The Love Slave (51 page)

Within a very brief time the Saqalibah finished mopping up the little resistance attempted by Ali Hassan’s men. The women and children in the camp were gathered together. They would be taken to Alcazaba Malina and sold in the slave market there. The remaining men would be publicly tortured and executed for the benefit of the citizens of Malina, so that the murder of Habib ibn Malik and his family could finally be put to rest.

The prince and the Nasi went into Ali Hassan’s tent. Zaynab and Iniga were brought to them.

“Where is Ali Hassan?” Hasdai ibn Shaprut asked them.

“He is dead,” Zaynab replied.

“How?” the Nasi said. “And when?”

“Just a short time ago, my lord. He died in the throes of passion, I regret to say. His lust killed him. It was too easy an end.”

Karim walked across the tent to the sleeping area, and pulling the diaphanous curtain aside, looked upon the man who had murdered his wife and family. This was the man Hatiba had
professed to love. He saw the bath with all its accoutrements. He pulled back the coverlet and spotted the silken cords, saw the angle of one leg, saw the pearlescent trickle oozing from the deflated manhood. He knew how the man had died, and while glad for his death, he agreed with Zaynab. It had been too easy, and too pleasurable a death.

“I did not mean to kill him thusly,” Zaynab said quietly when he returned to where the others stood. “I merely wanted to keep him occupied while Iniga fired the camp. When we realized that Ali Hassan allowed no outdoor fires, we knew that was why you had not found us.”

“My sister fired the camp?” Karim’s gaze swung to Iniga, surprised. She stood silently, eyes lowered modestly.

“Iniga was very brave,” Zaynab told them.

Hasdai ibn Shaprut said nothing, but he listened, and he watched the interaction between Zaynab and Karim. They spoke as old friends, and she was protective of his sister. What was between them really? What had been between them? It was the one thing that she had refused to discuss with him. “You had no doubts that I would find you,” he finally said to her, and she smiled up at him.

“I am a Love Slave, my lord. I knew you would not leave me to Ali Hassan. How could you have explained my loss to the caliph who gave me to you?” Then she laughed, and touching his arm, looked into his face. “Can we please return to the city, my lord? I am ravenous for food that does not come in a wooden bowl, and I need a change of clothing. So does Iniga.”

At the mention of her name, Iniga finally looked up. Her gaze rested first on Zaynab, and lastly, with love, upon her brother. Then, swiftly drawing a dagger from her robes, Iniga drove the weapon into her frail body. The others stared, surprised, as Iniga’s legs gave way beneath her and she crumpled to the floor. Karim knelt, cradling his sister in his arms, tears sliding down his handsome face.

“
Iniga, how can you leave me?
” he pleaded with her. “If you go, my sister, I will have no one.”

“I am defiled, Karim. Zaynab will tell you,” Iniga said weakly.

Hasdai quickly knelt down and examined the wound, praying that it was superficial, but Iniga had struck herself a mortal blow. His sympathetic brown eyes met the prince’s blue ones, and he slowly shook his head. Then the Nasi rose to his feet and put his arms about Zaynab. She was shaking with shock and weeping silently.

“D-Do not g-grieve,” Iniga said to them, and then she sighed gustily, her gaze freezing.

“She is dead,” Karim said tonelessly. “My little sister is dead.” He arose, Iniga’s body still in his arms. “She will be buried with her family,” he said with finality.

In the camp they found a white burial shroud that someone had obviously put aside for themselves. They sewed the body of the young woman in it. By now dawn was already staining the skies. Karim, Hasdai, and their men fired the rest of Ali Hassan’s camp, and then driving their prisoners before them, they rode from the foothills of the mountains down into the city.

The day was well under way when they finally reached Alcazaba Malina, but as word of their arrival spread, the bustle of commerce ceased. The citizens came from their houses and shops to see evidence of the victory their prince had wrested from Ali Hassan, whose severed head upon a pike led their way back into the town.

