Authors: Bertrice Small
One stall sold colorful live birds, which hung confined in their willow cages. Some of the creatures sang sweetly, while others simply shrieked raucously, hanging upside down on the bars, glaring with beady black eyes at the passersby. A poulterer and a butcher were next to one another, their wares displayed for all to see. Beef and lamb hung side by side, boys with palm fans shooing the flies from the meat Chickens squawked, ducks quacked, and pigeons cooed, confined in their pens, awaiting a buyer. There were jewelers selling everything from cheap brass earrings to expensive baubles that glittered in the sunshine.
Rounding a corner, they came upon a slave merchant. They stopped, fascinated. Strong young black men were paraded naked, and were quickly sold to new masters. A pretty dark-haired young girl was brought from behind a curtain. She tried to cover her nudity with her hands, but the slave master spoke sharply to her, and with reluctance she revealed all to an audience of eager bidders. The bidding was spirited. The girl, advertised as a virgin with a physician’s proof of her condition, sold quickly for three hundred thirty dinars.
“Would that have happened to Oma and me if Donal Righ had not bought us?” Zaynab asked Karim.
He nodded. “Yes, my jewel. A slave market is not a happy place.”
Once again, Zaynab realized, but this time far more strongly, how fortunate she and Oma had been to be sold to Donal Righ. Oh, they had been told it often enough, but seeing that poor frightened girl just now had really made her understand. If men did not think me beautiful, she considered thoughtfully, I would have ended up terrified in some public marketplace, and Oma as well. She shuddered in her distaste, but her companions did not notice.
Putting a hand beneath Zaynab’s elbow, Karim directed her into another part of the market, where they came upon stalls filled with fruits, flowers, and vegetables. One merchant hawked carnations, jasmine, myrtle, and roses. Another offered baskets filled with cucumbers, peas, beans, asparagus, aubergines, and onions. There was a stall filled with herbs, mint, marjoram, sweet lavender, and jars of yellow saffron. The fruit seller offered oranges, pomegranates, bananas, grapes, and almonds.
Karim bought them little cups of water flavored with lemon to assuage their thirsts, for the day had grown unseasonably warm for late winter. “Sip it through your veils,” he cautioned them. “You must never show your faces in public, lest you disgrace yourselves.”
They walked on, and Zaynab’s eye was caught by a small stall where a silversmith worked. “May we stop, my lord?”
“Indeed,” he said, “and you may each choose a gift if something catches your fancy.”
The serving girl’s eyes lit upon a delicate silver chain studded with blue Persian lapis, and Karim generously bought it for her. Zaynab, however, fell in love with a silver cup. It was not footed, but rather round in shape to fit comfortably in the palm of the hand. The cup was decorated with a raised design: a lily, about which a small hummingbird hovered. The flower was overlaid with gilt, while the bird was enameled in bright green and violet with a tiny ruby eye.
“This is what I desire, my lord,” she told him quietly, and he purchased it for her.
“You will remember me each time you sip from this cup,” he said as he escorted her to her litter.
“I could never forget you,” she told him softly.
“The silver comes from mines in the nearby mountains that belong to Alcazaba Malina,” he told her in an effort to change the subject. “Those mines are responsible in part for the city’s prosperity.”
She could not look at him. Turning her head, she lay back in the litter and pretended to doze. In a few weeks Iniga would marry, and the month after, Karim would take her to Cordoba. She would never see him again. The knowledge was like a knife to her heart. Yet did any woman have a different lot in life? Her sister had been married for expediency’s sake. Zaynab wondered if the child Gruoch had borne was the hoped-for son. If it had been, then Sorcha MacDuff’s revenge would have been total and complete. A true MacDuff would continue to possess Ben MacDui, as well as the MacFhearghuis’s lands. I will never know, Zaynab thought.
Iniga’s wedding day arrived. Zaynab had consulted Karim as to what she should wear. “I would do your sister honor, but I do not want to outshine her on her day of days,” she told him.
“If you wore a sackcloth you would outshine every woman in the world,” he said gallantly. “I can only tell you not to wear pink, for that is the color of my sister’s garment.”
“What help is that?” she grumbled at him.
