Chapter Text
Ismael Khan doubled over in pain as he and Erik arrived in the central square of the village of Ulva Kvarn outside the ancient city of Uppsala.
“Oh my dearest!” the great disfigured musician said unto his husband as he saw Ismael’s pain, “Are you okay? Please tell me you are alright and will soon be thriving once again!”.
“I’m fine” Ismael coughed out as he struggled to get back up again, “Iii just need a little rest. I think…”
“I know” Erik responded as he guided Ismael through the cold and snowy streets of Ulva Kvarn until they reached the ancient tavern known as The White Owl. They sat down togther in a biig covered chair at a small round table before Erik got back up again and went over to the counter of the receptionist.
“Please, good sir” Erik said to the soft-faced, chubby old innkeeper, “I need a room for my spouse. He’s gone into labour and needs both a doctor and a midwife and a room in which to give birth!”.
The chubby old innkeeper snarled for a while at the thought of providing service to an unusual foreigner and a man who looked like unto a skull or the face of Death Herself, but nonetheless, he ultimately sighed and led both Erik and Ismael up to their room on the top floor of the inn.
And as they made their way slowly and methodically up the stairs to their destined apartment, Ismael Khan found himself reflecting upon his liifie so far. It seemed not that long ago when he had been a rising star in the land of Eran, a young Daroga appointed to a high position in the Rosy Hours of Mazanderan. He was the son of a Daroga and the grandson of a Daroga as well, and he had always dreamed of the wondrous reaction which his father Nader and his mother Aishah and Ibrahim his father’s father and Fatemeh his father’s mother would give unto him once he finally went to join them in Glorious Jannam after many years of noble and dignified service to the Solar Throne of the Erankhshatsa.
And then he had met Erik LeFevre.
And at first, the relationship had been good. Ismael had been quick to take pity upon the poor young architect, the only survivor of a travelling Rromani clan who had been arrested for loitering near Mazanderan and had mostly been executed upon Lady Jeyran’s and Lord Hushang’s shared orders. Erik, in turn, had been just as kind to Ismael as Ismael had been to him, and he had listened eagerly to the younger man’s anxieties and dreams and passions and had even shared some of his own secret musical compositions with the young Daroga. And in time, they had begun to fall in love with each other, even arranging to have secret dinners together in the innermost sanctums of the Rosy Palace called Mazanderan.
And then the Fateful Day had struck.
Erik had finally gotten too far in love with the young Ismael, and Ismael too far in love with him. And in their state of drunkenness, they had declared their love for each other and proceeded to have intercourse right then and there upon their secluded dinner table.
And four days after that, the Special Time of the Month (as his mother had always sarcastically called it) had failed to come for Ismael, and he had been sent into a state of panic and desperation that he had only barely managed to conceal both from Erik and from the rest of the court.
Within two months though, the ruse was up and all knew the secret of how Ismael was pregnant with the Ghost’s bastard child. And because it was forbidden for one sworn to the Celibate Order of Mazanderan to bear a child with anyone, especially with a foreigner such as Erik, it was decreed by the Empress Faranak (heavily influenced by her younger sister Lady Jeyran of Mazanderan) that both Erik and Ismael and their child would all be put to death via beheading as soon as the baby was born. However, Erik was having none of this, and neither was Ismael. And so they had both escaped from Mazanderan in the middle of the night and had proceeded to flee across both Eran’s provinces and Turkiye’s dominions until they had crossed the Straits of Phrixus and of Helle into the lands of Austria-Hungary. And on and on, they had fled through all the lands of central Europe, hiding in the wheatfields and the cottages of the peasantry and even a few mighty castles of the nobility until they had finally reached the mostly blessed realm of La France.
Even there, though, they were not fully safe. For there was much hatred and mistrust for the people of Faranak’s realm in this land still ruled over by dark memories of confrontations with pirates from the Amazigh Coast and the invaders who had swept out of Spain in the days before Charles Martel and his beloved second wife Swanachild the Bold had driven the Followers of Allah out of Aquitaine in what Ismael still thought of as Balat ash-Shuhada in 113 Sanat Hijriyya, and as aresult both Ismael and Erik had been driven out of almost every town in which they had attempted to settle down and relax. It was only with the help of a young aristocrat-turned-diplomat named Thomas de Chagny that they were able to escape from France to Sweden.
And now here they were, Ismael deep in the pangs of labour in a strange and unfamiliar little tavern in the middle of Scandinavia. He felt like he was about to pass out from said labour pangs, but still he stood up all strong and proud and tall and fearsome, for the sake of himself and for the sake of Erik and for the sake of their unborn child.
