The King's Fool

by Mahi Binebine

Genres: Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology; Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Sidi is dying.

In the last days of this all-powerful tyrant, his faithful court fool takes stock of the decades he has spent in the king's service. For the many years have left certain indelible wounds.

During his service, the fool has been the king's closest counsel, his most trusted companion and adviser, privy to the king's deepest secrets and most intimate thoughts. It is an honoured position for which many other courtiers would pay a hefty price. Something the fool understands only too well, for this closeness has indeed come at a terrible cost.

What price the confidence of a great king? Is it stories, jokes, witty repartee? Or does the debt fall closer to home? Perhaps it must be paid far from the magnificent palaces, feasting and festivities of the royal court. Perhaps it must be paid in the death jails of a formidable prison fortress far out in the desert; a place so feared that few dare to speak its name . . .

Release date: August 6, 2020

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 288

Sample

EVERYTHING SEEMED NORMAL, BUT it was not. A moonless night, embroidered with pale stars, cloaked two figures in the vast courtyard of the palace. Sidi moved slowly along paths dotted with lanterns, bordered by trees – orange, almond, doum palms. I kept close, slightly bowed, a touch obsequious, as required when escorting the king. Night-flowering jasmine infused the humid July air. Sidi held his aching belly with both hands, letting out occasional groans. The invisible beast gnawing at his bowels barely gave him a moment’s respite, and he was finding it harder to stand up straight. It was painful to watch him suffer, but I refrained from showing it. I forced myself to crack a few jokes – that was my job, to make my master laugh. Sidi was not in the mood. He scarcely listened, his face a knot of wrinkles which looked as if they had grown deeper all at once.

Everything seemed normal, but nothing is normal when the lion is on its knees and its claws have become useless splinters of wood; when the dying fire in its eyes inspires more pity than fear; when its gaze has turned inwards to the depths of its defeated body; when the roars of yesterday are no more than faint echoes of a life burned at both ends, heavy with every kind of excess: bitter regrets, un-acknowledged defeats, resounding half-victories, great joys and sorrows, sacrifices and misgivings, too – a tumult through which angels and demons dance to the Grim Reaper’s tune.

Everything seemed normal, but I could feel a tightness in my chest. I prayed, day and night, that God would free my master of his illness and, if needed, inflict me with it on his behalf. I was willing to take on his sickness, the spasms in his guts, the shooting pain in his sides. Had I not been the king’s devoted servant for thirty-five years, his enduringly resourceful entertainer, his appointed theologian – despite his role as Commander of the Faithful? His literary consultant, too: his only fount of knowledge when it came to the dazzling world of poetry, a witness to the days when the Arabs waged war in verse, when grammarians argued for months about intonation and declensions, about a trifling accent; an era when mathematical and astrological equations were the closest we came to religion . . . blissful times that now felt as though they had never existed.

Everything seemed normal, but your humble servant knew otherwise. I, Mohamed ben Mohamed – the scum of Marrakesh’s rancid effluence, the least likely man ever to have rubbed shoulders with the elite, an escapee from the deepest sewers of humanity – I was there on that July evening, a few steps behind my moribund master, my head still reverberating with the doctor’s dire verdict: “In two or three days we’ll all be orphans.”

Sidi’s attention was grabbed by an unusual light in the gift room: a vast storeroom where thousands of presents, the residue of the king’s innumerable parties, were piled up, still in their original wrapping paper.

“Come,” the king said. “Let’s go and see what’s up.”

“It’s late, Sidi. The night is chilly. We should go back.”

“Not before I catch the fiend who’s robbing me before I’m even in my grave,” he grumbled, pushing ahead.

“Someone must be cleaning, Sidi, that’s all.”

“At this time of night?”

I didn’t reply. The king seemed bent on getting to the bottom of the matter.

When you walk through the palace at night, you would be wrong to imagine that you are alone. Dozens of spying eyes follow you, watching your every move. I know what I’m talking about. For decades, I’ve lived behind these walls glinting with mosaics, in these gardens studded with fountains that gurgle the same song at each twist in the path. It seemed incredible to me that someone would be foolish enough to steal from the very heart of the royal household. Yet we all knew the king was a shadow of his former self, and as a result some presumed they had the right to attempt the most foolish things.

