Angeline (6 page)

Over the next few days Angeline realized that Zahra was keeping a close watch on her. She allowed Angeline out of her sight only to go to the cooking place to fetch her food. Angeline chafed at this and, even though she knew full well she was being unreasonable, she took offense at Zahra’s distrust. She was wild with impatience to see Stephen, to speak with him. Several times she had tried to make Zahra understand what she wanted, but Zahra either would not or could not do so. Then one morning Zahra sent her again to the market—the “suq,” Angeline had learned it was called—with Samah. Angeline did not allow herself to hope that Samah would let her anywhere near that balcony again, nor did she.

When they reached the suq, Samah led Angeline to the alley where spices were sold. Here were stalls with shelves upon shelves of baskets containing all manner of spices, none of which Angeline had ever seen before coming to Egypt. She was beginning to recognize some of them by now, however. The long reddish-yellow threads were saffron. The cooking women used them in rice, turning it to the same golden hue. She knew not the names of the others, but could recognize some of them by their scents. Spicy cloves, ground powders, seeds in every colour. The mingled smells were wonderful, yet almost overpowering. Samah made her selection carefully. She chose, also, a whole basket of the dried flowers that were used to make the sweet, crimson juice that Angeline had already become fond of.

After being shut up for so long, Angeline allowed herself to relax and soak up the sunlight and the bustle. She even found herself enjoying the crowds of shouting, boisterous people. It was so alive! While Samah bargained with the spice seller, Angeline began to tempt a small cat toward her by dangling a string in front of itsnose. The kitten watched her warily for a time, then could resist no longer and lunged forward. It batted the string with a lightning stroke of one paw, then whisked itself back behind a basket where it peeked out, eyes bright, ears alert. Angeline giggled. Then she caught herself. She had laughed! She could not remember the last time she had laughed out of sheer merriment!

Samah finally came to terms with the spice seller, then began to load Angeline up with the basket and various packets of spices. At that moment, Angeline heard an even greater shouting than usual, accompanied by the clamour of bells. She looked up to see a crowd of jeering, guffawing people pushing down the street toward them. Two men were leading a donkey with another man riding backwards on it. This unfortunate man wore a tall, red hat, festooned with bells. As Samah pulled Angeline aside to let them pass, Angeline saw the man try to cover his face with his hands, only to have them knocked down so that all could see who he was.

“The walk of shame,” a voice said behind Angeline. In French!

She whipped around to see Zeid standing behind her. Stephen was with him. Stephen seemed as astounded to see her as she was to see him.

“Punishment meted out by the muhtasib to a thief who has tried to cheat the people. Our muhtasib enforces the laws well here,” Zeid said.

Angeline barely heard him. Samah made an exclamation of annoyance, but Zeid barked out a few short words and she was silenced. Samah’s whole body went rigid with anger.

“Stephen!” Angeline cried, ignoring both Samah and Zeid. “I have been wanting to see you so much! How fare you?” To her delight, Stephen’s face lit up, if only briefly, in a smile.

“I, too, am glad to see you!” he answered. “I am well … as well as can be expected,” he corrected himself. The smile died and his eyes grew dull again.

Angeline could see an ugly, half-healed scar on his forehead. Stephen rubbed at it, then seemed to make an effort to regain his enthusiasm.

“But you,” he said. “Zeid has told me that you are being well treated and that the concubine, Zahra, has grown fond of you.”

Fond of her? Zahra had grown fond of her?

“She is good to me,” she replied. “But everything is strange here, Stephen. I am so alone and I have worried about you. I miss you!”

“I have missed you, too,” Stephen replied. He dropped his hand to his side and stood for a moment, hunched, as if cold, even though the sun beat down upon them with an unrelentingheat. “Zeid reassured me that you were not being mistreated …” He stopped, said nothing for a long moment, then drew a deep breath and spoke again.

“This is not how we thought it would end, is it, Angeline?”

Angeline’s initial relief at seeing him died. She could not bear to see him so defeated, so hopeless. He looked hollow. Empty. Like a cast-off, burned up lantern.

