The Jewel Of Medina (43 page)

In the next moment Muhammad stood and smiled at her. Both she and the escort beamed so benignly I wondered if I’d imagined their exchange.

I would have to find out. “I think we should befriend this one,” I said to Saffiya and Hafsa. “Let’s offer to help her prepare for the wedding.”

“You want to be her tire woman?” Saffiya shook her head. “Pregnancy must addle the brain.”

Hafsa eyed me suspiciously. “What’s running through your mind?”

“I’d like to get to know her. Wouldn’t you?” I gave Hafsa a pointed look. She shrugged. Later, when we were alone, I’d tell her what I’d seen. My instincts pointed to danger—but before I could go to Muhammad I’d have to know more. He wouldn’t believe me otherwise, and I couldn’t afford another mistake.

I linked arms with Hafsa as she and I walked toward our huts. “
Yaa
Hafsa,” I said, leaning close to her ear. “There are all kinds of ways to prepare a woman for marriage.”

C
ONSPIRING WITH THE
E
NEMY

L
ATER THAT DAY

Alone in my room that night, I waited for Muhammad and fretted over his words to Hafsa. Would he utter the remaining repudiations and send her back to Umar? My breath tore in my throat, frayed by the notion. If Muhammad would divorce Hafsa, the daughter of his close Companion, were any of us safe? Was I?

In spite of my turmoil, my stomach demanded food. Since I’d become pregnant, my appetite was a deep, unfillable well. I stepped out to the cooking tent, but in the courtyard I stopped at the sight of shadows sweeping like crows’ wings across the night. I heard the snap of a twig and flattened my body against the wall, watching for the pounce, listening for the snarl or growl of something wild. Their watering holes sucked dry by the drought, jackals had begun haunting our streets at night in search of water. Sawdah said when they became this desperate, they’d hunt humans to drink our blood.

I heard a muffled cry. Across the courtyard, a dark figure slumped to the ground. When it arose I saw that it was no jackal, but something far more sinister. My heart drummed its warning as I discerned the outline of a man stumbling from hut to hut, pulling curtains aside and peering
into windows. I watched him stare into my apartment and, finding no one there, move quickly away. When the light crossed his form, rage snarled in my breast.

It was Abu Sufyan who peered in the windows, grinning at what he saw in Hafsa’s apartment, lingering at Zaynab’s, then waving excitedly at the window of his daughter Umm Habiba. He waddled around to the front door and waited there until she opened it, then slipped inside. And I was the only one who’d seen him enter.

So Umm Habiba
was
a spy! How many times had her father visited her these past months? Had she helped Abu Sufyan plan the Bedouin raid on those Ghatafani shepherds, the attack that had broken the peace treaty? Had she passed information to him that our army was preparing to invade Mecca?

Like many in the
umma
, I worried that Quraysh would attack us first. When I’d told Muhammad this, he’d said he wasn’t afraid.

“We have become too mighty for Abu Sufyan to fight, let alone conquer,” he said.

What would he say when I told him of Umm Habiba’s treachery? Would he believe me? He’d scoffed today when I’d told him I was carrying his child. “Desperate,” he’d called me. Why would he listen to me now?

I ran to the
majlis
, where Muhammad and his Companions dined and talked politics with his new fiancée’s escort, the Yemeni emissary. I caught my father’s eye and summoned him away from the meal, then told him in a hushed voice what I had seen.

“Abu Sufyan, here?” His body tensed. “We must alert Muhammad.” He turned to head back into the
majlis
, but stopped. “Are you certain it was him, A’isha?”

“Of course I’m certain!”

“Did you see his face?”

I faltered, trying to remember. “I saw his fat body,” I said. “And I saw him walk into Umm Habiba’s hut.”

He stroked his beard. “I will go and investigate. But our dinner is nearly finished. If Muhammad comes out, will you tell him where I have gone?”

Alarm jabbed me with its bony finger, and I grabbed his arm. “No,
abi
! You can’t go alone. It is too dangerous—”

He patted my shoulder. “I and Abu Sufyan used to do business together,” he said. He leaned close to whisper, “His fighting skills are atrocious.”

As I waited for Muhammad to emerge, worry and excitement tugged my thoughts in different directions. Would he believe me when I told him what I’d seen? My accusations against Maryam had made him suspicious of me. He now saw me as a jealous schemer determined to destroy his other marriages. In fact, he couldn’t be further from the truth. I hated sharing him with so many, but I knew the value of each alliance. Yet where Umm Habiba was concerned, I had good cause for suspicion. Would my discovery of her father’s visit redeem me in Muhammad’s eyes?

About ten minutes later, the men stepped out of the
majlis
in twos and threes, talking among themselves, unaware of the presence of their enemy in our household or of the danger lurking in the eyes of the Yemeni emissary. I stood in the shadows with my wrapper over my face, waiting for Muhammad. When he appeared, I asked him to follow me to my apartment.

Inside my apartment, I let my wrapper drop. “Umm Habiba is a spy,” I said. Before I could continue, his anger swept like a storm over us both.

“Damn your accusations!” he said, gritting his teeth. “If I hear another slander from your lips about your sister-wives—”

“This is no slander.” I forced myself to speak calmly although his anger shook me. “I saw Abu Sufyan in the courtyard. My father has gone to confront him.”

“Abu Sufyan?” Questions gathered on Muhammad’s brow.

“He sneaked into the hut of his daughter. The one he sent to spy on us.”

Muhammad glowered. “Umm Habiba is no spy.”

“And I’m not a redhead.”

“She has been a devout Muslim for many years. Abu Sufyan tried to kill her husband after he converted. The two of them fled to Abyssinia years ago.”

