“You know you’re not supposed to bring all this to bed with you,” she said. “Your physicians have said over and over that it disturbs your sleep and your appetite. How many of these couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”
“Considering the centuries of mismanagement that brought us to our current apocalypse—all of them,” said the sultan drily, throwing himself onto his bed. He still moved like a boy. Fatima had found it charming once, but lately it had begun to unnerve her.
“Have you eaten?” she asked, scrutinizing his ribs. Abu Abdullah rolled onto his back with a groan.
“Now you’re just nagging. Good God! Even my slaves nag me now. What a farce.” He caught her by the waist, pinching her in a particularly ticklish spot. Fatima shrieked and doubled over and let him pull her laughingly down beside him.
“My dress,” she gasped. The thread-of-gold was heavy and sharp and dug into her shoulders.
“Is there no end to these small humiliations? Here.” Abu Abdullah helped her pull the offending garment over her head. It ended up in a crumpled heap on the floor. Fatima put her face up to be kissed. His mouth was fragrant and bitter with the mastic powder he used to clean his teeth. The taste of it never failed to remind Fatima of the first time she had been presented to him, on a night two years ago when Lady Aisha had declared her old enough to share a bed: he had been affectionate but impersonal, handling her as deftly as he would a horse on a hunt. She had left him on sore legs, bewildered and imagining herself in love, imagining, in fact, many things that would never come to pass: confiding in him, advising him on matters of state, giving and receiving impassioned letters hidden in flowers, as lovers did in poems. But whatever desire she felt had faded when she realized he was still her king. She could neither initiate their lovemaking nor reject it: it was a transaction in which her desire played no part.
Now, as he pulled her beneath him, Fatima found herself staring at the oil lamp on the table nearby and calculating how long it would be before she could return to her poems. But Abu Abdullah did not touch her in the usual way: instead, he pressed his face against her neck and tucked the wool coverlet around them both.
“Will you stay here?” he murmured. “Sleep here, I mean.”
“Of course,” said Fatima warily, wondering whether this was some trick. “If that’s what you want.”
“Good. I’d like company just now.”
Fatima traced a scar that wandered down his right arm, a legacy of his ill-fated battles in Castile, and felt uneasy.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
For a moment, he didn’t answer her. There was kohl smudged in the creases beneath his eyes; his hair, which he wore long, hung in lank strands across his pillow. Fatima imagined him in a farmer’s unbleached linen shirt, his head shaved and his golden skin dark from long hours working under the sun. He would have been happier, and not much poorer than he was now.
“There is no money left,” he said softly. “And no grain. The shipment of wheat from Egypt that was meant for us was stopped at the port in Rejana by the Castilian blockade. I had a courier this morning. You won’t be spared this time, you and the other women. We will not last the winter.”
Fatima was silent. All her life, meals had appeared at their appointed times, made by unseen hands and unseen means. She knew, or rather sensed, that the rest of the palace had been hungry for some time—perhaps even the sultan himself had missed meals, if the hollows between his ribs were any hint. Certainly Hassan was always eager for whatever she brought him. But the harem had remained apart, supplied in all seasons with bread and oranges and meat, even if there were fewer and fewer maids to serve it.
“We’ll be fine,” she said with more confidence than she felt. “Every year your viziers wring their hands and say it’s the end of the world, but it never is. Granada is still here. We’re still here. We’ll be all right, surely.”
She felt him shake his head.
“Not this time,” he said. “Not anymore.”
Fatima had never heard him speak so quietly. She felt a sudden pity for the man beside her. In other circumstances, circumstances in which she could say yes or no to the nights they spent together, she might well have loved him. The feeling was so analogous to desire that she pulled him toward her, sinking her teeth gently into the flesh of his shoulder. He caught his breath.
“Fatima.”
“My lord.”
He kissed her neck, pulling her upright, lifting her onto his lap. There was a frantic series of knocks at the outer door of the dressing room behind them. Fatima wanted to cry.
“Whoever you are, I’m going to have you executed,” shouted Abu Abdullah.
The knocking continued. Cursing, Abu Abdullah rose, hopping awkwardly on one foot as he retied his izar around his waist. Fatima pulled the wool coverlet over her shoulders and followed him, hiding herself behind a large wooden wardrobe in the gloom of his unlit dressing room. Abu Abdullah yanked open the outer door.
“You are a dead man,” he informed the trembling herald who stood in the hall.
“I’m sorry, my lord,” the herald stammered. He was not quite a man—not old enough to have grown into a rather large nose—and he was so terrified that Fatima worried he might wet himself. “A Castilian delegation has just crossed through the Gate of Granada under a flag of truce. They’re coming up the hill now.”
“Coming here?”
“Yes, my lord. Half a dozen nobles, it looks like, and their outriders, and a baggage cart. And two women.”
“What nonsense is this?” The sultan pounded one fist against the doorframe, causing it to rattle. “You, boy—”
“Rajab, my lord.”
“Rajab. Wake up my pages. Wake the chief vizier, my private secretary—and get Hassan the Mapmaker, who is surely not asleep. I want to know where the rest of this delegation is hiding.”
The hall was suddenly full of noise. The herald ran away, screaming orders, and was succeeded by the sound of doors opening and closing. Abu Abdullah slammed his own door, cursing again.
“Fatima!” he called.
Fatima presented herself.
“I need you to do something for me,” said Abu Abdullah, cupping her face in his hands. “There’s a party of Castilians at our doorstep, and for reasons that surpass my understanding, they’ve brought women with them—we’ll have to put them up in the harem. They won’t like it, but we have no other quarters for highborn ladies here. I want you to look after them. And keep an eye on my mother. She’ll flay them alive if you’re not careful. Can you do all that?”
“Yes, my lord,” said Fatima, clenching and unclenching her hands. Abu Abdullah bent to kiss her.
“So young, and already so brave,” he said. He looked as though he wanted to say something else, but hesitated and then turned away.
“Go down to the kitchens first and find out whether we have anything to feed them,” he instructed her, grabbing her robe off the floor and tossing it to her. “Take my door, it’s faster. We’re not clinging to tradition tonight.”
Fatima pulled on the wrinkled garment and set off into the hall. Men and boys in various states of dress were hurrying back and forth, knocking into each other and shouting accusations. None of them bumped into her, however, or even looked at her after the first startled glance of recognition. Fatima squared her shoulders and tried to appear nonchalant. She picked her way around a hastily discarded cup rolling about underfoot, its sticky green contents—emetic herbs, by the smell—congealing rapidly in a series of male footprints.
“Hsst! Fa!”
Hassan was billowing toward her like a wayward bonfire, his curly hair standing on end above a suspiciously pink face. Fatima felt herself flush.
“You’re out of your senses,” she hissed, pulling him into an alcove. “You can’t just wave me down like a peasant. Didn’t you tell me to be more careful just this afternoon?”
Hassan only grinned, watching the commotion in the hall with almost hysterical glee.
“Are you drunk?” asked Fatima.
“As a bandit,” snickered Hassan.