The Serpent's Daughter (12 page)

“What does that hand mean, Bachir? Is this house the abode of
jinni
?”

“This house bears a curse,
Alalla
. Perhaps someone killed himself. It is now the abode of
jinni
. The hand warns us. The Arabs call it the hand of Fatima, but the sign is older than that. Our
kahina
carried that sign before the Arab invaders came.”

“Well, I’m not afraid of any
jinni
. I’m more afraid of what my mother will do to me if I don’t get her out now. So listen carefully, please. I am going to pull off the boards from that door and go inside. Then I’m going to go across the rooftop to the other house. When I throw some plaster down to the street, you knock on the door and keep their attention on you.”

She reached into the basket, pulled out the pig’s foot, and tossed it aside. “That will probably only create more trouble,” she muttered to herself. A stray dog lounging in the corner grabbed the bony tidbit and ran off with it. “Just give them the wine, Bachir, and argue over payment while I find my mother. I only wish there was time to discover who these people are.”

“Send your mother out to the rooftop. I will help her down while you search the house.”

Jade stopped to think over the proposition. She wanted to just get her mother and run, but without some proof of their innocence, Deschamp would never let them leave Tangier. This might be her only opportunity to get that proof. “She might not trust you, Bachir.” Jade studied the sturdy little man, with his lone lock of hair dangling from his knitted cap and his homespun clothes fluttering on his short frame, and wondered if
she
trusted him. So far, at least, he’d proven honest.

“She will if you tell her to,
Alalla
Jade.”

“Very well.” She reached around her neck and pulled a gold chain over her head. On it hung the ring that her sweetheart, David Worthy, had pressed into her hands just before he died. “Mother will recognize this. I will tell her to follow the man holding it.” She added two of her last francs. “Pay the gatekeeper to let you and her out. Take my mother to the French church in Gueliz and wait for me there. Do you understand? This is my
mother,
Bachir. If something happens to her, you will wish
jinni
were chasing you rather than me.”

Bachir replied with perfect serenity. “Your mother will be safe with me,
Alalla
Jade.”

Jade pulled out the two boards from one end and let them hang to the side. Then, drawing her knife from her boot, she opened the door onto the inky blackness within. “I need a light.” She took out her flashlight, thought a moment, then removed a tin of matches from the camera bag. She handed the bag to Bachir, deciding that she wouldn’t be able to take a photograph inside the house, anyway, without adequate light.

“Here. Take this. It will only be in my way right now.” She put the tin of matches in her front trouser pocket, turned on her flashlight, and entered the abandoned house.

After the usual set of right-angle turns from the entryway, Jade found herself in the expansive central courtyard. The dry fountains stood as dead sentinels, and the once-gorgeous tile work lay under a thick coating of dust, dried leaves, and animal droppings. Most of the smaller plants had long since withered into dry stalks, but one citron tree flourished, watered by early spring rains. Left unattended and unpruned, it had pushed up to the broken skylight in a riot of sprawling limbs. At its base grew a clump of jasmine, the white flowers opening in the night and filling the courtyard with a wash of perfume that nearly masked the stench of droppings.

If
jinni
took the form of mice, insects, and spiders, this house had its fill of them. Owl pellets crunched under her boots and one Little Owl fluttered off at her approach. It settled on an exposed ceiling beam and watched her with golden eyes.

“S-salamū alekum,”
she whispered in greeting. “I think I met your cousin in Azilah.” The owl trilled its quavering
kee-uhk
in response.

She walked the courtyard’s perimeter, looking for a means of gaining the roof. Nothing.
How the blazes did the women get up there?
There had to be stairs or a ladder somewhere. She repeated the circuit and tried all of the doors off the courtyard. Several opened up into what had once been sumptuous rooms lined with intricate ceramic tile mosaics in green, turquoise, and blue. The tiles formed five-pointed stars and other complex geometric shapes. Binding them all was a running network of white tiles, representing the interlocking network of life.

