The Emerald Embrace Page 16

  The Pasha had managed to control his laughter. Sitting, wiping his eyes, he asked, “Is this why Ahmed and the Enlightened Ones gave you to me? As proof that the West has all the advantages in education?” He glanced down at my open book. “Should a woman know how to read ancient Greek history rather than learn the workings of her own body?”

  “I thought it was being hurt in the Ceremonial Alcove,” I said, swallowing hard at the memory.

  His glowing, youthful happiness faded. After a breath, he said quietly, “It would give me the greatest pleasure to forget that night. Yet how can I? When I’m so delighted with what it will produce?”

  He had so many children. “Are you really pleased?”

  “For weeks I’ve tried to share my happiness. And you kept so infuriatingly silent on the matter. Am I right, Naksh? You know nothing about having a baby?”

  Curiosity overcame my misery and my pride. “Nothing,” I admitted.

  “Our child was started that night.” He rested his hand on my pink silk harem trousers, his fingers lightly stroking my stomach. “He, or she, lies here, very small now, but growing in your womb, encased in his own sac, getting his sustenance from you through the umbilical cord. Soon—in two months or so—he’ll make his presence known by giving you a kick. If he has anything of his father’s nature, he’ll poke often. He’ll grow bigger and stronger. It takes nine months for him to arrive, forcing his way through that passage where I find so much pleasure.”

  “And enter the world a slave,” I said bitterly.

  “One of the tenets of our faith is that any child a slave bears her master is born free.”

  “That’s one law our country ought to adopt.”

  “Why, Naksh, are you complimenting us?” His eyes danced, and from his sash he drew a scrolled parchment. “Here,” he said. “It’s your gift.”

  I took the heavy paper, which was still warm from his body. As I scanned it, I recalled Amos Thornton handing me a guardianship document, so at first my mind refused to encompass the scribe’s Arabic. Naksh, a female slave of Christian ancestry, is granted freedom by Pasha Mohammed Ali.

  It was a decree of manumission.

  “I thought you’d be happier,” said the Pasha. “You never stop telling me of the joys of freedom, and now you look as if it’s a sour commodity.”

  Freedom? Though no longer his chattel, I was still imprisoned by the twenty-foot-thick walls of the Citadel, still trapped in the harem. Escape was but a foolish dream. And all around me, like the invisible web of a great, venomous spider, were strands of feminine jealousy and intrigue.

  Already there had been an attempt to kill me and my unborn child.

  “When I left you were rosy-cheeked and now you’re pale. Thinner. Naksh, you’re meant to grow plumper.” He touched the scab on my chin. “How did you hurt yourself?”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. What point in accusation? The princess was his wife. And then, suddenly, I thought of a refuge. “Pasha, now I can return to your apartments.”

  “I’ll visit you here.”

  “Please?”

  “Women belong in a harem. Besides, Naksh, think. You have this garden to run around in any state of nudity that you wish.”

  He was teasing. But I was locked inside my urgent fears, as surely as I was locked inside these walls. “You don’t have to worry about my going onto your veranda. I’ve been staying inside mostly—I’ve been sleepy.” I remembered his advice about flattery. “I want to be with you.”

  He looked into my face, searching for something that he apparently didn’t find. His gray eyes went flat and unreadable as wet stones. He said casually, “I’d stick with the truth if I were you. You’re the worst liar in Islam.” He paused. “What is it you want? A bigger apartment? More servants? Some special book? Tell me right out and you’ll have it.”

  “Then I have to stay here?” I asked miserably.

  “I’m afraid so. And to make matters worse, I’ll drop by often.”

  I doubted that anyone, even the princess, would dare harm me while he was around. “When? Will you come for supper?”

  “Naksh, what is all this?”

  I managed to say lightly enough, “I need another lesson on childbearing, Pasha.”

  This amused him. Chuckling, he replied, “I did plan on supping with you. I’ll explain more about your interesting condition then.”