Sooner than later, however, it was not long before Ismael could feel the baby kicking and doubled over in pain just a little before he had to sit down in order to regain his strength just a little. He was surprised and taken aback by just how comfortable these chairs actually were. He had expected them to be rather hard and stark and wickerish things, made more for practicality and service than for comfort or for softness. So it was much to his surprise that these chairs were so comfortable as they were, until that is, he remembered how much these taverns of the land of Sweden were known for their comfort and hospitality as well as for their practical considerations. And so it was that the man known as Ismael Khan smiled to himself as he gazed around the room, catching glimpses of the magnificent fireplace that roared as fiercely and beautifully as if it was built for Mazanderan Herself and the portrait of the queen and her wife that seemed to decorate every public building in this land that called itself Sverige like it was the official duty of every citizen to please their monarchs as much as possible through pleasant and amiable and agreeable pictures. One would think that a devoted follower of The Great Allah and Their Prophet Muhammad (Subhanahu wa-Ta’ala) would be so much virulently opposed to the production of such images and pictures of such plain and material things, but he was not one of those men. After all, Ismael himself came from a culture with a tradition of truly beauteous and beautiful illuminations and illuminated manuscripts, many of which depicted their legendary sovereigns as well as events from the Shahnameh and its heroes. So it did not bother Ismael much that the Swedish Folk were like this for their monarchs.
And so the day passed onwards and onwards, mostly in blissful solitude. The fire roared its peaceful and pleasant blaze with the serene symphony of a sunrise combined with a sunset. It reminded Ismael of a trip he had taken to Isfahan as a small child, not yet known as Ismael, wherein his mother had shown to him all the wonders of the ancient city at sunset as it was bathed in the rosy purple fingers of the dusktime. He remembered also standing in the Jewelled Masjed of Shah Cheragh in Glorious Shiraz, that King of Light that held the mortal remnants of Ahmad ibn Musa, son of the Seventh Imam, he who was as much a forebearing holy servant to the God Almighty as his father and whose tomb was said to have been illuminated by a beautiful light in the times of the Shah Ishaq Inju. How strange and wonderful of a thing it was to consider how much it was such an easy thing to find beauty in this world, whether in the palaces of the mighty and in the great or in the abodes of the lowly and humble and even the miserable.
In time, however, it was time to depart for dinner as Ismael saw Erik beckoning him towards the dining room for a piscine feast. The dining room of the tavern was a pleasant and agreeable place that smelt of smoke and love and was filled with the sounds of violinists scratching out simple little tunes, folk songs sacred in the memories of the Sverigian peoples for as long as they had existed and almost as beloved to them as the hymnals that they sang in their churches every single Sunday for over a thousand years. There was a good mixture of Sverigish and Sapmic folktunes amongst this ensemble, but neither Erik nor Ismael could pay much attention to these songs, for they were much, much too focused on the delicious stew of sour herring that now sat before them like offerings to a God or to a King. Erik in particular smacked his lips together at the taste of every single piece of fish touching upon his tongue or upon his lips and he seemed to relish even the tiniest details of this meal after months of living off of whatever gruel they could manage to acquire in cheap roadside taverns. Ismael, meanwhile, was a lot more unsure about what he was consuming. He was still unused to the tastes and textures of Occidental European food, and he missed the richer textures and magnificent spices of his homeland back in Eran. In fact, so unused was Ismael Khan to the taste and texture of these European fish foods that he caught a bit of pepper in his throat and began to cough furiously, forcing Erik to jump up to his own feet and rush himself and his husband out of the building in a desperate attempt to get some cold air for the sake of Ismael’s cough.
Outside, the cold of the Swedish December continued to be as strong and as biting as if they were in the depths of the Arctic herself. The only companion that either Ismael or Erik could hear in the depths of the nigh-Arctic cold was a rather peculiar Irish fellow who seemed neither old nor young, neither tall nor short, singing peacefully to himself about beating people of the Liverpudlian dispoisition up with his shillelagh before transitioning into an even more jaunty and joyous tune about learning to dance at some beautiful ball.
“Ismael, are you okay!?” Erik begged his husband as he cupped Ismael’s face in his own hands and looked straight into the young Persian’s eyes, “Did anything go wrong? Did it affect the baby?”.
“No, my love” Ismael responded to Erik’s queryings as he finished up with his coughings, “Khoobam, eshgham. Khoobam!”.
