The Eagle and the Dove Page 7

  Leaving her mouth, he placed his lips against the fast-beating pulse at her throat, before raising each wrist in turn to press a kiss against the matching pulse. Sarita stirred on the divan, her mind cut loose, so that she felt as if she were floating somewhere above, looking down on herself on the divan, seeing the whiteness of her body on the white sheet, the lean golden body moving across hers. She felt her thighs part under the pressure of his hands, and her loins leaped beneath the delicate touch of a fingertip.

  And then her mind rejoined her body with an anguished jolt. The image of Sandro as he had been that afternoon filled her internal vision, and she fought the rising sensations … fought them before they were beyond fighting. She held herself as rigid as steel on the bed, her arms tight at her sides, her fists clenched, eyes closed in the agony of the battle she fought with her willful body. A trail of salt trickled from beneath her eyelids down her cheeks.

  Abul knew that he could win if he continued, but he also knew it would be a hollow victory. He could not bear her tears, the desperation of her struggle to contain her body. He sat up. “It’s all right, querida. There will be no more.” He smudged the salt tears from her cheeks with his finger, feeling her shudder as the rigidity subsided. Her eyelids fluttered open, showing him the drowned emerald pools beneath. “You see that I keep my promise,” he said, although he could not hide the edge of frustration, of disappointment, in his voice. “I suspect I am mad to do so. And even madder to go on doing so. But you will give yourself to the pleasure in the end, Sarita.”

  She was utterly drained, her limbs like molten wax, and she had no strength to protest the statement or even to understand that he meant this gentle yet diabolical persuasion was going to continue. She tried to sit up.

  “I want to go back to my own bed. I must sleep.”

  He pushed her down again. “You shall sleep, but it is too late now to make your way back to the tower.” He drew the coverlet over her. “Mad though I am, I wish to lie beside you, so I will endure for the rest of the night.”

  She looked up at him, the startled expression in her eyes reflecting the startling thought. “Are you in pain?”

  He gave a short laugh. “What do you think, cara? Of course I am. I could send you back to the tower and summon some other woman, but I am deranged enough to wish to spend the night beside you. Try not to touch me.” He bent and extinguished the lamp, then slipped into the bed beside her.

  Sarita lay still, staring into the darkness above. She had shared a bed with her mother but never with a man, never with quite such a large, warm, naked mass so close to her. Her body ached, and she too was conscious of a void that should have been filled, of a path of sensation abruptly diverted. If it was bad for her, how much worse must it be for Abul?

  The sacrifice he had made had the strangest effect on her. It reassured her, soothed her mind and her body, and with a little sigh, she turned onto her side and slept.

  Chapter Five

  Abul awoke before the first cockcrow and was for a disoriented moment surprised by the presence of another body in his bed. Occasionally, Aicha would spend all night with him, but it was a privilege rarely extended to his other women. He turned his head drowsily on the pillow, and a wisp of red hair tickled his nose. Memory returned, some of it uncomfortable. He propped himself on one elbow and looked down at the sleeping countenance beside him. His eye ran along the length of the small mound of her body beneath the coverlet.

  She looked far too insubstantial to have caused him so much grief, he reflected with a wry grin. But he should have been warned by that mouth, which even in sleep had a decisive set to it; and her chin, although far from square, was decidedly firm. Her nose wrinkled as she snuffled in her sleep, and he had great difficulty resisting the urge to kiss it. With an outflinging of her arms, she turned onto her side, facing away from him, presenting him with a rounded shoulder, the tip of a pointed shoulder blade.

  Slowly and carefully, he drew down the coverlet and lay, still elbow-propped, dreamily surveying the back thus presented. Her knees were slightly bent and the curve of her bottom was entrancing. His loins stirred, and he knew that this time he would have to do something about it if he wasn’t to spend the day in priapic torment.

  He touched her shoulder. “Wake up, Sarita.” His voice was brisk. When she didn’t respond, he tapped her bottom. “Wake up, Morning Star. It’s time you went to your own bed.”

