Yusuf trusts his doubts

Leila was surprised, but after her first sharp gasp she managed not to show it. Yusuf was too flustered to notice even that.

“Sister!” He sat up on the bed. “Is it time?”

“Not quite yet. They’re just loading the wagons.”

Yusuf slumped over his lap again.

“I only came up for the tenth time to be certain we hadn’t forgotten anything. You know me.” She flicked her hand and waited a beat, but Yusuf did not smile. She decided to attempt an outright joke. “Say, you haven’t seen the baby lying about anywhere, have you?”

Yusuf shrugged. “He probably got packed in with the towels.” He did not laugh nor lift his head, but it was lively enough a response for Leila.

She strolled past the bed to the far window—curtainless since the laundry maids had swept through the room during breakfast and borne off all that could be laundered. It promised to be the first day of clear sun in weeks.

Leila’s steps echoed in the empty chamber, and the light of late morning was chill. Now that the artificial gaiety of Christmas had passed, a hush had fallen over Nothelm, a tense unease that made such simple sounds as her clicking boot heels as aggravating as a drip of water on tin.

Behind her she heard a rustle of straw and feathers as Yusuf rose from the bed. His leather soles carried him in silence.

“You didn’t happen to forget to pack a baby brother, did you?”

Leila turned to him. He looked sheepish, but he had sounded a little forlorn.

“Now, what sort of guest would I be if I robbed my hosts’ castle of such a valuable furnishing?”

He laughed. “I’m a furnishing?”

“Oh! An ornament, let us say. I might as well steal the diadem from Hetty’s brow.” She illustrated her point by stubbing her finger upon his forehead.

Yusuf swatted her hand away and grabbed her by the furry ruff of her cloak.

“I doubt anyone but my sister would compare me to a priceless jewel. I’m surprised you do. Crystallized toad dropping maybe.”

They laughed so long together that Yusuf finally patted her shoulders and turned away towards the window. Leila saw she would have to speak quickly, before the thread of the conversation had dropped.

“Some people do seem to find you… ah… dazzling.”

Yusuf understood at once and turned his back to her fully. “To the extent that they do not often look upon me?”

“You don’t know where she looks when you’re not looking.”

“She’s blind, Leila.”

“Her eyes can still follow you around a room.”

Yusuf’s head sank lower. “That’s so she’ll know where I’m standing, so she won’t run into me later.”

Leila sighed. “Oh, brother! You and your nephew are two of a kind.”

“My nephew?” Yusuf’s curiosity was roused enough to turn him around, and Leila waited until it had.

“Cedric. I hereby remind you, O worthy uncle, that you owe it to your dignity to figure this thing out before your twelve-​year-​old nephew does.”

“What thing?”

Leila pinched his nose. “Love.”

Yusuf wrinkled his face and swatted her arm down. “Cedric’s in love?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“With whom?”

“With Gwynn.” Yusuf’s nose wrinkled again, but Leila pressed on. “However, we were talking about you.”

“Her father will never allow that,” Yusuf protested.

“Ah! Thus yours isn’t the most hopeless love beneath the heavens after all. Irene has no father.”

Leila smiled, but Yusuf’s expression went from confounded to blank.

“No,” he said. “She has a god.”

“No, she has God.”

“No, she has three gods!”

Leila took a breath. At last she had found the opportunity to deliver the phrase she had been practicing in her mind for days.

“‘Lawful unto you in marriage are not only chaste women who are believers, but chaste women among the People of the Book…’”

Her voice weakened and faltered. She had not expected a simple quotation from the Koran would have the power to transform her brother’s face into their father’s.

“What did you do? Sneak into my room? Is that the use to which you put the revelation of God, now, sister—to win an argument against me?”

“No, brother, God forbid it.” Out of ancient habit Leila’s voice dropped into the soothing, milk-​and-​honey tones the women of her house had always taken with the men. “I did it to help you.”

“Are you in any position to help me with this matter?”

“I am your sister.”

Yusuf straightened and blinked his eyes like a man coming out of a trance.

“Forgive me, habibati.” He adjusted the end of her scarf, as though his anger had blown it out of place. “You speak out of love, I know.”

His voice too was warm as honey when he spoke with feeling, and Leila thought it a shame that no head lay beside his on his pillow at night to hear it. She thought it a shame he had no babies of his own for whom to pour it out in lullabies. She knew he would make a good husband and father, however he prayed.

“Yusuf, if what you truly desire is to marry a Muslim sister, then I pray God will show you the way to her. But if your desire is to marry Irene, then I want you to remember it is not forbidden for a brother to marry a devout, chaste Christian woman.”

A shadow of their father flickered over his face again, quickly replaced by a grimace worthy of Leila’s twelve-​year-​old boy.

“It’s not only that!” he wailed. “If it were only that! But do you hear yourself? Marry Irene? Leila, she’s a Princess!”

