Sultana (9 page)

She withdrew without looking at Fatima, who still staggered, as shards of pain knifed her legs.

Niranjan’s fingers closed on her wrist. “Give yourself a little time. The ordeal has weakened you.”

She snapped. “I’m not weak!”

Tiredness weighed down her limbs. It seemed like forever that she had feared she might never see her father or family again. The hated tears welled up and spilled.

Niranjan’s gentle touch glided across her wet cheek. She pulled away and whispered. “It was you.”

He raised his brows.

She continued. “In my room that night, it was you. She sent you to take me away. You said ‘take her’ to the other man who tried to keep me from warning my brother and sisters. I remember your voice.”

“Princess, I was your mother’s guard, the only one she relied upon. I have never left her side, until now.”

“I have heard your voice before. I didn’t remember where until you touched my cheek. Now I know you.”

“I once served your mother in the palace. I do not doubt you may have heard my voice there.”

“You’re lying, I know you’re lying.” She licked away the salty years, as Faraj approached, eyeing both of them.

He asked, “What happened to you, Fatima?”

Before she could think of an answer, her name floated on the wind. Her father dashed from the entryway and across the cobblestone square. He lifted her from the ground and held her as if he would never let go.

“Oh, my dearest one, how I feared I would never see you again.”

She hid her tears in his shoulder. In his embrace, she threaded her fingers in his dark reddish-brown hair and inhaled the familiar scent of him.

Later, she returned to the harem with her father, via an underground passageway from the citadel. She had never seen it before, but her father assured her, it was necessary to keep her absence and return a secret from everyone outside the family. She looked over her shoulder, wondering why he had allowed Prince Faraj to join them.

She waited with Niranjan and his sisters in the harem’s garden courtyard. Overhead, the sun rose on another Gharnati day. Birds chirped in the trees and scented flowers filled the space. Water bubbled from the pomegranate-shaped fountain and surged along the channels that lined the walls. Everything looked the same. Yet, it would never be the same for her again.

Her brother appeared first, rubbing his eyes. He seemed indifferent to her presence, yawning loudly. While her sisters were also bleary-eyed, they were happy to see her.

Muna hugged her. “We didn’t know where you were. Why are you so dirty? Your throat is all red.”

Fatima swallowed past the lump in her throat, stomach roiling. Her brother and sisters stared. She reached blindly and Niranjan caught her hand. Burying her wet face in his tunic, she gave in to his gentle soothing.

He said, “I have ever served your mother. Now, I shall serve you. I shall protect you until the end of my days.”

Behind her, Alimah asked, “Fatima, what’s wrong?”

Their father cleared his throat. Fatima looked up just as the Sultan arrived. The princes and princesses fell to their knees.

“Fatima, come to me.” When the Sultan held out his hand, she withdrew from Niranjan’s hold and knelt, kissing the hem of her grandfather’s robe. The Sultan raised her up and cupped her face, looking down at her in a steady hazel gaze.

“Rest, bathe and eat, for now. Afterward, I want to know everything.”

After the slaves Leeta and Amoda had bathed her and her governess wrapped her in clean garments, Fatima went to her father’s apartments in the harem. Niranjan trailed her silently.

“Go back!” she whispered over her shoulder. “I am only going to my father. I don’t need a guard for that.”

His stubborn footfalls echoed hers. She scowled over her shoulder at him. She bypassed a garden ringed with myrtle trees. At the center, multicolored fish swam in a marble pool. When she reached the entrance of her father’s residence, she turned to Niranjan. He bowed and stood next to a column, hands clasped behind him.

From within, the sound of her father’s weeping echoed. She had not told him of her mother’s death but he seemed to know it.

When she entered, he sat hunched over his writing desk, while the Sultan and Faraj stood on either side of him. The Sultan lifted his hand before letting it fall limp at his hip.

He asked, “Where were you kept, Fatima?”

She answered, “In the house of Abdallah, Princess Aisha’s brother, my Sultan.”

“Who else was there, other than the princess and her brother?”

