The Mer- Lion (91 page)

What, she wondered, would be his reaction to her own lips? Leaning over, she proceeded to find out. Well she remembered those lips that had haunted her dreams for nights. And now, kiss for kiss, they were returning her caresses. If she demanded more, his met hers and gave as good as they got. If her lips parted, his did also. If her tongue ventured forth to lick and taste his sweet, soft lips, his did the same. Eventually, however, even she had to breathe, and she sat up, sighing, to rest a moment before returning to the sweet combat.

Then the magnitude of what had happened struck her. He was drugged, but his lips responded! Might not his manhood as well? And if so, might there be a third way out of her trap? One that
would spare her from self-ravishment, yet bind him just as fast to her as if she had indeed mounted him!

There was only one way to find out. Down over the muscles of his broad chest her hand moved, fingering the scars, some old, some new, that proclaimed this a fighting man's body. Slipping beyond the ribs and down to his abdomen, stopping only momentarily to explore his navel, her sensitive fingers detected just the faintest trace of down leading toward his
uyur.
Those damned slaves in the baths would be punished, she vowed, for letting those hairs escape their razors. As her fingers explored, he groaned and attempted within the bounds of his bindings to move away. More important, her questing hand had evoked a response from his manhood. His
uyur
jerked as if just coming awake. Another caress of his abdomen and still greater response.

Aisha smiled in triumph. Her plan would work. She would win. This man who had refused her everything up to now, on this night could refuse her nothing. Then, suddenly, she remember the
asira.
If the girl should come back prematurely, the plan would fail, as it would if the man awoke too soon. She must make her move now. Determinedly she reached for his
uyur,
not quite knowing what to expect, for in its loose-skin sheath it was different from those of the slaves she'd practiced on. But like theirs it was warm and smooth to the touch. More than that, it responded like any other man's to every move of her hand. Like a man milking a camel, she forced his
uyur
into the first stage of the
kadill,
its natural cycle: to stiffen. And now, to surrender its ejaculate. Any other time, she would have played with him and delayed him as long as she could. Not tonight. Only by spilling his seed upon the sheepskin could she defeat him. Eventually, it spurted. As it did, his body arched, he cried out in exquisite anguish, and his eyes came wide open. She held her breath. Did he recognize her? But his eyes, those startlingly blue eyes, remained soft and unfocused. Whatever he was seeing, he was not seeing the Amira Aisha.

She was right. In his stupor he was back in a cold bare room at Hampton Court and the face looking down into his was dark-haired, the eyes black and sparkling mischievously, the lips demanding to be kissed. He tried to rise up, to take her in his arms, to drink deep of
those lips, but he could not. Some unknown force kept him lying there helplessly as that beloved face moved even farther away. "Come back to me, my love," he called out in French, the language that had, during his exile, become his mother tongue.

Aisha's heart leapt. Was he conceding defeat at last? Had he succumbed so easily as that? Was he but one of those whose heart follows wherever the penis leads? Leaning over him, she smiled lovingly and reassured him, "I am here my
rawa,
my
jamad ja'da,
my husband."

"Anne, please dear Anne come back!"

When Aisha realized that his words had not been meant for her, but someone else, her smile swiftly faded. Someone else was his love, was she? Aisha's eyes darkened with anger. How dare he? Lying there in her bed, with her lips and her hands giving him pleasure, how dare he think of another?

Well, let him dream of this other love tonight. Tomorrow he would wake to the reality that he belonged to the Amira Aisha. In one supple move she was on her feet, putting the last part of her plan into action. As the cheetah watched attentively, she opened the large wicker cage. Crooning softly under her breath, she soothed the sleepy songbirds. Then, she chose one, one whose feathers had grown scant and whose song had been stilled for weeks. A finger nudged it awake and then made a perch for the bird to hop onto trustingly. At the last moment, as she withdrew it from the cage, it fluttered its wings anxiously, but a f
ingertip stroking its forehead
soothed it again. And then her hand pinned it tight. It struggled once, then lay quiescent, but she could feel its heart pounding fiercely as she brought the warm body to rest against her cheek. "I am so sorry, little one, that I must do this to you, but your life is drawing to its conclusion and mine has yet to begin!"

