The Tenth Gift (22 page)

S
OME MINUTES LATER
the spell was broken as Said hurled the taxi up onto a broken sidewalk and the engine shuddered to a halt. I looked around. By now it was fully dark, and here particularly so, the only brightness visible being the blue-white fizzing light of a man arc-welding his car across the road, an activity that threw off alarming shadows that leapt and danced like dervishes. Something moved fleet and close to the ground in my peripheral vision. I whipped
around and it froze in mid-pace: a black cat, thin as a stick. Its eyes flared at me as the welder’s light reflected in them, then it flicked its tail and vanished into the night.

“Allez, madame
, with me. Dar el-Beldi this way,
par ici”

I followed him down an alleyway so narrow I could touch it on both sides without stretching out my hands. The houses had walls of rough adobe and were incised with grand doorways. In one of these an old woman sat crouched on a doorstep. As we approached, she smiled up at Saïd, and her eyes were all white with cataracts, shining up at me like those of the cat. She stretched out a dry, brown bird’s claw of a hand.
“Sadaka all-allah.”

Despite being laden with my bags, Said stopped and dug in a little pocket set aslant in his tunic, withdrew two coins, and pressed them into her palm.

“Shokran, shokran, sidi. Barakallaofik.”

He was already past her, stepping into the shadows opposite and knocking on a vast iron-studded door. A small door within the door swung inward and golden light flooded out onto the alley. There was a loud staccato burst of Arabic between Said and the person on the other side; then he waved me forward. I skirted the old beggar woman with a nervous smile and fled into the welcoming light of the riad.

C
ATHERINE

August 1625

C
AT LAID ASIDE THE PEN AND SIGHED
. I
N
truth, she had no hopes that her former master would even receive the letter she had just drafted, let alone be minded to act on her entreaties. Three thousand four hundred and ninety-five pounds, of which she knew a full eight hundred to be her own redemption price. It was a fortune. At Kenegie she had been paid just eight pounds a year, from which was deducted her bed and board; Matty earned barely four. Cornwall was a poor county; there was never enough money to go around. Taxes and tithes had to be scraped together; doctors’ fees were a luxury—many a child had sickened and died because his parents could not find a shilling for the chirurgeon. The cost of a decent burial forced many families to cast themselves on the mercy of the parish for the price of the simplest service. Cat had witnessed the use of sackcloth as a winding sheet; even once a body blessed by a mendicant priest for a bowl of gruel and taken by night by one of the local fishermen to be consigned to Davy Jones’s locker.

“Done?” The large, rough-faced, rough-handed woman into whose care Cat had been thrust now stood before her, hands on ample hips, waiting impatiently.

Cat nodded reluctantly. “It’s finished.”

“Give.”

She handed over the sheet of paper and the patroona took it and stared at it suspiciously, turning it around and around in her callused
fingers. Cat could tell that the woman could not read a word of what she had written, but she made a satisfied noise and rolled the paper into a scroll.

“I take to the Djinn.”

Cat frowned. “Al-Andalusi?”

In response, the woman hissed at her and bustled off into the shadows. Cat sank back into the cushions and tilted her face up to the sunlight, which streamed down through the twining jasmine, releasing its confectionary scent into the still air. She was sitting at a table set within a recess to one side of a tiled courtyard. Overhead, in the vines that climbed the intricate trellis to the balcony that ran around the whole inside square of an elegant two-story house, tiny reddish-brown birds sang. An orange tree spread its limbs across one corner of the courtyard; in the opposite corner a small patterned rug had been set, its once-bright colors faded by the sun, and in the center of it all a fountain splashed into a raised marble bowl scattered with pale pink rose petals. The tranquillity, the light and scent and exquisite artistry of this place were so far removed from the vile
mazmorra
, the pitch-dark and stinking-of-shit-and-piss holding pen in which she and the rest of the captives had been thrown, that all she wished for now was to be allowed to remain here, even if it meant writing the wretched letter a thousand times over.

She had spent only three days in the
mazmorra
(reckoned by the cries of the muezzin, for no sunlight penetrated their cell), but already it had replaced every other image for Hell that her mind had ever conjured. They had all been confined together—men, women, and children—in such filthy conditions that it was clear their captors cared little whether they lived or died. Early this morning two men had come for her, calling her name in an accent so heavy that it had taken several moments of confusion before anyone realized it was Cat who was being summoned. They had bundled her up in a black robe and veil, tied her hands, and dragged her, stumbling and blinking, through the narrow streets to this house. She had been pushed
into a cool, dark room, the door thudding closed behind her. The contrast between the blinding sunlight of the streets and the dimness of the interior had been disorienting. When the familiar voice had broken the silence, she had fair leapt out of her skin.

