Sultan's Wife by Jane Johnson Page B

suffer are quite unspeakable.
    Later that night, when I examine myself in the privacy of my room, all over my poor red skin is as innocent of hair as any of Raphael’s cherubs.
    The next day Lalla Zahra tells me to make ready for my journey to Meknes. She hands me a book. ‘You are an educated and intelligent woman: I think you will appreciate it. Promise me you will read from it whenever you can.’ Then she hugs me briefly and regards me for a long moment, her eyes glittering in the bright light.
    It is small and simply bound in dark brown leather. I think, foolishly, it is a Bible and thank her for her kind gesture. But when I open to the flyleaf I find it to be ‘The Alcoran of Mahomet, Translated out of
Arabick
into
French
. By the
Sieur du Ryer
, Lord of
Malezair
, and Resident for the French King, at
Alexandria
. And Newly Englished, for the satisfaction of all that desire to look into the
Turkish
Vanities. London Printed, Anno. Dom. 1649.’
    The heathens’ holy book; and printed in London too! When I lift my head to voice my outrage, I find she has slipped away as silently as she came in. I throw the offensive book away from me; but when I go down into the courtyard there it is, perched on top of the bag of clothing and toiletries I am to take with me on my journey.

8
    It is a Friday when we leave the city, the Mahometans’ holy day. All over the city the eerie cries of their prayer-callers echo through the warm air like the cries of foreign birds.
    Three of us travel inside a curtained box. The two other women are dressed in a similar fashion to me, in cotton kaftans with bright scarves bound around their heads. Like me, they are blue-eyed, but they look as foreign as the Moroccan women, with their dark brows and lashes. We sit in stultified silence as the cart rattles and jolts its way through the narrow city streets. Once I twitch aside the curtain and a shaft of sunlight cuts through the carriage like a knife. The girl next to me flinches and turns her head away. Her hands are never still, her fingers working listlessly against one another in a nervous fashion.
    There are men everywhere, flowing in a stream towards the nearest mosque: men in white robes and little skullcaps; men in tunics and wide trousers that stop short of the ankle; men in turbans or beneath hooded robes. Their faces are as brown as polished walnuts and their black eyes are inquisitive. Their stares are frank, piercing: like hunters who have sensed quarry.
    After what seems an interminable interval, but may have been only two hours, we come to a halt.
    â€˜Are we here already?’ asks the girl on the other side of the carriage.
    â€˜You’re English!’ I cry, almost an accusation.
    It is the other one who answers me. ‘Irish. We’re Irish, not English. We’re sisters, so we are, Theresa and Cecelia: sisters from Ringaskiddy, though there’s not many as knows where that is so I just say Cork.’
    Which explains the telling of the phantom rosary beads. My mother was fiercely anti-Catholic, blamed the old king’s French wife for his, and therefore our family’s, downfall; and when his son married a PortugueseCatholic, she was incandescent with rage. I peer through the crack in the curtains. ‘We’re in a forest.’
    They relax visibly. ‘Mother Mary, thank you. Cecelia and I have sworn to be martyrs like Saint Julia and Saint Eulalia.’ Cecelia bursts into noisy tears. Theresa pats her on the arm. ‘It’s all right: you shall be like Saint Julia:
I
shall be Eulalia.’ She turns back to me. ‘Saint Eulalia refused to recant her faith; so they cut her breasts off.’
    Cecelia’s sobs rise to a wail.
    â€˜They put her in a barrel full of glass shards and rolled it down a hill, so they did. But even that was not enough to make her turn apostate; so two executioners tore her flesh with iron hooks and held flames to her wounds till the smoke