The Tenth Gift (20 page)

Michael had been here. He had let himself in using the key I had given him six years ago. He had made this unforgivable invasion, failed to find what he was looking for, and then had the gall to follow me to Cornwall. The complete and utter bastard.

I felt sick. Was Catherine’s book really that valuable? If it was, why had he given it to me in the first place? And what would he do next once he found that I had returned to London? Was I in danger?
Would he hurt me to get hold of it? In that moment, I realized I didn’t really know the man I had been sleeping with for seven years at all.

I called Alison.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll keep them down here. They’re planning to stay for a couple of weeks, anyway. It’ll give you some breathing space. If Michael leaves, I’ll call you.”

F
OR THE NEXT
fortnight, I devoted myself to cleaning my flat thoroughly, for the first time since I had bought it. I threw out fifteen black sacks of rubbish and felt oddly cleansed myself: catharized. And after I had done that, I put the place on the market and handed the key to the agent. I didn’t want to live there anymore.

I moved into a rented flat in Chiswick, sold the lease on the shop to a girl who’d just graduated from St. Martin’s and wanted somewhere from which to sell a line of gorgeously silly clothes, and my stock (what little there was of it) to a woman I’d met at a crafts fair the previous year.

Then, feeling absurdly rootless and light-headed, I took myself to Stanford’s on Long Acre and bought all the guidebooks they had for Morocco.

T
HE NIGHT BEFORE
I flew, I had misgivings. I called Alison.

“Look, I’m going to Morocco tomorrow. I thought someone ought to know, just in case anything happens to me.”

There was a shocked silence at the other end of the phone. “You’re going
alone?”
she said at last, disbelieving.

“Um, yes. But I’ll be staying at a lovely place, a
riad
—an old merchant’s house in the capital, Rabat,” and I gave her the address and contact details. I had had a long conversation with the woman who ran it, who spoke beautiful fluent French, which stretched my stuttering
schoolgirl French to the limits and beyond. But Madame Rachidi had been reassuring and helpful. There was a guide who would walk with me around the city, she said, a cousin named Idriss who was well educated and knowledgeable about the history of the area and who spoke excellent English. This would mean I’d be safely chaperoned from any “unwanted attention,” as she put it. I didn’t really know what she meant.

“But Julia, it’s a Muslim country. You can’t go alone.”

“Why ever not?”

“It’s dangerous. The men over there, well, if they see a Western woman on her own, they’ll think she’s fair game, that she’s asking for it. It’s a very sexually repressed culture, with the women all covered up and sex before marriage illegal—Western women must seem like prostitutes to them, flaunting everything they’ve got. And you’re blond— ”

“Oh, come off it!” I snapped. “You’re sounding like the
Daily Mail.
It says in the guidebooks that you just have to cover up a bit more than usual and be sensible. Madame Rachidi says I’ll be fine.”

“Well, she would, wouldn’t she? She wants your lovely English money.”

“Anyway, I’ll have her cousin Idriss with me.”

“Julia, you’ve got to be joking. You don’t even know him—he might be the problem personified!”

“Look, I only called to let you know,” I said crossly. “And to give you my new mobile number. I’ll call you when I get to the riad, okay?”

I heard her sigh. “Well, if I can’t deter you.”

“I fly tomorrow at ten; I should get there midafternoon.”

“Inch’ allah”

“Oh, very funny.”

C
ATHERINE

August 1625

T
HE DAYS WERE LONG AND EMPTY ONCE
A
L
-Andalusi was sufficiently recovered to resume his duties as captain. Each morning the raïs would rise at dawn with the first call of the prayer leader, wash himself with ritual care using the cold water in the bowl behind the traceried mahogany screen, and, taking up a stick his men had fashioned for him, limp down the companionway and up onto the deck. Cat would not see him again until sundown.

At first it was hard to fill her hours. She would lie in the semidark, waiting for the knock at the door that signaled the arrival of the food with which she every morning broke her fast—a little hard bread, some oil, a little honey rather less dark and pungent than that with which she had cleansed the raïs’s wounds, and from time to time a strange hot drink flavored with some herb and a great deal of sugar, which she would drink down greedily. The call to prayer came again at midmorning and once more as the sun climbed high, and still he would not return. After a few days, she realized that she missed his company, and that gave her concern. Surely she should hate her captor and wish death upon him? She thought about her family and compatriots in the stinking hold below, how astonished they would be to see her living in such luxury, and felt more guilty than ever. A few days before, she had plucked up enough courage to ask the raïs to allow her mother to join her in the cabin, but he had turned his hawk’s face away from her without saying a word, and she was not
sure he had even understood her request. Something hung in the air between them, awkward and unspoken, some tension she could put no name to. At times she thought it was because she had seen him at his weakest and most unguarded and he was ashamed; at others he seemed obscurely angry with her and would sit moodily, staring into a candle flame, or reading a small leather-bound book, his lips moving silently, as if she did not exist.

