that I could read them.

But Hela has even thought of this. The next day, an elderly man presents himself at my home. “I am here to teach you to read and write,” he says.

“I can read and write,” I say. “And who are you?”

“You cannot read and write in Arabic,” he says. “I was paid to teach you.”

“By whom?”

“A woman named Hela,” he says. “She paid me a goodly sum; she said that I was not to leave you until you could read and write in Arabic.”

I hesitate. I am not sure that I want gifts like these from Hela, from beyond the grave.

I wonder why she thought of me so much, when our paths crossed so little.

I wonder if somehow, with her strange powers, she knew something of what happened with Kella.

Is this gift a curse? A blessing? A trick?

But I think of the tomes of learning held in the chest which has been placed in my work room, of the knowledge held within them to which I would dearly like access.

I nod and step back to let the man enter.

So begins a period of learning for me, such as I have not undertaken since I was a girl with my father and then under Sister Rosa’s care in the stillroom and sickroom of the convent.

I am as an ignorant child, learning once again the letters and sounds of a language, turning meaningless symbols into knowledge, shaping clumsy letters and sighing over my lessons.

The letters I have known until now are useless to me; these new shapes bear no resemblance to them.

I must even learn to write in a different direction, to read right to left rather than left to right.

I no longer possess the flowing script of an educated woman, instead I know, by comparing my efforts with my tutor’s hand, that my script is awkward, inelegant.

My fingers grow ink stained and I spend money on more and more new paper so that I may practice longer and harder.

Rebecca watches me in surprise but shakes her head when I offer to teach her in turn.

And slowly, slowly, the books that Hela left me begin to open their pages to me, begin to share what they contain.

And such knowledge as I prided myself in having, such knowledge as I thought the Christian scholars held, is swept away by what I find.

These books are the works of Muslim scholars, who themselves have drawn on past scholars from across the world and far back in time.

Their knowledge surpasses all that I have ever read.

I find myself staring in amazement at the books on medicine, on their depth and detail, on the knowledge that has been kept from me, a Christian woman who believed herself educated.

And for what? Only because of my faith. I find myself thinking on my father, and his words, which my mother dismissed but which I now recognise as the truth, as containing wisdom.

I think of the times he talked of in Cordoba, long ago, when scholars of all faiths came together and shared knowledge, wisdom, such books as these.

They did not allow their faith to create a barrier, they looked beyond it and waded into a pool of shared knowledge, adding to it through their time together, their shared discussions.

The more I read, the more I wish my father was still alive, so that I could return to him and ask for more.

In particular I study medicine, finding volumes from The Complete Book of the Medical Art and more from a scholar and physician named Bin Sina, whose work is called A Canon of Medicine .

I stare, fascinated, at illustrations of anatomy.

I learn of the importance of the six ‘non-naturals,’ which are the surrounding air, food and drink, sleeping and waking, exercise and rest, retention and evacuation and the mental state of the patient.

I learn that to maintain good health all of these must be balanced.

There is mention of being able to inoculate a person against illness such as smallpox, through introducing a tiny amount of the disease into them, which leaves me stupefied.

My education in healing, of which I was so proud, feels childish, like the work of a new apprentice when I set it against this vast collection of knowledge.

I grow hungry for what has been denied to me all this time.

I seek out the booksellers, the scholars’ libraries, and I purchase or borrow whatever they can give me, adding book after book to those already in my possession.

I read of geology and chemistry, of mathematics and philosophy.

My tutor holds up his hands and says that he has nothing more to teach me, that my script has grown smooth and my reading fluent.

He invites me to join him, at the school where he teaches, that I may learn more.

But I am always wary of being too visible, and so I refuse.

But I pay him myself, now that he has fulfilled his work for Hela.

I ask him to come and read to me, to discuss with me the ideas that I have found in these works.

I feel that I have been set free from my bonds as a slave, now that my mind may wander wherever it wishes.

I wonder if Hela read all these books, I assume she must have done.

Was she so knowledgeable then, so gifted in medical work?

And what of her other powers, which I still believe she held?

Were they there from birth or did she find them in these books?

Perhaps she sought answers for what she could do in these tomes and did not find it.

I wonder if she was afraid of her own abilities, if she found them too much to bear.

I wish she could have exercised them for the common good rather than in service of Zaynab.

And I think that perhaps I could use what she has given me to help others more than I have done so far.