Prague Castle
As it turned out, Aisha’s latest victim was indeed the very man that had brought her there as a cub from Turkey. Lauren, before summoning the scribe of Lion- and Tiger-related Injuries, Maulings, Fatalities and Compensations, had the presence of mind to rifle through his pockets. From it she extracted a velvet draw-string pouch; shoving it down the front of her bodice she had flicked her head to left and right to ensure she’s not been observed. In the shadows she detected a small, quiet presence; the emperor’s little bastard, standing quite still, eyes locked on the corpse. Narrowing hers, she decided the child was more interested in the gory death scene than her petty larceny, so made off down the hall without comment or entreaty. Children only had the importance you gave them.
*
When the Ottoman sultan Murad III had gifted Mohammad the lion cub and Aisha the tiger cub to HRE Rudolph II some six years ago, Dr Dee and his associate Talbot had not long arrived at court. Bilal, the Ottoman emissary, was very imposing, and gratifyingly free with gossip about goings-on in the ‘Sultanate of Women’. He updated Dee on how these last couple of years Murad had improved promotion possibilities for black eunuchs, and of the many squabbles between the sultan’s mother, Valide Sultan, and his main consort Safiyeh. Dee was especially interested to learn there had been a grand observatory built by a prominent architect, only to be destroyed a few years later at the behest of an influential Muslim cleric, who deemed it responsible for an outbreak of plague.
Dee himself came bearing a gift of his own, red earth from Glastonbury, which he claimed to be the Philosopher’s Stone; he was warmly welcomed, and extended use of the imperial alchemical laboratories below the palace. And that very same year the emperor’s mistress presented him with a son, Don Julius, which apparently pleased him rather less than the lion.
When the emissary that had brought the cubs saw the babe he stepped back aghast, and muttered into his beard ‘Awz b’illeh min shaytaan ar-rajiim!’, a protective phrase which rung in the ears of Fereshteh, the slave he left behind to care for the beasts.
Fereshteh showed little aptitude for the task, and as the animals grew, so did her fear of them, or rather of the tiger Aisha in particular. Eventually the services of the dazzling Lauren were engaged, then very svelte. It didn’t seem politic to send Fereshteh back to Constantinople; as Murad never asked for her return, she remained in Prague, and was often to be found in the lab with the would-be alchemists Dee, Talbot and sometimes Brahe with his servant of short stature, the allegedly psychic Jep.
Lauren was very taken with her, and before long she moved in at Vlašská Street. Ordinarily it was Fereshteh’s task to collect the meat tax from the Jewish quarter, and it was Lauren’s fault that on this occasion she hadn’t. So later, when Lauren told her what had happened naturally she was distraught at news of the death—
‘Wallahi yerhamhu, May God have Mercy on his soul’ she invoked, and shuddered violently at the mention of the name Don Julius.
‘Why, love, why? He’s just a child. Creepy, yes, but why does he frighten you so?’
‘Why do you not know, why must you ask!’
Lauren held her in a firm, implacable stare - Fereshteh shifted under it, then continued:
‘I have told you many times that Bilal believed the child was evil incarnate. Ah, Bilal—who brought me here with the cubs seven years ago, who brought me here where my heart has found freedom beside you, coolness of my eyes! Bilal the Faithful, who returns every quarter to hear my news, and now lies dead in the palace morgue—’
‘Yes, yes,’ Lauren cut in impatiently ‘you loved your friend, and you love me more! But why such hatred toward the child?’
Fereshteh looked miserable, the kohl had run and her eyes had a hunted look. After a significant pause she resumed in a lower tone:
‘There is something else. Something I didn’t tell you. Bilal was taken from Sierra Leone, from another life; like me, he wasn’t always Muslim. He converted after he was enslaved, but his mother had been a gifted, highly-respected spiritual healer. She taught him if a part is sick the whole is sick, and that a person isn’t a person without other people to make them so. He had a gift, and would enter the spirit world in a state of trance even as a boy, before he was stolen away from her. Later, at the Sultan’s palace when he learnt more about the faith, he came to understand that Islam too shares this idea that humans are spiritually vulnerable if not integrated into the group. He came to understand he honoured her wisdom and memory by becoming part of the Muslim community.
She paused and checked if Lauren was still with her, and seeing her struggle to suppress an opinion, Fereshteh resumed quickly:
‘We are not the only beings in creation, it is a matter of substance. Humans are mud, animated by the breath of God. Angels and Djinn are made of fire; some are Believers, and some are terribly wicked. Bilal saw that the babe had attracted the attention of a particularly evil djinn, the door left open by his father’s closed heart. Bilal came back every quarter to see if I was safe, and whether the child had gained the love and acceptance of his family despite this, whether there was any progress in the project of drawing him into the light.’
‘What has this to do with poor Bilal’s death? Even if young Julius were the devil himself, the man was killed by the very tiger he brought here!’
‘Yes, the tiger, just like that boy, is a solitary creature. Lions hunt together, and tigers hunt alone. The lion may be king of the beasts, but in the old days in the Colosseum, of the two the tiger would usually win. The tiger can fight on two legs’ she concluded archly.
Lauren left a pause here too. She was in two minds about the pouch she’d taken from Bilal’s body, watched by the darkling boy. But she drew the pouch from her boddice now, loosened the strings and placed into Fereshteh’s damp hands a flat, round obsidian mirror.
