Page 39 of None Such as She (The Moroccan Empire #2)

“I am leaving, Zaynab. You have tried to poison me. No doubt you will try again. What do you want – my life in exchange for my son’s?”

My heart is pounding. “I might consider such a bargain,” I say.

I watch her walk away, clinging to walls as she goes. Behind me Hela enters.

“Watch her,” I say.

***

Still we wait for a messenger from Fes.

“She is shopping,” says Hela.

“What?”

“Kella,” says Hela. “She is buying things in the souks.”

“I do not care what she buys,” I tell her. “What am I, a housewife? Do not bring me useless information.”

“A saddle? Piles of household gifts? A sword?”

I frown. “For her own home?”

“Most has been sent away, back to her people’s camp.”

“Most?”

“She kept a racing saddle.”

“She cannot be allowed to leave,” I tell Hela. “I need to know where she is. She and her child.”

“If she leaves she will no longer trouble you.”

“Why?” I spit. “You think she will stay away forever, not return with a fully-grown son she can show to Yusuf and claim his place as heir?”

Hela shakes her head. “I do not think she will return, if she goes. I think she would leave to protect her son.”

“I will not risk that,” I tell her.

We look at each other.

“Command me,” says Hela.

“You know what to do,” I say.

“I want to hear you say it,” says Hela. “I will not take a life on hints and whispers.”

“Kill her,” I say, the words out of my mouth so fast I am not even sure I have said them. They hang in the air between us.

She gazes at me as though she believes I will add something, as though I will countermand what I have said.

I hold her gaze. I hear footsteps running and a messenger stands before me, sweaty and dusty.

“Fes has fallen,” he pants.

***

We are jubilant. There is feasting and celebrating throughout the city.

Fes is now our stronghold in the North. Our army is unstoppable, we have conquered not one but two cities side by side.

Now the great walls that separate them will be torn down and we will command one great city to rise from the ruins.

Yusuf and I sit late into the night, maps of the Maghreb spread out before us, our bodies slick with sweat from our coupling.

With Fes falling, more and more leaders will submit to us without fighting, for they have been shown what it means to defy us.

Yusuf’s fingertips trace the contours of the regions that lie before us.

“The Mouluya valley,” he murmurs.

“Tlemcen,” I return.

He raises his eyebrows. “So far East?”

I shrug. “Why not? And further: Algiers.”

He laughs. “You are unstoppable, Zaynab.”

“I am,” I say, curling my body back into his hands. “I am.”

***

The dawn call to prayer comes and Yusuf leaves me in the half-light.

I do not follow. I am lazy with relief at our plans coming to fruition.

I lie in the tumble of blankets and listen to the world around me, the servants clattering about, the merchants in the alleyways.

I have created a great city from nothing, from sand and tents. And I will create many more.

“She is gone.”

I blink and struggle into a sitting position. Hela leans in my doorway as though unable to stand unsupported. Her face is white. In one hand she clutches something wrapped in a rag.

“Gone?” I repeat.

“Gone,” she echoes.

“Dead?”

She shakes her head.

“I told you to kill her,” I say.

“She broke the cup,” she says, her voice shaking.

I frown. “What are you talking about?”

She lets go of the rag in her hand and two pieces of wood clatter out of it onto the floor, two halves of her carved cup.

We both stare at it. I feel a sudden fear: what if the drink that drew Yusuf to me, that has kept him filled with desire for me, can no longer be made?

What if it is not Hela’s skills with plants but the cup itself that has done the work?

I swallow. “Did you poison her?”

“She spat it out.”

“Did she swallow enough?”

“I do not know.”

“And where is she now?”

“Gone,” says Hela. “Her camel is gone. As has a man from her tribe, one of Yusuf’s soldiers.”

“She had a lover?” This, I had not expected.

Hela shrugs. Slowly she lets her body slide down the doorway until she is sat on the floor, her hands close to the cup’s broken halves. She strokes one half, as though it is an injured pet, a dying creature. It makes my skin crawl.

“Does Yusuf know she is gone?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“Do not tell him yet,” I say.

I dress quickly and leave the room, brushing past Hela, who does not move.

***

I send out scouts in all directions but it is too late.

Kella has gone, there is no trace of her.

Her two slaves are also gone. Not much is known about the man when I enquire.

He served in our army, he was from her tribe, perhaps they will return there although she cannot be so stupid.

It is more likely that she believes we have made a pact: her disappearance for her child’s safety.

Perhaps she will return to the trading life she had before she met Yusuf.

I cannot keep the information from him for long.

When he finds out that she has disappeared he, too, sends out scouts.

I already know they will not find her but I stand by to comfort him.

I remind him that her child died and that perhaps she has ended her life.

I hold him when he weeps for her. But the days go by and then a month passes and he grows resigned, he no longer speaks of finding her.

There is gossip of course but we weather it, it is nothing compared to our successes and I make sure my son’s nursemaids show him off in public, that he is seen with Yusuf, a reminder that this is his heir, that I am his wife and queen.

I should feel relief. Kella is gone. I am Yusuf’s queen, the mother of his heir.

Our army cannot be stopped. If there is a baby, if Kella has actually left her child behind, then I cannot find it.

Perhaps Kella wanted only for the baby to be safe, for if she is not here then how can the child ever be proved to be Yusuf’s?

A passing similarity of their features would not be sufficient.

If there is no mother to claim its father, it will be one child among many hundreds, thousands in our kingdom.

It cannot stake a claim. I should feel relief.

But Hela is sick. I think of the moment when she told me that the cup was broken and I think she has been sick from that moment onwards.

Her skin has taken on a strange pallor, as though there is no blood beneath it.