  After he left I went inside. Folding the manumission document, I put it away carefully into my jewel box. Uisha put fresh henna on my finger- and toenails, she loaded on all my jewelry, including the Emerald Embrace, then, peering at me, she got out her box of maquillage. Normally I disliked paint, but this afternoon I made no protest when she lined black kohl around my eyes and touched rouge along my cheekbones.

  She prepared supper for two.

  The lamb kabobs and couscous grew cold while I picked at orange segments. The large brass tray was removed and the servants, except for Uisha, went off to their quarters.

  Finally, I accepted that the Pasha wasn’t returning.

  So much, I thought with a twisted smile, for keeping him nearby. Uisha folded my resplendent clothes, locked away my jewelry, then pressed her palms together, and bowing, left me alone.

  The drowsiness that had plagued me vanished. I paced up and down. Outside, the moonless night was deathly still; no sounds came from the courtyard or the far end of the palace, where the concubines had their apartments.

  Then, all at once, by the front windows, I heard a stealthy rustling.

  Somebody was out there!

  I halted, immobilized in the center of the lavishly appointed room. Shrubbery rattled again, then was quiet. I could actually hear the pounding of my heart. My terror was greater than it had been when the Ithaca was boarded.

  No other sound came. I decided that whoever lurked outside was waiting to attack after my lamp went out. My mouth tasted metallic, of helpless fear, and I ached for a weapon.

  In my enclosed garden was a row of meshals, outdoor torches with cedar staves and iron-drum tops. A meshal could be used as a mace-like weapon.

  Opening the door, I went into cool darkness and, lifting an unlit torch from its ring with difficulty, lugged it inside to balance against the divan. I perched tense.

  Again I heard a noise. I grasped the splintery staff, grunting as I raised the iron basket over my head.

  The door opened. The Pasha came in.

  I felt a complete fool, my arm muscles quivered, yet I continued to hold the torch upraised.

  “Naksh, I know I’m late,” he said. “Is that a capital offense among Americans?”

  “I heard noises in the courtyard. I thought somebody was out there, someone who wanted to harm me and the baby.”

  A muscle flicked angrily at his jaw. “Put down the meshal,” he said. “There’s no need to tear out the harem adornments to defend our child, Naksh. I’ll protect both of you.”

  Slowly I lowered the torch to the floor. “Now you have one more thing to joke about. But I don’t care.” My voice rose. “Somebody’s outside!”

  “I reserve the right to tease you,” he said. “There are guards by your windows. I stationed them.” His face grew worried. “Beloved, you’re shaking all over.”

  “I … it happens sometimes.”

  “When you’re in the harem?”

  I nodded.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, stroking my arm. “You have to tell me things. It’s not easy for me to understand. Naksh, you’re too quick-witted and independent for a woman. You never confide in me. Wouldn’t it have been easier to simply explain why you wanted to return to my apartment? How was I meant to guess the great bitch made you fall?”

  “Informing’s dishonorable,” I said. “And besides, Pasha, she’s your wife.”

  “That can be remedied,” he said grimly. “She tried to poison you.”

  “So it was the princess,” I whispered.

  “Yes. But what I don’t understand is that with all
your spirited arguments against harem life, you never mentioned the incident.”

  “I’ve been afraid you’d … uh, avenge yourself on Uisha.”

  “There was something very wrong with how the ring was returned, but I was too pleased at having it back to look into the matter. Naksh, I haven’t been taken in like that since I was eleven.” His voice was dry yet imperious. “Don’t ever try any more games with me.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “This afternoon, when you were so upset about staying here, Ahmed and I began to investigate. We spoke to the harem servants and uncovered the princess’s plots. She is accustomed to life in Sultan Mahmoud’s Grand Seraglio and its intrigues.” He paused. “She owns a slave skilled in the herbal arts. Unfortunately for her, though, your mute’s been preparing your meals. And when you refused to miscarry, there were other plans afoot. They were to take place while I was in Alexandria.” He drew a deep breath. “If I hadn’t come back to be with you, you’d have been dead.”

  Surprised at the depth of his emotion, I heard myself ask. “Am I that important to you?”

