Antonina had still not exchanged a word with her. She had ruled Rukaiya out from the very start, and Rukaiya herself had made no attempt to get Antonina’s attention. But the Roman woman knew full well what was happening at that bench.
* * *
There are people in this world who have the knack for it. People who draw others around them, like a lodestone draws iron filings. The kind of people whom others, when they stumble and fall, automatically look to for help and guidance.
The kind of people, in short, that you like to see sitting on a throne—and rarely do.
Antonina shook her head. Too skinny.
* * *
By the morning of the third day, Antonina had narrowed her selection to three girls. She decided to spend the entire day in private conversations with those final prospects.
Rukaiya was not among them. Yet, when the time came for Antonina to make her announcement to the assembled girls in the harem, her tongue seemed to have a will of its own. After she finished naming the three finalists, the rebellious organ kept talking.
“And Rukaiya,” her tongue blurted out.
Across the room, Rukaiya’s head jerked up. The girl was staring at Antonina, wide-eyed. That was due to surprise, and—something else. Rukaiya, strangely, seemed distressed by the announcement.
That’s odd, thought Antonina. Then, firmly, to her tongue: And she’s still too skinny.
* * *
Antonina interviewed Rukaiya last of all. It was already late in the afternoon by the time the Beni Hashim girl entered the small sleeping chamber in the harem which Antonina was using for her private meetings.
As Rukaiya took a seat on a bench across from her, Antonina admired the grace in the girl’s movements. There was something almost sinuous in the way Rukaiya walked, and slid herself onto a couch. Even the way the girl sat, with her hands modestly folded in her lap, had a feline poise to it. And her clear brown eyes, watching Antonina, had little in them of a sixteen-year-old girl’s uncertainty and awkwardness.
Antonina returned Rukaiya’s stare in silence, for a good minute or so. She was studying the girl carefully, but could read nothing in her expression. That beautiful young face might as well have been a mask. Antonina could detect none of the quick-witted liveliness which she had noticed for two days, nor the startled apprehension which had shone in Rukaiya’s eyes the moment she heard herself named as one of the four finalists.
Let’s clear that mystery up first, she decided.
“You seemed startled, when I named you,” Antonina stated. “Why is that?”
The girl’s answer came with no apparent hesitation. “I was surprised. You had seemed to pay no attention to me, the first two days. And I was not expecting to be selected. I am too skinny. Two men—their parents, actually—have already rejected me as a wife. They are worried I will not be able to bear children.”
The statement was matter-of-fact, relaxed—almost philosophical. That was its own surprise. Most Arab girls, rejected by a suitor’s parents, would have been heartsick.
The problem was not romantic. Marriage among upper-class Arabs was arranged by their families. Often enough, the man and woman involved did not even know each other prior to their wedding. But marriage was the destiny and the highest position to which an Arab girl could aspire. To be rejected almost invariably produced feelings of unworthiness and shame.
Yet Rukaiya seemed to feel none of that. Why?
Antonina was alarmed. One obvious explanation for Rukaiya’s attitude was that the girl was so egotistical—so enamored of her own beauty and grace—that she was simply incapable of accepting rejection. She might be the kind of person who, faced with disappointment, always places the blame on others.
In the long history of the Roman Empire, Antonina reminded herself, there had been more than one empress with that mentality. Most of them had been disastrous, especially the ones whose noble birth reinforced their egotism. Antonina’s friend Theodora, in truth, had the same innate temperament. But Theodora’s hard life had taught the woman to discipline her own pride. A girl like Rukaiya, born into Arabia’s elite, would have nothing to teach her to restrain arrogance.