“The Ashqilula chieftains, Ibrahim and Abu Muhammad followed Abdallah to Gharnatah.”

Her father lifted his head. His eyes were wet and puffy. “Did Abu Muhammad hurt Aisha?”

“No.”

The Sultan approached. “Did Ibrahim do it?”

When she nodded, her father jerked to his feet, knocking the chair over. “I’ll kill him myself.”

The Sultan patted his shoulder. “In time, my son, all in good time.”

Chapter 6

The Bond

Prince Faraj

Gharnatah, al-Andalus: Muharram 664 AH (Granada, Andalusia: October AD 1265)

Faraj turned toward the window, as Fatima and her father embraced. He considered the consequences of the previous night. The child kidnapped. Her mother murdered. If her captors had no qualms about killing a woman, their own kin, what might they do to him, now that he was Fatima’s husband? The death of the Crown Prince’s wife was the first hint of the threat the Ashqilula posed.

“I have dispatched guards to the foothills, to search for the body. When they return, I want the rest of your children brought here, my son. They must know the truth.”

When the Sultan spoke, Faraj turned toward him with a frown. What could his master be suggesting?

The Crown Prince pulled back slightly from his daughter, though his arms still encircled her. She kept her face buried in his shoulder.

He said, “I intend to tell them, Father.”

“That is not enough. Let them come and see the body.”

The Crown Prince stood, his reddened eyes widening. Still, he hugged Fatima close to him. Faraj felt a tiny pang of jealousy stirring his memories. No one had remained to comfort him when his mother had died.

“Father, you cannot mean it.”

“Don’t I? Let them see what comes of treachery and disloyalty to this family.”

“I won’t do it. You cannot be so merciless, not even to your own grandchildren. I shall not burden them with such a sight! It would destroy them. Would you have Fatima endure it again? Hasn’t she suffered enough in this ordeal?”

“I was there.” Fatima murmured against the folds of her father’s robe. “I was there, when Ibrahim killed her.”

Faraj drew closer, his heart pounding. When the Crown Prince knelt before her again, she rushed on, “He took out his sword. She told me to look away, but I wouldn’t do it. Then, he cut off her head.”

Faraj staggered slightly, drawing the sudden interest of both the Sultan, who studied him and his son, who sneered. Her matter-of-fact description pierced his very soul.

He had informed the Sultan of the deaths of his parents in much the same way, over ten years ago. He gripped the bottom of the Crown Prince’s writing desk, where the men could not see his shaking hand. At length, both of them looked away. He sagged slightly but kept a steady hold on the furniture.

The Crown Prince hugged his daughter again, as she renewed her sobs. Over Fatima’s head, he murmured,“I hope you’re pleased with yourself, Father. Look at what has happened to Fatima, what she has endured. Would you ask her to do it again?”

The Sultan waved a dismissive hand. “I predicted your union would only bring discord and it has done just that. Your lust led you to want a woman who belonged to another. I indulged your desire, like a fool. You shall soon find another woman to comfort you.”

“How dare you!” The Crown Prince glared at his father. “Aisha was my wife, Father and regardless of our relations, I loved her. Do you understand anything of what it is to truly love a woman, or do you only recognize her value in wealth or alliances?”

Although he addressed the Sultan, Faraj felt a small spark of concern at his earlier thoughts. He did not love Fatima – indeed, how any man could love a child bride confounded him – but he recognized that for him, her only value existed in her relationship to the Sultan. Was it right to use this marriage only to further his own interests? What about Fatima?

He pushed aside worry for her, as the Crown Prince continued, “My wife’s blood is on your hands, Father. She died because of this feud between you and Ibrahim.”

“My son, be reasonable. The Ashqilula did what anyone should have expected. If we held the kin of one of them in our clutches, we would have done the same. They killed her as one of the enemy.”

“Yes, all because you made my daughter marry that boy!”

When the Crown Prince turned his glower on Faraj, he shrank back under the scrutiny.

The Sultan muttered, “Don’t blame Faraj for your failures. You should have controlled your wife and kept her locked up.”