  She rolled onto her back, her eyes wide and staring, although it was clear she was still more than half asleep. Then her gaze focused on his face, and he saw recognition and memory flood back.

  “Up,” he instructed again, springing from the bed. “One of the guards will escort you back to the tower.”

  Sarita sat up, blinking in bewilderment. This briskness was quite new. Last night she had begged to go back to the tower and he had insisted she stay, so why now was he all but throwing her from the room? He had picked up her robe and was bringing it back to her, and her eyes involuntarily took in the condition of his body. She blushed deeply and seized the robe as he tossed it on the bed, shrugging into it, sliding to the floor as her fingers fumbled with the loops and buttons.

  “Ready?” His tone was still brisk. She nodded, moving to the door. “Your slippers,” he reminded her. “We do not go barefoot in the Alhambra.”

  For a moment, rebellion flickered across her face; then she pushed her feet into the curly-toed slippers. She had no intention of being in the Alhambra by sundown today, so there was little point in provoking skirmishes.

  Abul opened the door and spoke in rapid Arabic to the two men outside. One of them went off immediately, on some errand, Sarita assumed; the other indicated that she should follow him. She looked over her shoulder at Abul, who was unconcernedly naked in the doorway. She felt the need for some ceremony of farewell, something to make sense of being thrust from his presence in indecent haste, but he wasn’t looking at her and abruptly turned and went back into the room.

  The guard stopped and said something to her that again she didn’t understand, but she assumed he was impatient at her dallying and set off after him. What must he think of her? That was a silly question. What would anyone think of a woman who had spent all night in a man’s bed? What Sarita did not understand was that the guard thought nothing of her at all. She was simply a woman who belonged to the caliph. No more and no less than that.

  In the gray light of dawn, the journey she had made the previous night under starlight and in torchlight was very different. She had a sense of the reality of the Alhambra, that it was no longer an enchanted land but a place of bricks and mortar, earth and stone, a place that needed constant tending in order to maintain its fairy-tale qualities. There were fewer people about, only servants sweeping and washing down the marble-paved courtyards and porticos, tending the flower beds, but the dawn scents were as heady as those in the nighttime, and the omnipresent sound of water was as soothing. Swallows dived into the courts and soared over the red rooftops, now glowing as they caught the rays of the rising sun.

  Sarita looked up to the Sierra Nevada: nature’s majesty ringing man’s attempt at competition. She watched and shivered as the first eastern peak turned crimson. This place, however beautiful, was indeed a gilded cage. True beauty lay beyond the perimeter walls with the fresh breath of freedom and the hard earth beneath her feet. Disdainfully, she curled her shod toes against the marble paving of the court where she stood. Her escort stopped and called again. Shrugging, she followed him onto the cypress-lined path leading to her tower.

  Kadiga and Zulema were in the court when she entered and greeted her cheerfully. All traces of the previous night’s bath and supper had vanished, and the room had a fresh washed look about it.

  “Have you been here all night?” Sarita asked, wondering where they had slept.

  “Oh, no,” Zulema said with her easy smile. “We have just come to attend you.” She regarded Sarita closely. “Will you be going to bed for a few hours?”

&n
bsp; Sarita opened her mouth to express her surprise at such a question. Why on earth would she want to go back to bed at dawn, when the day was just beginning? And then she understood. A tinge or pink blossomed on her cheekbones. They probably assumed she had spent an energetic night in the caliph’s bed. She could hardly tell them she had passed a dreamless, undisturbed night in as sound a sleep as she was accustomed to having.

  “No,” she said. “I wish to go for a walk.”

  “A walk?” Kadiga looked surprised. “You will break your fast first, though … and there is this.” She extended a small cup to Sarita, who took it and peered at the contents, wrinkling her nose at the strong aromatic smell coming from the small quantity of viscous liquid.

  “What is this?”

  “It will ensure that a child will not lodge in your womb,” Kadiga said matter-of-factly. “Unless, of course, you should wish it?” She shrugged carelessly, as if the question were of no great significance, and turned to a table where dishes of food were laid out. She unwrapped a napkin from a basket of flat bread, and the warm, steamy aroma of fresh baking filled the room.

