The Sultan was not averse to the mother teaching her son. He was a shrewd man, if savage and cruel. And that France from where the girl came was growing ever more powerful. It would be to the boy's advantage to learn all the arts and cunning of his mother's people.
The Sultan Casim gave Annette but one present that she took from him willingly; a sandalwood bureau with shelves and drawers and little sliding panels, an elaborately carved and handsome piece of furniture; stocked with slate and pencil, paper, quills and ink—such as the priests at the mosques used themselves. For this strange girl who hated him had more learning than all the priests put together.
But, for all that, the youngster had to sit at their feet at appointed times, and be taught all the Sultan had ever been taught, to read and write, and recite scraps from the Koran, and to be a true Moslem.
Annette hated this wild, profligate religion, and into her son she tried to instil her own Roman Catholic faith.
But at eight years, although he learnt with avidity all her other teachings, he laughed at her religion.
"Yours is a woman's religion, little mother," he said one day. "It's all right for you—a religion that prays to a woman, but it is not suitable for men. Give me my father's religion. A religion where men rule. In that, one does not bow the knee to a woman. A good religion, my father's, fierce and strong, of love and fighting, not a puling thing where one prays to a woman and a babe. No, little mother, keep your religion, and be happy with it. I prefer my father's and my own."
"Raoul, my son, you mustn't forget the white side when you are with the Sultan," she said gently, a touch of chiding in her sad voice.
The boy looked at her speculatively, knowing already that his mother had no affection for the man he called "father."
"You should be proud, not sorry, to be the Sultan's wife," he remarked. "It is an honour for any woman to be loved by the Sultan. Even a woman as lovely and learned as you, little mother."
At twenty-seven Annette was even more beautiful than on the day the Sultan Casim Ammeh first saw her; but more fragile and ethereal. Although her captor's fancy often strayed to other women, he never lost his passion for her.