Alamut (21 page)

Sayyida strode out of the kitchen with fire in her eye, to meet Morgiana's wide and wicked smile. “You put a spell on her!”

“I did not,” said Morgiana. “Fetch your wrap, and a shawl for the baby.”

There was no doubt of what Hasan would choose, if anyone happened to ask. Sayyida paid one last desperate tribute to duty and respectability. “I'll miss Ishak when he comes.”

“Ishak is not expected until after the sermon. We'll be back well before him.”

“You,” said Sayyida,” are a limb of Shaitan.” Morgiana only laughed. Sayyida went to find her mantle.

oOo

Well and modestly swathed and veiled, a pair of women made their way to the bazaar. One carried a basket, the other a bright-eyed baby in a shawl.

Mother and Laila were very thoroughly occupied, Mother in resting for her son's arrival, Laila in calling on a friend or two. Father, unlike Maimoun, did not object to his wives' passing the front gate, if only they were circumspect about it, and did nothing scandalous.

Sayyida put them firmly out of mind. She had not passed the gate of the house since before she married Maimoun. Then, with the servants, she had seen to the marketing. But a married woman of good family, mother of a son, with servants at her call, did not need to set foot outside her own door. Her honor and her duty were to remain in seclusion. Maimoun had been most eloquent on the subject, when once she had asked if she could go out. “Just to take the air,” she had said.

“You have the air of our garden,” he replied, “which is surely sweeter than the effluvium of the streets.”

Maimoun, for all his lack of family, was an educated man, and he was most conscious of the honor of this house which he had made his own. He had overridden Laila, who would happily have seen Sayyida continue to be little more than a maidservant. Mother had taken his side, which had settled the matter. Sayyida was not to go out. Shahin and Rafiq could do all that was needed of tramping about the city.

Safe in her voluminous wrapper, Sayyida did a little dance in the street. Hasan grinned at her over Morgiana's shoulder. She grinned back and ruffled his curls.

It hardly mattered to Sayyida where they went. The walls were not the walls of her house. The sun was hidden more often than not, slanting through louvers in the roofs of the streets or making its tentative way between high walls, but it was sun that came at a different angle than that in the house. The dark, twisting, tortuous streets were a wonder and a delight, the bazaar a dizzying marvel. She was like Hasan, discovering it all over again, as if it were wholly new.

They bought a sugar tit for the baby, and bathed in a
hammam
that was open for that hour to women — by great good fortune, seeing no one Sayyida knew — and dawdled along the street of the cloth merchants. One could dream long and joyously among the silk and sendal, damask, brocade, cotton fine as spidersilk, sheer fabric of Mosul, cloth of gold and silver, turquoise, sea green, scarlet and vermilion and rose, saffron, blue, violet and royal crimson. There was silk exactly the color of Morgiana's eyes, and Damietta brocade as pure as the snow on Mount Hermon, embroidered with gold, and wool as soft and deep as sleep. Morgiana had a long and lively chaffer over a length of silk which the merchant swore had come from Ch'in, the color of flame, embroidered with dragons. When at last she consented to a price, she paid it in gold. Sayyida laughed to see the seller so visibly torn between wailing that he had been beggared by her bargaining, and singing praises to the quality of the coin.

Sayyida folded the silk in her basket and covered it with a bit of rag. Hasan, having nursed in the
hammam,
was asleep on Morgiana's back. “He's never this placid for anyone else,” Sayyida said.

“Sorcery,” said Morgiana, taking the basket over Sayyida's objections and herding her past a laden donkey.

One of the greater pleasures of facing Damascus from behind a veil was that of observing the men who passed, and not being observed in turn. The slave with bent and often shaven head, but sometimes a handsome face; the laborer under his burden; the man of substance strutting importantly about his business. Often he would meet another who could have been his brother, stout with good feeding and well content with himself and his world.

“Peace be with you,” one of them would say.

“And with you, also,” the other would reply.

“And on your day prosperity,” the first would continue.

“And on yours, blessing and prosperity.”

Then, the ritual fulfilled, they would go their stately ways.

