The Serpent's Daughter (15 page)

Time stood still in the tunnel, with only the pounding of Jade’s heart to mark its progress. By now her captors would have discovered her escape from their dungeon, but did they know where she’d gone? Had they opened the bathing room and seen the guard’s clothing? Each time she paused, she listened, dreading to hear an echo of pursuit. Her hands hurt, her shoulders ached, her head throbbed, and ever since that last turn, she’d been getting wet. She pressed on. The blasted tunnel had to end somewhere.

It did, in a pile of collapsed clay and dirt. Jade lay in the pipe, struggling to register the brutal fact that she couldn’t go any farther. As long as she’d been making progress, she could ignore her throbbing knuckles and tired arms. Now they seemed to scream at her for attention.
Idiot! That’s why the pool was dry.
She started to shiver and recognized the signs of muscle fatigue.

Well, she couldn’t very well go back to that room and wait for them to find her. She needed another plan. For a moment, she thought about digging through with her knife. She patted the obstruction, trying to get a feel for how packed it was, until she reached to the far right and felt water. It seeped through in a steady trickle that flowed at perhaps a cup a minute, but who knew how much lay pent up behind the barrier? She might release a torrent and drown.

No, thank you
.

There seemed to be no option but to wriggle backward and try one of the other pipes. True, they’d empty into another house’s pool, but from there she might make it to the roof. She decided to follow the water and started to shinny back down until she found the most recent T branch. She discovered it at the point she’d first started getting wet.

Not wanting to back down this pipe, Jade retreated a little bit into her old route, then, feeling with her hands, found the juncture that took the tiny stream and headed into it. It sloped down, which meant she’d end up in someone else’s plumbing. She just prayed this pipe didn’t get any narrower and that the end wasn’t covered. At least she hadn’t run across any vermin.
I feel like a blasted cave salamander
.

By the time Jade found the end of the pipe, she was ready to crawl through a den of
jinni
, she was that desperate to get out, and for a moment, she entertained the notion that she might have to. It was the sound of high-pitched conversation that set off the idea. She listened carefully and picked out three distinct female voices and at least one giggling child.
A harem?
She inched closer, careful not to make a sound. If someone thought anyone was creeping up on them, they might call for help or even close the pipe and leave her trapped inside. She didn’t relish either option.

Finally she could see the end.
What do you know. There is a light at the end of the tunnel
. It seemed since the water flowed so slowly, they didn’t bother to ever close the water conduit. Instead, they simply let it trickle into the bathing pool. From her vantage point a few feet back, Jade could see two of the three women. One, a girl of about fourteen years, stood in the pool with water to her ankles, holding on to a toddler’s hand. The naked baby marched in place, giggling and cooing as he splashed the young woman. The other, a middle-aged woman in green, sat on the edge and watched. The third was out of view, but Jade could tell from her voice that she was much older.

Jade gathered her wits about her, preparing to make her dash to freedom. Then with a sudden flurry of movement, she literally oozed out of the pipe and into the shallow pool. All three women screamed, their high-pitched voices reverberating off the enclosed walls. The young mother snatched up her son and pulled the folds of her scarlet and gold vestlike robe around him.

“Jenniya,”
said the oldest, followed by something that might have been a plea for their lives.

Jade stood up and put her finger to her lips.
“Ana mra,”
she said repeatedly. “I am a woman.”
What the tarnation was
the word for “friend”
?
“Sāheb.”
She knew she must look a fright so she quickly stooped and splashed some water on her face to clean off the worst of the mud.

The oldest woman, a wrinkled thing swathed in a black robe, calmed down first and dared to address Jade. “Who are you?”

Jade wasn’t sure that these three women, possibly secluded since birth, would understand if she told them she was an American. Instead she decided to repeat the word for “friend,” then pointed to herself and told them her name. “
Ana
Jade.” Then, taking her time to get the words right, she explained her predicament. “Bad men held me in a house. Will you help me, please?”

The thought of adventure and the novelty of a strange female emerging from their bathing-room pipe pushed aside the women’s residual fear. The three descended on her as one, touching her short black hair, matted with wet clay. They fingered her shirt and the brown overskirt, lifting it to observe the trousers underneath. Their own pants ballooned out from under their tight-bodiced robes, the younger girl’s in scarlet with designs embroidered in gold threads, the middle woman’s in green and blue. Even the old woman’s wrists and ankles jingled with gold and silver bangles from which hung many coins. The bracelets glittered as the women pawed and patted Jade. Clearly, they considered her homely brown clothes and lack of jewelry to be as much a subject of pity as her recent capture.

“Have you no brothers? Is your father poor?” were some of the questions they pressed on her. Jade said she had no brothers and her father lived very far away.

The eldest remarked that Jade clearly came from a distant land, as she spoke Arabic in an odd way. The woman’s pale blue eyes watered as her thoughts drifted to a different place and time. Perhaps Jade’s presence triggered some long-dormant memory in her mind, a time in her youth when she was sent from Circassia on the Baltic Sea to become the property of some man she’d never seen before. The moment passed, and the old woman patted Jade’s arm. A few words to the younger women and the three were galvanized into action.

The youngest held her baby and acted as a watchman, listening at the door for voices or unusual activity outside. Under the elder woman’s direction, the middle-aged woman slipped out and returned with the all-encompassing white veil worn by women when they ventured onto the roof or, more rarely, into the streets. She wrapped it around Jade and showed her how to hold it so that only her eyes showed. Satisfied that Jade looked like a proper woman on a simple visit, they escorted her from the bathing chamber towards the stairs to the roof. Jade need not have worried about being seen. No man other than the head of the house would have dared intrude upon the women’s quarters.

At the foot of the stairs, the old woman tugged at Jade’s arms to stop her. Then she pulled three of her own silver bangles from her arm and gave them to Jade. “To buy food,” she said.