“O Deo Gratias!” Erik exclaimed with a rushing sigh of relief before retreating back inwards to the tavern with his husband by his side. As soon as this was done, Erik and Ismael sat back down at the table and Erik beckoned towards the waiter and asked them to replace Ismael’s surstromming with cress soup. The waiter bowed and obeyed Erik’s commands and came back with a lovely and luscious bowl of cress soup which Ismael was very quick to devour. And after this meal was all done and dusted, as the modern kids would say, Erik and Ismael both chose to forgo the desert option and went back to the inn’s common room for a few minutes before Erik succumbed to a comatose state of sleepfulness that comes regular upon all of those who have just consumed a hearty and luscious meal and went up to sleep in his appointed apartment. And so it was that Ismael Khan remained alone and peacefully contented in the Common Room…until the kicking started at last.
And so it was that Ismael Khan entered into labour with his husband’s child, and it was thus that he was quickly rushed upstairs to a private room to await the attentions of a midwife.
And sure enough, the midwife arrived about five minutes later. She was a rather pleasant and charming and plump little woman, with grey hair growing all together in soft curls and cheerful blue eyes that seemed to speak of sparkling conversation. She was softly humming a little tune to herself as she entered the room, and Ismael felt compelled to ask her what she was humming to herself, exactly.
“O this?” the midwife responded with a smile and with a chuckle, “It is not all that much, honestly. Just a charming and sweet little thing by the name of Herr Mannelig”.
“What is it about, if thou dost not mindeth me asking, o good Christian woman?” Ismael asked while trying not to think too much about his own pain.
“It is a folk song about a troll woman who tries to marry a lord” the old midwife responded, “I think you would like it if ever you chose to read it all a whole”.
“I think I can recognise the tune honestly” Ismael responded to the midwife’s answers, remembering how he had heard something that sounded like it both in the harbour down at Stockholm and in the performances tonight at their dinner together.
“It is a good one” the midwife responded before subsequently introducing herself as Mistress Theodora Brakulle of Skoletof in Sweden.
“Nice to meet you, Mistress Theodora” Ismael responded with all of the politeness and sweetness that he could muster in his voice, “My name is Ahmad ibn Yusuf ibn Musa, and I am a prince of Arabia on business from the Caliph”.
“What kind of business?” Mistress Brakulle asked with a wry and mischievous grin upon her voice and upon her lips as well, “Are you an ambassador from Kostantiniyye?”.
“Well, yes, my lady” Ismael responded as he answered the Mistress Brakulle’s queryings, “I have been sent by Sultana Mihrimah bint Nurbanu of the House of Osmanoglu to negotiate trade deals with your Queen Elinor and her wife Lady Christina. I am staying here in Ulva Kvarn to, you know, ensure that the Sami delegation arrives to negotiate with Her Grace”.
“Well that sounds exciting!” Mistress Brakulle responded with a smile upon her lips and laughter upon her voice, “You know that I have some Sami blood in me veins, and so does my good old son-in-law by the way?”
“Pardon me, o mistress and madame?” Ismael responded with curiosity in his own voice, “Whatever dost thou meanst by that?”.
“My great-great-grandfather was an old Sami trader who married an iron miner’s daughter” Mistress Theodora Brakulle responded with a smile upon her lips and face, “And my son-in-law David, his mother is Sami as well, by the way. Took the name Maria, she did, when she married the boy’s father Edvard back in the days. O David is such a sweet boy, a regular violinist and a virtuous of those marvellous melodies of his. I bet you heard some of his performances down in the old dining hall this very evening”.
Ismael tried to wrack his mind back as he pushed the baby out of his womb, but he could not remember anything distinctive about any of those performers, let alone any of them who seemed like a half-Sami boy named David. Then again, he had not had that much chance to focus on the performers themselves while he was dealing with his own pregnancy and impending childbirth and also with the feeling of Swedish pepper being caught in the back of his throat. The only performer that he had actually caught all that much notice of on this particular night was that odd-yet-average looking Irish fellow who was singing two of his country’s folk songs outside the inn that night, and that was only because he was, unfortunately, inescapable and seemed to hover around both him and Erik like a leech. Sometimes Ismael wondered if he would ever love and adore and cherish any kind of music, even that of his own dear husband Erik, more than he cherished and adored and loved the music of his own dear home country of Eran.
And indeed, so absorbed was Ismael Khan in all of these thoughts and feelings and ideas that he did not even notice at first his child beginning to cry a little until Mistress Brakulle calmed her down and wrapped her up in swaddling clothes. And then it was not long after that that Ismael got to hold his child for the first time, and he smiled oh so happily.
