Page 37 of Do Not Awaken Love (The Moroccan Empire #3)

Until the day break, and the shadows flee away…

W hen I look at Ali now, standing taller than Rebecca and me, I wonder where these past years have gone.

He is not yet a man, but I can no longer call him a child.

He has grown up with no father, with two mothers, in a household full of the sick and impoverished and he is wiser than I was at his age.

“Your son is an excellent scholar,” says his tutor proudly. “He has a great feeling for the Qur’an, for its nuances. He has a great understanding both of religion and the law.”

“I am glad to hear it,” I say, although I feel again the familiar uncertainty.

Am I doing the right thing, raising him as a Muslim when it is quite possible that Yusuf will never know he is his son, when perhaps he will only have me for a mother?

It draws attention to us, for I am known as a Christian, and people will wonder why I am raising a child in my care as a Muslim.

But I know that if the day comes when I may return him safely to Yusuf as his son, I cannot have raised him against his father’s wishes.

I do not tell him much about my own life before I came here, only that I was a religious woman, in a religious house in my own country, but I was brought here and became Yusuf’s slave.

I tell him that I have been well treated, that I owe Yusuf a great deal, and he, hero-worshipping Yusuf as he already does, adds this to his list of glories and behaves ever more as a son to him.

He waits for him to return from campaigns, hangs upon his every word, and takes every opportunity to show, his face a little flushed with pride, how his studies have progressed.

He writes a beautiful script in Arabic, my own, by comparison, having come later to it in life, is not as fine.

I teach him to read and write my own letters and he attends to them with great care, begs for the use of all my books in both languages and spends many hours a day reading them.

His Latin is good, although his accent betrays our location, but still, he would not disgrace any gathering of scholars.

I think sometimes of my father, and how he would have been proud to have a scholar in his family, how he would have showered him with books, introduced him to the scholars who visited his shop.

He would have praised his fine hand and his turn of phrase when he writes or speaks.

I miss my father. My mother, of course, would be utterly appalled at what I have done.

She would turn away in horror at the very idea of me being a slave to a Muslim master.

That I would choose for a child I was raising to become a Muslim and not a Christian, would be beyond her understanding.

“Tell me again how you pray,” Ali says. He is eager to learn, it does not matter what.

He has been taught to pray as a Muslim, but he continues to ask all manner of questions of Rebecca and Daniel about the Jewish faith, listening wide-eyed to stories from her childhood, of the rituals of their family life.

He follows me when I go to my room to pray and watches me earnestly, confused by the silence of my prayers.

“But what are you saying inside your head?” he asks.

I repeat my prayers for him out loud, they sound strange in this place, for I have not spoken them aloud for many years now.

He learns them quickly, learns the Hail Mary and Our Father.

When I mention in passing that we used to sing, he asks me to sing again and I do so, my voice faltering without my sisters all around me.

He tries to copy me, although he is not a gifted singer.

I think of our choir mistress, that she would wince at the way he sings, as she used to when I was a child before she improved my performance with endless repetition and practice.

It feels strange to have another person to pray with, for Ali will willingly pray with me as well as with the other scholars and people of the city in the mosque.

“I have never met someone like you,” I tell him, honestly. “You remind me of the people of Cordoba, about whom my father used to speak.”

“Tell me again about Cordoba,” he begs.

And so, I tell him about Cordoba, trying to remember everything my father told me, while I refused to pay proper attention. I wish I had listened more closely now, for Ali’s face lights up at what I describe.

“Yes!” he says, enthused. “It does not matter what name we give to God. In matters only that we share his wisdom and the blessing of knowledge he has given us, whatever name we in our mortal ignorance have given him.”

I have such pride in him that I sometimes wonder if it is sinful, but I cannot help it. I show him all the books Hela gave me and he reads them avidly, sits up at night to discuss what he has read with me.

Rebecca and Daniel have been blessed with two children, both of whom I brought into the world.

Her son is named Samuel, her daughter she asked me to name and I called her Rachel, for another Jewess long ago who tried to befriend me.

Now that she has little children to care for again and Ali is older, she comes less frequently to the house, but I still see her every few days and she, Aisha and I are often together, working and talking together as we help those who come for healing and learning.

Aisha has learnt to read and write and now she passes on what she has learnt to the little children who come, sitting patiently by their side as they gain in confidence.

Yusuf visits us often. His eyebrows have grown grey.

He has secured the Maghreb now, he need no longer go to war, he may rest and reap the rewards of his courage and faith, as befits an older man.

Usually of an evening, between training with the army and returning to his palace, he will slip in through the gate to our courtyard, as twilight falls and most of my patients have left for the day.

Those who are truly sick, who must stay in our infirmary for a night or more, are by now asleep, cared for by earnest Fatima, who has become an accomplished healer in her own right.

Yusuf squats amongst my potted plants. Always disdaining of luxury, he will wave away chairs and even soft rugs.

He accepts cold water to wash his face and hands, plain bread, which I have baked for him late in the day, so that it will be fresh when he needs it.

A handful of dates, a few scraps of roast meat if there are leftovers, this is all he wants.

I bring him cold water and sit with him.

Sometimes we will spend all of his visit in silence, listening to the fountain play, watching as the first stars come out.

Then he will rise and leave, with a smile for me and a wave and nothing more.

On other days, he will talk to me of something he has seen that day, of a bird, a plant, a child in the street.

