The Serpent's Daughter (17 page)

By four o’clock, two hours before sunrise, she’d had enough and got up to rekindle the fire. Bachir again made tea flavored with mint and sweetened with chunks from their sugar loaf. Jade felt the morning chill in her back and left knee, and so drank some for the sake of the heat. She wondered if she could leave out the tea and just drink hot, sugared mint water instead. That might not be too bad. They ate more of their bread, put out the fire, and packed up.

“How far is it to your village from here, Bachir?”

He peered south towards the mountains. “Another day’s journey, maybe more if the waters are too high. We came as far yesterday, but the climb is harder.” He picked at the woven panniers, making certain the teapot was securely inside.

“You must be anxious to get home to your parents,” said Jade.

Bachir shrugged, but Jade noticed that he packed more rapidly this morning, as though he was anxious to get home.

They broke camp and began the long climb up into the Atlas Mountains. At first they passed through fragrant cedar forests, once startling a male red deer, his antler nubs pushing up the velvet. White and pink flowers worked their way up through the needles along with leafy ferns. As they climbed higher, they gradually left the great cedars behind, picking up stumpier vegetation confined near riverbeds filled with spring melt. Here the underlying nature of the mountains revealed itself in layer upon layer of faulted rock the color of old rust that had darkened the way blood does on drying. At times the color gave way to the brighter brick orange where erosion had clawed fresh wounds into the mountainsides. In the distance, the Atlas took on a cool hazy blue color, always topped by snow. And above it all was a sky so perfect, so intense, that it might have been poured from a bottle of cerulean blue.

Several times the mountains seemed to begrudge them any room for a path. More than a few times, Jade’s overskirt brushed the rock wall to her left as she made the effort to avoid going over the precipice on her right. Below her the accumulated spring runoff roared by in deep chasms. It was not a place for someone with vertigo. Bachir never cast so much as a glance to the plunging valley, which spoke volumes on his familiarity with the trail. If anything, Jade noted, he sat up straighter and searched the heights eagerly. Once again his flat voice drifted back, singing softly in quavering notes.

They rode past a bank of shrubs whose slender, finger-length greenery gave way to a cluster of five-petaled pink blossoms at the tip. Jade picked one and examined it more closely.
Oleander?
She asked Bachir its name.

“The French call it rose laurel. Very deadly,” he added. Jade dropped the flower by the trail.

The path reminded Jade of the mule ride down into the Grand Canyon. Besides following the curves of the mountain, the trail continually switched back and forth in an effort to climb as well as make forward progress. As they rounded a turn, Jade glanced down and saw that they’d advanced only a few hundred yards south from the last matching switch. The hawk flying to her right made better time than they did.

Once near a tributary, they broke to rest the animals and let them graze while Jade and Bachir finished the last of the bread and cheese. Bachir started a fire with flint and steel and heated the teapot for the inevitable hot mint tea. Jade felt too impatient to sit for long and soon wandered up the tributary a few hundred feet. She amused herself by scanning the fresh red mud for animal tracks and found several from smaller animals, including one that looked like a fox. As she turned, she noted the shadows in the mud. Something had left a very large print, and she bent for a closer look. She expected to see a human shape from some sandal. She did not expect to see the distinct pug mark of a large lion. Luckily it led up the valley and away from them.

“Bachir,” she called. “Come and look at this.”

He put down his tea and hurried to her side.

“Do you see it?” Jade asked, her voice ripe with excitement.

He nodded, his knitted cap bobbing. “It is
Izem
. That is what we call the lions of these great mountains. It is a good sign. We are close to my home now.”

“A Barbary lion,” whispered Jade. “I didn’t think there were any more left.”

“Very few,
Alalla
. Very few. Soon they will be gone, like the bear that once walked these mountains.” He sighed. “We are safer, but we are poorer now, I think.”

Jade looked at the track again, wishing she hadn’t left her camera with her mother. “We’d better get back to the mules before this one returns for dinner.”

