Page 40 of None Such as She (The Moroccan Empire #2)

W ithout Hela at my side I feel vulnerable. Now I must stand alone, must hold my power without her help.

I have feared for a while that my knowledge of the Maghreb and all its rulers, its secrets, deceits and counter-deceits, the certainty that the Almoravid council craves from me, would end.

I have stretched out all I knew and of course I have learnt from them as they have learnt from me.

But I feared the day would come when I would have nothing else to offer.

Today I glimpse a different path to tread, and at once I realise its power, for it offers endless possibilities.

The man standing before me bows deeply and asks in a low voice if he may visit me in private.

I wave him into my own bedchamber, call for servants to bring sweetmeats and cool drinks.

His eyes widen when he sees the bed, of course, but I am used to that by now.

He sits on the cushions laid out on the floor and we make ourselves comfortable.

He has been in our council today, offering words from his lord, chief of a tribe to the North.

A minor tribe, but one who wishes to stand at our side, one who fears a possible onslaught if he does not pledge allegiance to us.

“Your master is a wise man to become our ally,” I say, trying to understand why he would want to delay his visit by idly talking with me rather than resting before his return to the North.

He nods. “Although…”

I sense he will not speak unless I make it easy for him.

“Although?”

“He can be… changeable.”

I know this word when used in such circumstances. “Can I trust your lord’s stated intentions and promises towards us?”

I ask it with great bluntness. The man blinks.

Perhaps he thought more discretion would be used.

He pauses and I lean forward. My perfume envelops him and he leans a little closer.

He will tell his friends that he sat alone with the legendary Zaynab, queen of Aghmat, now queen of Murakush and Fes.

They will not believe him but they will want to know more.

“I – I think perhaps you would be wise to put your trust in others before my lord,” he says, stumbling over his words.

I put one hand on his and he trembles a little at my touch. “Can I put my trust in you?” I ask gently.

Now he cannot speak fast enough. “My lady – yes – yes, I would do anything to deserve…”

I am thinking as fast as I can. I lean forward a little more and place another hand over his. His hands are bound in mine now. “I would pay you well,” I whisper. “And I would like to see you again – to hear from your own lips whatever news you have to bring me.”

Just like that it is done. It is a matter of days before another man is ensnared by my hands and whispers, by my perfume which fills their senses. They cannot resist the idea of serving me, of being known by name to a woman whom the storytellers have already shaped into a legend.

Slowly I gather informants across the Maghreb. My two eyes become four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four… many hundreds. When I blink they blink, when I look to the right or left their eyes move with me. When I sleep they keep watch. Now I have information from across many lands.

Yusuf frowns when I begin to reveal changes to loyalties or successions, when I share the secrets of leaders, but when I am proved right time and again the men begin to lean towards me when I speak and Yusuf waits for my knowledge before choices are made, new allies approved.

My power in the council is undimmed, indeed it grows stronger.

I hear the storytellers call me ‘the Magician’ and claim that I speak with djinns to know all that I do.

I laugh in private at such claims, but in public I let them think what they like. Let them fear me.

***

My son Abu Tahir grows. I see him take his first steps.

I give him a little wooden sword of his own, I have a shield made for him, give him a drum and teach him the slow drumbeat of the battlefield.

When Yusuf sees him pretending to be a soldier he laughs, but he is proud and I see that he grows closer to the boy because of his warlike nature.

My only fear is that some harm will befall him.

One child is not enough, for any child might grow sick and die and always I remember that Kella’s child may be somewhere in Murakush.

I must have more children, although the thought of it makes me want to weep.

The endless sickness I endured weakened me so badly that to willingly undertake it again seems madness.

Besides, I am growing older. I risk my life by birthing more children.

I hope that perhaps, perhaps, the sickness will not come again, that the first time was the worst.

I am wrong. It seems I am fertile enough after all, for despite my age I fall with child again but the sickness is so great that I do not know how I will get through the pregnancy alive.

I send for one healer after another and all of them are useless.

I am made to drink foul brews and wear meaningless amulets.

They do nothing. I eat unleavened bread, one tiny fearful mouthful at a time, I sip water constantly, for I can only swallow a tiny amount at a time or risk losing everything I have eaten or drunk that day.

“Rest,” says Yusuf, worried as my hands turn bony again and my skin grows pale from keeping indoors.

But I have spies who will speak only with me, I must sit in council. I must tend to my son. I must weave the endless warp and weft of Yusuf’s kingdom.

I send for the herb-seller, the healer from Al-Andalus. She stands in my presence and waits for me to speak.

“I suffer with great sickness from this pregnancy,” I tell her. “I have need of your healing powers.”

“I do not have powers,” she corrects me. “I only have knowledge of herbs and I pray to my God for His guidance.”

I say nothing. I note her stubborn clinging to her own god, her Christian god. Much good he has done her, a scarred and crippled slave girl far from her homeland.

“What have you tried?” she asks.

I list various things: eating acrid things such as capers, not eating such things, avoiding chickpeas and other such legumes and rue, the use of fresh air, gentle walks, wool placed over my stomach. Various wines, diluted with one thing or another. The never-ending amulets.

She shakes her head when I have finished. “I will make you a syrup,” she says. “Take it when you feel the sickness and at least twice a day even if you do not. Eat small meals and often.”

“I can barely eat anything but unleavened bread,” I say. “Everything else I vomit.”

She shakes her head again. “I will send the syrup,” she says.

“You must tell me what is in it,” I say, suddenly wary. I do not like her stillness, her steady eyes that look me over as though she judges me.