We limped our way towards the northern wing of the palace, climbed some steps, headed down a long, vaulted corridor only used by the staff and saw the door to Ali Baba’s cave ajar. Sidi gave it a gentle nudge, peered through the gap and stood still. Then he silently set foot inside. I slipped in behind him. The scene that met our eyes was enlightening to say the least, and would have been unthinkable only weeks previously. The hem of his djellaba held up to form a bundle, an old slave was busy scooping up precious caskets, felt-lined coffers and objects of all kinds. He must have been hard of hearing not to have noticed our arrival, but when Sidi cleared his throat, the man spun round and nearly passed out at the sight of the king standing right there before him. Petrified, shaking, the slave appeared to be trying to speak, yet no sound would leave his mouth. His ebony skin turned purple, its shininess exaggerated by the sweat streaming down his forehead in a sheen of terror. Given Sidi’s reputation, I didn’t give the brazen idiot much of a chance. If he was lucky, the fearsome fire slaves in charge of punishments would send him packing with a hundred lashes. Proper whips, too, made from plaited oxtail, dipped in ice-cold water. One crack of these whips was retribution enough. I didn’t dare think of the alternative. But the king was unpredictable. No-one could guess how he would react. He could crush a man for a trifle just as he could forgive the most serious of offences.

We had further proof of it that evening.

“Hurry up,” he said to the thief. “Get on with it, and scarper! If the guards catch you, you’ll end up with a noose around your neck.”

The slave did not know which way to turn, unsure whether to believe his master or not. As he remained rooted to the spot, I leaned over, rummaged through his upturned djellaba, removed what seemed to be an expensive watch case and slipped it into my hood.

“At least have the decency to share some of your spoils, fat arse. Now get a move on before Sidi changes his mind!”

Noticing the beginnings of a smile on my master’s weary face, I added, “Consider yourself lucky that Sidi’s in a good mood this evening. As a matter of fact, if I were you, I’d ask him for another favour.”

The slave stared at me in disbelief. The king had begun to smile now.

“I don’t know. Request a transport licence of some kind,” I said. “A franchise to sustain you in your dotage?”

“What kind of franchise?” The king chuckled.

I leaned towards the slave and whispered, “A railway franchise.”

“A railway franchise, Your Majesty,” the poor man stuttered.

The king guffawed, reawakening the pain in his sides, but it didn’t stop him. He laughed on and it was as if a cloud of butterflies had taken flight.

“I think an airline franchise might suit our man better,” I said, grinning. Then I turned to the slave. “Go on, get out of here, you’ve earned your treasure.”

We watched him stagger away, a trickle of urine in his wake.

Sidi remained a while longer in that vast storeroom weighed down by a mountain of gifts he had never had the time nor the inclination to unwrap. This abundance brought him no pleasure at all. We both knew he had no need for any of it where he was heading. Letting the slave walk free, however, had cheered him no end.

“Come,” he said, his voice calm. “Let’s go.”

EVERYONE IN THE ROYAL palace had been pretending for weeks. A heaviness had replaced the usual hustle and bustle. Silence swept through every courtyard, down every corridor, into the drawing-rooms and kitchens. Only muffled echoes and whisperings escaped here and there. The guards’ loud footsteps had once reassured us, but now they tiptoed about. The slaves who used to proclaim “Long life to His Majesty” at every possible opportunity had also fallen quiet. The constant toing and froing of high-ranking officials and ministers did not bode well – and nor did the presence of the crown prince and other members of the royal family. They, too, were pretending. Just like the muezzin of the palace mosque, whose melancholic voice had been drowned out by his shriller colleagues in town. Sitting at table, we did our best to eat, to talk as we always had, to comment on the escalating violence in the daily news, to laugh about this and that.

Sidi’s favourite granddaughter, Sofia, was far more skilled at eliciting a smile from him than I. She regularly stole my limelight, shamelessly stepped on my toes. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but even at the age of seventy, I was often jealous of the snickering, carefree little blonde child. I’d catch the king staring at her pink cheeks and bouncy, golden hair, her hazelnut eyes nearly swallowed by her spoiled pout. “My snowy pearl,” he’d say, his face aglow, marvelling the way only a dark-skinned Bedouin could marvel at an alien, Northern beauty like hers. To him, she was a miracle, this child with milky-white skin, who at the age of eight already . . .