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out through the lattice.
    Despite the gloom of nighttime, she made out swaying tree branches lining both sides of an empty courtyard. The city was silent, except for the occasional hooting from an owl in the trees. The smell of dew-soaked grass and a flower garden, perhaps below the window, reached her nostrils. She inhaled with a sigh and leaned forward, her forehead pressed against the wooden screen. She could not tell where the heavens touched the earth on a night as black as kohl , except for when glimmering beams of light beckoned from a distance.
    “Ulayyah, where are we?”
    “In the foothills of Gharnatah, my princess.”
    “Am I close to the Sultan’s palace? How far is it from here?”
    “I’m not supposed to tell you that.”
    She jerked back toward the slave. “Who said so?”
    Ulayyah’s shoulders sagged and she hung her head. “My lord Abdallah. Forgive me, princess. I know you have been brought here against your will.”
     Fatima’s jaw clenched. She swung toward the window and stared out into the darkness again, focused on the flickering lights.
    “Would you like some more of the fruit, princess? You have eaten so little. It would displease the lady Aisha if she knew.”
    Fatima ignored the slave at her feet. Angry tears welled in her eyes, but she swiped them away impatiently. Would she ever see her father, brother, or sisters again? If Aisha had her way, it might be a long time before that happened, or perhaps never. Aisha had not explained where she intended to go after leaving Gharnatah. Was she truly doing this for her daughter’s protection? Could Fatima’s father have been right in warning her never to believe the princess? Her gaze clouded with more unshed tears. Whom should she trust – the father who had always adored and sheltered her, or the mother whose love she had long desired?
    Just the evening before, everything had been different, as the household slaves prepared her for the wedding. Fatima’s governess had brought her to the hammam where four female attendants awaited them. They undressed Fatima, while she studied a frieze of glazed tiles, in hues of yellow, blue, red, green and black.
    She had bathed and relaxed in the water. The attendants scraped her hands and feet with pumice stones. They toweled her dry and massaged her skin with rose oil and myrrh. They dried her hair with silk cloths perfumed with ambergris. Her governess dressed her in a qamis, a thin cotton shirt. Even now, she shivered in the cool room at the memory of the nearly transparent material against her bare skin.
    She looked down at her hands, still painted with henna. Like all Andalusi brides, she had undergone the rituals of al-Laylat al-henna . She remembered the heady fragrance of aloe wood, as her governess led her from the hammam to the garden where the women of the Sultan’s household had gathered. Only Aisha remained absent, but then, Fatima had not expected her to be there. One of her grandfather’s favorite concubines, his kadin Lateefah had painted her fingers and palms, even the soles of her feet.
    Fatima traced the fine lines and swirls, with which the tip of the thin brush had colored her skin. When the henna application had dried, Lateefah bound her hands in white cotton. Fatima’s governess returned her to her chamber but she hardly slept that night. A woman’s voice rose above the rhythmic sounds of zaggats , clanking, finger cymbals made of brass and bowl-shaped, wooden kāsatān. The noise of the festivities drifted through the lattice windows of the harem until the coming of the first prayer, Salat al-Fajr .
    The governess had returned in the morning with the slaves who brought her wedding garments, a palette of white, silver and lavender colors. Over another white cotton undershirt and ankle-length trousers, the slaves dressed Fatima in her lavender silk jubba, over which they drew another robe of white, brocaded cloth, the khil’a . Ermine trimmed the neckline of the garment. The