The Bird King(6)

Fatima thought of arguing, then remembered where she was. The bathing room was built entirely of white stone and shaped so that a whisper carried all the way across it; secrets were exchanged elsewhere. She slumped, letting her legs slide farther into the water. For several minutes, neither spoke.

“How old am I?” Fatima asked, breaking the silence.

“Seventeen, my love. No—eighteen. No, I was right the first time. Your mother gave birth when the full moon of Ramadan fell on the first of May. That I remember distinctly.”

“How old was she when she had me?”

Lady Aisha shifted in the bath, considering the question. A lock of white hair had come loose from the knot atop her head and trailed damply across her breasts, flattened by age and a succession of children.

“She must have been a bit older than you are now. Poor thing, what a muddle that was—solemn as the rain from the moment she arrived, and didn’t tell anyone she was pregnant until it was obvious. Never spoke a word about your father. I imagine he was the Italian merchant who bought her in the first place. Though who knows? Perhaps she secretly took some handsome soldier for a lover on the journey between Sochi and Genoa. You must get your height and your temper from somewhere. Whoever he was, he was long gone by the time she arrived at the Alhambra.” Lady Aisha frowned up at Fatima. “Why all these questions now, sweeting? Are you pregnant? Is that what this is about?”

“No!” Fatima clutched the edge of the tub reflexively. “No.”

“That’s a shame,” sighed Lady Aisha, closing her eyes again. “I hope you’ll conceive before that silly cow Hurriya does. She’s desperate for a boy. Imagine her horror if her future glory was displaced by the son of a slave girl. Second wives, my dear! Second wives need keeping down.”

Fatima kicked one foot restlessly. She wanted to reply that she desired no children, that the line between her own childhood and the role she occupied now was still unclear to her, but she knew better than to adopt this line of reasoning with her mistress. Still less could she admit to the little packet of herbs she had stolen from the apothecary and swallowed, in the dead of night, after she had failed to bleed during one particular moon, or to the upheaval that had come afterward, and the drying-up that had come after that. Instead, she kicked again.

“Don’t, please, you’re splashing me. Be a sweet thing and scrub my back.”

Leaning across the tub, Fatima retrieved a sponge from a copper dish and squeezed it in the milky water.

“I hear rumors from the North,” murmured Lady Aisha, pillowing her head on Fatima’s knee.

“What rumors, Lady?”

“King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella have begun to expel the Jews of Seville and Córdoba and their other reconquered territories. They say there are priests riding about the countryside, lurking at the windows of those Jews and Muslims who converted to Catholicism in order to save their lands and fortunes.”

Fatima rubbed Lady Aisha’s shoulders with the sponge, careful not to chafe her delicate skin. Her mistress had aged rapidly in recent years. She was still slim and straight, her waist enviable, but a yellow pallor had settled on her face, and much of the anger had gone out of her.

“Why lurking?” Fatima asked, doing her duty to the conversation.

“To catch them in a lie, of course,” said Lady Aisha. She gestured damply with one hand. “The priests wait for the poor fools to refuse a dish of pork or a glass of wine or to keep the wrong sort of sabbath. And then they burn them as heretics, leaving their lands and fortunes most conveniently unattended. They’re calling it an inquisition, though I’m told the new pope looks very unfavorably upon the whole enterprise. It does no good to fake a conversion of faith. Remember that, my love. The people who want to burn you alive will find a reason to do it, whether you pretend to agree with them or not.”

Though it was warm and stifling in the bathing room, Fatima felt a stealthy chill. The sponge in her hand was still on Lady Aisha’s shoulder, dripping perfumed water into the pool below drop by drop.

“What’s troubling you?” Lady Aisha asked in a voice that was almost kindly. “You came in here like a thundercloud and you’ve been frowning ever since. You’ll get lines between your brows at this rate, and then where will you be?”

Fatima hesitated. Lady Aisha often invited confidences, but it was not always wise to indulge her. She thought of relaying Nessma’s insults, but to Lady Aisha, who had never known how it felt to occupy a body that could be priced and sold like that of a goat or a tame leopard, it might look like whining. She thought of telling her mistress the truth, of attempting to describe the feeling that sent her to Hassan and his maps every day. Yet she didn’t trust her own vocabulary. Whenever she tried to be poetic or philosophical, she ended up saying exactly what she meant in the plainest possible language.

“Hmm?” Lady Aisha was waiting for an answer, her eyebrows raised half-mockingly.

“I don’t want to be a slave anymore,” said Fatima. The plainest possible language. She cursed herself silently.

Lady Aisha gave an undignified snort.

“How modern that sounds,” she chortled. “This is what happens when you let a concubine read Ibn Arabi and Plato and sneak about with cartographers. What on earth would you do with your freedom, if it were granted? A small house, a bad-tempered husband, a child every year—what happiness could that bring you? Here you are clad and shod in silk, taught to recite poetry and to do sums and figures. You listen to music and wait upon great ladies. What does the world offer you that you don’t have here?”