  He looked at me as if weighing the question. His face grew blank. “Of course you are,” he said easily. “Is there another woman who can make me roll on the ground with laughter?” He got up and began to undress.

  Thutmose sat in his private courtyard watching the Lady Nefer float in the pool. His convalescence had been slow. Physicians, however, divided illness into two types: diseases beyond their knowledge, for which they offered up magic incantations to the healing goddess, Sekhmet, and illness they knew how to cure. And this recurrent marsh fever that he had acquired in his long campaign against the rebellious Hittites they classified in the second category. The Pharaoh understood, therefore, that soon he would return to full health. The hot sun above Thebes warmed him and he smiled at the Lady Nefer, who was floating toward him, her emerald eyes shining, her lashes glued into points.

  He knelt, embracing her, drenching his robe of royal linen. She kissed him. He splashed into the pool and they clung together, buoyant in the shallow, sun-warmed water, which rippled as their embrace grew yet more ardent. Neither was aware of eyes watching through a narrow slit concealed by the brilliantly painted fresco.

  “Naksh?” the Pasha said. I blinked at him. His turban rested on its chair. He wore a nightshirt. “You were a million miles away.”

  “I saw her again.”

  “Saw who?”

  “That blond woman. This time she was with the Pharaoh. And somebody was spying.”

  “Another thing about being pregnant,” he said, stepping up into the alcove. “It brings on odd fancies.”

  “They were real people. And the love between them was so strong I could feel it. I could feel the danger, too—as strongly as I did the other time I saw her!”

  He raised a mocking eyebrow. “Naksh, I’m surprised at you.”

  “You really think it’s my condition? Was it just a hallucination?” I asked uncertainly.

  “Let’s put it this way. I didn’t see any Pharaoh making love to a blond woman. Still, it sounds a pleasant enough idea.”

  Pulling at the silver ribbon of my night shift, he leaned forward to kiss the pulse at the base of my throat. At the warmth of his lips that odd, vicarious desire filled me and I thought I would faint with longing. Giving a small cry, I pressed his head closer to me.

  “Naksh,” he whispered hoarsely “Ahh, Naksh, how I’ve missed you.”

  As the hot, wanton blood surged through me, I was aware that this arousal of my poor, amputated desire was somehow connected through the Emerald Embrace to that long-dead woman. But how? In neither vision had she worn the necklace. I wasn’t wearing the necklace. Indeed, I’d never worn it when carnality overcame me.

  The whole idea was perposterous. And what did it matter?

  I fell back into the soft mattress, my thighs spreading as I pulled the Pasha over me. He muttered endearments and I engulfed him. Once he whispered that I should take care. But, thinking of the hard, hawk-nosed Pharaoh, I didn’t heed his words. My passion exceeded our other times.

  “Naksh?”

  It was still dark and his arms were around me.

  I came out of sleep, drowsily murmuring, “Mmm?”

  “Does it disturb you the child will be a bastard?”

  I awoke fully, and he must have felt my tension. “So the idea doesn’t appeal to you.”

  Though in the East illegitimacy has little social stigma, I sighed. “The baby’s all I have. I can’t joke about it.”

  “Who asked you to be funny?” he retorted. “I’ve been lying here wondering how far you’d go to ensure its well-being. Would you, for example, marry me?”

  “Is that why you woke me up? To tease me?”

  “Aren’t you interested in my proposal?”

  “You already have four kadines.”

  “That, I told you, will be remedied.”

  “For once be sensible with me, Pasha.” My voice broke, but I forced myself to continue more calmly. “I’m just a slave—or was until yesterday. An ephemeral woman in your life. The princess is the Sultan’s niece. You can’t divorce her. Sultan Mahmoud, though he has little power is more revered than my people.”

  “Thank you for the lesson in Islamic politics, Naksh,” he said smoothly. “What I asked, however, was the lengths to which you’d go for this child. I take it you refuse to marry a middle-aged Oriental despot famed for his vengeful streak?”

  Darkness intensified the savage mockery in his voice. Was he mocking himself? Or me?

  The Pasha finally spoke. “I want this child to be legitimate, Naksh.” The harsh voice was commanding.