“She no longer considers herself a Princess…”

“She used to live in marble palaces! She used to have a slave whose sole duty was to wave a fan at her! She used to bathe in goat milk perfumed with jasmine!”

“We have goats…”

“And I’m a doctor! I don’t have any money! I don’t have a house! I never know when I shall be home or when I shall be called out late at night! And I come in streaked with blood and vomit and pus!”

Leila bit her upper lip so she would not laugh.

“How could I aspire to her when there are other far more worthy men all around her? What about Ralf, the King’s Steward? I believe he’s fond of her. The King’s Steward, Leila! What am I to that?”

“I believe Ralf is more fond of having an audience for his Greek aphorisms.”

“And why not a lord? Lord Acanweald might return this year.”

Leila sighed. “And since she was already in his castle anyway…”

“Or why not a man we don’t even know? Word will spread! She’s still young, still beautiful. She’s not barren, and I’ve nursed her back to health.”

Leila straightened her scarf over her shoulder. “The eunuch might be a bit off-​putting…”

“And you’re forgetting the most important obstacle, sister.”

Leila folded her hands and readied her rebuttal against the inevitable protest. Irene had never confided her feelings to Leila or anyone else, to Leila’s knowledge, but poor Irene could not have been aware how much emotion a face could reveal. Her delight in Yusuf’s arrivals and dismay at his departures were not feigned.

But Yusuf said, “I am her doctor. I have seen her partly unclothed. And touched her in ways that only her husband or servant should touch her. It would be despicable of me to take advantage of that trust and intimacy.”

Leila let her hands fall apart. She had not prepared an argument against that.

“It is not uncommon for women to develop affection for their doctors. Or their tutors,” he added with a note of gentle condemnation.

Leila hid her eyes behind her lashes.

“We are taught to avoid it, but not to blame the women, for they are innocent, and it is only natural. However, if we develop affection for our patients, it is a sin against modesty and a forswearing of our oath as doctors.”

Leila could find nothing to say to that. Yusuf waited a moment, then snorted in grim triumph and took a few steps into the room.

“Wait,” Leila said.

Yusuf stopped.

“Permit me to say, habibi, your relations with Irene these past weeks have had very little to do with the doctor and very much to do with the friend. Women do not sit for hours and talk with their doctors. They don’t dance, and go for walks, and play games with their doctors.”

Yusuf stepped forward again, but his stride had slowed to a swingy, thoughtful rambling.

“Perhaps the doctor-​and-​patient stage in your lives is coming to an end, and you are now free to be friends. And perhaps something more, inch’allah.”

Yusuf grabbed the bedpost and lifted his foot onto the footboard, and combined a graceful, monkey-​like swing with an inglorious eleven-​stone thump onto the mattress. Leila lifted the end of her scarf over her mouth to hide her smile. Her brother forgot he was no longer twelve about as often as her son forgot he still was.

Yusuf tucked his leg beneath him and hung his head over his lap. “That doesn’t change any of the other things,” he grumbled.

Leila counted a point in her own favor.

“No…” she admitted as she stepped closer. “But you see, there are no absolute barriers between the two of you.”

“Only a lot of tremendous obstacles.”

“If you choose to see them that way.” She sat beside him on the edge of the bed.

“There’s one more obstacle I failed to mention.”

“What’s that?”

“Why should I believe for a moment that she might have an affection for me?”

“Ah, habibi, that’s just you. And Cedric too. There are men so bold they will see a sure sign of passionate attachment in a lady’s look of disdain, and men so shy they will fail to believe in a lady’s love though she expires of longing at their feet.” She reached back and squeezed his hand. “Don’t be either of those men.”

Yusuf snorted.

Leila asked softly, “Why don’t you simply tell her how you feel?”

“I cannot do that. Suppose she does not share my feelings? I could no longer be her doctor. That would be a selfish act. Perhaps even dangerous to her.”

Leila sighed and tapped the heels of her dangling boots against the bed frame. Instead of stopping to think over their logical conclusions, she spoke her musings aloud.

“But if what you say is true, you can no longer be her doctor anyway, since you do have an affection for her.”

Yusuf’s leg flopped straight upon the bed. An instant later he was up and out of it. Leila hopped up on the other side.

“Wait! Where are you going?”

“I’m going to pack. I’m going home with you. You’re right. If I am more friend than doctor here, then I should not be here.”

“Wait!” Leila swung herself around the bed post and hurried after him.

“I was right,” he said as he yanked open the door. “For days now I’ve been thinking I wanted to go home with you. Praise God! All my doubts were only my conscience trying to show me the right path. Praise be to God! I should always trust my doubts.”

He disappeared into the hallway, and Leila knew better than to chase after his long nomad’s stride with her heavy cloak and her heeled boots clattering out a warning of her approach.

“Always trust your doubts!” she quoted at the open door. She shook her head and sighed. “Brother, you and your nephew are two of a kind.”