The Tenth Gift (30 page)

She smiled at the women uncertainly and sat down by one of the unoccupied frames, shuffling to sit comfortably in this unaccustomed position. The frame before her was not much like the little round withy-wood frame she was used to at Kenegie, with its spring mechanism and small surface. This was larger and more primitive, but as she bent her head to fit a length of linen to it, she saw that it was more than serviceable, even though sitting cross-legged at it felt strange. When she looked up again some moments later, it was to find the gaze of all the women upon her, assessing, expectant.

She looked to Leila, confused. “Are we waiting for the teacher to arrive?”

“There is no teacher here but you,” the Dutchwoman explained slowly. “These women know only to work the simplest of peasant designs. The Sidi Qasem is determined that you shall widen their repertoire. You shall be a sort of
ma’allema
, a teacher, but only of embroidery. A true
ma’allema
would undertake some of their moral education, too, though of course he would not expect that of you. He has other ambitions.”

“Ambitions?” Cat echoed, feeling all those dark, foreign eyes upon her.

“The royal city of Fez makes a great fortune each year from the fine embroidery it exports to the world. There are three thousand houses of
tiraz
, official factories of embroidery, operating there— very fine work, traditional, very beautiful. But every
tiraz
make same thing, over and over—is boring and loses novelty. He wants New Salé to show Old Fez that it can do better, combining European techniques with Moroccan craft. You will facilitate this new industry for us. These women are just a beginning. You will teach them, and they will become
ma’allema
, too, and pass what they have learned to others. If you succeed, you will be like guild master: Sidi Qasem will be rich, and so will you.”

Cat felt faint. In Cornwall she had railed against the limits set around her, like a great unscalable wall. With her work on the altar
frontal she had felt as if she had climbed three or four rungs of a giant ladder that might eventually enable her to peer over that wall. Here, at a single bound, she found herself astride the summit, but instead of a golden vista below, there loomed a great, yawning void.

“What if I fail?” she asked, and her mouth was dry.

Leila shrugged. “Is best not to fail.”

Cat touched her throat, where it felt as if her heart fluttered like a trapped bird. What choice did she have? She must seize her fate and force down her fear. Perhaps she could achieve something extraordinary. Perhaps she could find the life she had always sought, even if it was on another continent, among strangers. She squared her shoulders. “Perhaps we had better start with the fundamentals. If these ladies can show me the sort of stitches they use, we can start with that. Then perhaps tomorrow they can each bring an example of the work they have already done, or something they have in the family, so I may have a better idea of the styles of embroidery made here. But I also need to see the sort of thing that is made in … what was the name of the city, Fez?”

“I am sure all that can be arranged. But a
ma’allema
does not sit on the floor among her students.” Leila held out a hand and helped Cat to her feet. “You sit here.” She indicated a low carved chair set before the largest frame of all. “If you tell me what you need them to do, I will translate.”

Cat sat in the chair, which was low but wide, as if made for a much larger woman. Then she held up a hand. “My name is Catherine, I come from England, and I will be your teacher in embroidery. You will each tell me your names, and then we will start with some simple stitches.”

And so began her first lesson.

O
N THAT FIRST
day she took them through some of the more basic stitches and was relieved to find that not all were unknown to them,
although they had different names for them all. Damask stitch, flat stitch, and a type of darning stitch they were all familiar with. She showed them in addition cross-stitch, chain stitch, and a simple herringbone, which made them laugh: To them it looked more like a stalk of wheat than a fish. They showed her in turn Fez-stitch, a sort of reversible backstitch producing work that looked the same on both sides of the fabric. She shook her head. “It’s very fine, but for most purposes it is wasteful—it uses a lot more thread. I think if you used a flat stitch instead, you will find you can achieve a similar effect on the only side of the fabric which is seen, and it is quicker, too.” She demonstrated, but they pulled faces. Old habits die hard.