  “So do I,” I said, and the whispered words seemed to hang in the night.

  Seventeen

  Divorce in the East isn’t considered a sin. The Islamic husband, needing no grounds, isn’t compelled to brand his wife an adulteress. In the presence of the woman and two witnesses, he simply repeats three times: I divorce thee.

  Despite the ease of the rite, however, for the Pasha to rid himself of the princess involved grave risk. There was no way for him to be certain whether discarding the Sultan’s niece would set off the fiercest of all battles, a war of faith. Since he mentioned neither the divorce nor marriage again, I assumed our talk that night had been another of his inexplicable games.

  Then, in late August, he informed me that the princess was crating her dowry goods. “She’s taking my barge to Alexandria Harbor. A Byzantine galleon is waiting. Soon she will only be plotting her way around the Grand Seraglio.”

  The princess, it turned out, was my one enemy in the harem. The Syrian kadines, when I told them about my pregnancy—though they already knew—responded with interest, giving me advice on it and childbirth. The concubines promptly bought lovely thread to embroider little quilts. The Pasha’s young daughters were always clustering around me to touch my stomach and “feel the baby.” Lullah Zuleika beamed like a proud grandmother.

  The harem’s excitement alternately bewildered and delighted me. I’ll never get used to women amicably sharing one man, I thought. Still, it’s wonderful to have friends.

  One day Lullah Zuleika invited me to a party. She’d hired an antar, one of that rare breed of storytellers who can properly recite The Thousand and One Nights.

  The princess had not yet left, and I was living in the Pasha’s suite until she did. That day there was a chill to the wind and as I opened the unobtrusive door between the Pasha’s residence and the harem, I wrapped my violet wool cloak tighter about myself.

  The princess was walking with four of her servants in the fountained courtyards. Obviously she had been waiting for me. As I emerged, she started toward me, her ermine-lined crimson pelisse swirling in a great blood-red curve, her servants following after her.

  There was an inevitability to the advancing group. Among her retinue was the huge Turkish woman who looked like a female wrestler. My knees went weak. Nothing, I told myself,
can happen in broad, cold sunlight with a score of gardeners around trimming wind-driven shrubbery. I’m safe. Yet instinctively I moved a hand to my gently rounded stomach.

  The princess and I walked slowly toward one another. We were both tall and young, but there the resemblance ended. I, my loose blond hair windblown about my rosy cheeks, was of the first generation reared in our new democracy. The princess, her black braids glinting with rubies, her ivory face barred by those straight black brows, was the proud daughter of six hundred years of the Ottoman sultanate.

  She halted a few steps from me. She didn’t waste words on greetings. “You’re to be the new Little Kadine,” she said.

  Though he’d talked about divorce, the Pasha hadn’t mentioned marriage again. “I doubt it,” I said. “When the Pasha remarries, he’ll choose a politically advantageous wife.”

  She ignored this. “Ever since you arrived in the harem, you’ve been angling after this. You drew him to your chamber, seduced him, stayed in his alcove feigning illness until you got yourself pregnant. Now, you’ve inveigled him into divorcing me.”

  “You’re the one who plotted! It wasn’t until the Pasha learned about your scheme that he considered divorce.”

  “He’s an upstart who doesn’t know the difference between royalty and slaves. That’s why he’s chosen you to breed his heirs.”

  “He has many children,” I retorted hotly. “He’s devoted to them all. Ibraham’s his heir and his most trusted adviser.”

  “Ibraham? Any son of mine would have outranked him,” she answered with hauteur. “His mother’s a nobody, a fat pile of superstition.”

  At this insult to the kindest person I’d ever known, my anger swelled. I drew a sharp breath of cold air, and said in a voice as loud and steely as the princess’s, “In my opinion the Pasha’s chief fortune is having a wife like Lullah Zuleika. And the Pasha concurs.”

  “She’s not my enemy,” retorted the princess. “You are.” Her long fingers clenched her blowing pelisse. “Because of you he came no more to me. Because of you I am childless, and now I must go back to my uncle. You are the cause of my disgrace.”