“Something elegant, but simple,” Oma said, drawing forth from the chest a caftan of aquamarine silk. The round neckline was embroidered in gold and silk thread flowers, as were the bottom of the sleeves. “There are matching silk trousers for beneath, my lady. We’ll use the little gold slippers. The plain ones, not the jeweled.”
Karim, listening, nodded his agreement. “And only earbobs for jewelry,” he said. “The little gold crescent moons. Perhaps a single bracelet, but nothing more.”
Oma dressed her mistress and then did her hair. She braided
the long thick gilt mass into a single plait, weaving matching silk ribbons studded with pearls among the silky tresses. When she had finished, she topped the braid with a diaphanous silk veil of blue-green shot through with gold and silver. It had a matching face veil. The servant’s own garb was similar in style to her mistress’s, but it lacked embroidery and was of a pretty soft green. About her slender neck Oma proudly wore the silver necklace Karim had bought her. Sadly, all their splendor was topped by the black yashmaks they were forced to wear when traveling.
The litter arrived to take the two women into the city. As was his custom, Karim rode by their side. When they reached the street where Habib ibn Malik’s home was located, the litter stopped before the garden gate. Dismounting his horse, Karim opened the gate with his key.
“I must enter through another way,” he said. “You will find the other women in the garden at their celebration.”
“Where are the men?” Zaynab asked.
“The celebrations are separate,” he explained. “It is our custom. Go now, and enjoy yourselves. My mother will tell you when it is time for you to leave. You will depart through this same gate, and I will be waiting for you. Enjoy yourselves!”
They walked through the gate and found themselves in the most exquisite gardens. There were tall graceful trees everywhere, and pools with water lilies, and fountains that sprayed showers of tiny droplets into the sweet afternoon air. Following the sound of music, they moved along a gravel path until they reached the bridal party. The two young women went immediately to the lady Alimah and paid their respects.
Karim’s mother was looking particularly beautiful and happy this day. “Do you see the bride?” she asked them, and turning them about, pointed.
There in the center of the garden, Iniga sat upon a golden throne, garbed in soft pink silk sewn all over with tiny crystals and diamonds. Her hair was unbound and dusted with gold, but a delicate pink veil was placed modestly over it. Slave women
came and removed Zaynab’s and Oma’s travel garments. Instinctively, the two shook the wrinkles from their gowns.
Alimah looked approvingly upon them. “How pretty you both are,” she said in a kindly tone. “Now go, and greet my daughter.”
They hurried to the center of the garden, where Iniga sat alone, surrounded by her dowry and wedding gifts. She grinned mischievously at them. “What do you think?” She laughed. “Am I not like some painted idol?”
“You are quite magnificent,” Zaynab agreed. “Do you sit there all day, Iniga, or are you allowed to move about?”
“I must sit here in my solitary splendor,” Iniga chuckled, “until late afternoon when Ahmed and his male relations will come to take me to his father’s house, where we will live. The party will continue there, again men and women in separate areas, until at last my husband and I may escape to the privacy of our bedchamber. After that my glory is dimmed until the day I announce I am with child. Then it will brighten with each passing month until I deliver my offspring, who will hopefully be a son.”
“What if you birth a daughter?” Zaynab asked her.
“A son is hoped for first, but a daughter is welcomed too. Before the prophet came and brought enlightenment to our people, many killed their female infants. The Quran, however, says: ‘Do not kill your children because you fear poverty. We will grant you subsistence to feed them. Killing them would be a terrible mistake.’ ” Iniga smiled. “Besides, we women are lifegivers. We should not be lifetakers.”
It was a pleasant afternoon. An all-female orchestra played, and often the women danced with each other beneath the eye of the bride. Slave girls passed trays of drinks, little cakes, sugared dates, and other sweets. Finally, Alimah signaled to Zaynab and Oma that it was time for them to leave. Returning to where Iniga sat enthroned, they wished her well and then bid her farewell.
“Come and see me,” Zaynab said, “before we leave for Cordoba.”
“When will you go?” Iniga asked.
“After Ramadan, Karim has said,” Zaynab answered.
“I will come,” Iniga promised her friend. “He will not leave until after Id al-Fitr, the three-day celebration ending Ramadan. The holy month begins in two days, and I will not be able to come during it, but I will come at Id al-Fitr, Zaynab, I promise.”