Pulling her dagger lose from its seat in the tent pole, she held it against the bird's throat, but hesitated a long moment. This plan of hers was not without its obvious disadvantages. With one swift stroke of her knife, she would release her hold on the Moulay and put Ramlah's life in peril. The sheikh, when he saw the bloody sheepskin in the morning, would believe she had come to her marriage bed virginal, and so she would have lost her chance to depose the Moulay swiftly and easily with little bloodshed. But if,
by shedding this bird's blood, she bound the
jamad ja'da
to her forever, was the rest too much to pay? Oh the morrow he would wake to believe that the marriage had been consummated, himself raped and taken by a conquering virginal queen who had impaled herself upon his staff and thus triumphed over him. After that, he would have to accept defeat and acknowledge that he was hers for the rest of their lives.

Deftly, she cut the bird's throat, and
let its blood spill over her con
sort-couchant and run convincingly down onto the sheepskin below.

De Wynter stirred and pleaded with
the girl in his dream, "Anne, I
love you. Don't cry. Please, Anne, no more tears."

Tears there were, but they were Aisha's. For the bird, for Ramlah, for herself, for all of them. But they did not keep her from milking the bird of its last bit of blood, t
hen throwing the corpse to the c
heetah, whose patience was finally rewarded with one crunch and a satisfied gulp. Then, blinking the tea
rs from her eyes, Aisha dipped a
finger in the gore and smeared the insides of her thighs with the final, absolute proof of the consummation of her marriage.

As she lay down beside him, her fingers seeking under the pillows he talisman she kept there, she realized that her tears were not just For herself but for mat unknown girl of whom de Wynter dreamed, tad who had lost him now forever. But if that Anne thought she night some day regain him, sh
e was wrong, Aisha vowed. Anne m
ight have his dreams, but Aisha had his body, and she had proved his night that she could control it. Eventually, she knew, Anne's nemory would fade before the reality of her own warm body and hen Aisha should possess him in
his entirety. The thought was b
ittersweet but had to suffice.

When the
asira
stole into
the tent later with word of Fion
n's (wakening, the tent was quiet. Aisha slept, her head pillowed on the
amad ja'da's
chest and a small scrimshaw carving of a Mer-Lion ested within the curve of her outstr
etched black-painted palm. Two h
eads turned as the girl entered. Two pairs of eyes studied her eriously. The brilliant blue gaze of the man caught and held her breathless; the green yellow slits of the cheetah, accompanied by a
c
oarse cough of warning, sped her departure.

"He was awake, you say, yet lying quietly?" Ramlah asked her
spy when the girl came next to the queen's tent. "And what of your mistress?"

"Sound asleep, her body pressed against him, her head upon his chest."

"Could you see the sheepskin?"

The girl shook her head no, but quickly added, "However,
I
saw him." "And?"

"He was dark with blood."

"You are sure it wasn't hair?"

"Yes, mistress, I am sure. I saw him earlier, he was shaved clean."

Ramlah smiled sadly. Her daughter had found and secured herself a man, but at what price? Now, Aisha,
the
jamad ja'da,
Ali, Ramlah herself, were in danger from the Moulay. Yet Ramlah would not have had her daughter otherwise. Ramlah knew far too well what price was paid in a loveless marriage. Bending down, she patted the
asira
upon her hps. "You have done well, my child. Now, seek you your bed."

The
asira
hesitated a moment, wondering, then deciding against telling the queen that besides the bloodstains on the
jamad ja'da's
body, she had seen tear streaks upon the Amira's face. Aisha had cried herself to sleep.

Poor proud, purposeful princess.

So ended the last day of the Great Games of the Amira Aisha on the 17th Jamad II,
A.H
. 939.

Epilogue

On that same day, the last day but six of the first month of the year of our Lord 1533, Thomas Cranmer was called upon to offici
ate at the marriage of Henry VII
I and Anne Boleyn. The only witnesses were Anne's immediate family, including her brother Rochford and her malicious sister-in-law, and also her family priest.

"She looked," Lady Rochford later cooed, "absolutely terrible. Her face was swollen; whether from fat or bloat or crying, I'll never know. But Henry was excited and grinning like a cat that drank the clotted cream. Believe you me, in less than nine months, we can expect a new heir to the throne of England.