“She was never my prisoner, Father!”

“If she stood here, she would say different.” The Sultan sighed. “Grief and sentiment clouds your judgment. This night, while tragic, is also advantageous to our cause.”

“That my children should be motherless is advantageous?”

“You’ve oft said she never showed them a mother’s love. She is no great loss and if you put your feelings aside, in time, you shall see that. Her death aids our cause. It shall sway other families still loyal to the Ashqilula. If they learn our enemies have killed one of their own, a woman whose only fault was to marry you, they shall rally against them! I shall be the victor, in the end.”

“Then, have your hollow victory, at the expense of my pain and tragedy. What of my children? How am I to raise them, motherless? You have all the answers, Father, but none for that.”

Later, the rest of the Crown Prince’s children assembled before their father. The Sultan’s guards had found the mangled body of his son’s wife and returned with it. Faraj still barely believed that the Sultan would have countenanced his grandchildren witnessing such a grisly sight, but mercifully, he had rescinded the command.

He remained in the room with the Sultan, both of them at the window. The Crown Prince sat at his writing desk with the children gathered at his feet. A little baby snuggled in his arms. The children’s governess, a tall Nubian, hovered behind them. There was elegance in her appearance that he had never seen in a slave. He suspected she might have been very beautiful in her youth, with wiry, graying hair cropped close to her skull, large eyes and smooth lips. Her nut-brown complexion glowed with vitality and reflected a good diet. Her slim fingers cradled the youngest child against her. She quieted the fussy child as the Crown Prince began speaking.

“Children, Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful in His infinite wisdom protects us, but He has taken one from among us. The enemies of your grandfather have stolen away your mother, the Princess Aisha. She has died, gone to Paradise.”

Stunned silence followed their father’s announcement. Their governess hugged the smaller children, while the twin girls he had seen earlier, Fatima’s younger sisters, hugged each other. Fatima stood apart from all of them at the side of her brother, Muhammad ibn Muhammad. After a moment, he turned and faced the wall.

When Fatima wrapped her arms about his waist and laid her head against his shoulder, Faraj edged closer. He had never seen such intimacy between siblings and it fascinated him. The children appeared close in age, each perhaps no more than a year older than a younger sibling. They each had dark brown or even dark red hair and their father’s brown eyes or the Sultan’s hazel ones. Except for the boy Muhammad, each had inherited their father’s sallow-skinned complexion. They looked thin and lean, as if none of them ate enough, but surely, the Sultan’s grandchildren were not starving. Only Fatima had black hair. No other feature distinguished her from her brother or sisters.

As Faraj neared her and her brother, Muhammad said, “She left us.”

“The Ashqilula took her away from us, brother,” Fatima murmured against his tunic.

Muhammad pulled away. “She never wanted us. Now she’s finally rid of us forever.”

Faraj frowned at their exchange. Why was this little boy so angry? He looked around and realized that despite the news only Fatima showed any sadness. Her sisters appeared confused and surprised more than anything else. The death had brought strong, but opposing emotions to the surface in the two eldest children. Perhaps the others were too young to understand the impact of their loss.

Fatima shook her head. “You don’t know what you’re saying. The Ashqilula killed her.”

“Good. I hope she suffered, I hope it hurt.”

Her face reddened with blotches and she curled her tiny hands into fists. It seemed as if Faraj could see into her heart, the turmoil building inside her. He had never felt such a strong awareness of the feelings of another in his life.

“Don’t say that, Muhammad. She was our own mother.”

“Not mine. I never had a mother! She never cared for us. Never a kind word! She hated us and I hated her. I’m glad she’s dead.”

She pushed Muhammad with such force, that he sprawled on the marble. Faraj’s heart thudded when. She threw herself upon her brother, tiny fists raining down blows.

Faraj scrambled across the room, without thinking and pulled her off. She fought against him now, her legs flailing. She kicked Muhammad’s nose and blood spurted. Faraj held her close, despite her squirming struggles.