The child was small, as was to be suspected of a newborn infant, and seemed to be fair of face yet also dark tan of skin, much like Ismael himself. It made him wonder just a little how the villagers of this region would react to seeing them, whether they would denounce the infant as a foreign devil child or simply accept them as a half-Sami child like most of the other folks in this village and several other Swedish villages.
“She is a fine little thing, isn’t she, Mister Ahmad ibn Yusuf ibn Musa?” Mistress Theodora Brakulle said and smiled as she watched the young baby nurse at her womb father’s teats while suckling greedily for milk and nurture and sustenance.
“She is, my dearest Mistress Brakulle” Ismael laughed to himself before changing his mind and voice to being serious for the sake of the midwife understanding what he was about to say, “I love her very much and very deeply, and I hope she goes on to greatness and great joy and great, wonderful things throughout the course of the long, long life that she has ahead of her”.
And as he said these last few words, Ismael paused to himself in his ramblings and allowed the baby to be taken off to be washed and swaddled and mayhaps even breastfed by Madame Brakulle or one of the other women who worked with her. And as he did so and as this was done, he felt a great sadness climb into the depths of his heart and stay there like an owl nuzzling herself inside a tree with her owlets. The life that he and Erik currently lived together was no life for a young child to live, always on the run and hiding and fleeing from place to place lest the hired knives of Queen Arnavaz and her wife the Empress Faranak pursue across the world from land to land, always on the run lest they be done in in the midst of the nighttime by those hired hands of death and murder. This child…she deserved a better life, a kinder life that would enable her to grow alive and thriving and loved and protected by someone who would care for her and nurture her and tell her stories and comfort her when she was scared in the night and just do all the wonderful things that a parent could do for a child when the parents were also able to support themselves on a sustainable and substantial household budsget and personal income and sense of emotional stability.
“Madame Brakulle” Ismael asked the midwife as she came back with the freshly swaddled child and nursed her just a little while still nodding along with his words and listening to what he had to say.
“Yes, what is it, Herr Ahmad?” she asked as the child nursed upon her breast.
“If you do not mind, my good friend and good woman, Saidah Brakulle” Ismael responded as he finally gathered up the courage to speak to the Madame about what he wished for her to do, “Could you adopt my child? I do not feel that she is safe with me and my husband in our current circumstances”.
“What do you mean, my good man?” Madame Brakulle asked as the child continued to nurse herself from the older woman’s breasts.
“I would like you to adopt our child on our behalf” Ismael the former Daroga said at last after so much hesitation, “Please, take care of her while we are unable to do so, and maybe we shall return one day to claim her once more as our own and take her back into our familial fold. Until then, though, I need you to hold on to her”.
“I am a tired old woman, my good Muslim friend” Madame Theadora said with the wise old chuckle of a sage predicting the outcome of the next harvest and the coming of the next rainfall, “However, let it be known that I will try, and my daughter shall as well”.
“Is your daughter a good, kind woman?” Ismael asked with the genuine curiosity of a parent seeking what is best for their child.
“Why yes she is, my Agnes my love!” Madame Theadora chuckled to herself once again as she described her daughter’s virtues in great detail, “She is such a good and wise soul that it is said that the village priest shall press to have her canonised before she has even died! She is married to a violinist, you know! A good strong fellow named David who has performed here in this very inn more than a few times”.
“I do believe I saw him perform in the inn this very evening just before I gave birth!” Ismael chuckled to himself and to Madame Theadora Brakulle and to the baby as well.
Madame Theadora continued discussing David and her daughter Agnes for a good long while after that, and the more that he heard about them, the more he was convinced they were the ones most worthy to adopt his and Erik’s child and raise her as their own.
“Where do your daughter and your son-in-law live, if you do not mind me asking?” Ismael asked at last, after some more hesitation.
“In Skotelov, not far from here!” the old Madame chuckled to herself as she held the baby upon her lap and burped her slightly to keep the air flowing through her newly born lungs.
“Then take her to Skotelov and leave her there with them! I think that she will thrive in their care and with their company!” Ismael said at last after some more hesitation and a sigh of reluctant sadness as he knew what he was doing exactly.
And with that having been said, Madame Theadora and Ismael bowed to each other respectfully and with the utmost of admiration as Madame Theadora took the unnamed little infant downstairs with her and out of the room with her while looking for a carriage to take her to Skotelov with her precious cargo in tow.
For a while, at least, Ismael Khan sighed to himself with relief knowing that his and Erik’s child would be safe and sound in a prosperous and gentle town with a soft and generous and loving family to look after her throughout her childhood.
Little did he know what was to come.