Page 17 of None Such as She (The Moroccan Empire #2)

T he bird’s talons grip my wrist so tightly I fear it will draw blood even through the thick leather of my glove.

It looks this way and that, the wind ruffling its feathers, making it impatient.

It shifts its feet and stares at me boldly, a challenge to my supposed authority over it.

I whisper to calm it. There is as yet no prey in sight, it must contain its desire for freedom.

I turn my horse a little and glance towards the falconer.

His eyes scan the horizon and narrow at a glimpse of movement.

His face is grown like that of his birds, I think, and stifle a smile.

He nods and I lift my wrist in a quick swift movement, launching my falcon into the air.

It sails away from us, strong wings beating, seeking out a trembled movement below.

“A good bird,” says the falconer.

I nod. We wait, companionably silent together, watching the bird turn this way and that in the wind, feeling its way through the air currents holding it aloft.

He is one of the few servants who does not bow and scrape before me. He likes me because I enjoy this rare time outdoors; enjoy the soft feathers and hard eyes of his charges. He treats me with respect but does not fear to instruct me in how to manage my falcon.

One of my only pleasures here is falconry.

There is a great festival in the spring for which many birds of prey are caught and trained.

During the days of the feast itself many gather to see their feats in the air, their power and agility, their ferocity and courage.

When the festival is over there comes the moment for which I long, every year of the last twelve years as the queen of Aghmat.

At the end of their time in captivity most of the birds are released, to fly free once again.

They take wing above the palace and leave us, never to be seen again.

Each year I watch this moment, and then I withdraw to my rooms. Everyone thinks I am tired, for I am much in public demand during the festival, but when I reach my rooms I dismiss my servants and weep.

I permit myself only this one moment of weakness, every year.

When I have finished weeping I stretch out my hand and Hela is there, unbidden, to pass me water to wet my dry throat.

Then she will bathe me and put cold compresses of cooling herbs on my eyes, so that the redness will not be seen.

I will come to dinner as a queen should, in fine clothes and jewels, my head high and a gracious smile on my face.

No-one else witnesses this precious moment of weakness, only Hela.

***

I had only been queen for a year when word came of the fate of my childhood city of Kairouan.

When the Zirids declared their conversion to Sunni by giving allegiance to Baghdad, the Fatimid Caliph sent as punishment great hordes of Arab tribes to invade.

They burnt, they killed, they reduced buildings to rubble.

They so utterly destroyed Kairouan that it was humbled in the dirt, a once proud city made nothing.

All of them perished. My father. My mother. Even loving Myriam. As for the street children with whom I used to play, now the men and women of that city, who knows who fell and who remained standing? Hela could not tell us.

She stood before us, her face grown old beyond her years, her body stooped, her clothes still streaked with ashes, smelling of smoke.

The fall of Kairouan had taken her life away and left her a withered husk.

She had come all this way to give me the news of my family.

When my husband Luqut saw the way I shrank from her dark presence he at once appointed her my chief servant, as she had been to my mother.

I did not argue. I had been married for only one year, yet I already knew the penalty I would pay should I defy him in any way.

And so Hela came to be head of my household, my handmaiden as she was my mother’s.

And over the years I have grown used to her, her silent secret presence.

I know my other servants are wary of her, just as the servants of my childhood home were.

But they do not know what comfort it is to me to have one person who knows the truths of my life as queen, who does not exclaim or whisper but alters what she can and accepts what cannot be changed without sighing or wringing of hands.

She makes me stronger than I could ever be alone.

***

That first night she came to me and dismissed the other servants. Already she had power over them, for they obeyed meekly. They brought all that she asked for, and then they left us alone.

She stood in the shadows and Luqut did not see her. She did not speak when she saw what he did to me. She had never been one for talking when it was unnecessary. When he left me a crumpled heap on the floor, then, only then, did she step out of the darkness and raise me up.

It still seemed strange to me that my family was dead.

I did not weep, for I had suffered too much in the past year to weep, but my shoulders were stooped and my body was limp and unresisting in her hands.

Had I not heard the news I would have been more uncomfortable in her presence.

I remembered her strange forbidding presence from my childhood and how she had spoken of my father’s second wife Imen.

Her death had been sudden and unexpected and Hela’s words at the time had frightened me, for they hinted at a dark hand behind gentle Imen’s passing.

I should have drawn away from her touch, but I stood still.

I had never thought to see my family again, but still in my mind they had been alive, and now, suddenly, they were dead.

It should not have made a difference, but it did.

I did not look down at myself, nor did I raise my head and look across the room at the carved mirror, which would have shown me what she now saw.

My body was covered in bruises. Not where they might show, of course.

My neck and face, my hands and parts of my arms were made smooth and lustrous with fine creams and good food.

My feet, also, were well shaped and delicate.

But where my magnificent robes covered my body I was marked out in black and brown, yellow and purple.

There were bruises that had almost healed and then had been marked again, so that there were layers of colours. And there were other marks.

Hela said nothing. She bathed me, standing close to each part of my body to stroke me with a warm wet cloth. As she did so she came even to my intimate parts, and she did not draw back at what she saw there.

When she had finished bathing me she went to a corner of the room.

Here she had placed her two bags, both made of rough goat-hides.

They were the bags of a poor serving woman, not a rich woman’s favoured handmaid.

She had never drawn unwanted attention to herself.

From one she took several small pouches.

Returning to me she extracted a few pots containing unguents, which she proceeded to smear on my body, different ones for different parts.

Then she waved me to my bed, where I lay down.

Hela stood over me. Gently, as though I were a child, she placed my covers over me, and then she looked down on me. Her voice was as deep as ever.

“How often does he come to you?”

I shrugged and closed my eyes. “When he wishes it. There is no pattern. Unless I have displeased him in some way. Then he will come until I have learnt my lesson.”

“No child?”

I kept my eyes closed. “I know what to take to keep from having children.”

“He does not wish for a child?”

“He has bastard children. He would think nothing of raising them up if he thought it would hurt me.”

“Why does he want you then?”

I felt a tear creep from under my eyelid and make its way down my cheek. “For glory.”

Hela was silent for a moment. “I heard about your vision. Every ambitious man in the Maghreb wanted you for a wife when they heard about it.”

I did not reply but a tear made its way down my other cheek. I felt the wetness move down my neck.

“Do you often have visions?”

I did not reply, only lay there as the tears slipped down my face. Hela grew silent then and I heard her move softly away from me.

***

Life changed after Hela became my handmaiden.

She ruled my household in my stead, lifting from me the burdens of managing servants, responding to supplicants, making arrangements for festivities and holy days.

To me were left only the pleasant parts of being a queen – choosing fine clothes and furnishings, ordering the planting of gardens to delight me with colour and perfume, falconry, riding.

I was grateful for all of this of course, but it was one night that truly changed my life, only days after Hela came to me.

Luqut came to me and the servants fluttered round like shadowy moths as lamps were lit to make my bedchamber blaze with light. He needs to see to do his work.

I stood still and silent in the centre of my room.

The servants did as they were bid. They did not stop to ponder the uses for the implements they laid out, nor count the bruises on my body as they stripped me bare.

They had their orders, which had not changed since I had been brought here, and probably since before my time in this place.

Those who disobeyed were likely to find out for themselves the meanings of these things.

I did not ponder them either. What would be the use?

I thought of nothing else for months when I first came here, but after a year I was resigned.

To protest would be to enhance his pleasure, to refuse would be to enhance my pain.

I was better off imagining myself elsewhere, allowing my body to take the punishment that my mind could not withstand.