  Sarita was for a moment at a loss. Again, she could hardly tell them that such a precaution was unnecessary. They wouldn’t believe her; indeed, why should they? She stared into the cup. She knew such potions existed. She had overheard her mother and some of the other women discussing it after the death in childbed of one of their number. But the women had been vehement in their disapproval of such things. Babies came or they didn’t; they brought happiness or sorrow, life or death. They were a woman’s lot, and it was not for women to interfere with that lot.

  “Does it really work?”

  “Oh, yes,” Kadiga said, surprised at the innocence of the question. “All the women of the palace use it if they do not wish to conceive.”

  “It’s said even the lady Aicha uses it,” Zulema put in. “Will you choose which robe you will wear today?” She gestured to a mass of colored silk draped over an ottoman.

  “Who is the lady Aicha?” Sarita took the cup and turned her back on the two women. Deftly she tipped the contents into the soil at the base of a sweet-smelling shrub beside the fountain. Hopefully the potion wouldn’t kill it.

  “Why, the sultana, of course,” Zulema told her. “The lord Abul’s wife.”

  A wife. Of course he would have a wife. Why was she so astounded? She knew something of the customs of his people; strange, barbaric customs they were, for the most part. Despite this knowledge, she had to fight a surge of anger that she knew was irrational.

  “Why would his wife not wish to conceive?” Her voice sounded stiff, and she put the empty cup on a table and went over to the pile of material on the ottoman, trying to appear insouciant as she sifted through it.

  “Oh, it is said she wishes no rival for Boabdil,” Kadiga said. Zulema made a softly protesting sound, and Kadiga shrugged. “Oh, there is no one to hear, Zulema, but the three of us.”

  “But if the lady Aicha were to hear you speak thus, she would have you flogged.”

  Kadiga shrugged again. “You know as well as I that Boabdil is everything to her. She could never endure to have another child because of what it would take from her son.”

  “The child is the caliph’s son?” Sarita pushed the massed garments to the floor and sat abruptly on the ottoman. “How old is he?”

  “He is ten.” Kadiga passed her the basket of bread. It was warm and buttery, and Sarita found herself taking a piece without conscious thought.

  “There is just the one child?”

  “Oh, no.” Zulema laughed. “His secondary wives have given the caliph children. He has three sons and two daughters.”

  Sarita was holding the flat bread halfway to her mouth. Butter dripped down her wrist, and absently she licked it off. “How many other wives?”

  “Four.”

  Muley Abul Hassan had five wives and five children, and wanted to add Sarita to the list. No, not to the list of wives. There’d been no mention of wifedom, just pleasure sharing. He’d talked of buying her, she remembered, hearing his soft laugh as he’d held her on his horse and told her that only a fool would pay for the dove that flew into his hand. A wave of anger broke over her again, and she had to breathe deeply to bring it under control.

  “I am going for a walk.” She stood up and went to the door.

  “Oh, but you must change your clothes and finish eating. Will you have some jasmine tea? There is yogurt and honey …” Zulema followed her, chattering distressfully like a disturbed starling.

  “I wish only to be alone.” She stepped outside into the tower garden. Kadiga and Zulema stepped behind her. “Alone!” she said, swinging round on them. Impatiently, she pulled off her slippers and tossed them to the ground behind her. “I am going for a walk on my own.”

  “Very well,” Kadiga said, laying a restraining hand on Zulema’s arm. They stood watching until Sarita had gone beyond the garden and turned onto the path continuing around the perimeter wall, away from the palace. Then they set off after her, keeping a discreet distance.

  Sarita walked fast, reassured by the feel of the ground beneath her feet, the fresh morning air cooling her heated temples and soothing the tumbling thoughts within. She had allowed herself to be brought to this place as a means of escaping Tariq … a purely temporary measure of expediency. Now it seemed as if she had volunteered for a place in the caliph’s seraglio. She had not thought of the consequences of her initial compliance because of that overwhelming sense she had had from their first silent meeting that she had nothing to fear from Muley Abul Hassan. But she had been thinking only of the obvious dangers to life, limb, virtue. He had shown no inclination to threaten any of those things … he posed no threat even to the latter. That threat was within herself, unleashed by him, certainly, but there was no violation.

