Page 19 of None Such as She (The Moroccan Empire #2)

The very best of all the goods are brought to me of course.

I need not wander the hot markets, nor seek out one caravan or another, asking for favoured traders by name.

When the best arrive, they come to the palace, where the quality of their goods are known and their faces are recognised.

They do not enter my presence, they sit outside my chambers and wait for my favour to be made known to them by my servants.

I can lie on a soft couch while goods from every part of the world are brought out and laid before me, I can dismiss or approve with a wave of my hand, a nod of my head.

My husband is vain. He may dislike me and fear the rush that comes upon his manhood when he tries to touch me, but still my presence by his side, in his palace, promises great things for him and so I may have anything I want.

We are to be denied nothing. He has the finest weapons, horses and women.

I have the finest clothes, perfumes and furnishings.

Our court eats the freshest and best foods, enjoys beautiful gardens and rooms bejewelled with coloured tiles in all directions, in patterns so complex they take experienced craftsmen months to create.

Our court must be always magnificent so that the amir can be magnificent through its reflection.

Hela shops alone. When new traders arrive she will leave the brightly-lit palace rooms and go out into the dark streets.

When she returns she will have replenished her stocks, carrying small bags of unknown items, which she will gradually use up over the coming months.

The traders she uses do not come to the palace.

They have perhaps four or five camels rather than over a hundred.

They do not give their names, nor ask those of their best customers.

There is no banter at their stall, nor much haggling.

A simple nod, a few whispered words and gestures before coins and pouches swap hands.

They know which cities to visit and their customers, like Hela, know where to find them when they arrive.

Later, servants will make their way to Hela’s cool bright rooms, adjacent to mine, and whisper their fears and pains, and leave clutching cures.

I watch as they come and go and recognise the servants of rich merchant’s wives and courtiers amongst those who ask for her help.

She is as much consulted as a noble physician.

Sometimes she looks up from her whispered consultations and sees me watching her.

Then she will look away. I would stop her, fearful of what happened to Imen, but I know that those in her care thrive and are cured, so I hold my tongue.

Sometimes she tries to teach me her skills, but I have not learnt much.

I know how to brew the drink that I take to keep from bearing a child to the amir, but I knew that before I came here.

I can name a few cures for simple ills – for burns, for wounds, for fevers and to soothe coughs, colds.

I mix things with so little precision that Hela takes the mortar and pestle away from me, will not allow me to make much beyond a simple tea for women’s pains or a headache.

She herself is meticulous in her measuring and weighing, in her mixing and brewing.

There are often visitors to our court, some from far away, some closer to home. Today Yusuf is at court and I am shaking.

He rarely comes to Aghmat. He used to come often when I was still his wife, but since I became queen his visits have become less.

I do not know why this is – if by command of my husband, or because of Badra, who still sits in her rooms and gazes at nothing as her sons grow into men.

If it is by his own heart’s wish then I do not know whether he does not wish to see me because I am a fool or because – and I am shaking even at the thought of this – because he longs for me and does not trust himself in my presence.

Whatever his thoughts I know only that I lose my reason when he comes to court.

I have maidservants who will pass me word of his coming in return for a little coin or trinkets.

I pay more than they would ask for, for I must outbid my husband when it comes to paying for spies.

When they come to me, pink-cheeked with whispers, I throw my chambers into disarray.

I wear my finest clothes, my eyes are ringed with kohl.

I come in state to the great chambers of the palace, in every way a great queen to those who behold me, in every way a foolish girl inside.

Today he is at court and I am shaking still, even after twelve years away from his side. I have no-one else of whom to dream.

I sit carefully, the stiff silks folding around me as servants kneel before me to rearrange them more becomingly.

They straighten and I try to appear at ease, as though I always look like this, as though every day I wear such formal clothing and sit in the state chambers of the palace rather than in my own rooms.

He enters and I catch my breath. As always he is dressed simply.

He has little interest in finery and inwardly I curse myself.

Why must I always appear before him so formally attired?

Why does my nervousness at seeing him manifest itself in acting the part of a great queen rather than a young woman who was once his wife, whom he teased in the soft darkness?

But he, too, is formal with me. He sweeps a low bow, as he ought to his queen. “My lady Zaynab.”

I incline my head, gracious, while the heat mounts in my cheeks. “Yusuf bin Ali. You are welcome to court.”

He is seated and offered cool water to wash his hands, then sweet drinks and cakes, hot tea. He takes them with courtesy. “Is your husband the amir well?”

I hate it when he calls him this, ‘your husband’. I want to cry out he is not my husband, how can he be when I was your wife and you are still living? He is not my husband, nor ever should have been! I am your wife, not his!

I bow my head. “The amir is well. He is gone hunting and will return this evening. He will be glad to see you.”

This much is true. He loves to have Yusuf visit us.

When he does I am required to attend the meal.

I must sit by my husband’s side and smile while he and Yusuf talk.

I must accept choice morsels from my husband’s jewelled fingers into my mouth and smile.

If he kisses my hand or compliments me I must smile. I must always smile.

He does not stay long, and when he leaves I do not know when I shall see him again. It may be only the rise and fall of one moon, it may be several. Once it was from one blossoming of the almonds to another. That time I thought I might go mad.

I thought that as the years passed I would no longer feel the same towards him.

I was wrong. At first I longed for him because I still loved him as his wife.

I was alone at court and I longed for his gentle touch now that I knew how cruel my new husband could and would be for the rest of my married life.

When Hela came I was freed from that torment but was rarely touched at all, which brought a new desire – to be held, to be loved.

Now, after all these years, I hope that perhaps he still thinks of me as I do him, and that if I can wait long enough the amir might die.

If he were dead, Yusuf could take me back as his wife.

This time I would know what I had in him and in his first wife – I would be grateful for a gentle loving life, even if it were shared with the shadow of another woman.

But time passes and the amir is still hale and hearty, while I grow older.

Hela, meanwhile, goes about her own business.

There is no part of the palace she does not visit, no place into which she cannot find her way.

I have been here for over twelve years and yet I barely leave my rooms or the state chambers save to attend some festivity or other.

Sometimes I summon the falconer and we take my bird to fly.

I do not explore Aghmat, merely use its riches to pass the long hours of my life.

But Hela knows every part of this city. She knows where the armoury is, the stables.

She knows the movements of the guards, the name of every servant, the tiny winding streets where the poor live and their miserable dwellings.

She has entered the homes of the merchants and the metalworkers, the rich nobles and their servants. She is called on to be everywhere.

Today she is returned from one of her outings.

The other servants make themselves scarce when Hela attends me.

She makes them feel ill at ease, for she watches their every move as a cat watches a lizard.

Sometimes she reads from great tomes as well, and this also makes them uncomfortable, for surely a maidservant should not pass her days studying like a scholar or a physician?

“What have you found today, Hela?” I ask her.

She is busy washing out little pots in a basin of water, rubbing each dry with a cloth and packing them away again in a carved chest. She keeps all her secrets in that chest now, after I told her that the old goat-bags were not befitting to the handmaiden of a queen.

The chest is very plain. I offered her one of precious woods, carved with every kind of flower, but she refused.

She does not answer. She rarely engages in conversation. I throw a date at her, which she ignores. I am bored. I have no-one to talk to but her.

“What secrets do you know today that you did not know before, Hela? Sometimes I think you are planning to escape this place. You know where the stables are, the saddles. The names and watches of all the guards. Are you planning to run away?”