The gentle breeze had been replaced by a hot, dry wind that burned her sleepless eyes and whipped the normally serene sea into a witches’ brew as choppy and tumultuous as her thoughts.
She plopped down on the bench and set the basket beside her, sighing heavily. She hadn’t yet broken her fast, but not even the delectable aroma of the freshly fried pastries could tempt her on this morning. Had it been only yesterday that Farouk had ignored her giggled protests and insisted upon breaking off sugary bits of the treat and feeding them to her from his fingertips?
She desperately wanted to believe he would come strolling down the garden path any minute, his robes rippling around his ankles, his dazzling smile breaking through his beard. But hope had always been an indulgence a woman like her could ill afford. Learning to live without it made it so much easier to carry on and keep smiling when there was no hope to be had.
Despite what she had wanted to believe, it seemed Farouk was no different from any other man in the world. He would rather waste his time pining over a woman who would never love him than take a second look at the woman who did. She had been dismissed as a silly fool more than once in her life, but this was the first time she had truly felt like one.
She drew out the leatherbound volume of Coleridge’s poetry she had tucked into a corner of the basket and opened it to the page marked by one of her faded hair ribbons. She and Farouk had finished discussing “Kubla Khan” a few days ago only to plunge directly into the giddy pleasure that was
Christabel
. They had traded her spectacles back and forth, taking turns reading each stanza aloud.
As Poppy’s eyes drifted over the page to the last few lines of Coleridge’s uncompleted masterpiece, it wasn’t her own voice she heard in her head but Farouk’s, its deep and compelling resonance bringing fresh meaning to the timeless beauty of the poet’s vision.
And pleasures flow in so thick and fast
Upon his heart, that he at last
Must needs express his love’s excess
With words of unmeant bitterness.
Perhaps ’tis pretty to force together
Thoughts so all unlike each other;
To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm.
Perhaps ’tis tender too and pretty
At each wild word to feel within
A sweet recoil of love and pity.
A solitary tear splashed on the page, blurring the words. Poppy gently closed the book and set it aside, knowing she would never open it again. She peeled back the satin napkin covering the
ktefa
, seeking refuge in the most reliable comfort she had ever known. She crammed a large bite of pastry into her mouth, but it seemed to crumble to sawdust on her tongue, its honeyed sweetness as bitter as persimmon juice. It was all she could do choke it past the lump in her throat.
She rose from the bench and headed back down the garden path, turning away from the sea and leaving the book, the basket, and all of her ridiculous dreams behind.
Since arriving at the palace of El Jadida, Clarinda had been invited, wooed, persuaded, sweet-talked, cajoled, coaxed, and had the pleasure of her company humbly requested, but Farouk had never lorded his authority over her by
commanding
her to appear before him. His high-handed summons to break her fast with him must be the first sign of her lowered status in his eyes. She feared that if Ash wasn’t successful in his bid to purchase her, many more signs would come.
After the other eunuch had escorted a blindfolded Ash away, ostensibly to prepare him for his appearance before the sultan, Solomon had patiently waited outside the door of the chamber where she and Ash had passed the night while she bathed and donned the garments he had provided for her.
She glanced down at the flowing layers of multicolored silk as Solomon ushered her from the room, wondering if they were to be her shroud.
She could feel the curious gazes of Farouk’s wives and concubines upon her as Solomon led her through the main hall of the harem. Was it her imagination or did even Yasmin’s narrowed eyes hold a glimmer of knowing pity? Longing to see a truly sympathetic face, she looked around for Poppy, but her friend was nowhere to be found. She could only hope it wouldn’t be their last chance to say good-bye. If she was walking into a trap that might prove fatal, leaving tenderhearted Poppy to fend for herself in this ruthless place would be one of her keenest regrets.
Farouk had honored his word by allowing Ash to spend the night in her bed. But what if he had simply been biding his time until morning came so he could avenge the terrible blow Ash had dealt his pride? For all she knew, she and Ash could both be marching to their deaths. She flinched as the doors of the harem clanged shut behind her and Solomon with jarring finality.