  He could not hold her against her will. Yet even as Sarita told herself this, she knew it to be untrue. He could; but would he?

  The path had taken a steeply uphill turn, and her steps slowed. Pausing, she turned to look behind her, down the path to the gardens and buildings spread out below. Zulema and Kadiga stopped when she did and stood on the path some hundred yards away, clearly waiting for her to make another move. They looked uncomfortable and confused, very much as if they were unused to taking morning walks around the ramparts of the palace enclosure. Had they been given instructions to accompany her everywhere? It was time to force the issue with her gently yet alarmingly persuasive captor.

  She walked back down the path to where the two women stood. “We’ll go back now, if you wish.”

  “It’s if you wish,” Zulema said in her sweet way. “But I am sure you must wish to change your clothes and perhaps have some jasmine tea. It’s most refreshing in the morning.”

  Sarita smiled slightly at the other woman’s clear relief that the morning was about to assume normal and expected paths again, but she said nothing, merely walked ahead of them past gardens and towers until she reached her own.

  * * *

  Aicha carefully licked honey off her fingers before reaching for another little cake from the plate of sweetmeats beside her on the divan. She was addicted to the honey and almond delicacies.

  “You are certain the lord Abul kept this Christian woman in his bed throughout the night?”

  “Yes, lady.” Nafissa poured scented water into a crystal finger bowl and approached the bed. “The guard returned her to the tower at dawn. Zulema and Kadiga were there to attend her.” She placed the finger bowl on the bed and proffered a linen towel.

  “But where did she come from?” Absently, Aicha dipped her sticky fingers into the bowl, swirling the rose petals on the surface.

  “It is not known, my lady.” Nafissa confessed ignorance reluctantly. “Only Yusuf was with the lord Abul, and Yusuf—”

  “Yusuf has a mouth like a trap,” Aicha broke in with a hint of impatience. She pushed aside the coverlet, heedless of the water slopping from the bowl onto the di
van. “I will get dressed and send for these women. She may have talked with them.”

  “I understand that the lord Abul sent for the girl Fatima, the one he bought in the bazaar at Marrakesh,” Nafissa said with a sly look as she mopped up the water with the towel.

  Aicha turned slowly from her dresser. “When?”

  “After the Christian woman had left him,” the handmaid said, still apparently busy with the mess on the cushions. “Fatima was with him for an hour. She left his apartments but twenty minutes ago.”

  Aicha moved to the window. “If he was displeased with the other woman, why would he keep her until dawn?”

  It was not a question Nafissa felt qualified to answer. She picked up the empty plate. “Shall I bring you more stuffed dates, my lady?”

  “No.” Aicha stood gazing out of the window and waved a hand over her shoulder dismissively. “I will have a jasmine infusion. Then send at once for Zulema and Kadiga … no, perhaps not.” She turned back to the room, a sharp glint in her dark eyes. “I shall visit my husband. Do you talk with those women. There is no need for me to seem interested beyond the ordinary in this new arrival. Find out what happened with the lord Abul. They will have attended to her afterward and will know whether she shared pleasure with my husband last night … Oh, and talk also with Fatima. You may discover what it was my husband wanted of her … the degree of his need,” she added. “Now bring me water to wash. I will wear the caftan of gold tissue with the belt of amber studs.”

  She said no more while Nafissa helped her dress, brushed her hair, and secured it with ivory combs beneath a scarf of the same gold tissue as the caftan. It was Abul’s habit to keep to his apartments until the sun was well risen. He broke his fast alone and prepared himself for the day, discussing with his vizier and his cadi what administrative matters required his attention. She had always found him receptive when she had visited him at this time with some matter of domestic moment to impart. Today, she would present him with an unimpeachable reason for visiting him. It would not be a comfortable audience for her, but a wise woman knew when to bow to necessity.