“So, Cat’rin Anne Tregenna. How you like your new quarters?” And he laughed, a cruel sound that brought tears stinging to her eyes. He snapped his fingers and a black-skinned boy who till this moment had been squatting silent in the shadows sprang to open a shutter. Sunlight flooded the chamber, gilding the walls and pouring in an amber wash over the handsome furnishings and the man who reclined on the cushioned divan.

Al-Andalusi was garbed in a robe of cerulean blue embellished with swirls of golden embroidery, his head swathed in a white turban. He looked like the embodiment of gracious summer, and in contrast Cat felt more than ever the lice-ridden, filthy savage she had in such a short time become.

“You will write the letter of ransom on behalf your fellow townsfolk,” he had told her. He outlined the form the letter should take, the money that should be demanded, ignoring her gasp of horror. “You will tell them how terrible are the conditions in which you live; also that we beat you mercilessly and threaten you daily to convert to our faith….”

Cat stared at him. “No one has been beaten since we left your ship,” she said boldly. “And no one has made any attempt to force us to your religion.”

Al-Andalusi’s eyes glittered. “ B-a-s-t-i-n-a-d-o-e,” he spelled out and made her repeat back to him. “Do you know what it means?”

Cat shook her head.

“One is laid upon the ground and the feet are drawn skyward, then the soles are beaten till they are black. I am told is excruciating. No one withstand such pain long. They soon scream away their faith in the false Son and embrace true belief in Allah. You will include it in your letter.”

“I cannot understand why you should wish me to say such things.”

The raïs laughed. “Why your people should pay if your life and soul not in mortal danger?”

“They won’t pay.” Cat’s chin came up. She felt furious—at the deceit, the cruelty, his deliberate enjoyment of her situation.

He watched her color rising impassively. At last he had shrugged. “Then you will live and die in Morocco.”

T
HE LETTER HAD
, unfortunately, met his requirements. The two men who had brought her from the
mazmorra
returned; she went with them, unresisting. Something had gone out of Catherine Anne Tregenna this day. A glimpse of paradise had been afforded her, then whisked away, like a conjuring trick, leaving her soul in a darker state than it had been in before. At the door, they took the black robes from her, though they fit her mood, and pushed her back into Hell.

“Had enough of you already, has he?” shouted one man. She could not see his face in the darkness.

“He has his choice of whores, no doubt, the Turk.”

“Cat is no whore, Jack Fellowes. May you burn for your words!”

For a moment, Cat had thought it was her mother who defended her name, but her mother would never use the short form of her name. It was another who had spoken. The indignation in the voice tore something in Cat’s heart. Matty: dear, faithful, silly Matty, still defiantly alive and hale enough to care what was said about her friend.

Cat started to weep, for the first time since they had been taken, and now the voices came thick and fast, some trying to soothe and calm, others jeering and coarse. She sat crouched with her knees to her chest and her hands over her ears, rocking back and forth, trying to shut out the noise. Using every fiber of her will, she recalled the details of the fragrant courtyard and the cool quiet of the house. The rose petals on the water, the mosaic tiles in radiating patterns of blue
and white and gold, the fruit glowing in the orange tree, the fretted trelliswork supporting the tumble of sweet-smelling flowers, and the little hopping birds; the carved cedarwood ceiling in the raïs’s chamber, the thick woven carpets and sculpted wooden furniture; the elaborate costume of the little black boy and the tight crimp of his hair; the rich fabric of the raïs’s robe, and the gleam of his eyes in the gloom … For a moment, a small voice in her head questioned her: Why do you not seek to recall the details of your life in Cornwall to comfort you? She answered it silently that she could no longer remember that life in sufficient detail for it to serve her purpose, but even as she thought it, she knew that to be a lie.

The next day two guards came with the patroona to the prison. For the first time the captives were sorted into male and female, the children standing with their mothers or nearest relative. They took the women and children first. Out they stumbled into the street, their eyes squinting in the merciless sunlight. The guards chained them expertly into a coffle, taking care not to touch their infidel skin except with the cold iron of the leg-rings, displaying as little reaction to the state of their piteous charges as they might a herd of hobbled goats being taken to market.