The next day, each woman brought a piece of work from home. One brought a tunic decorated at neck, cuff, and hem with a simple stylized design. It was neatly done, if unambitious. “Very nice,” Cat said approvingly. “Will you ask her what the pattern is?”

When Leila translated this, the woman—nut-brown and lacking a number of teeth—laughed and clacked her tongue, and Cat suspected she had demonstrated her foreign ignorance by asking the question.

“It is the tree-and-stork design,” the Dutchwoman explained. “They have used it here for centuries. The stork is
baraka
, a good omen.”

Which was all very well, but what was a stork? Cat had no idea. Leila shrieked with laughter. “Later I show you—there is a nest on the minaret.”

So it was a bird, then. Cheeks flaming, Cat looked back at the design. A bird with a long beak, she surmised, but was not much consoled by this.

Another woman had brought some long embroidered bands of a dense, complex design, with tarnished silver thread running through it. “This is not local,” the translator said. “It is very old and was a part of her great-grandmother’s trousseau, and the old woman came originally from Turkey, she says. But this other piece”—she held up a simpler, monochrome band—“is a ceremonial piece for a man and comes from the Rif.”

“I like this very much,” Cat said. “Much nicer than the Turkey piece.” The design was bold and emblematic, strong and confident in execution, and clearly made by someone with long experience of working in these materials and with these motifs. She picked up the other again and examined the workmanship. The silver had not been stitched through the fabric, but lay across the surface, held in place at tiny intervals by a sturdy neutral thread. “Ah, this is couched—it saves the thread and makes sure the piece will not be stiff or buckled.” She smiled. “Though I have never worked in silver, nor in gold, either!”

“You will,” Leila promised. “Sidi Qasem has many plans and a great deal of money.”

There were braids and trimmings—
mjadli;
wall hangings—
hyati;
and a
sau
, a pretty, decorated bath-veil used to tie up the hair when attending the hammam. All these were homely, attractive objects worked in single colors with rudimentary skill. Then Habiba shyly drew out of her burlap bag a length of dark velvet, so at odds with everything else they had seen that the women as one gave a gasp of delight.

“This is my
izar,”
she said. “Or rather, one of them. One half of a bridal curtain. For when I’m married.” And she blushed while the women drew it reverently out of its folds and caressed the soft velvet, one even touching it to her cheek. They had to climb, three together, giggling and staggering, onto one of the divans in order to give it its full height, and now it was Cat’s turn to gasp.

The scope of the design was larger by far than any of the other examples the women had brought with them: Someone had had remarkable ambitions. From a series of dense friezes alternating geometric patterns with stylized trees and plants, there rose a recognizable minaret, a dome-topped tower, which reached from the foot of the curtain a full five feet to its apex, all the way down the right-hand side of the velvet.

“This is truly remarkable,” said Cat admiringly.

Habiba explained through the Dutchwoman that her mother and grandmother had made it together and that it was only one of a pair. She had had to sneak this one out of the house, for the curtains were the most costly things the family owned, and her mother would have been angry that she should show it off so, and to strangers, too, but you could tell by the way her eyes shone, Cat thought, how proud she was of it. The piece was having its effect on the other women, too, for they exclaimed over it covetously, and Cat felt a sudden swelling of ambition inside her own breast. She could perform work like this—finer even, given the chance. She thought longingly of the altar frontal left behind under her bed at Kenegie, no doubt gathering cobwebs and mouse droppings, and for a moment she felt very sad that none would see or praise her finest design. I will outdo it, she promised herself. I will make something finer still, in this new world.

Leila and Hasna had managed to gather a number of items made in Fez and other regions. Mostly, these were exquisitely worked pieces in dense monochrome: a scarf in red, a mattress cover in blue, and a pretty bed-hanging in violet and mauve, touched with details of gold. The embroidery on these pieces was professional in comparison to the more rudimentary examples, the stitches finer and more regular, the patterns more exactly replicated, and the work reversible, too, which showed considerable skill.