Cha
p
ter 18

I
t was amazing, Zaynab thought as they returned to the city, that she and Karim had looked on one another for the first time in several years, yet spoke to each other as if they had never been parted. She loved him. Did he love her? He had not loved Hatiba, Mustafa said,
but did he still love her?
And what good if he did? She belonged to the Nasi. Another wife would be found for Karim, she knew. The caliph wanted him remarried, wanted Karim to have heirs who would continue their loyalty to the Umayyads while ruling Malina for him. It is hopeless, she thought, and she wept silently in the closed litter.

Her tears returned when Iniga was buried between her mother and her husband The girl’s in-laws, dressed in white, came with their grandson to help mourn his mother. Zaynab praised her friend’s bravery, and leapt to her defense when Iniga’s father-in-law said, “I am surprised she was still alive when you arrived at the camp of Ali Hassan, my lady Zaynab.” His voice, though kind, carried a faint tone of condemnation.

“She was alive,” Zaynab replied quietly, “because she believed Ali Hassan had little Malik in his possession. Each day they would show her a small boy across the encampment who waved to her. They told her it was her son. In fear for the child, she did their bidding. Only a loving mother would have sacrificed herself so.”

“Ahhh,” Iniga’s mother-in-law said, tears in her eyes, “she was always a good mother. We will see that Malik remembers her as such.”

No one asked anything further until that evening, when Karim
came to the Nasi’s quarters. “I wish to speak with Zaynab,” he said, and Hasdai nodded his permission.

“Do you wish me to go?” he asked Karim politely.

“No, you may stay.” He settled himself across from Zaynab and asked, “Now tell me exactly what happened to Iniga. I know that you know.”

She sighed. “What difference does it make now, my lord Karim? Iniga is dead. Ali Hassan is dead. Nothing can change that, nor what went before it. Why do you wish to torture yourself?”

Her beautiful face, Hasdai noted, was concerned.

“Tell me what happened, Zaynab!” he said in a harsh voice. “
I must know!
”

“Why?” she demanded, but seeing there would be no arguing with him, Zaynab began her recitation in a flat voice. As she came to the end of her tale, tears began to slip down Zaynab’s beautiful face. “I thought that if I could keep her alive until you came, Karim, she would want to continue living; but as soon as she knew I would escape unscathed …” Zaynab could not go on, her sorrow being too great. Hiding her face from the two men, she wept bitterly into her two hands. She would never understand why Iniga chose suicide over life. To Zaynab life was precious, and when it hurt or disappointed you, you got up and moved on to a better time.

Oma, who had been sitting silently, crept to her mistress’s side, putting her arms about her. “There, there, lady, don’t grieve,” she murmured. “They have this code of honor here, and you couldn’t save her from it, lady. ’Twas her fate, I fear.”

“Are you satisfied now, my lord?” Hasdai coldly asked the prince. “I do not think Zaynab has anything else to say to you on the matter.” He was furious with himself for allowing Karim al Malina to distress her so. Zaynab had a kind heart. She had cared deeply for her friend.

Karim, stricken, arose and left them. He thought he had known what Zaynab would say, but the depth of the brutality visited upon his sister was more than he could bear.

Finally, Zaynab’s grief subsided a bit, and she said to the Nasi, “I tried to save her, Hasdai. There was no need for her to
die, but she kept saying because she had been raped, she was defiled and no longer felt fit for decent society. Why should that be so, my lord? She was not at fault. It was the men who brutalized her who were at fault! I know several of them by sight. They are among your prisoners, and I want to see them die!” Her voice was shaking now. “
I must!
”

“Lady, Alaeddin said to me their deaths will be horrible,” Oma whispered. “The prince burned for revenge before he heard your tale. Now he will be merciless. ’Tis too harsh a sight for our eyes.”

The Nasi, however, disagreed. “If you wish to see these particular men tortured and executed, my dear, then you shall; but Oma is right. It will be a cruel and terrible sight.”

“I would see it,” she said fiercely, then turning to Oma, told her, “You need not accompany me.”

“So be it,” the Nasi told her.