“Pomegranate syrup with yarrow, stinging nettle, comfrey root, cinnamon, turmeric and bentonite clay,” she says. Her tongue is quick as she names each ingredient. There is no hesitation, no subterfuge that I can see. There is nothing I have not heard of.

I nod. “Send it to me,” I say.

The drink, when it arrives, has a sweet-sour taste to it, with a spicy warmth from the herbs.

Luckily I cannot taste the clay. I sip it gingerly but it does not cause me to vomit and after a while I call for some food: the plainest couscous and white meat and find I am able to eat.

It is the first real meal I have eaten since this child was conceived.

I send for her again and she stands before me.

“Did the drink work?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say. I nod to a servant, who passes her a large pouch, heavy with money.

“You will continue to send the drink throughout my pregnancy,” I say.

“You will be well paid for your service.” I should say more perhaps, should be more fulsome, for I am overwhelmed with gratitude that she has taken away the gnawing hunger and the endless violent vomiting, that she has opened up the path for me to birth more children without suffering so badly each time.

But her stillness, her dark eyes, her watching me does not make me feel close to her as I did with Hela.

She takes the money without gratitude, without bowing. “I can tell your servants how to prepare it,” she says.

“No,” I say. “I want you to prepare it.”

She nods and steps away, making to leave.

“Wait,” I say.

She pauses.

“You could work for me,” I say. “My own handmaiden Hela has passed away and I have need of a healer in my service. Will you be my handmaiden?”

“No,” she says simply.

I frown at the speed of her reply, she has not considered the proposal at all. “Why not?”

Her brown eyes fix steadily on mine. “I do not wish to serve you,” she says. “I cannot serve a woman who has such darkness inside her.” Without asking my permission, she turns and leaves the room.

I call for one of my spies. “Find out who she is,” I demand. What I am really asking is, who is she to speak to a queen as though she disdains her, disdains me?

It is not long before they return with information.

They tell me she is from the very Northern kingdoms of Spain, above Al-Andalus, even.

That she is a devoted Christian, was a nun in a convent but got caught by a raiding party and sold as a slave to a rich man in Aghmat who, it seems, maimed her.

Certainly she walks with a limp. She followed the army to Murakush, as did most of Aghmat’s population, and set up her herb stall for a while, before some man set her up in a house of her own.

No-one is sure of his name, he is one of the thousands of soldiers in our army.

I dress in the bright colours any woman here might wear, my long hair hidden under a wrap, my face overshadowed by a shawl. No-one would recognise me in such attire, even those who know me well would struggle to find my likeness at a distance.

The street where she lives is cramped, a hidden alleyway. The door is small: narrow and poorly painted. My knock sounds too loud and I look over my shoulder but there is no-one about. A servant’s face appears in the half-open door. An ugly girl, one shoulder set too high, her skin coarse.

“Is this the home of the healer?” I ask.

The girl nods. “She’s not here, though,” she tells me.

I look beyond the girl. All I can see from here is a half-open door and a few plants in pots.

Already I can feel my interest fading fast. Whoever keeps her here is no man of importance: some soldier whom she healed, perhaps, and was grateful enough to feel something for her, scarred as she is.

He does not have much money or she would have better servants and be kept in better style.

So she will not serve me? I do not care.

She has given me a cure for what ails me and I have paid her well for it.

It is enough. I would not want such a woman by my side all the time.

She can make me the syrup when I ask for it.

I do not even need to have her in my presence.

“It is not important,” I say and turn away. Behind me I hear the door creak shut and think, so little does her man care for her that he does not even see to oiling it.

I see her from time to time, when she brings the syrup or in the streets. Occasionally I see her with a young child balanced on her hip. Perhaps she is too busy to serve me if she has a child of her own who must be cared for.

I do not have such a luxury. When my time comes and the pains grip me, I have no-one to cling to now that Hela is gone.

There is no other woman I would summon and so I hold onto my own carved bed and birth a daughter, Fannu, all alone.

I sigh when I see her, for although I would be glad enough of a daughter, I am always mindful that I must provide male heirs and so her birth forewarns me that I must endure another pregnancy.

I know that some slave girl has given birth to a girl child named Tamima whom Yusuf has acknowledged as his own.

I narrowed my lips when I heard of her but Yusuf still comes to me and I am still seated at his right hand.

I am greater than the unnamed girl will ever be and she would not expect to become a wife.

She would fear such a position, not crave it.

So I look at Fannu and whisper to her that she will be a great queen one day, I will see her married to an amir, she will learn to rule as I have.

***

“Should I continue to follow the Spanish woman?” asks the spy.

I think about her and then shake my head. “She is not important,” I tell him. “I have better things to think of.”

He bows. “And the other slave girl?”

I shake my head. Yusuf may have rolled with some girl or other but she is no danger to me, he does not suggest her as a wife. “I am not interested in slave women who whelp bastard girls,” I tell him. “Look beyond. I would know how Ibrahim the son of Abu Bakr fares.”

It seems from what my spies report back to me that he seeks to challenge us again for leadership, in his father’s name.

I sigh at such stupidity, but I send gifts of honour and many fine words.

My belly swells again and I provide a second son.

I name him Abu Bakr, honouring our distant so-called Commander.

Sure enough the boy-Ibrahim gives way at these meaningless honours and gifts, acknowledges Yusuf as amir, as his father will already have counselled.

Such is the brashness of youth. It makes me feel even older than my years.

But the power of my many eyes allows all such challenges to be swept away, for I know they will come our way before they are even spoken and can plan accordingly.

I hear foolish tongues claim that I speak with djinns, that the spirits of the air tell me what is to come.

I laugh at the very idea. People speak more loosely than any spirit, are easier to command than any djinn.