Sultan's Wife Read Free Page A

rest of you, Nus-Nus. Take it, then: but guard it with your life. I will come for payment on the morning of the sabbath.’ Sighing, he wraps it reverently in the linen and hands it over. ‘Remember: it is quite irreplaceable.’
    I would be lying if I say I am not anxious about carrying such a treasure, but I have only two more errands to complete: some spices for my friend Malik, and a quick return to the herbman to pick up Zidana’s items.
    Malik and I are in the habit of trading favours: we have become friends by necessity as much as by inclination, since he is Ismail’s chief cook and I the sultan’s food-taster, amongst my many other duties. Mutual trust is useful in such circumstances. Malik’s needs –
ras al hanout
mixed to his own recipe and an essence of attar to which Ismail is partial in his couscous – take me back to the Spice Quarter, where I make the necessary purchases. Thence it is only a short step to the hidden stall of Sidi Kabour.
    I duck beneath the awning and am surprised to find the place unattended. Perhaps Sidi Kabour has slipped out to take tea with a fellow stallholder, or to fetch more charcoal for his brazier. I move the bottle of musk to one side and am gratified to see that Zidana’s list is gone. Perhaps the herbman has gone to fetch an item kept in more discreet premises …
    Another minute passes and still there is no sign of him. The heady scent of the incense burning in its brass container is becoming quite stifling. It is not the usual pleasant fragrance Sidi Kabour favours – a little elemi resin mixed with white benzoin – but a more complex combination out of whichI can detect wood of aloe and the clashing scents of amber and pine resin, one sweet, one acrid, which no one in their right mind would combine.
    Come along
, I mutter, and feel my gut twist with anxiety. Wait or go? My anxiety begins to mount. Soon the sultan will begin his afternoon rounds and expect me to accompany him as I always do. But if I go back without Zidana’s purchases, she will fly into a fury or, worse, into one of those silent musings that tend to precede an act of cruel retribution. Being caught between the two of them is the daily peril of my existence: sometimes it is difficult to know which of them is the more dangerous: the sultan with his towering rages and sudden outbursts of violence, or his chief wife with her more subtle terrors. I am not sure that I believe in the efficacy of her magic, for, despite being raised in similar traditions (I amongst the Senufo, her with the neighbouring Lobi), I like to think I have acquired a degree of enlightenment on my travels. Of her ability to use all manner of subtle poisons effectively, though, I have no doubt at all. I do not enjoy ferrying poisons for the empress, facilitating her wicked death-dealing, but, as a slave of the court, I have little choice. The Meknes court is a spider’s web of connivance and deceit, confusion and intrigue. Making a straight path for yourself in such a place is near impossible: even the most upright man can find himself fatally compromised.
    I pace fretfully to the back of the shop. Boxes containing the spines of porcupines and the eyelashes of mice (those belonging to male mice in one box; those to female mice in another), antimony, arsenic and gold dust; dried chameleons, hedgehogs, serpents and salamanders. Charms against the evil eye; love potions; titbits to draw
djinns
as surely as sugar draws wasps. As I make my way along the dusty back wall, I am confronted by an enormous glass jar full of eyeballs. Recoiling, I catch my hip on the shelving and the jar wobbles dangerously, setting its contents jiggling, till they all appear to be staring at me, as if I have woken a host of trapped djinns. Then I realize the angle of the shelf shifted when I banged into it. I set the linen-wrapped Qur’an down carefully beside me and adjust the shelf so that the jar sits more