Well in Time (8 page)

The second guard herded us forward through heavy curtains wrought in curious, barbaric designs, and behind which was revealed a large room filled with low divans and fat cushions, placed directly on a floor covered in layer upon layer of wondrous carpets. Upon these furnishings reclined or sat many women, all of them dark of eye and hair and all wondrously plump. They languished there in various states of undress and I wondered that the approach of the guard caused no stir among them whatsoever.

The nature of this second guard was very curious and it was not for many days that I learned the reason for this. We had been delivered, it became apparent, not into the dank confines of an Infidel prison but into the soft and feminine boudoir of the women of the house. We were in very fact now the denizens of a seraglio!

§

We sadly bedraggled ten were immediately engulfed in a welcoming way by the women of the harem, and the guard disappeared behind the curtains again. We were obviously a wonder to these women, dirty, ill-kempt, and probably stinking as we were. They plucked at our matted hair and pinched our poor bruised arms, chattering the while in a barbaric tongue that sounded like the purest babel.

While there was much laughter at our expense—and well we must have deserved it—still I felt a certain maternal regard from these foreign women, for they were not rough or rude with us. My eyes fell upon a plate of food lying upon a low table beside one of the divans. My look must have been most predatory, for one of the women, following my glance, gave me a look of great understanding and immediately offered the dish to me and my fellows.

I fear we devoured every morsel on that plate and searched the room with our eyes for more. We had not eaten more than a handful of dried dates since coming to that shore, and we were faint with hunger. The women proffered us food and water until it was clear, by their distressed looks and pattings of the belly, that they feared we would be taken ill if we ate more.

Our strength somewhat restored to us, the ladies now ushered us, en masse, through a series of twisting corridors and brought us at last to a bath house. Here, they helped us from our clothing, if such those poor matted and torn tatters could still be called. Each rag was consigned, by agency of fingertips, and with noses wrinkled in disgust, to a large basket which, when the procedure was complete, was borne from the room by a servant, presumably to be burned.

Now began a ritual that, though administered by the hands of the Infidel, remains still in my memory as one of the sweetest moments of my existence. The women cooed and clucked over our poor thin, pale bodies, still innocent of women’s hair, as they slowly lowered us into tubs of steaming water and scrubbed us from our topmost head hair to the soles of our feet. Our nails were pared and cut. Our hair washed and combed. Even our teeth were scrubbed with brushes.

When we were clean as the day our mothers birthed us, still another treat awaited us, for they now, once again in a giggling, jolly mob, escorted us into the neighboring room where steam rose in soft white billows through pierced marble grates in the floor. Here we, as a body, reclined upon thick white towels, turning ourselves like meat on a spit until our bodies were pink as the summer roses of Muret.

I was becoming very relaxed and would have drifted soon into slumber, right there on the floor, but that we now must move again into still another room. Here were low tables and the ladies aided us in positioning ourselves on them with our faces down on soft mats. They then began to massage us, two or three women working over each girl. One rubbed my back and neck, while another stroked and kneaded my arms and hands, and still a third rolled and pummeled my legs and feet.

I must have swooned, for the next thing I remember, I was being carried through the corridors on the bosom of a stout servant, with a gaggle of my new friends chattering along behind. I was placed in a small but beautifully appointed room on a low mattress covered in embroidered fabric. One of the ladies bent kindly over me, stroking my forehead maternally, and that is all I remember.

§

Later, two ladies who could speak a limping sort of French told me that I had slept for three full days and that they had feared I would never awaken but might simply slip away from my slumbering body, not to return. These two ladies of the harem who were able to speak with me were called Farah and Fatima, and they had an interesting story to relate regarding their ability to speak our language.

It seems that during the last Crusade, the wife of one of our French sergeants was captured. Rather than put her instantly to death, however, as is the Musalman custom, she was delivered to that household because of her great beauty.