Samah was tugging at her arm. Must she go back to the harem and not see him again? She could not!

As if sensing her thoughts, Stephen spoke quickly.

“I will see you again, Angeline.” He drew another deep breath, as if summoning up strength, then turned back to Zeid.

“I work with Kareem the gardener in the mornings,” he said, “but in the afternoons I help Father Martin when he teaches the Emir’s son, Habib. If Father Martin sent for Angeline, would she be allowed to go to him? Our priest has worried about her. He worries that she is not hearing Mass. That she has not made her confession since we’ve been here.”

Zeid nodded. “It could be done,” he said. “The maid could come to Father Martin after Habib has finished.”

Her patience exhausted, Samah snapped out a few words to Zeid and he nodded.

“Go with Samah now,” he said to Angeline. “I will arrange it. You will be summoned when it is time.” He smiled. There was even a flicker of what might have been amusement in his eyes. “You have a right to worship with your priest,” he said, “and I do not think anyone would find it amiss if Stephen were there, too.”

“Thank you,” Angeline said. She felt suddenly light. “I will come if I am allowed, Stephen,” she said. “We will be together again, you will see. Perhaps then we can bear this.”

How strange, she thought. I am comforting him. When all the time we were on that terrible journey, it was he who comforted me.

Angeline waited impatiently for the call to go to Father Martin. Finally, one day after their afternoon sleep, Samah came for her, heavily veiled. Zahra must have been expecting her, because she was not surprised.

“Imshi,” she said.

Angeline had heard the other concubines say that to the slave girls often enough to know that it meant
Off with you.
The other women snappedit out as a curt command, but Zahra said it almost affectionately. She waved Angeline out of the room.

Samah led Angeline through an unfamiliar part of the house, then they descended into a small garden at the back. Angeline thought she saw the whisk of a gown disappear into a doorway as they crossed to a separate wing of the residence. There they followed another passageway to the end. A door stood open and Angeline could hear Father Martin’s voice. Samah led her up to the room, every stiff step expressing her disapproval. At the doorway she turned quickly and left.

When Angeline entered, she could not suppress the rush of gladness that overwhelmed her. Father Martin rose from where he had been sitting at a table and came toward her. She almost hugged him. Stephen stood behind the priest. She rushed over to him and held out her hands.

“Now we can really talk,” she began.

Father Martin interrupted her. “I believed it was for religious instruction you wished these meetings?” His voice was dry but there was a smile behind the words. “I suggest we pray,” he said.

Chastened, Angeline fell to her knees beside him. At first she wished only to be done with it and allowed to talk to Stephen but, as theyprayed, she felt a quietness steal over her. After all this time of strange customs and ways, it was a solace to hear the familiar words. She found herself praying more earnestly and sincerely than ever before in her life. She prayed for herself, for all the others who had died on the crusade, for those whose fate was unknown to her—and for Stephen. But, to her dismay, she saw that Stephen did not pray.

Did he still believe that God had deserted him? Betrayed him? Had he been able to find no comfort at all in these last few weeks?

There was time for talk after the prayers. Father Martin moved to a small table in the middle of the room and began to prepare his lesson for the next day.

“I must make ready for Habib, the little prince,” he said. “He has just left us for his daily lessons in the Qur’an.”

“What is that?” Angeline asked.

“That is the holy book of the Muslims,” he replied. “Every boy is required to memorize it.”

“The entire book?” Angeline asked.

“The entire book,” he confirmed.

“It must be very short then,” she said, thinking of the thickness of the Holy Bible that the Christian priests read from.

“It is not,” Father Martin answered. “I have seen it. It is as full a book as our True Book. Awonderful endeavour it is, that every boy should learn it all by memory. Or would be, if it were not heresy,” he added quickly. “Would that our Christian children were required to do the same with the Word of God.”

Angeline looked at him more closely. He was wearing the same cassock that he had worn all during their journey. Clean now, but mended to the point where there seemed to be more stitching than original cloth. Father Martin saw her look.

“They have allowed me to keep my own robes,” he said. “They do respect our religion. I would not have believed it, but it is so.”