Jade turned to the little woman, now stooped with age, and wondered if she were the mother of the house or the first wife. She looked seventy, but might only be fifty if her life had been a hard one. Jade smiled and took the lady’s wrinkled hands in hers. “
Shukran,
thanks,” Jade said, and repeated her thanks to the other two women.

“Where will you go?” asked the youngest. Her soft black eyes expressed the horror of being alone in the streets, something unimaginable to one who had always known protective walls.

“To my mother,” said Jade.

“Ah,” said the others, nodding. That was well, then. She would be with family.

Yes, thought Jade, there was safety in the family, even one as odd as her own. After wishing them peace with many
besmellāh,
she bounded up the stairs and made the roof just as the muezzin called for noon prayer.

From the rooftop, Jade could see the high tower of the great Koutoubia mosque and reoriented herself. She was two streets over from the house where she and her mother had been held prisoner. After seeking out the best route to the French district, she looked for a way down. The roof was about fifteen feet off the ground, and Jade wasn’t sure she wanted to drop that far. That’s when she heard a woman’s voice call to her.

The second oldest of the three women popped her head up through the hole like a groundhog from its burrow. She pointed to the far edge of the roof. Jade followed her hand and saw a flimsy pole ladder lying next to several thin boards. The ladder, meant to carry a woman up and over the rooftop latticework to the neighboring house, barely reached the roof when Jade lowered it to the ground. She eased her weight onto it and scrambled down as quickly as she could, with the veil swaddling her. Once on the ground, she hurried through the maze of streets, using the position of the red Koutoubia tower as a bearing. Finally she exited the old city near the tower, discarded the white veil, and hurried west towards the Franciscan church.

The few European people walking about in the afternoon sun eyed Jade as they might an escaped lunatic, uncertain whether they should ignore her, offer aid, or call for an official. Jade ran her dirty fingers through her hair in an effort to make it less wild, and headed for the rectory. Just outside the church she ran into a priest wearing the brown robes of a Franciscan.

“Father, can you take me to my mother? Her name is Inez del Cameron. I believe she came here last night. She was held prisoner in a house in the
Medina
.”

“You are mistaken, my child. No one has come here under any such circumstances. It has been very quiet.”

“But she must be here,” Jade insisted. Just then she saw Bachir and ran to him. She grabbed him by the front of his woolen robe and glared at him. “What have you done with my mother?”

CHAPTER 12

—The Traveler

“YOUR MOTHER IS VERY WELL AND SAFE,
Alalla
Jade. Just as I promised she would be.” His mouth was set in a determined line, as though his honor had been impuned.

“She’s not
here
. I told you to take her to the French church.” Jade hissed the words, her face inches from Bachir’s.

“Mademoiselle,”
called the Franciscan as he pulled Jade away from Bachir. “What is the problem? Why do you attack this poor man?”

Jade kept her green eyes riveted on Bachir’s. She watched him raise his right hand in front of his face, fingers spread upward in the sign against the evil eye.
You have no idea just how evil it’s going to be
.

“Mademoiselle,”
repeated the priest. “What has happened?”

Without taking her eyes off Bachir, she answered, “My mother was a prisoner in one of the old
riads
. Someone kidnapped her in Tangier and brought her here. This man,” she said as she pointed in Bachir’s face, “was there in Tangier. He said he could help me. I went into the house to free her and I trusted him to bring my mother here, but she is
not
here. He has abducted her
again
.”

“I see,” said the priest. Turning his attention to Bachir, he addressed him in Arabic. “Where is her mother? Did you take her?”

Bachir, perhaps to show he was no uneducated fool, answered the priest in French. “I did not steal her mother. I told the
Alalla
that I would keep her mother safe. And I have. She is with my people. It is the only way I could be sure the
Alalla
would keep her promise and help us.”

The Franciscan, acting now as a negotiator, turned back to Jade. “Is this true? You promised to help this man in return? ”

Jade nodded. “I did. And if Mother is indeed safe, I will. I keep my promises.”

“Very well,” said the priest. “It seems you both must learn to trust the other.” He let his hands drop from both of their shoulders and folded them inside his sleeves as he appraised Jade. “You have seen some trouble, that much is clear. It is my counsel that you go to the authorities at once. The Resident General is away at present, but surely his aid would help you.”

Jade shook her head. “No, Father. Not yet. They would only arrest my mother and myself for a murder we did not commit.”

He arched his brows in surprise at this new revelation, then furrowed them just as quickly as another thought occurred to him. “Wait. What is your name again?”

“Jade. Jade del Cameron.”

“Come with me. I have a message for you.”

They followed him to the rectory door as he explained that a telegram had come yesterday for her and that they’d spent much of the day debating what to do about it. “We decided it was a mistake, but it appears now it was not. Wait here.” He went inside for a moment, then reappeared with the telegram and a loaf of bread and two chunks of cheese. Jade took the telegram.

Bev and Avery had sent help. Jade wondered what kind. Probably pulled in some favor with the British Consulate in Tangier, who, hopefully, carried weight with either the French or the American consulates. But what was this about Lilith Worthy having disappeared from London? Her deceased beau’s mother always ran her schemes of murder and drugs safely from her London town house. Did they think she was also on her way to Morocco or perhaps Spain? Jade folded the telegram and shoved it into her trouser pocket.

“Thank you, Father,” she said. “You have helped me more than you can know.”

He handed each of them a chunk of cheese, followed by the bread. Jade, suddenly ravenous, bit into the bread. “Where do you go now?” the priest asked.

Jade, her mouth full, looked to Bachir. He pointed out the window across the flatlands to the white-capped mountains in the south. “There. We go to my village.” Jade coughed as she suddenly inhaled a bit of bread.