“And without her husband, what is she now?” My voice rose in protest. “Her father’s enemy or his ally?”

“Her hatred for Abu Sufyan has caused her much pain. If he visited her, it was without her permission.”

“So that’s why she wanted to marry you,” I hurled, wanting to hurt him
as his disbelief had hurt me. “Not to spy on Abu Sufyan, but to punish him.” His low growl told me he was about to shout again, but my father’s knock interrupted us.

His smile was grim as he entered and bowed to Muhammad. “Congratulations. Your enemy is vanquished. Abu Sufyan trembles at rumors of a Muslim invasion. Although he will not admit it, he has come to plead for mercy.”

Muhammad took a deep breath and looked at me. Contrition flashed in his gaze before he returned my father’s smile.

“This is in truth good news,” he said. “But why did he not approach me with an official delegation?”

“After his men broke our treaty, he did not know whether he would be in danger,” my father said. “He left his bodyguards at our gates to avoid attracting attention and asked Umm Habiba to relay him safely to you. She refused.”

Muhammad shot me another look—this time, of triumph. “She is a loyal and devoted Believer,” he said. Then he frowned. “Abu Sufyan should have known that.
Yaa
Abu Bakr, is there a trick? Why has he taken the risk of coming here alone?”

“He has insurance.” My father’s voice hoarsened. “His son Mu’awiyah occupies my father’s home in Mecca, uninvited and refusing to leave. Abu Sufyan is holding my
abi
hostage.”

Muhammad’s vein darkened, but he clapped a hand on my
abi’s
shoulder. “Do not worry, Abu Bakr. Your father is safe. Not a single hair on Abu Sufyan’s head will be touched.” My father’s face relaxed, though worry still filled his eyes.

“As for Abu Sufyan’s pleas for mercy, I would like to hear them myself,” Muhammad said. “Let us go to him now. I think we can claim Mecca for al-Lah in a way that is merciful.”

“After all the times he’s tried to kill you?” I blurted.

“He is my cousin, and now my father-in-law,” Muhammad said, all business, as he turned toward my door. “
Yaa
A’isha—” he kept his back to me, and his voice pulled itself tight at the edges, “—you and I have not finished. Please wait for me here.”

It was late by the time Muhammad entered my apartment. I’d paced my floor for hours, trying to think of a way to listen in on his talk with Abu Sufyan. But I didn’t want to break Muhammad’s command to wait in my room for him. His trust in me was too damaged for me to risk his wrath again. I fumed, wondering what I had to do to repair our relationship. Discovering Abu Sufyan should have pleased him, but accusing Umm Habiba had harmed me more.
Please, al-Lah, give me the chance to prove myself.

He rolled into my room like a brush fire. “Your jealousy has become untenable. If I cannot depend on your support, at least, in this
harim
—”

“Do your other wives oppose you also?” I said, my voice surprising me with its even tone. “Perhaps you’re at fault.”

He raised his eyebrows at my impertinence. “At fault? For which offense? Each of my wives has a different complaint.”

“Some of us have much to complain about,” I said bitterly, hoping he would ask me what I meant so I could tell him of my servitude to Zaynab and how I dreaded rising from my bed every day. But Muhammad was too immersed in his own problems to consider mine.

“Juwairriyah has not had new clothes in a year,” he grumbled. “Saffiya dislikes the food that Sawdah prepares. Hafsa dislikes Maryam. Umm Habiba dislikes you.”

“What a coincidence! I feel the same about her.”

His smile was humorless. “Umm Salama will barely speak to me, and Zaynab will not leave me alone. Raihana dislikes everyone except Zaynab, and everyone dislikes Saffiya.”

“By al-Lah, what a tangle!” I said. “I can understand why you’re eager to marry again.”

“That is not so, A’isha. I am resigned to it.”

“Resigned? Was that the look I saw in your eyes when you beheld your Yemeni bride’s heart-stopping face?”

He frowned. “I will not lie and say I feel resigned about spending time with her. But I would not have sought another wife.”

“Why trouble yourself when they flock so readily to you?

“You speak truly.” He sighed. “Al-Lah has already given me more than my share of women.”

I took his hand in mine and pressed it to my breast, letting him feel the
urgent flutter of my heart’s caged wings. “Why marry this new one, then? Send her back to the Yemeni king.”

“And risk his displeasure? Never.” He pounded his fist on the windowsill. “We need Yemen’s allegiance. With it we can ride into Mecca without worry or bloodshed.”

“But Yemen is allied with Quraysh,” I pointed out. “They’ve traded together for generations. How many of their caravans have we raided?”

“All that ended with the peace treaty. The trade route is open now.”

“Peace treaty?” My laugh was harsh, for I could see Muhammad was determined to proceed with this marriage. “Your friend Abu Sufyan has broken it, remember?”

He pulled his hand from my grasp. “I sealed another agreement with him today.”

“Truly?” I stared at him, incredulous. “That’s like placing your hand in a lion’s mouth and trusting it not to bite you.”

“He will honor this pact, or he will pay with his life.” Muhammad grasped my shoulders and shone his eyes at me. “Mecca is ours, A’isha! We are taking her back for al-Lah. In return, Abu Sufyan will remain as leader—as long as he obeys me.”

“Invade Mecca?” Panic gnawed at my insides. “But you said you were tired of killing brothers and cousins.”

Muhammad lifted his hand to stroke my hair. “You have nothing to fear, A’isha. No one who converts to
islam
will come to any harm. And when they see the size of our army, they will all convert—even Abu Sufyan.”

B
ROTHERS OF
J
OSEPH