She became a favorite of the master of the house, and so lived out her life in great comfort until she died of a fever but months before my unfortunate arrival. While she was incapable of learning the barbaric tongue of the Musalman ladies, she yet persisted in teaching them our language. I am most grateful to this unknown woman whom they called Irene, for it was through her efforts that I was able to converse and to learn so much.

We spent several weeks languishing in the harem. The sole delight of these ladies seemed to be to fatten us like Toulouse geese. Day and night they plied us with the richest and most delicious foods, until even the thinnest among us began to look sleek.

During these days, I questioned my French-speaking friends closely, endeavoring to learn all that I could of my situation. It was as well a method I used to quell my grieving after my lost Godfrey, for while I thus conversed, my mind could not dwell on his sufferings.

I learned that I was not, as I originally had supposed, in the house of the Caliph of Egypt. It was, in fact, cause for great hilarity when I suggested this notion. My new master was but a high-ranking official in the office of the Caliph’s vizier.

Since the wealth surrounding me was unimaginable, I asked them how much greater must be the palace of the Caliph. These ladies seemed quite well informed despite their sheltered life, and I soon learned that they had spies everywhere, so that they had news of all the latest happenings in the instant. Thus, they were well able to describe for me the opulent surroundings of their king.

First, they told me, I must imagine materials of only the finest sort, for his palace was built of precious stones and woods. There are pillars inlaid with colored stones and jewels and in the throne room, pillars carved to resemble trees with golden leaves upon them. The fountains have basins of a red stone veined in rich pink, in gardens and courtyards that are too many and vast to comprehend. The tall rooms are walled in panels of marble pierced in wondrous designs, and the floors are covered in rich and brilliantly colored carpets.

The Caliph himself, they said, sits upon a golden throne, but behind a curtain, to give audience. Never does he speak directly to those who come to do him homage but speaks only through his advisors, who then convey his will to the supplicant.

He is arrayed the while in the finest linen or cotton fabric, all woven and embroidered with designs of such cunning that they are works of years and years of labor by skilled weavers and craftsmen. And about it all, everywhere one moves, there is the sound of splashing fountains, songs from birds in golden cages and the scent of flowers perfuming the air.

It is, withal, a most pleasurable description. I shiver with wonder to think on it still, for I am sure that in all of France not one such compound exists to compare with its richness.

§

One day when we had been perhaps two months in our new captivity, an astonishing thing occurred which was to change my life forever. We were sitting on our cushions as usual. Some of the women were playing at dice. Some were waxing their legs by rolling balls of beeswax over them very rapidly. The wax caught and pulled out their hair; and thus, their skin was smooth as glass. I was sitting, as was our custom, with my new friends and they were regaling me with tales of their city.

Of a sudden, the curtains parted and the eunuch stepped in—for such my friends had now told me he was. He clapped his hands sharply and called out an announcement that I could not understand. My friends, however, rose quickly to their feet, pulling me with them, whispering that we were to be visited by the master, whose name I now knew was Ali Abu’l-Hasan.

I had wondered many times about the nature of this man whom I had never seen. My friends had told me he was young but this I now would plainly see had been sheerest flattery. For soon there entered a man of perhaps fifty, with black hair, gray about the face, and a visage thin and shrewd. His eyes were so deep-set as to be more like caves of shadow, his forehead was high and finely lined, and his nose was thin and cruelly hooked, like the beak of my father’s falcon.

The eunuch again gave an order, clapping his hands officiously, and the ladies of the harem turned upon us ten girls, pinching our cheeks to make them pink, brushing our hair back with their hands, and otherwise quickly surveying us. Then we were pushed into a ragged line before Ali Abu’l-Hasan.

There was much twittering from the ladies at our backs, as if a flock of sparrows had landed there, but one swift glance from their master silenced them. Placing his hands behind his back, this man commenced a slow stroll back and forth before us, eyeing each of us as I have seen bidders do with horses, before the auction at the spring fair. He even pulled back the lips of my friend Jeanne to examine her teeth! When his eyes fell upon me, I felt my face go white and I thought I should faint, so cold and pitiless was his stare.