Cat stood in line behind little Nan Tippet. The widow was at the best of times a short woman, and now her head was bowed: Cat’s view of the city known as Old Salé was unimpeded. It was hard to believe she had been out in these streets the day before, for she recognized nothing of her surroundings, but in truth she had been first bewildered and hampered by the unaccustomed veil, then in a dismal daze, and she had taken nothing in. Now, though, it was as if the town demanded her attention, as if it shook its foreignness at her like a gypsy’s tambourine. The streets through which they passed were alive with people—men hauling bony donkeys whose backs were bowed beneath their burdens, ragged children who ran behind, hitting the beasts with sticks and shouting raucously; gaudy-hatted water-sellers with animal skins about their shoulders, men with long
beards and prying eyes, blind beggars, cripples lurching along on uneven limbs; women robed from head to foot, balancing enormous baskets on their heads or backs, staring curiously through the eye-slits in their veils at these fair-haired, pale-skinned savages in their outlandish rags and tatters.

“Imshi!
Move!”

One of the guards poked Cat with his stick. She had herself stopped to stare. On the corner of the street, a man played a flute to a swaying serpent in a pot; his partner held another snake in his hands, demonstrating to a small crowd of onlookers that it would not bite them, but no one took the writhing creature from him.

The air was filled with heat and flies and noise and dust and spices. Cries and music, the braying of an ass, the squawk of chickens, the smell of dung. She glimpsed goats skittering away down an alley between tall, windowless houses, pursued by a band of brown-skinned children. Cat stumbled on, her senses assaulted with every step.

At last they turned into one of the narrow side streets, where the patroona led them to an enormous, brass-studded door, which was opened by a slender woman wrapped in a robe of midnight blue, the selvages of which were embroidered with a series of bright geometric patterns. Cat fixed on the one thing in this alien world she could comprehend. Such a simple design—a child of seven could embroider it. Given such fine fabric and a choice of silks, she could make such a robe exquisite, for all its voluminous asexuality.

The patroona embraced the other woman, kissed her four times on the cheek, and they chattered companionably. The prisoners had been marched here at speed by their guards, hit with sticks if they hesitated or stopped, and now it was as if there was no hurry in the world. The greetings finally over, they were ushered into a tall-ceilinged room, at one end of which sat a cowled woman at a desk with an inkwell before her and a quill in her hand. This she tapped impatiently up and down, and beneath the desk, her scarlet-shod foot tapped away at the same tempo.

Their leg irons were released and one by one they approached the desk and via the patroona gave their names, ages, and marital status, which the clerk took down in her own approximation of the strange foreign sounds. Shortly, they found themselves in two groups. On one side of the room Jane Tregenna stood with her sister-in-law Mary Coode, Maria Kellynch, Ann Fellowes, Alice Johns, Nell Chigwine, and Nan Tippet. On the other side, Cat, Matty, Anne Samuels, and the two children, James Johns, aged five, and little Henrietta Kellynch—known as Chicken—who, detached from her mother, clung to Matty as if she would never let go.

The patroona and the slender woman walked among them; then the latter tapped Alice Johns with her stick. “Take off robe!” the patroona barked at her. She plucked at Alice Johns’s filthy dress and gestured wildly.

Alice gawked. “Off! Take off!” The patroona took hold of the skirt and began to haul it off her. Alice clutched the dress to her and began to shriek. The slender woman hit her smartly across the back with a long, supple switch, making her shriek even louder. The switch was raised high and came down again with a thwack.

The captives exchanged horrified glances. “Off!” Under the barrage of blows and cries, Alice capitulated, standing as unresisting as a punished toddler as the dress was dragged over her head, leaving her standing in her stained cotton shift. At twenty-five and with only the one child to her name, Alice Johns was a handsome young woman, despite the ordure and grime that adhered to her skin. The patroona and the amina poked and prodded at her, chattering in their strange tongue, feeling the muscles in her arms, examining her hands, her feet, her teeth. From time to time, the clerk would consult a large manual on the desk and call out a question, which the patroona would roughly translate. When Alice failed to understand the patroona’s heavy accent and odd phrasing, she was hit again, this time across the hamstrings.