He does not talk of military strategy, of plans for conquest, of amirs surrendering to his growing power.

The whole of the Maghreb is now under his control.

It is divided up into four great provinces, two in the north and two in the south, each under the control of a governor appointed by Yusuf, every tribal commander pledging loyalty to the kingdom.

His generals have little left to do, although he still commands a vast army.

I know of his conquests from others, never from himself.

Long gone are the days when Murakush was a city of tents.

The city walls rise high, surrounded by palm trees.

There is water in the public fountains and the houses of the well-to-do, the whole city fully built at last, including a great mosque at its centre.

Yusuf owns Fes and the northern port of Tangier, he controls the trade routes, including all trade in salt, slaves and gold.

On some evenings, Ali finds and joins us, his face all alight with hero worship.

Yusuf is always kind to him, always welcoming.

He will question him on his studies and then listen as Ali recites from the Qu’ran.

Ali asks him about matters of law and taxation regarding how the kingdom is run.

Yusuf answers him honestly, explaining even minor details in great depth.

Illiterate himself, he seems to relish Ali’s learning.

The better his tutors say he does, the higher quality tuition Yusuf purchases for him, calling on great scholars of the city to spend time with Ali, sharing their knowledge and their debates with him.

“He has a learned mind,” he repeats often. “There will be a place in my Council for him when he is grown to manhood. A leader must have wise counsel from those about him, and young eyes see what old minds have forgotten.”

Ali glows at such praise, bends ever more earnestly to his studies. The warmth of their relationship pleases me, although always, there is something in me that worries when they are together, that the moment of discovery will come when I least expect it.

I see Zaynab’s children at a distance, over the years.

For each pregnancy, I must make and send to her the syrup, each time I am amply rewarded, the gold I receive then used to heal or teach, while I try not to think of Yusuf lying in her arms. One after another they are born, six sons and three daughters, and all of them are prepared for a future in her footsteps or those of Yusuf.

The boys are warlike, they follow the army out to the plain and copy their every movement, they carry miniature swords and drums, they are trained to become warriors of the future.

Her daughters are dressed as befits princesses, they are shown maps of their parents’ empire and sit in Council from when they can barely speak, future consorts to great lords and rulers, every one of them.

Zaynab herself grows older but never less than beautiful, her eyes dark with power and the knowledge that she has achieved great things.

If Yusuf were to die, she could rule this kingdom alone, for she has done as much as he to create it.

Twice in those years, I hear from Aisha that Yusuf has also fathered a child with a slave, a boy and a girl born to one woman, one boy born to the other.

I see that he acknowledges these children, that they take their place alongside their legitimate siblings, as though there were no difference between them.

But I see also that their mothers are not accorded the status of a wife, they are kept secret and hidden away, as I am.

At first, their existence wounds me, makes me feel that I am one of many, perhaps dozens of slave girls and their offspring hidden all over Murakush and beyond.

But I see no more children born to such women, and so it seems that they were little more than dalliances, the children acknowledged, the women left behind, though no doubt Yusuf, being a generous man, will have provided for them.

I do not speak to him of them, ask no questions, just as I rarely mention Zaynab.

Instead, I speak of new knowledge found in my books, of what I have tried and whether it has worked, whether it is time to pick this or that petal or leaf, of the birds who have made a nest on the corner of our rooftop and wash in our fountain at dawn.

From the way Yusuf talks to Ali, I make the mistake of thinking that he is content, that now that his kingdom is complete and peaceful under him, he seeks no further conquest, no further adventure. But I am wrong. It is hard to tame a warlord, a warrior-made-king.

It seems that there is trouble in Al-Andalus.

Divided into princeling taifa states, each a tiny region, ruled over by Muslim kings, it seems they have forgotten the shining days of Cordoba and instead squabble amongst themselves, grown lazy while living lives of luxury.

They might have worked together, to create a kingdom, an army strong enough to defeat Alphonso the Sixth, the Christian king of the North, but they prefer to continue in their comfortable lives and pay him tribute.

But now the Amir of Seville, Al-Mu’tamid, having been late in paying the annual tribute demanded by Alphonso, has tried the king’s patience too far.

Alphonso demands not only tribute but recompense for the delay, insisting on the delivery of many strong castles in Seville’s region.

Rather than negotiate, the Amir of Seville kills Alphonso’s messenger and then, worried by what he has done, writes to Yusuf, as one Muslim king to another, asking for his support against the Christian king.

He claims that the scholars of Al-Andalus agree that this is righteous.

“But Yusuf has no seagoing ships,” I point out to Aisha, when she tells me this.

“He has demanded a ship from the Amir,” says Aisha. “The Amir of Ceuta, on our northern coast, has yet to be conquered, but with a ship Yusuf will defeat him in no time. If he can do so, he has promised his aid to Al-Andalus.”

I had thought my years of praying for Yusuf’s safety were over.

It seems they are to begin again. I think that I should perhaps be praying for Alphonso, but that thought comes and goes in an instant.

Galicia was too long ago, I cannot summon the desire to support a Christian king I know nothing of, against a man who sits amongst my plants in the twilight, eats food prepared by my hands and talks to me of nesting birds.

I hope that Yusuf will support the taifa states only as long as is necessary for them to form a stronger alliance of their own, to fight their own battles against Alphonso and let Yusuf return safely home to Murakush. To me.