By late afternoon, Bachir had led Jade onto a branch of the trail that headed more easterly, rather than the main path that continued to climb up to the pass. The sun started to dip below the peaks just as they reached a broad, swiftly flowing stream.

“We will cross tomorrow,” said Bachir.

“But you said we were close,” Jade argued.

Bachir jerked his chin to the fast-moving stream. “It is not safe to cross it now. Too cold, and they”—he nodded to the animals—“are too tired.”

Jade nodded, curbing her impatience to see her mother safe and sound. He was probably right, although she suspected him of stalling more than once, almost as if he wanted to make sure they didn’t overtake her mother before they got to the village. Still, crossing these ice-cold waters would be bad enough in the daytime when the sun’s rays could dry them out afterward. At dusk? They’d risk taking shock from the cold for themselves and the mules. She also knew the animals had a better chance of crossing without slipping when they were well rested.

Jade hobbled the mules, put some grain in their feed bags and slipped the bags over the animals’ heads. Bachir started his fire and soon had a pot of couscous simmering, seasoned with cumin and onion. They ate in silence, completed their private ablutions and needs, then settled on their separate saddle blankets.

She soon heard Bachir’s soft snore, but sleep eluded her long after the gibbous moon climbed over the peaks. She kept reviewing everything she’d learned so far and kept coming back to the fact that she’d heard Patrido Blanco de Portillo’s voice in that
riad
. Clearly he was smuggling something for someone, but wasn’t in charge of operations in Marrakech. That job belonged to the other man, the one who said he had “taken steps,” done something “more effective than a bribe.” The fact that de Portillo thought he’d meant a bribe indicated he was not the author of her mother’s kidnapping.

But right now he’s all I’ve got to clear our name
. She stoked the fire with the remaining pieces of brush. And this other man in Morocco, was he the brains? The warning from Avery made her wonder if Lilith wasn’t behind it all. Jade could have easily stumbled onto another branch of her illegal operations. But Lilith always ran them from London.
You don’t know that for certain
. So where did Bachir fit into all this? So far he’d proven useful, but not entirely trustworthy. He’d sent her mother out of Marrakech and up into the mountains against her orders. Just what did he and his people want from her? She would have to be extra wary tomorrow.

Jade closed her eyes and slept, her brief night haunted by the distant
harrumph
ing roar of a male lion.

The next morning, Jade and Bachir crossed the stream, then dismounted and walked, leading their mules along the narrow path, the sheer mountain wall rising to their right, a precipitous drop to the swollen river on their left. It was a good thing she hadn’t pressed to continue last evening. This was not a route one took in the twilight hours. Treacherous as it was, it had the grace to be short. After a few hundred yards the trail turned south, away from the river and towards a small valley. There, along the stream, lay Bachir’s village, or at least the fields and orchards.

Jade looked in vain for any houses until she let her gaze stray up from the fertile floodplain. Nestled directly against the mountain wall, the village itself rose, the red plastered buildings nearly invisible, so well did they blend with the mountain. The houses climbed the Atlas in terraces, leaving the more hospitable ground open for farming and grazing. Dominating the higher terrace stood a one-family
kasbah
, its four-turreted corners marking it as a building of importance. The span between the towers had the same odd crenellation as the gate where she’d purchased the mules. Each crenellation looked like a set of stacked
z
’s, narrower at the base and coming together in a wide, flat top. Even the fortress itself was constructed in a reverse of this plan, with a wide base gently sloping inward to the parapets. More zigzags were carved into the outer wall. The lines rose and fell like mountains with valleys between. No one stood at the top or below. In fact, aside from a few goats and chickens, the village appeared abandoned. It wasn’t.