Now these beautiful rooms housed rotting silken hangings and shredded cushions. Rustlings and squeaks showed the new occupants lived inside the aging pillows. A narrow door in the corner was locked. If the stairs were behind it, someone had made sure it wasn’t usable.

Finally, one door at the back of the court opened into another, less ornamental suite of rooms. Discarded clay jars and charcoal braziers lay in one corner and a broken loom reclined against the opposite wall.
A women’s work area
. A set of broken stairs, built into the back wall, led up to additional living quarters. Jade tested the first one before putting her full weight on it. Her light dimmed, and she opted for haste instead of caution.

The upper floor was divided into several large rooms, which again circled the main courtyard. Another set of stairs at the back led up to the rooftop, the place where women could hide behind screens and safely take the air and watch the street below without being seen. Jade also knew from her stroll in Tangier that the rooftop was the way women paid visits to each other. Sure enough, a wooden ladder was long enough to allow a woman to climb safely up and over to the other side. Presumably, it could also span the narrower alleyways between one row of houses and the next.

Jade’s flashlight dimmed again, then died. She shoved it into a hip pocket, hoisted her leg over the screen, and scrambled across. Now to alert Bachir that she was ready. She grabbed a handful of broken plaster and tossed the rubble down to the street. Immediately after, she heard Bachir’s insistent knock. She listened for the door opening, then scurried across the roof to the stairs inside.

Despite this house’s current habitation, the stairs were in worse shape than that of the boarded-up building. Apparently no one used the roof here; further proof that the occupants either didn’t hold with the traditional code for the harem or didn’t have any resident females. The steps were bad enough going down to the upper rooms; they became nonexistent shortly after that. Once again the formal stairs to the lower floor were barricaded, this time from the top. Jade found the set used by the slave women coming from the kitchen. Two steps down from the top floor, Jade’s foot searched in vain for a purchase.

Blast the bad luck
. She could easily drop down to the first floor as the ceilings were low, but getting back out would be another matter. She heard voices in the distance, arguing— Bachir and the guard. His distraction wouldn’t hold out for much longer. She needed to move now. Jade knelt down, took hold of the last step, and slid over the side.

She landed with a soft plop. By now her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she made out the remains of a brazier, a few pots, and a cracked
tajine
, once used for cooking savory stews. Whoever lived here didn’t use the kitchen area, either. At best, this was a temporary residence, a place to hide out.
Now, where’s Mother?

So far the floor plan of this house matched that of the abandoned one next door. That meant a large central courtyard to the front and an array of rooms radiating from it. The ground floor had no windows for prying eyes to peer in, which made any of those rooms perfect for a prison. Jade padded down the dark corridor, hugging the walls, her knife hilt snug in her right hand.

Bachir’s voice drifted towards her. She caught snatches including “gift” and “Nazarene.” Apparently he was trying to convince someone that the wine bottles were a gift they should accept. At least he hadn’t alerted them to her. That was a point in his favor. The courtyard opened in front of her, bathed in the house’s lamplights. This one had been better cared for in more recent times, as at least one stout orange tree thrived among a wealth of jasmine. The central fountain trickled weakly into a tiled basin at the floor, and the wet cobalt and emerald tiles shimmered in the flickering light.

That same light, now a blessing to help her find her way around, would easily become a curse if anyone came back. She hugged her dark robe more closely about her and stuck to the shadows behind the thick pillars as she made her circuit and listened at each door. After the third door, she decided to try the other side of the courtyard rather than risk getting any closer to the entryway and the guard. That’s when she noticed the recessed hallway in the back corner.

Tucked away inside was a narrow wooden door, painted in faded bronze and deep greens to resemble potted trees in bloom. The white plastered wall forming the top of the doorframe was cut into three slender minaret tops, the central one higher than the others. The door itself was made of two wide panels opening down the center. What most intrigued Jade was the stout iron bar bolting the door shut. There were fresh gashes along its side, as though it had been recently slid into place. She put her ear to the wood and listened. A persistent scratching from the other side rewarded her.

“Escupe fuego y ahorra las cerillas!”
A slight lisp accompanied the
s
sounds, the remnants of Castilian Spanish laced with years of New World Spanish.