She would wander about the cabin, intrigued by the exotic objects he had collected there—running her hands over the intricately carved little tables with patterns of brass and mother-of-pearl and ivory inset into their polished tops, the lanterns with their star designs punched out of the metal, the gorgeously colored fabrics of the wall hangings. There was a pair of sturdy silver bracelets, set with studs and stones, their surfaces etched with swirling lines, which opened on a hinge and closed with a long pin on a chain. They were so large she could slip them on without moving the pin; they settled comfortably over her bicep, though the raïs wore them at his wrist. She examined the odd crystalline substance in a little brass dish set over coals that he often heated after his evening prayer: Its powerful scent still perfumed the cabin the next morning. It infused her clothes; she could smell it in her hair, even after she had washed it, which she did occasionally merely to pass the long and solitary hours. She wrote in her little book, taking the opportunity to fill the tiniest spaces with writing even she could barely read; she lay among the cushions and wondered at the strangeness of people who would sew pearls and gems into an object created for comfort; she picked at the smoked meat and dried fruits left for her midday repasts; she even managed to develop a taste for olives.

Today when the knock came at the door, she opened it to find not only food for her lunch but also some squares of fresh white linen lying on the ground outside, and placed carefully upon them a spool of fine black wool and a ship’s needle.

Astonished, she gazed up the companionway, but whoever had
brought these treasures had departed posthaste, barefoot and silent. She gathered them up, took them in, and spent the afternoon amusing herself with some blackwork designs of her own making—a decorative cross-stitched band of zigzags and circles—then sketched with the plumbago stick twining leaf motifs, to which she added two birds. She was still stitching the last of these when the raïs returned to his cabin, but she was so absorbed in her task that she did not hear him arrive. She looked up to find him framed in the doorway, the candlelight throwing his features into relief, exaggerating his high cheekbones and full lips. His expression was unreadable, his eyes in shadow, the whites of them visible as a thin line beneath the iris. How long he had been there, standing with his hands pressed against the jamb, watching her, she did not know. Flustered, she put the sampler aside, covering
The Needle-Woman’s Glorie.

“May I see?”

“It isn’t finished.”

He held out his hand. Reluctantly, she passed it to him, watched as he examined it, turned the fabric over, handed it back. “We believe it is wrong to show realistic representations of living things.”

“What, even plants and birds?”

“Even plants and birds.” He watched as her face fell, and went on more kindly, “There is story, a hadith. According to Ayesha, who was Prophet’s favorite wife, Mohammed came home one day from expedition and found in one corner of room a hanging she had ornamented with embroidered human figures. At once he pull it down, saying: ‘On Day of Resurrection worst punishment shall be reserved for those who seek to imitate beings created by God.’ And so chastened, Ayesha took down hangings and cut them apart, avoiding human figures, to make pair of cushions.”

Cat felt quite sorry for Ayesha: Her husband sounded a fearsomely pious man. She frowned. “But I’m not really seeking to re-create these things, just to show a simple version of them, interpreted in my own way.”

“Is that which is presumptuous.”

She thought for a moment. “But isn’t it just another way to appreciate God’s works? To think about them for yourself?”

The raïs closed his eyes, considering. After a while he said slowly, “In the south of my country, in the mountains where my father’s tribe comes from, the women weave images of camels and sheep into their carpets, but they are peasant women—they know no better.”

Cat flushed. “I’m no ignorant peasant! Where I come from it is considered a great gift to be able to represent the beautiful things of our world.”

Al-Andalusi regarded her solemnly. “God is beauty and He loves beauty. Camels are things of great beauty, it is true. And so is woman in a fury. I am not sure which I like better.” And then he smiled and held her regard, until she looked away, uncomfortable.

Her hands were shaking; she did not know why. Gathering up the linen, the skein of wool, and her little book, and hugging them to her, she said, “When will we arrive in Slâ?” She had learned to pronounce the Barbary port after his own fashion, though it was ugly to her ears.

“We cleared the Cabo de São Vicente yesterday. If the wind is good to us, we arrive later tonight.”

That was sooner than she had expected; much sooner. Cat could hear the blood beating in her ears. “And what will happen to me then?” she asked.

Silence stretched out between them like a wire. What did she want him to say? That he would keep her to be ransomed to her family back home? But with her mother and uncle on the same vessel, she did not even know to whom she might write, let alone how such a letter might make its way back to Cornwall—which now seemed another world, in another time. There was her cousin Rob, and Rob alone, who might care enough to work for her release, but could he prevail upon the goodwill of Lady Harris to speak to her husband on Cat’s behalf? Somehow she could not imagine that even if he did so, Lady Harris would care enough for the welfare of one she regarded as
at best a servant, and at worst a wanton coquette. Neither could she conceive of Sir Arthur giving such a huge sum of money into the hands of foreign corsairs for an uncertain return, for why would he bolster the fortunes of the very enemies it was his duty to defend the coast against? The other possibilities, that the raïs would give her into the hands of the man he named the sultan, or sell her to the highest bidder at the slave markets Dick Elwith had spoken of, were too terrifying to contemplate further. The final scenario—that he would keep her for his own household, as he had once intimated before declaring her too clumsy—gnawed at her. She knew she shouldn’t hope for such an outcome, that to enter the domicile of a barbarian pirate whose sole aim in life was to murder and steal from her own people was to be regarded by civilized folk as a grim fate. But if her duties included such simple tasks as teaching his womenfolk her needlework skills, then surely to be a servant even in this foreign land was preferable to being sold to a stranger who might use her for who knew what dire purpose. Now she was shaking, courage failing.

