Chapter 11
The six of them remained behind locked doors for the rest of the day, while the lamps were lit and trimmed and lit again, and the food the servants left outside the door went cold.
By the time the evening call to prayer drifted over the rooftops, one thing had been settled beyond argument.
Torstein and his men would take Samira and the pendant north, and they would leave as soon as possible.
The attacks would not stop. The Brotherhood would come again, and the Banu Ifran, and whoever else had heard the whispers.
None of it would end until the pendant and its keeper were beyond their reach, behind the walls of the Abbess's abbey.
But first there were matters to settle.
Near sunset there was a knock at the door. One of Dawud's guards brought in a young Norseman, dusty and out of breath, who had run all the way from the funduq. He spoke to Torstein in rapid Norn, and Samira watched Torstein's face harden as he listened.
"Armed men have been watching the funduq since this morning," Torstein said when the messenger had finished.
"Two at the corner of the lane, and more who come and go.
And someone has been stirring talk in the market against us.
Northmen come to steal women, they say. Northmen who raided this coast before. "
"Nekor," Dawud said quietly. "They have long memories here."
"Then every day we stay, it grows worse," Torstein said.
Samira sat with her bandaged hand in her lap and said nothing. Her mind would not keep still.
She could not travel alone with men who were not her family. The law would not allow it, and nor would her own conscience. And the prophecy would not allow her to take Zohra, or Tiziri, or any woman at all. She shall cross the water with no sister at her side.
She was going to give up everything she knew for a world she could not imagine. Where would she live? What would she do in a land of ice, among people whose tongue she did not speak? Who would she be there, when she was no longer the daughter of Dawud ibn Yusuf al-Idrissi of Fez?
She looked up and found her father watching her. He looked tired and old, and very sad.
"There is only one road left open," Dawud said.
Torstein looked from Dawud to Samira and back again. "Then explain it to me."
"My daughter cannot travel with men who are not her mahram. Her father, her brother, her son." Dawud paused. "Or her husband."
Torstein went very still. "Husband?"
He sat up a little straighter as he said it. Samira saw it, and so did Zohra, and so, from the look on his face, did Njal.
"Yes," Dawud said. "But she cannot marry a man who is not of her faith. No qadi in Fez would bind them, and no marriage made any other way would be recognized as legal in this region."
"Then what would he have to do?"
"Recite the shahada." Dawud held Torstein's gaze. "And mean it. The words must be spoken with true intention, or they are worth nothing, and so is the marriage."
"I'll do it," Torstein said.
He did not hesitate, and he did not look away from her father.
"You will do it?" Samira repeated. Her voice sounded strange in her own ears. "Just like that?"
Torstein turned to her. "Aye."
"You do not know the first thing about my faith."
"I know you pray through the day. I will learn the rest," he said. "I also know the men who tried to carry you away today would never bow to anything but gold."
The room was very quiet.
"If it means I am better placed to protect her," Torstein went on, turning back to Dawud, "and that no one will look down upon her, or call her less than she is, then I agree. With my whole heart."
Samira stared at him.
This was all moving far too fast. Two days ago she had been a merchant's daughter with a secret she did not know she carried.
Overnight her life had become bound up in an ancient prophecy that was unraveling before her eyes, faster than she could follow.
And now this man was offering to give up his gods for her as easily as he had stepped between her and a blade.
"Samira." Her father's voice was gentle. "The law allows me to give you in marriage without asking you. I will not do it. If you say no, we will find another way, even if I do not yet know what it is."
She looked at Zohra. Zohra said nothing at all, which told her everything.
She looked at Torstein. He was waiting. He did not push, and he did not plead.
He had come for a stone and found her instead. He had crossed the whole of the sea not knowing she was at the end of it. And somehow, in dreams, she had seen his face long before he ever saw hers.
It is you.
"If there is no other path," she said slowly, "then I will take this one."
Torstein let out a breath as if he had been holding it a while.
"You need to leave as soon as it can be done," Dawud said. "The longer you remain, the greater the threat. It will be done tomorrow, quietly. The qadi is an old friend. He will come to the house."
***
THE FOLLOWING DAY, in the long room with the doors barred and the guards on the roof, before the qadi and two witnesses, Torstein Hagansson spoke the shahada.
His accent was thick and the words did not sit easily in his mouth.
But he said them slowly and clearly, and he looked at no one while he said them but the old qadi, who listened with his head bowed.
When it was done, the qadi raised his eyes and studied the Norseman for a long moment. Then he nodded once.
For the mahr, a mandatory gift of payment, Torstein drew a silver ring and laid it in Samira's hands.
Dawud gave her in marriage with his voice steady and his eyes wet.
And so before witnesses, Torstein Hagansson of the Orkney Isles, under the Norwegian crown, bound himself for life to Samira al-Idrissi of Fez, Morocco.
***