A long, empty corridor stretched before them. Now that she had the inscrutable eunuch all to herself, she had every intention of trying to pry some answers out of him.
“Do you know what the sultan has planned for us?” she asked.
He continued to march a few steps ahead of her, as if each of his long strides were measured by the beat of an invisible drum.
She sighed. “I know you can hear me, Solomon. There’s no need to pretend otherwise.”
She might as well have been talking to the wall. Her panic and frustration were swelling with each step. The door at the far end of the corridor loomed before them. Once they passed through it, they would be back in the public areas of the palace without even the illusion of privacy.
“Damn it all, Solomon, I’m tired of being ignored!” Taking two extra steps to catch up with him, she grabbed the back of his vest and held on, refusing to budge until he acknowledged her.
He could just as easily have kept walking, dragging her behind him like a tenacious terrier with its teeth dug into his trousers. But it seemed she had finally managed to get his attention. He slowly turned, his expression so thunderous she let go of the vest and began to back away from him. Since he always seemed to be standing in the shadows, as stolid and dependable as a battered armoire, she had forgotten how very large he was. As she continued to retreat, he stalked her step for step until her shoulder blades came up against the wall, making escape impossible.
Perhaps Farouk wasn’t going to kill her, she thought, fighting an insane desire to giggle. Perhaps he had ordered Solomon to do it. The eunuch could probably snap her fragile neck in one of his massive hands without so much as breaking a sweat.
As if still not completely trusting they were alone, Solomon stole a glance over his shoulder before leaning down and saying sternly, “If a man learns to hold his tongue, there are many around him who will forget to hold theirs.”
Clarinda had learned that lesson only too well when she had mistaken Ash for Solomon during her massage and spilled out all of those embarrassing confessions.
“Is that why you let everyone believe you are a mute?”
“People believe what they want to believe,” he replied, his voice every bit as musical as it had been the first time she had heard it. “They see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear.”
“Have you by any chance heard what the sultan has in store for us?”
“I have not. But I do know it would be wise for you to tread with great care. Even the most gentle of beasts can lash out when wounded.”
Clarinda touched his arm. “This is not the first time you have offered me your counsel … or your kindness. Why is that?”
“You remind me of someone I knew when I was very young.”
She searched his stoic face but his shaven head and unlined visage made it impossible to determine his age. He could have been any age from thirty to sixty.
He lifted a strand of her hair from her shoulder, sifting its brightness through his ebony fingers. “She was dark everywhere you are light. But she had the same proud set to her shoulders, the same unyielding spirit.”
“You loved her?” Clarinda ventured softly.
He straightened, folding his arms over his chest. “On the night before we were to be wed, the slavers came to our village and carried me away. I was young and strong and my only thought was to make my way back to her, so I tried to escape more than once but they always caught me. They finally decided there was only one way to stop me. After they had at me with their knives, I knew there was no reason to ever go back to her.”
The eunuch’s simple words made Clarinda’s heart clench with sympathetic anguish. “You never saw her again?”
“She was young and beautiful. I would imagine she married another man from our village and had many fine children.”
Children that should have been his
.
“How you must hate them,” she said, her voice low and passionate. “How you must hate them all! The ones who enslaved you and the ones who keep you enslaved.”
“Out of all the masters I have had, Farouk is the best. He no longer follows the barbaric practice of creating eunuchs for his service. He simply puts to good use the ones who were created by his father and his father before him. He was the one who taught me Arabic and English so that I could be his eyes and his ears in the harem and elsewhere. You are the only secret I have ever kept from him.”
“Me?” she whispered, gazing up at him in bewilderment.
“You and your Englishman.”
Clarinda felt the color drain from her face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You may have believed I was mute but I have never pretended to be blind. I have spent most of my life since my capture in the company of women. It is not so easy for them to hide their hearts from me.”