They were amusing, but the young men were fascinating. Tradesmen's sons with the sweat of their labors on their fine smooth brows. Soldiers strutting as if they owned the city. Merchant princes in the best of their fathers' wares. Noblemen mounted or afoot, with swords at their sides and bright mail on their beasts, turbans wound about the sharp points of their helmets, fierce and haughty as eagles. Dark slender Syrians, hawk-nosed Arabs, sleek full-cheeked Persians, almond-eyed Turks with their hair braided down their backs; even curly-bearded Jews, and fair Circassians, and a golden giant who was, Morgiana said, from somewhere called the Rus. No Franks, today. Sayyida had seen a Frank once. He had been as big as the Rus, but smooth-shaven, and his hair had been the color of a new copper pot. Urchins and beggars had followed him, marveling loudly at his strangeness.

The women paused to slake their thirst at a fountain which danced where two streets met. Sayyida sat on its rim to rub an aching foot. She was grievously out of training, but her wind seemed likely to hold. She slanted a glance at Morgiana, who played beast of burden without the least evidence of strain.

The ifritah had gone very still. Sayyida followed the direction of her stare. At first there was nothing worth staring at, unless it were the
qadi
in his robes and his dignity, making his way on an errand of significance, most likely the partaking of his dinner. Then, behind him, a pair of young men arm in arm, fresh and shining as if from the bath. One was extraordinarily tall. The other was Ishak.

Sayyida's instinct gibbered at her to flee. Sense, as well as shock, held her where she was. She was a faceless shape in black, a pair of shadowed eyes, invisible.

Once the terror was in hand, it was wickedly pleasant to sit there in full sight and not be seen at all. They paused to drink as she had, keeping to the other side of the fountain, which was their only concession to the women's existence. Ishak was in high good humor. His friend was...

Striking. That, first. His height; his carriage, light and proud; his moon-pale skin. His eyes were grey. She had not known that eyes could be that color, like fine steel.

Morgiana might have been carved in stone.

The stranger bent to drink, cupping water in a long narrow hand. Ishak flicked a handful at him; he laughed and gave it back fourfold. Still laughing, skirmishing like young lions, they went on their way.

“I think,” said Sayyida after a very long silence, “that we are going to have a guest.”

Morgiana seemed not to hear. Sayyida had never seen her like this. All at once she stirred, eased, shook herself. “Yes? Did you say something?”

Sayyida swallowed a sigh. “Nothing.” Her eyes sharpened. “Morgiana. Are you in love?”

The ifritah whirled on her in such passion that she recoiled. “
No!”

Sayyida let the echoes die. Carefully, she said, “I think we should go home.”

Morgiana did not even argue.

He was, Sayyida conceded, a very handsome man.

oOo

As far as anyone in the house knew, Morgiana had come in shortly before noon in her guise of the lady of Damascus, and gone to keep Sayyida company in the garden. They prayed together there, the only words that Morgiana spoke until the other women came and required greetings and some semblance of conversation. The announcement of guests was a welcome release.

When it was only Ishak, Father and Maimoun had their greetings, but then he went straight within to pay court to Mother and be fussed over by Fahimah and be polite to Laila, and thereafter, if there was time, Sayyida would get him to herself. When there were guests, the women had to wait, except for Sayyida who put on her veil and served the men their dinner. Or so it had been until Maimoun put a stop to it. Now Shahin and Rafiq did it as they did everything else.

Mother and the aunts had to suffer in patience. Sayyida was less high-minded. Behind the room where the men dines was a passage for the servants, with a door that had an inclination to hang ajar. Rafiq stayed in the room, serving as he was needed, or pretending to; mostly, he napped against the wall. Shahin, having brought the bowls and platters from the kitchen, never came back until they were ready to be cleared away. Neither of them need know the passage was in use while they were out of it. With the ease of long practice, Sayyida set her eye to the crack of the door. She felt rather than saw Morgiana crouch in front of her and do the same.

oOo

Farouk the swordsmith was an older, stouter, sterner version of his son. The solemnity which Ishak only played at seemed to be his natural condition. If there was any lightness in him at all, he did not display it to strangers.