At last, he turned to the eunuch and whispered something to him. As quickly as he had come he departed, the long white skirts of his garment swishing heavily across the marble steps. Immediately, pandemonium broke out among the ladies. They fairly mobbed the eunuch, clearly questioning him about their master’s wishes. The eunuch demanded silence with frantic waving of his pudgy hands. When the assembly had settled, he made a brief announcement that, of course, we girls could not understand.

There was among our poor betrayed party one girl named Agnes, who had come from Amiens to join our sad Crusade. She was consigned by nature to be a stout person. Even our extreme hardships on the road to Marseilles and on the ship across the sea had not completely diminished her. Now, with the fine foods that were insisted upon us day and night, she had again blossomed to her full buxomness. She was fair and full, for all that she was but thirteen years old.

Suddenly, all eyes were upon Agnes. Now it was her turn to be mobbed by the ladies. They shrieked and petted her and made such a fuss that the poor girl was quite bewildered.

Farah finally told me the cause of all this commotion. Arab men, it seems, dislike thin women but must have their ladies plump and round. Because of her stout figure, Agnes had just been chosen first among us to spend the night with Ali Abu’l-Hasan!

§

Never have I been more grateful that merciful God created me small and thin! I felt the greatest pity for poor Agnes, although I did not yet understand the enormity of what had befallen her. Agnes, however, being a simple-minded girl, was delighted with her newfound glory. All day as the ladies worked over her, bathing and combing and massaging her with perfumed oils and manicuring her nails, Agnes was beaming like the sun, full well pleased with herself.

As evening approached, the ladies were still working over her. They arrayed her in a caftan of fine vermillion fabric and painted her face by lining her eyes with black kohl and rouging her cheeks and lips. They had braided her wet hair in tiny braids in the morning. Now these were released and her hair fell in a sheet of wavy gold, past her waist. To me she looked like a poor, silly doll. It was clear, however, that the ladies of the harem found her lovely.

As the sun fell below the horizon, a servant brought in a silver tray bearing one single cup of tea. This was administered to Agnes and although she complained mightily of its bitterness, the ladies compelled her to drink it all. It was, Fatima explained to me, a draught to bring lethargy and to release in a woman her sensuality. Having drunk this opiate, Agnes was escorted from our sight by one of the senior women of the harem.

I am relating all this as dispassionately as I am able, these three years hence. You must know, however, that in that moment I was consumed in horror. Often had my dear mother spoken to me of the sanctity of marriage and the honor of a woman who goes to that bed unsullied. From that hour I vowed to eat meagerly, consuming only enough to sustain my life, so that I should never be appealing to this infidel who held sway over my fate.

I vowed, as well, that beginning that very night while others slept, I would explore these confines, seeking any way of escape. I knew that it was well nigh an impossible task that I had set myself, for the compound of women was surrounded by high walls that were themselves contained within still higher walls surrounding the buildings and properties of Ali Abu’l-Hasan. Nevertheless, I preferred death itself to the fate I now knew awaited me within the seraglio.

§

Well after midnight when the sleeping quarters were at last filled only with the deep breathing and snores of sleeping women, I arose from my mattress and slipped into the corridor. I intended to move toward the back of the building, where the kitchens and laundry were situated.

I had only gone several feet, however, when a sharp whisper brought me to a halt, with my heart beating in fear as if to break from my chest. From behind a curtained doorway, in the dim light of the few oil lamps situated in wall niches, I saw the wan face of another of my companions, Marguerite. Slipping a hand from behind the curtain, she beckoned me with silent urgency.

Quickly, I darted into her room and the curtain was drawn behind me. Marguerite clutched my hand in terror and pointed toward the floor. There in the dancing shadows of the oil lamp lay a bundled heap that, on examination, I discovered to be none other than Agnes!