Mother
. Who else would say “Spit fire and save the matches”? “Mother, it’s Jade,” she whispered. Immediately the scratching and the muttered imprecations ceased.

“Jade? Is it really you?”

“Shhh,” Jade admonished. From the front she heard Bachir invoking charity and pity in Allah’s name on a poor servant. Other than that one guard at the front door, the house appeared to be empty. The others were presumably lying in wait at the Square of the Dead. Still there was no sense in making any extra noise.

The solid door had no bars or latticework to admit any light into the room beyond. Jade slid the bolt back and eased the door open. It wobbled on one lower hinge. Inez emerged carrying a lit candle in one hand and a thick, rusty nail in the other. A quick visual inspection told Jade that her mother, while disheveled and dirty, was not injured.

A surge of relief and inexpressible joy rushed through Jade.
Thank you, God!
She wanted to grab her mother in a tight bear hug, but resisted and put her finger to her lips for silence instead. They were too exposed here. She motioned for Inez to come out, then eased the door shut and pushed the bolt back into place. If no one opened the door to check on the prisoner, they would assume she was simply asleep inside. Jade pointed to the back of the house and led the way.

Once they were safely in the unused kitchen area, Jade embraced her mother, but only for the briefest moment before Inez gently pushed her back.
Mother never did approve of public hugs, not even in private
. Jade let her arms drop and risked a few words. “What the hell happened, Mother?” Inez stood with her proud chin covered in grime, her green linen walking dress tattered and soiled. Her knuckles bore fresh scrapes and scratches. She softened her tone. “Are you hurt, Mother? You look like something the dog dragged in.”

“I’m not hurt, and I do not know what happened. I went to our room to prepare for my visit and found that message from you apologizing and begging me to meet you. So as soon as I changed into something suitable for walking in those souks, I hurried back out to find you. Where
were
you?”

Jade heard the hurt in the voice and knew her mother felt betrayed and blamed all this on Jade’s supposed negligence. “I didn’t send any message to you, Mother.”

“What? But it looked like your hand. You, er, the note said to meet you at the cloth sellers’ on the Place de la Kasbah. ”

Jade sighed. “Mother, there are no cloth sellers there. I tried to teach you about … oh, never mind. What happened then?”

“I left the hotel and one of those innumerable guides came up and asked me where I wanted to go. He spoke English well enough, so I told him. He said he knew the shop and led me down all sorts of dirty streets to one of those little plaster buildings. Someone came from behind and put a rag over my face. That’s all I remember until I woke up in an automobile. By then I was bundled head to foot in ether-soaked cloth, my hands tied in front of me. They put me in there with one candle.” She held up her nail, an evil-looking, hand-crafted spike more than two inches long. “I pulled this out of that weak excuse for a table and was taking the hinges off the door. I had one off already,” she said, her voice proud, her chin thrust out.

Jade grinned, pride for her mother’s courage replacing relief. “Well done. Maybe I’ve been a good influence on you after all.” Inez gasped, and Jade immediately regretted the attempt at levity. “I can get you out, but it will not be easy. Do you see those stairs?” She pointed up at the top two steps, dangling into space. “I’m going to put my hands out like a stirrup. You step up and I’ll boost you as far as I can. Do you think you can pull yourself up the rest of the way?”

“Jade! In this dress? And what about you? How am—”

“Mother, we do
not
have time to debate this. You are wanted for murder back in Tangier, and I need to clear up this mess.” Jade took a deep breath as her mother gasped again. “When you get to the upper floor, continue up those stairs to the roof. Climb over the latticework to the house next door. Go down those stairs and work your way to the front of the house. There will be a man waiting for you nearby, a Berber man named Bachir. He has David’s ring. Go with him.”

“Where?” Inez began, but Jade cut her short again as she heard the heavy front door slam shut. Footsteps echoed from the courtyard: a man walking slowly. She heard him call to her mother, taunting her, then, receiving no answer, walk away. A moment later she heard another inner door close.