Maimoun his apprentice seemed intent on being the master's image: a solid young man with a faint and perpetual frown, very full of his own dignity. But again, perhaps that was the face he put on for strangers. It slipped alarmingly when Ishak brought Aidan in with all the proper formalities, saw him served with the best of the table's offerings, and then, and only then, said with utmost casualness, “Khalid is a Frank. He's come up from Jerusalem in search of good Indian steel.”

Maimoun looked as if he had opened a bottle of rosewater and breathed in a noseful of asafoetida. Farouk merely frowned. “I don't supposed you call yourself Khalid at home.”

Aidan bowed. “Aidan of Caer Gwent.”

“Khalid, then,” said Farouk, “if you don't mind. Your Arabic is excellent.”

Aidan smiled, shrugged. “I do my poor best. I have kin in the House of Ibrahim.”

Which might have been meant to follow logically, or which might not. Maimoun's expression had not altered, unless it had grown more sour still. He had stopped eating. Clearly it appalled him to have broken bread with a dog of a Frank. Even a dog with pretensions to respectability. “That's your accent, then,” he said. “Aleppan.”

“No doubt,” said Aidan. “I've been told I sound like a camel driver.”

Ishak choked on a bit of spiced mutton. Farouk pounded his back with no slightest sign of emotion. Aidan's eyes sharpened. He knew a word for that. Deadpan.

Farouk, he was beginning to suspect, was no one's fool.

He let himself settle slowly. The food was plainer than he was used to in Mustafa's house, but plentiful, and well prepared. So too was the house less rich than the merchant's, yet still prosperous, more so than many a western lord's: clean and well looked after, with a good carpet, and dishes of silver, some rather fine. The manservant — slave, no doubt — did not exert himself a whit more than he must, but he was attentive enough. He and the woman seemed to be the only servants, unless there was a gardener, or someone hidden in the harem.

That, Aidan could not accustom himself to: the utter absence of women. One saw them in the street, veiled to the eyes or, if they were slaves, unveiled but returning no glances. He had not known how much he valued the presence and the voices of women in court or at table, until he was deprived of them.

They were not spoken of. A gentleman might, after sufficient preparation, speak in general and poetic terms of feminine beauty, but to his wives he never referred, save indirectly. A woman who was talked of was a woman without honor. A lady was a secret kept among kinsmen.

Aidan's secret was sweeter and deeper than most. He drank water flavored with lemon and that essence of sweetness called sugar, and tried not to yearn for wine as for women. Good Muslims did not drink wine: as good a reason as any, to cling to his own faith.

oOo

When Ishak let drop that his friend was a Frank, Sayyida had all she could do not to gasp. A Frank. Here. In their house. Eating their food, at their table, in her father's company. Looking and sounding and acting like a human being.

She choked down a giggle. Why should she be startled? Her family had inherited an ifritah. They should know all there was to know of entertaining devils.

Morgiana did not move, and barely breathed, until he spoke of camel drivers. Then her shoulders shook against Sayyida's side. Laughing, surely. It was not a camel driver he sounded like. Not in the least.

Maimoun would not eat, would barely sit still, now that he knew what he ate with. Her father seemed to have accepted the inevitable; she wondered if he would tan Ishak's hide later, for tricking him with such utter disregard for law and custom and sacred purity.

The Frank had pleasing manners, although he did occasionally forget and take his cup in his left hand. That seemed to be the hand he favored: his dagger was on the left side. Sayyida noticed such things. It went with being a swordsmith's daughter.

Her father had taken to this man, Frank or no. When the talk turned to steel, the dull air began to glitter. Even Maimoun came out of his sulk to answer a question, and in answering it forgot to be rude.

Ishak was looking most pleased with himself.

When the discussion adjourned to the forge, Ishak excused himself to pay his respects to the harem. The others did not look as if they expected to miss him.

Sayyida looked about, startled. Morgiana was gone. She had not even felt her go.

oOo

“Well, little sister? What do you think of him?”

Ever since he grew taller than she, Ishak had called her that. She stuck out her tongue at him. “What do I think of whom? Maimoun?”

Ishak rolled his eyes. “Don't be stupid. I know you were spying. You always are.” He poked a finger in Hasan's belly to make him laugh, glancing up bright-eyed. “Well?”