“I do not know,” he said. “I have not yet decide.”

She looked up, startled. He was staring at her, dark and intense.

“Come with me, Cat’rin,” he said suddenly, holding out his hand. “You shall see stars shine down on Africa and moon rise over city that is my home.”

He wound a length of cotton about her head and face, leaving only her eyes naked to the sight of his crew, and she wondered at his reason, for he had never covered her before. But this time as she passed, instead of staring at her with curiosity or hostility, the crewmen bowed their heads and none bothered her. They came down the companionway into the waist and walked the length of the ship. Above them, the sails cracked—great squares of white on the main masts, and elegant triangular sheets on the mizzen—and in the black sky a heavy yellow moon hung, tinged with red as if with blood. A hunter’s moon, they’d call it back home, Cat thought, and wondered what it presaged for her future. Stars were scattered
across the firmament, thousands of them, and so bright, particularly one. She found her eyes drawn to it, for it blazed like a silver beacon overhead.

“Shining One,” Al-Andalusi said softly. “Al Shi-ra. Egyptians named it Star of Nile and predicted rising of floodwaters by its appearance; Romans called it Dog Star. In old religions, it guard way into heaven—do you see great bridge of stars that lie beneath?” And when she looked, she could see a glowing swath of milky white, a bridge between Earth and Heaven. “And there”—he turned her about and pointed—“to north shines Al Qibla. From its position we can determine direction of Mecca, sacred city of Prophet.”

“But that’s the Pole Star!” Cat cried, astonished. Rob had shown it to her so many times that now she could find it for herself. “I know that one. We call it the Fisherman’s Star. They use it for navigation.”

He smiled. “Sailors use it thus, also. I have sail to many places in world using that star as guide. To Valetta and Sardinia, Constantinople, Cabo de Verde, even as far as Newfoundland.”

To Cat, these were merely names, but they sounded exotic and far-flung. And she, who had never traveled farther than to visit the Bartholomew Fair at Truro and had wished so hard for wider horizons, was now looking at the savage land of Africa.

With the Pole Star at their backs, the wind drove them on toward a line of indistinct dark shadow rising from the foam-flecked sea. They stood there in silence, watching the land come closer.

“That is Morocco, Jezirat al Maghrib—island where sun sets; my home.” There was something in the vibrant tone of his voice that made her turn to look into his face. His eyes shone, reflecting the moon, but they blazed from within as well, making him almost demonic in his fervor. She shivered and looked away.

Gradually the indistinct revealed itself, moment by moment, rendering up the outline of cliffs, a breakwater washed by surf, a slender tower whose tiled roof glinted silver-green in the moonlight, a wide-mouthed river flanked on either side by massive fortifications.
Whatever it was that Cat had been expecting of her first sight of the dark continent, it was not such evidence of a powerful martial culture, nor anything so shockingly contrasting as the ethereal tower.

“Slâ el Bali—Salé the Old.” The raïs indicated the settlement on the left bank. “And Slâ el Djedid—New Salé on other side. I have family in both cities—among the Hornacheros of New Salé and followers of the Sidi Al-Ayyachi in old city, which give me rare perspective, unusual advantage in my dealings. They will all be glad to see what I have brought them!” He called something to his crew, and a man unshuttered a lantern once, twice, three times. Answering lights flashed from the top of the fortress and he laughed. “They already know it is one of their own. They well remember this pretty ship, and no other would dare to enter river by night. It is treacherous even in the brightest sunlight, for all it bears the tranquil name of Bou Regreg.” In his tongue the word sounded as harsh as the call of a crow—
bu-rak-rak.

“What does it mean?” she asked, eyeing with dread the looming fortress, the myriad robed figures moving around its battlements and gun emplacements.

He thought for a moment, his brow furrowed. “Yussuf Raïs told me it was in your language ‘Father of Reflection,’ for on calm day when river lies as still as a sheet of tin, you can see all of heaven reflected in it. But a man must reflect carefully when he steers his ship in its waters, for beneath gleaming skin lies hidden sandbar that has broken backs of a thousand ships, and a thousand more have foundered in its winding channels.” He paused, then smiled. “Is good to come home, triumphant and with great success.” He closed his eyes, ran his hands down his face, kissed the right palm, and touched it to his heart.
“Shokran li lah.”