The two girls embraced. Then Zaynab, in the company of Oma, hurried back across the garden to the little gate in the wall. Karim was awaiting them with the litter. After settling them in it, he told them, “I must remain for the rest of the celebration. I will be with you late tonight, my jewel. Wait up for me.” Then he closed the curtains, and they felt the litter being lifted up and carried off.
“ ’Tis funny,” Oma said as they traveled along, “how the men and the women celebrated separately at the wedding feast. I had hoped to see Alaeddin ben Omar there, but if he was there, I will never know unless he tells me. He has been so busy these past months, I have hardly seen him at all. I suppose I am not important to him, though he did his best to seduce me on our voyage from Eire.”
“Did he succeed?” Zaynab questioned her servant mischievously.
“No,” Oma said, “but not for want of trying.” She sighed. “There is no future for me there, lady, and I find for all my chatter I am not a girl for a quick kiss and a cuddle. The caliph will see you and love you, lady. You may have a child, and that child will be born free, a king’s son. Any child I bear will be a slave, as I am now. Perhaps if I had not been born free myself it would not matter, but I was freeborn, and it does.”
“If I please the caliph,” Zaynab said, “it will be in my power to free you, Oma. I could return you to Alba. Would that make you happy?”
“Lady, I should far prefer to stay with you,” Oma said. “There is nothing for me in Alba. I have no family, and the only home I have ever known was the convent. I cannot return there,” she said with a little smile. “Can you see the look on Mother Eubh’s face if I came tripping up the road to her gates?”
“I could send you to my sister at Ben MacDui,” Zaynab said.
“
What!
” Oma cried. “Are you trying to rid yourself of me, lady? You cannot be certain your sister survived her childbirth, and how would I ever explain all of what has happened to us? Do you think your sister and the Fergusons would believe me? They’d set the dogs on me, lady! Do not send me away from you!” Tears sprang into Oma’s eyes.
“I do not want to send you away,” Zaynab said, patting her serving girl’s hand, “but you seemed so unhappy just a moment ago.”
“Ohh, it is just that Alaeddin ben Omar,” Oma said.
“Perhaps then you should let him succeed at his seduction of you,” Zaynab suggested. “Because you are my servant does not mean you should not have a bit of love for yourself.”
“I do not want a child,” Oma replied.
“You do not have to have one, then,” Zaynab said. “Do you not wonder why I have not become with child all these months? Did not Karim give you a bottle of elixir back in Dublin with instructions that I was to be given some in water each morning? Have you not been given the recipe for that same elixir, and brewed it yourself for me?”
“Yes,” Oma said slowly. “I never knew what it was, but I knew the master would not harm you.”
“That elixir is to prevent me from having a child,” Zaynab told her companion. “And there is also another method, but I am not as certain it would be successful. Iniga told me the women of the harem stuff little sponges into their sheaths up to the mouth of the womb. This is said to block their lover’s seed. Take some of my elixir, Oma, and then if you wish, take Alaeddin ben Omar for your lover. You will be happier, I think, than if you don’t.”
“Thank you, lady,” Oma said gratefully. “I will admit to desiring that black-bearded ruffian, but no child of mine will be born a slave!” Then she thought a moment. “How long must I take the elixir before yielding to Alaeddin’s charms?”
“Take a dose of it tonight,” Zaynab suggested. “You will be safe immediately as long as you imbibe it daily. I will not take it once we arrive in Cordoba, however, for having a child by
the caliph can only increase my value to him, and my status in the harem.”
“I think I will be sorry to leave this place,” Oma said. “It is a fair land, and the lord Karim is a good master. When will we go, lady? Do you know?”
“In two days the month of Ramadan begins,” Zaynab told her. “We will refrain from eating and drinking from sunrise to sunset. At the end of the month there will be a three-day celebration. We depart for Cordoba immediately after it.”
The following morning brought a period of intensive study for Zaynab. Knowing that the time was short, her teachers pressed her, to assure themselves that she had attained perfection in their eyes. Her success in Cordoba would reflect glory on them all.
In the late afternoon Oma came to her, bringing a long, hooded white cloak. “My lord Karim says you are to put this on and come with me, lady.” Then she lowered her voice so the imam could not hear. “And Alaeddin has come with my lord Karim. May I be with him?”