It was a heartless thought, but I was tired and hungry. I was angry at life. And perhaps, although I would not have admitted it aloud, I was angry at God for letting this happen.

As I led my fellow Mothers away from the house, my scarved head bowed in fury and despair, I heard Umm Salama, the gentle widow, speak.

“We should tell the Messenger,” she said, her voice cracking in sorrow from the tragedies we had witnessed tonight.

I turned to face her and shook my head grimly.

“He has enough to worry about.”

The Messenger had not left his post at the trench since the first Meccan horseman had appeared. He had survived on perhaps two hours of sleep every night, and the toll of the siege was clear on his face. His glossy black beard had begun to streak with gray, and new lines had appeared around his dark eyes. It was as if this perpetually young man had aged overnight.

Sawda, my plump and elderly cowife, wiped tears from her eyes.

“But the children are starving. It will not be long before Jannat al-Baqi takes them,” she said, referring to the graveyard on the outskirts of the oasis.

“There is nothing more he can do,” I snapped, suddenly feeling intensely protective of my husband. The last thing he needed right now was to be nagged by his wives about matters that he could not control.

The Messenger knew full well the suffering of his community. Providing grisly details of famine and disease would only shatter his soft heart, making it that more difficult to stand up against this relentless foe.

I saw my young rival Hafsa shrug as if she were not convinced by my words.

“Perhaps he can negotiate a truce,” she said bluntly. “Or perhaps a surrender with honor-”

I slapped her.

Hafsa recoiled as if I had cut her with a knife. But the slice of a blade would have been more bearable than the cold fire in my eyes.

“The wolf is at the door and you would deliver us into its jaws!”

Hafsa’s face turned bright red, the rage that was the legacy of her father’s blood kindled. I steeled myself for a retaliatory blow and prayed that the cover of night would prevent anyone from seeing the Mothers of the Believers fighting like cats in the streets.

But then Hafsa surprised me. The daughter of Umar ibn al-Khattab took a deep breath and calmed herself. With what must have been a monumental effort, she bit down on her lip and then spoke in a calm, steady voice.

“You’re right. I shouldn’t have said that.”

In that moment, Hafsa went from being a dreaded rival in the harem to a woman I could respect. Indeed, as our friendship deepened over the years, we would often laugh that it began because I was the only person ever to stand up to her.

But that night there was nothing to laugh about. The vultures were waiting at the edge of Medina for us to fall prey to starvation and disease. And within ten days, they would have their wish. Unless the Messenger could find a way to dislodge the dogs of war from our doorstep, we were all doomed. And to have any hope of doing that, he needed support from his loved ones in his darkest hours.

I turned to face my cowives. When I spoke, it was with the voice of a strong woman, not that of a little girl. My body was that of a child, but my soul was already aged beyond a dozen a lifetimes.

“We are not like other women, who have the luxury of nagging their husbands with doubts and fears,” I said solemnly. “We are the Messenger’s last defense against this cruel and mad world. Do you think Khadija ever asked him to surrender when all of Mecca sought his head?”

That last was the hardest for me to say. Even though I had shared the Messenger’s bed for five years, even though I had been proclaimed the most beloved and honored of his wives, I had never been able to take the place of Khadija, the first person to believe in him and stand by his side. There were times when I felt him toss restlessly in bed beside me. And I would hear him whisper her name and see tears fall from his sleeping eyes as the pain of loss consumed his hidden mind. No matter how long I stayed with him, no matter how many sons I might bear him, he would never truly be mine.

Hafsa bowed her head and I saw the last fire of pride go out.

“I was a fool. I’m sorry,” she sobbed.

And then the radiant Zaynab bint Jahsh put her hand on Hafsa’s shoulder in comfort.

“Do not be. The thought had entered my mind as well.”

Zaynab looked at me with a raised eyebrow, her eyes challenging me to strike her perfect face as I had struck Hafsa’s. There was such power in her gaze, such innate nobility, that I suddenly felt like a child again, my pretense of authority vanishing into the night air.

The kindly Sawda moved to my side, perhaps sensing that my bravado was little more than a cover for the grief and uncertainty that veiled my heart.

“But what do we do?” she asked softly. It was strange, this woman who was well into her sixties turning to a teenage girl for advice. But the world was upside down and only those who could navigate the strange pathways of this nightmare would survive.

“We stand with the Messenger,” I said, feeling my confidence return with renewed vigor. “And if our destiny is to die at his side, whether by an arrow or by hunger, we do it with dignity and a smile on our faces.”

I took Sawda’s right hand as if to swear an oath. Hafsa placed hers atop mine. After a moment of hesitation, Zaynab did so as well.

“We are the Mothers of the Believers,” I said, pronouncing each word of our shared title with great dignity. “Nothing less can be expected of us in the eyes of God or man.”

The women smiled, their hopes renewed, and even Zaynab gave me a grateful look. I smiled back at her and hoped that her piercing eyes could not see the terrible chains of fear that bound my heart.

11

The black gates of the fortress shimmered in the moonlight. They had stood for a dozen generations, protecting their inhabitants from the wolves that roamed the volcanic hills, whether those beasts were canine or mortal men.

A single man stood outside the protection of those doors tonight, his dark eyes gazing over the tops of the hillocks toward a world he no longer recognized. Kab ibn Asad, the chieftain of the Bani Qurayza, saw the burning clouds of smoke that rose to the north, where an army stood on the verge of destroying the town that had once been called Yathrib. His brothers among the Bani Nadir had returned to reclaim their homes and had brought with them thousands of Arab warriors to support their cause. True, they had been temporarily blocked by the Muslims’ ingenious trench, but Kab knew that the moment would come when the barrier would fail and vengeance would be taken.

Almost a fortnight had passed with the army of liberators held back at the gates of Medina, but the delay had served a purpose. The Muslims were like trapped animals, hungry and exhausted, cut off from the necessities of survival by their own hubris. They were hanging fruit, ripe to be plucked. When his spies had confirmed the extent of the famine, the weakness of the Muslim troops, Kab had sent a specially trained falcon to the camp of his kinsman Huyayy, leader of the exiled Bani Nadir. In its deadly claws it carried a small message written in Hebrew, a language none of the enemy would understand if the bird were captured or killed. But the mighty falcon had returned unharmed, a reply written in Hebrew with the answer Kab had been hoping for.

And so it was that he stood alone tonight just past the safety of the fortress walls. He was doing what he had done for many months. Watching and waiting.

And then he saw it. A flicker of movement against the black lava flows that surrounded the southern pass. Kab focused his eyes but could see nothing more in the darkness. For a moment, he wondered if he had imagined it, his eager mind showing him what he hoped to see. And then he heard the steady crunch of footsteps against the cold pebbles and two small shadows broke free of the great black shadow of the hillside.