Zaynab went with him and Karim to point out the two men she had seen using Iniga that day, and the man Iniga had pointed out as the one who liked to beat her before using her. The three of them were separated from the others, and brought to the main square of the city for public torture and execution. Each man was whipped hard, but not enough to either kill him or render him unconscious. It was a fine art that the whippers practiced. They made their victims suffer exquisite pain, and then they rubbed salt into the bloody wounds to intensify that pain. Each man was then stretched upon a rack. His fingernails and toenails were removed while he howled with agony. The air was heavy with the scent of blood, urine, vomit, and feces when finally all three prisoners were ready for the next stage of the torture.

Zaynab sat immobile upon the dais placed in the square for Hasdai, Karim, and herself. She was pale, but her eyes were hard and lacking pity. No one looking at those eyes would have known that beneath her veil she bit her lip to keep from crying out loud. She stared as a surgeon carefully removed the testes from each man’s scrotum, numbing the area first, for the pain would have rendered him unconscious. The three would see themselves unmanned. The mental agony that caused was far,
far greater than any physical pain. A collective shriek arose from the three as their manhoods were sliced off in unison by three executioners, to then be fed to a pack of snarling, hungry dogs that had been rounded up for the occasion. The terrible wounds were stanched with hot pitch, causing further cries of pain. Zaynab swallowed back the urge to vomit.

The prince arose. “Come,” he said to the Nasi and Zaynab.

They followed him up a flight of stairs to the top of the walls of Alcazaba Malina, which were some thirty feet in height. Ten feet down on the smooth white walls, great, curving black hooks were set to prevent any attacker from scaling the high barricades. The three half-dead men were carried up the stairs behind the prince and his party. At Karim’s signal, each was carefully tossed from the wall, their descent stopped by the sharp hooks upon which they fell. Their screams were horrendous as their naked bodies were pierced through. They wriggled upon the hooks, crying out to Allah for a quick death, desperate to escape the all-enveloping pain.

“Depending upon their individual strengths,” Karim said quietly, “they may live several hours to several days. The last to die will watch as the carrion birds pluck the sightless eyes from his companions.”

“I hope it is the fat one,” Zaynab said. “The one who beat Iniga. He is the worst of them all. I pray he suffers the most!”

Watching the three dying men somehow seemed to ease the pain in her heart. Zaynab knew she would always remember, but at least she felt justice had been done. Iniga had been revenged. Her honor would be cleansed by the death throes of the men who had maltreated her so terribly.

For the next few weeks Hasdai ibn Shaprut worked with Karim to set the government and its administration, unsettled by the death of Habib ibn Malik, back on an even keel. Zaynab spent her time regaining her strength and preparing for Oma’s wedding to the vizier, Alaeddin ben Omar. In the days of Zaynab’s captivity, Karim’s former first mate had pressed his case with Oma. When Zaynab returned, Alaeddin came to her, pleading.

“You must convince her to wed with me,” he said. “I love
her dearly. I have taken no other wife, in the hopes that she would change her mind and return to me, my lady Zaynab; but I am no longer a young man. I am past thirty. If I am to have sons, I must marry soon.”

“I have told her I would free her, and I have advised her to marry you, my lord,” Zaynab told him. “Last time, I know, she remained with me because I was going into a strange new world. Now, however, I have the Nasi, and I have the caliph’s daughter. I should not want her to deny herself the happiness she could have as your wife. I will speak with her, but I can promise you nothing, my lord. Oma is every bit as independent in her thinking as I am. Are you certain you want such a wife? She will not change.” Zaynab’s eyes twinkled.

“I want only her!” he vowed earnestly.

“Do you love him?” Zaynab demanded of Oma later that day.

“Yes,” Oma said, “but I love you too, lady.”

“If you love him,” Zaynab replied, “then you must marry him.” She caught her friend’s hands in hers. “Ohhh, Oma, do not be a little fool! I love you too. You are the best friend I ever had, but what you will have with Alaeddin ben Omar will be even better. You will have your freedom, and status as the wife of the vizier. You will have children of your own, and I know you want that. Best of all, you will have the love of a good man. Do not throw that away just to remain with me, Oma.” Zaynab’s eyes filled with tears. “Dearest Oma, if I could have what you have, I would be the happiest woman in the world!”