She had somehow expected to be daunted by the Fez work, thought it might be beyond her capability, and that of the women who were to be her students. But with a good eye, a careful design, and strict training, a child could work these pieces. What they lacked was fluidity and individuality, she thought privately, remembering her Tree of Knowledge; even the slips and patterns in
The Needle-Woman’s Glorie
would show them a thing or two. How she wished she still had her little book. Never mind, she told herself fiercely. That belonged to my old life. This is now. I still have my two hands and my imagination, and that is what counts.

“Leila,” she said, and there was new purpose in her voice, “there
are a few things I need, and they should not be too hard to come by, I think.” She explained her requirements and then selected a piece of paper from the circular table and set about sketching a simple pattern. She recalled her conversation with the raïs, about the Prophet’s wife Ayesha and her doomed wall hanging. Perhaps it was best she avoid too realistic a representation of the living things of the world, and anyway, the women seemed to favor more stylized designs. So she made a drawing of repeating ferns, simply suggested, set within a frieze of bands decorated with little cross-stitch flowers.

This met with clapped hands and awe, as if she had somehow performed magic, so she set about another involving stars and crescent moons. This met with rather less approbation. ’That is a Jewish star you have drawn. Here we make our stars eight-pointed.” The Dutchwoman indicated one of the Fez designs, then showed Cat the same motif incorporated in the wall tiles. “It represents the seal of Suleiman. Is a sacred symbol.” She folded her hands primly.

Cat was surprised by Leila’s solemnity: She had not struck her as a pious woman, nor yet as a Mahometan. She took up another piece of paper and made instead a design involving the eight-pointed stars—a larger one set between two smaller stars—and ran pretty petal patterns through the friezes above and below. This found universal approval, so that when Habiba returned with the piece of fine cotton Cat had requested, along with some charcoal crushed to powder and a sharp awl, they waited impatiently to see what she would do with them.

“Choose the pattern you would like to work,” Cat told them, and was surprised when ten out of the twelve women opted for the stars. She tipped the charcoal into the center of the square of cotton and tied its corners together. “This is a pounce bag,” she explained, which gave Leila some trouble in her translation. “Now see how I transfer my design to your linen.”

She pricked holes along the lines of her paper design and then went from frame to frame, pinning the template to the cloth and
dabbing the charcoal bag against the paper. It looked messy, the paper all covered in a dirty gray film, but when the template was lifted there was the design as neat as could be underneath. And now they really did think her capable of magic.

“Now you must choose your colors—try not to choose the same as your neighbor or we will run out of some colors and all the work will look too similar. And choose shades that are complementary. You are lucky—you have so many beautiful colors to choose from. In my country most women are limited to threads that we dye ourselves from onionskins and the like—the colors are rather muted and will fade with time. Only rich women could afford something like this.” She held up a skein of bright mazarine blue. “Or this”—a hank of bright scarlet.

They liked this a good deal, the idea that they should be better off than their European counterparts, whom they had long thought wealthier and more privileged than themselves, and chuckled and slapped one another’s hands.
“Al hamdulillah,”
said one, and they all followed suit.

Cat smiled, feeling older and wiser than her nineteen short years. “Together we will make some beautiful things,” she promised them, and watched as her own budding confidence was mirrored in their faces, like flowers upturned to the sun.

T
HAT EVENING SHE
found herself exhausted. She had always thought of embroidery as a relaxing and sedentary pastime, far less taxing than her other chores, but now her shoulders and neck and back ached as if she had done hard physical labor all day. It was perhaps the tension of responsibility, she thought. She had never taught anyone anything before, not unless you counted showing Matty how to lace her gaiters, which had taken far longer than you would expect. But she was content. A good start had been made, and with practice the women would make very fair embroiderers. She knotted
her hands behind her head and stretched, feeling her muscles gradually ease.

A shadow fell across her.

In the doorway stood a tall figure, silhouetted by the setting sun. She stared at him, eyes wide, and suddenly her heart began to hammer against her ribs. He stepped into the room.