Bachir called out in his own language, and immediately the village erupted into life. Men poured out of every building, each one armed with either a flintlock rifle, a hoe, or a knife. They held up their weapons. Clearly they had known someone was approaching, and had kept vigil until they knew whether it was friend or foe. Behind the men came nearly a dozen children, and to Jade’s amazement, several women. None of them wore veils and many stood in bare feet, their legs exposed halfway up their calves. The Berber people truly were different.

Bachir and another, older man clasped each other in a bear hug and began a lively conversation. Judging by the glances in her direction, she was the topic of discussion. Finally Bachir turned to her. “Come, I must take you to the
kahina
.”

He led Jade to a multistory building at the far edge of the village. The first floor served as a combination barn for the livestock and storage area. Terraced about it were the living quarters, all made of
pisé
, the lower story as bricks, the upper as a solid mass of earth mixed with straw. They climbed up to the second floor.

“I have brought her,” said Bachir from outside the door. He pushed Jade inside.

As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw an elderly woman sitting in one corner next to a ceiling-to-floor loom, a pile of wool at her feet. She wore a brown-and-red-striped woolen cloak, or
handira,
like a dress over some lighter-weight, knee-length tunic. Two ornate silver pins pierced the
handira
and locked into large silver rings in front of each shoulder. A thick silver chain dangled between the pins, suspending a large silver amulet shaped like a diamond, which rested on her chest. The pins reminded Jade of the
fibula
worn by Romans for the same purpose. The woman’s hair was hidden under a turbanlike wrap of red and gold fabric. A shuttle rested against her leg.

A younger woman of about eighteen to twenty years and dressed in similar garb sat beside her, weaving on a loom attached to the ceiling beams. A little girl of two, wearing a light cotton garment, played with a drop shuttle at her feet, spinning it like a top.

“I knew you would come today,” said the old woman in Arabic as she looked up from her spinning. “I heard
Izem
call last night, something he would not do unless another lion came into his territory. Welcome to our village, Jade de Cameron. ”

CHAPTER 13

—The Traveler

“YOU KNOW MY NAME.” A split second after she said it, the reason seemed obvious to her. It also filled her with an incredible sense of relief. Her mother really was here. “Mother told you.”

The old woman smiled, the creases of her face folding into a broad grin. “Ah, your lady mother.” She chuckled. “For one who does not speak our language, she was very able to express her demands.”

I can imagine
. But this time Jade didn’t blame Inez, not after all her mother had endured. Jade wanted to issue a few orders of her own, but tempered her requests. “I would like to see my mother, please.”

The old woman nodded to the younger woman, who rose, scooped up her daughter, and left the house. As soon as she’d departed, the old woman dismissed Bachir with thanks and gave her full attention to Jade, inspecting her from bare head to booted toe. Her blue eyes were remarkably clear for one so old, and Jade knew that this woman could stare down one of the famed Barbary lions.
A woman after my own heart
.

“I knew your name before your mother came,” the old woman said. “Just as the last lion in this valley knew you as a lioness.”

Simba Jike, my nickname, lioness
.

Before Jade had a chance to question the old woman about her sources, the younger one returned, and with her a third Berber woman. At least that was what Jade thought until she noticed the soiled green linen dress peaking out from under the woven wrap and saw the woman’s face. “Mother!” She reached for Inez to embrace her. Inez countered by taking hold of Jade’s hands and pressing them between her own. “Thank God you’re all right, Mother.”

Inez patted her daughter’s hands. “Of course I’m all right. Why didn’t you follow me out of that house? You’ve had me worried to death, and no one here can understand me or tell me anything.” She looked at Jade’s clay-encrusted clothes and let out an exasperated breath. “What happened to you? You look as if …”

“As if I’ve been wallowing. I know, Mother.” She drew back her hands, again remembering that Inez deemed such public displays of emotion and concern improper, and let her face go blank, wiping away any hidden hurt she felt. “Please sit down, Mother, so we can discuss what is happening.”

Inez caught the sudden change in tone and topic. “I didn’t get a chance to ask if you are all right, Jade. Did you have some difficulties?”