As muffled screams reached the courtyard, his demeanor changed. “Though I must confess I am quite concerned,” he muttered. “Because, you know, the child is very early. I told my wife not to undertake this journey, but she can be stubborn.”
Rouston nodded silently. He liked independent women. They had a certain pride and confidence that he found attractive. He thought of Idri, the Chiadma woman with whom he had shared his life for two years. They had met during a moussem, a festival in the mountains, during which the whole tribe was gathered. There was much celebration, music, and dancing. Idri was a pretty widow with coal black eyes, breasts like ripe apples, and swaying hips. According to Berber custom, widows and divorced women determined for themselves who their next husbands would be, and how long they would be permitted to stay, for divorces were as simple as marriages. André and Idri had sealed their union before the qaid of their tribe as well as five male and five female witnesses. Afterward, André had paraded his wife on a donkey across the festival square.
He jumped at the earsplitting scream above him. The men looked at each other, wide-eyed. Then they heard the soft bawling of a newborn.
“My child,” Benjamin whispered. “It’s here!”
The door to Sibylla’s room was flung open and Sara Willshire appeared.
“Mr. Hopkins, come and welcome your son!”
Chapter Nine
Mogador, December 1839
“Tom! Give it! Mummy!”
Sibylla sighed, laid the letter she had just opened on the table, and went to the gallery to find out what was happening. “What’s the matter now? Tom, are you teasing your little brother again?”
Three-year-old Thomas looked innocently at his mother. His two-year-old brother, John, stood beside him, wailing miserably.
“I want!” He pointed accusingly at Tom, who was holding the morsel out of his little brother’s reach.
Sibylla had to suppress a smile. The two looked so adorable in their little kaftans over their long pants, especially Johnny, who had not yet lost his baby fat. Everything about him was chubby and soft, and his tearstained eyes looked so pitiful. Like his brother, he had light blond curls and deep blue eyes. Tom was taller and slimmer, with delicate features that made him appear older than his three years.
John was only fifteen months younger than his brother. Sibylla had told Benjamin she wanted another child, and was delighted when, shortly after Thomas’s birth, she found herself pregnant again. The baby had turned out to be a boy and, when she held the rosy little creature in her arms for the first time, she completely forgot that she had wished for a girl.
“Tom, did you take your brother’s pastry?” Sibylla asked.
“No, Mummy!” Tom shook his head vehemently. “It’s mine. He dropped his in the water and Daddy’s carps ate it!”
“Is that right, Johnny?” Sibylla looked into the pond in which the fat gold-colored carp, Benjamin’s pride and joy, were lazily swimming their rounds.
The little boy nodded through his tears. Eating was one of his favorite activities, and the sweet gazelle’s horns filled with almond paste, which Nadira had given the children, were one of his favorites.
“How many times have I told you to sit and eat your food in peace, John? If you do that, you won’t drop anything,” Sibylla admonished her younger son.
“Hungry,” Johnny replied plaintively.
“You’ll have to wait until lunchtime, darling. Run along and play now!”
The little boy made a face as though he was about to start crying again.
“Here.” Tom broke the remainder of his horn in two and gave a piece to his brother, who immediately stuffed it into his mouth.
Sibylla was touched. “That was a wonderful thing to do, my love.”
Tom’s affectionate concern was not only for his little brother. He was always anxious about everyone’s well-being: his mother and father, Firyal, Nadira, and all the servants. He even asked his mother whether the beggars in the alleyways had food to eat and a bed to sleep in like he did.
Sibylla was grateful that her firstborn was growing up so healthy and kind. After his birth, she had been unable to nurse him, and Thomas had been raised on donkey milk fed to him drop by drop. Rouston had purchased a female donkey while Sibylla was still recovering in the caravanserai. He had also transported her and the newborn safely back to Mogador. Benjamin, expecting some ships from London, had been unable to stay with her. She herself had urged him to go, although she had been quietly disappointed that he had actually left her behind in the caravanserai. But if he hadn’t, she would never have discovered what a diverting travel companion André Rouston was. While she was lying on the stretcher—this time with her baby—being carried by four slaves, he rode next to her and chatted. So she learned that, after the Algerian War, he had traveled all over the Maghreb. His descriptions of his encounters with belligerent Berber tribes, sage Arab scholars, and Oriental princes living in unimaginable splendor were so lively that Sibylla felt like she’d been there herself. She particularly liked the story of how he had visited Moulay Idriss, Morocco’s holiest city in the northern part of the Atlas Mountains on the pilgrims’ route to Mecca, disguised as a Muslim.
“John!” Sibylla shouted, leaning over the bannister. “Be sure to thank your brother for sharing with you.”
“Thank you, Tom,” the little boy said with a full mouth. Then he extended his sticky hand. “More!”
Tom laughed mischievously. “Come and get it!” He ran off, John at his heels.
Sibylla watched them run around the old olive tree and then charge up to the sundial that Benjamin had bought two years ago to celebrate a particularly lucrative deal. To Sibylla’s great amazement, he had even dug a base for it himself. Her husband was not normally a big enthusiast of physical labor. Once the sundial had been assembled, polished, and set in the courtyard of their riad, he had planted the Union Jack in the ground next to it and invited the qaid for a viewing. Sibylla remembered how proudly he had shown off his valuable sundial. His sons saw it mostly as a jungle gym, much to Benjamin’s chagrin.
“You boys leave the sundial alone, do you hear me?” Sibylla called. Benjamin was not at home—the better business was, the less time he spent with his family—but she did not want to risk any trouble.