“What do you teach Habib?” Angeline asked. She was intrigued in spite of her impatience to talk to Stephen.

“How to read and write in Latin,” Father Martin replied. “And French. Stephen assists me, and in so doing,” he added with a full smile this time, “he is learning also.”

Angeline was incredulous. Stephen had been a shepherd boy. He had never been able to read. He hadn’t even been able to read the letter that the mysterious stranger had given him. It had been Father Martin, the young priest from his village, who had read it for him.

“Can you read now?” she asked Stephen. “Can you write?”

“A little,” Stephen admitted. “Only a little,” he hastened to add.

Angeline was struck with a thought. If Stephen could learn to read and write, why not she?

“Could you teach me as well, Father?” she asked. “If they allow me to come here often, could you teach me?”

“I suppose …” Father Martin began. “But what use would you have of it? You are but a maid …”

Angeline bristled, but held back the angry retort that threatened to spill out. Instead, she said, “Zahra, the concubine who …” The words stuck in her throat. She forced herself to go on. “The concubine who owns me,” she said, “can read and write. She copies the books the Emir brings home from the palace library. Wonderful books they are! Bound in the finest leather and with illuminations of real gold! Her copies are as fine as the originals. And she has taught me a few words in Arabic that I write as well …” She stopped, aware that Father Martin’s face had frozen.

“A concubine?” he demanded. “Learned?”

“She is,” Angeline replied. To her surprise, she found herself defending Zahra hotly. “She is a
very
learned woman.”

“Why could we not do this?” Stephen broke in. “What harm is there in it?”

Angeline threw him a grateful glance.

Father Martin’s face thawed. “It is good to have you here, my child,” he said. “And to know that you are well, although I am dismayed by the sinful woman you are forced to serve. Lessons from the Bible would probably do you good.”

Angeline flushed. At that moment Father Martin sounded much like Father Bertrand, who had condemned her mother so unfairly. Truly, although she had not thought on it before, her mother and Zahra were not so unalike. They were both women full of love and, most of all, love for their children. There were far worse in the world, as Angeline had the misfortune to know, even amongst those who were properly wed. But again, she held her tongue. It would do no good to anger Father Martin. She must not risk losing the precious opportunity to learn how to read and write.

She turned toward Stephen.

“What is your life like here?” she asked. “Are you well treated?”

Stephen grimaced.

“Well treated, yes. For a slave.”

Angeline caught the bitterness underlying his words; nevertheless, she persisted.

“But tell me, what do you do? How do you pass your days?”

Stephen looked down at his hands. The leftone bore shiny scars. Stephen’s father had not believed the letter to be from God and had thrown the parchment in the fire. Stephen had thrust his hand into the flames to save it. He rubbed at the scars now. It seemed he would not speak, but Father Martin prodded him.

“Tell her of your work with Kareem,” he said.

“That old man!” Stephen exclaimed. “He has the most evil temper I have ever known.”

“But he has taught you much about gardens and the growing of living plants, has he not?” Father Martin insisted.

“He has,” Stephen answered, but he turned away. “It will be useful if I am to be a slave in this heathen land for the rest of my life, I suppose.”

Angeline would not give up.

“Well, I will tell you about how I spend my time,” she said, forcing a gaiety into her voice that she could not feel. She went on to describe her life with Zahra, exaggerating the luxury, embellishing every detail. Little by little, she managed to draw Stephen out, but when she tried to talk of their journey Stephen silenced her.

“I cannot speak of that,” he said.

Samah returned before the evening prayer to take Angeline back to Zahra. Angeline fetched Zahra’s meal, played with Aza for a while, then curled up on her couch. Zahra was not going to the Emir that night. Angeline lay in the darkness,staring out the window at the stars. There was much to think about. Suddenly her life had taken a new turn. A better turn, she hoped. Being able to see Stephen would help. But the thought of him was troubling. She remembered the look on his face while Father Martin prayed and he would not. It was a look of such pain and sorrow. He would not speak of their journey, but here in the silent darkness, Angeline could not help remembering.