“I have no idea what you think you see,” Clarinda said stiffly to hide how flustered she was feeling, “but I can assure you that Captain Burke is not
my
Englishman. We did enjoy a brief dalliance once, but whatever was between us was over many,
many
years ago. As soon as I’m free of this place, I plan to marry his brother.”
Although not a single muscle in Solomon’s face twitched, she would have sworn he was laughing at her.
She glared up at him. “You know, I think I may have liked you better when you were pretending to be mute.”
“Come.” His massive hand closed around her elbow. “It would not be wise on this day for either one of us to keep the sultan waiting.”
The chamber where Farouk was waiting for them would have been called a conservatory at home. One wall sported a row of tall windows overlooking a spacious courtyard. They had been thrown open to welcome in the morning breeze. The walls were lined with brightly colored clay pots overflowing with glossy green foliage and fronds that made it look as if a corner of his garden had been brought indoors. Splashes of red, orange, and yellow nested among them, the exotic blooms sending invisible tendrils of fragrance curling through the room. Golden shafts of morning light spilled through the expansive skylights set in the ceiling.
The floor was tiled in terra-cotta with nary a carpet in sight. The rusty hue would be simply perfect for hiding unsightly bloodstains, Clarinda thought with a slight edge of hysteria.
When she and Solomon had arrived, Farouk and Ash weren’t breaking bread together while propped up on cushions on the floor but were seated European-style in chairs at opposite ends of a long teakwood table. Normally, Clarinda would have been seated right next to Farouk where he could easily reach over to stroke her hair or feed her a particularly plump date or morsel of lamb, but today only one other chair was in the room, placed with strategic precision at the center of the far side of the table between the two men. Farouk’s guard was glaringly absent, as if he didn’t wish to have a single witness to this occasion.
As Solomon escorted her around the table, Clarinda did a double take. While Ash had a single golden plate and goblet in front of him, the table in front of Farouk was littered with bowls and platters, many of them already half-empty. One of them contained what looked like the picked-over carcass of an entire goat.
The only platter that hadn’t been touched contained a towering stack of
ktefa
drizzled with golden honey. As she watched, Farouk dipped a piece of
khobz
in a bowl of mutton stew, using the flat bread to mop up every lingering drop of the stew’s savory juices before cramming it into his mouth and chewing with relish.
Clarinda’s own mouth fell open in astonishment. In the three months since she had been dining by his side, she had never seen Farouk attack a meal with such ferocious gusto. Something about his single-minded concentration made the tiny hairs on her nape prickle to life. As Solomon settled her in the chair and turned to go, it was all she could do not to latch onto the eunuch’s leg and beg him to stay.
After Solomon bowed his way from the room, the awkward silence deepened until Farouk glanced up from fishing the last handful of dates out of a wooden bowl to give Clarinda a jovial smile. “Good morning, my little buttercup. I trust that you passed a pleasant night?”
Ash choked on whatever he was drinking.
Tossing another date in his mouth, Farouk gave him a bemused glance.
Ash dabbed at his lips with his napkin before rasping out, “Forgive me, Your Majesty. I’m not accustomed to partaking of such strong spirits so early in the morning.”
Clarinda picked up her own goblet and stole a peek at the ruby red wine within, wondering if it was laced with poison.
She lowered the goblet to discover that Farouk’s questioning gaze had once again returned to her face. “I did indeed pass the night … um … pleasantly, Your Majesty.”
All it took was the briefest glance from beneath her lashes at Ash’s guarded face to make her remember just how pleasantly. As heat crept into her cheeks, she tipped the goblet to her lips, draining it nearly dry in one swallow.
Considering that she and Ash had once coupled on a cloak beneath a tree in the middle of a meadow, it was ridiculous that she should feel so shy about what had transpired between them last night. Perhaps it was Farouk’s knowing smile that was making her so skittish.