She no longer walks, she shuffles and she does not speak, only mumbles replies if she is asked a question or talks to herself when there is no-one nearby.

The broken cup sits in her room, set into a niche in the wall as though it were something of beauty to be admired or something holy to be worshipped.

When I visit her in her rooms, which she leaves less and less, I find her in half-darkness, the shutters closed.

She sits on her bed, huddled in blankets as though she is permanently cold and she stares at the cup.

“Throw it away,” I say, standing in the doorway. I do not want to enter the room, it feels heavy, as though it were full of something unseen.

She shakes her head.

“I will do it for you,” I say, although I do not want to touch it.

There is something about the cup that still seems alive, even though it is broken.

I cannot but think about what it did to Luqut, how it took away his lust for me and then took his life when he went into battle.

I think of the lust it stirred in Yusuf, a lust that has not yet faded.

I owe the cup many things but I am still afraid of it.

I think of Imen and Kella’s lost children.

But Hela sits up at once, shaking her head. “Do not touch it.”

“You are a healer in your own right,” I tell her.

“You do not need the cup.” I am not sure this is true.

I know she is a gifted healer and that she has her own powers, her skill for sensing the feelings of others, but still I am not certain how much of her power comes from her own abilities and how much from the cup.

Her sickness frightens me, it is as though her life force has been broken along with the cup.

“Tell me what you need and I will have it made for you,” I tell her. “Or a servant can bring your herbs here and you can make it yourself.”

She shakes her head.

“You cannot die just because a cup breaks, Hela,” I say, trying to sound light hearted. But my voice does not sound light. It trembles.

She does not answer.

“I command you,” I say, trying a different approach. I make my voice hard. “You must rise up and serve me again, Hela. I have need of you.”

“You are set upon your path,” she says. “You can follow it alone now.”

I feel a heavy weight settle in my belly. “I cannot manage alone,” I say and my voice wavers more now, I can feel tears coming to my eyes.

“I have failed,” she says.

“In what?” I ask.

“I swore to bring happiness to your family,” she says and her head slumps down, she does not meet my gaze. “I failed.”

“You served my mother,” I say awkwardly.

“She was not happy,” says Hela. “I tried but I failed. Then I looked to serve you, for I felt my obligation was not yet complete.”

“Obligation?”

“And you are not happy,” says Hela, ignoring me.

“I am Yusuf’s wife and queen,” I begin, then stop. “I have given him an heir,” I add. “The army… our conquests…”

“You have spent your whole life desperate for love,” says Hela from the darkness. “Desperate to be loved, to be the only object of a man’s desire, to be his only thought, to be of supreme importance to him.”

“Enough of this,” I say. I do not like her voice, it sounds like a message from another world.

“It will kill you,” she says. She sounds weary, each word an effort. Her breath rasps in and out and every time I think there may not be another breath. “This terrible need to be loved, Zaynab, it will kill you. It robs you of every moment of happiness you might otherwise claim.”

“Enough,” I say. “I will not listen to this, Hela.”

I leave her but cannot settle to anything.

I wander through the rooms of the building, I sit with my baby son, dandle him in my arms, ask questions of the servants to be certain he is being cared for.

If I hear of anything in his treatment that is not right I have them whipped.

He is too precious to me, the thought of anything happening to him fills me with dread.

I take my place in council, but I cannot focus on what is being discussed.

I send servants to Hela, offering food, drink, lanterns, healing herbs, blankets, whatever she has need of.

She refuses them all. At last I return to her rooms. I can hear her breathing before I even reach her, the desperate sucking in of air and then its slow release.

The room is dark, only faint streams of dusty light trickle through the closed shutters.

There is a musky smell, as though something is decaying, rotting nearby. I stand by her bed.

“Finish this,” says Hela. Her voice startles me.

“Finish what?” I ask although something in me already knows the answer.

“Release me from my vow,” says Hela.

“I do not know what vow you made, but I release you from it,” I say. “You have stood by my side, Hela. You have made me who I am today.”

She sighs, as though my words are painful to her. “I know,” she says. “I am sorry.”

“I meant you have made me a queen, a wife. A mother,” I say.

She shakes her head, a slow movement to one side and then the other.

I stand in the half-light and wait for her to speak again but she only continues to struggle for breath.

Slowly I make my way to her side, sit on the edge of her bed, take her hand in mine.

Her hands have always been sturdy. Now they have lost their strength and they feel like bones bound together with ragged skin, limp in my clasp.

“Release me,” she says again, a croaking whisper.

“I do,” I say. “I have.”

Again the slow side-to-side shake of her head. “I cannot go,” she says. “I have tried.”

I swallow. “What can I do?”

Her spare hand feels about her until she finds a blanket. She tugs at the corner of it, pulls it until it touches my hand.

“No,” I say.

“I cannot go,” she says again. “Let me go.”

She goes quickly. I do not have to hold the blanket for long, but when I pull it away again it is already wet from my tears. I wonder if she tasted them before she died, if my grief trickled through the warp and weft and touched her lips as the breath left her body.

***

I sit in council while the deaths are tallied.

Fes has been crushed, thousands lost their lives, but we also lost men.

Their names are listed so that they can be prayed for, so that the correct rituals can be carried out.

I know that there are families in Fes who think of us as murderers, who curse Yusuf’s name and would curse mine too if they knew my hand in their loss.

Back in my rooms I hold Hela’s broken cup.

It does not feel strange or powerful now, it feels like what it is: two broken pieces of wood, lifeless in my hands.

Hela is the only person who saw the gaping emptiness within my outer perfection, the fear inside my utter control. She saw me for who I truly am.

Now she is gone. At my hand.