by Jane Johnson
Idriss’s touch on my arm brought me back to myself. ‘Let me show you something else. I think you will like it.’
He led me around the city walls until we reached a monumental gateway, towering twenty feet and more above us. Despite its enormous size and the massive nature of the stonework, it possessed astonishing beauty, for the arch seemed poised overhead as if held by some invisible inner tension between the two towers on either side and by the delicate traceried net of its mystical, interweaving patterns and scripts.
‘This is the Bab Mrisa,’ Idriss told me as we both gazed up at it. ‘“The Little Harbour”. In the seventeenth century, before the river silted up and changed its course, the corsairs sailed their ships right into the fortified heart of the city through this gate. It was through the Bab Mrisa that your Robinson Crusoe was brought. “Our ship making her course between the Canary Islands and the African shore, was surprised in the grey of the morning by a Turkish rover of Sallee,”’ he quoted suddenly.
I stared at him.
‘I majored in English for two years. One of the visiting tutors was a Defoe enthusiast – I read them all – Journal of the Plague Year, Moll Flanders, Roxana.’
What on earth would a man from a Muslim culture make of a rumbustiously bawdy romp like Moll Flanders? I couldn’t imagine. ‘You’re better read than me,’ I said laughingly, but also rather uncomfortably, for I began to suspect that it might be true. ‘But tell me: why do you have a touch of an American accent?’
His hand went to his mouth. ‘Really?’ He thought about it a beat too long. ‘My tutor was American, I guess that’s why.’
‘He seems to have made quite an impression.’
‘She.’ He turned away and started to walk so fast up the thoroughfare into the city that I had to run to catch up.
‘So, Idriss, what do you do – what’s your job, when you’re not shepherding tourists around the sights? Are you teaching at the university yourself now?’
‘I drive a taxi.’
‘Oh.’ I didn’t know how to react to this. His cousin’s house was opulent, and he was clearly well educated. So, although I was sure that driving a taxi was a perfectly good and respectable occupation, it wasn’t what I had expected.
‘And you?’
I laughed. ‘Good question. At the moment I don’t do anything at all.’
‘You aren’t married, you aren’t employed, you have no children, no?’
‘No, no children.’
‘So, Julia Lovat, if you were to disappear somewhere in the backstreets of an obscure Moroccan town, would nobody miss you?’ He turned to scrutinize me, and with the sun behind him I could see only the glint of his eyes.
He had struck a painful chord: who, indeed, would miss me? A few friends, eventually. Michael, but only because he wanted the book. Alison, certainly…
I stared at him, suddenly terrified. ‘I want to go back now. I’m very tired.’
He looked puzzled. ‘Of course,’ he said.
It was late afternoon by the time we made it back to the riad, and I was indeed exhausted. My feet ached, my back ached, and my head was stuffed with images and information. All the way from Old Salé to Rabat’s medina, I kept myself going with the promise of a long, fragrant soak in the beautiful bath that awaited me in my room.
But, as we stepped across the threshold, Naima Rachidi intercepted us. She said something very fast in their shared language to her cousin, who looked visibly shaken; then she turned to me.
‘Your husband was here looking for you.’
‘My… husband?’
‘Yes. I told him you were taking a guided tour of the city and wouldn’t be back till this evening, so he said he would go for a walk and come back later.’
I could feel my eyes growing huge and round. ‘Ah… thank you. How… how was he looking?’
She frowned. ‘How? Tired, a bit annoyed, though he was very polite.’
‘I mean, are you sure he was my… husband? Could you describe him? Perhaps it’s a mistake.’
‘About fifty, middle aged. Taller than you, not as tall as Idriss, dark hair – how you say – bald, here.’ She touched her temples. ‘Dark eyes, not big built, a bit of fat here –’ She indicated her belly.
Naima Rachidi was a very observant woman, though I wasn’t sure Michael would have approved of her description, particularly her significant overestimation of his age or her hawk-eyed pinpointing of the beginnings of a spare tyre. The light-headed feeling was returning, along with a horrible nausea. I took a deep breath. ‘Did he say when he’d be back?’ I could feel Idriss’s glower as a tension in the air behind me.
Naima shook her head. ‘No, but he said that he had left you a note in your room.’
‘In my –!’
‘I’m sorry, should I not have let him in?’
‘No, no, it’s fine.’ I ran a hand over my face. ‘Thank you.’ I turned, dreading Idriss’s reaction, but my guide’s dark face was inscrutable. I managed to blurt out: ‘And thank you, Idriss. I very much enjoyed the day.’ And then I ran away.
My room looked as if a bomb had hit it. Michael had tried so carefully to cover his tracks at the London flat, but he’d made no effort to hide his search here. The bedclothes lay in a rumpled heap on the floor, my suitcase had been upended in the middle of the room, the wardrobe doors flung open, my clothes thrown everywhere. Even the bathroom toiletries lay scattered and the towels left piled up on the edge of the bath.
I clutched my bag to me. I had meant to leave The Needle-Woman’s Glorie safe in the riad when I went out that morning, but somehow couldn’t bear to be parted from it: perhaps some sixth sense at work; perhaps Catherine herself had been prompting my actions.
An envelope had been left on top of the disaster that was the bed. Very symbolic, I thought, my heart thumping.
My name was scratched on it in Michael’s terrible scrawl, so there could be no mistake. He had followed me all the way to Morocco, had tracked me to this very room. Shaking, I opened the envelope. There were some sheets of paper inside, one folded around the rest. The top one read:
I must talk to you (see enclosed).
I’ll be back at 6.
M
The next sheet was a photocopy of an old-looking letter. I scanned the beginning and made out:
To Sir Arthur Harrys from hys servante Robert Bolitho, this 15th daie of October 1625.
Sir, I wryte this in the offices of Messrs Hardwicke & Buckle, shippers of the Turkey Company, Cheapside, London…
Suddenly the room was stifling. Heart beating a sharp tattoo, I refolded the papers and tucked them into the back of Catherine’s book, which in turn I stowed deep inside my handbag. Then, in a flurry of panic, I stuffed my belongings into my suitcase and canvas bag, and hauled both out into the courtyard. For all my tiredness, for all the riad’s comfort and beauty and elegance, I could stay here no longer.
‘Running away?’ Idriss sat at a table, cigarette in hand, a curl of smoke spiralling up into the roses above him. His long dark eyes regarded me curiously. ‘I thought you might want help.’
‘What sort of help?’
‘Well, you said you’d never married… and now a “husband” turns up, and you look as pale as the moon. I thought I could offer my services.’ He eyed my bags. ‘Even if it’s just as a porter.’
‘I need somewhere to go, just for the night,’ I said in a rush, but even as I said it I knew that was exactly what I did need: somewhere to stay, somewhere to hide from Michael. ‘Can you recommend a decent hotel? I hate to let Naima down, and of course I’ll pay her what I owe her, but I can’t stay here.’
Idriss stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette. ‘Here, let me take your bags. I will talk to Naima, don’t worry about that.’
A few minutes later I found myself sitting in the back of a small blue Peugeot with a taxi sign on top of it. Amulets and sigils hung from the rear-view mirror, twirling wildly as the elderly suspension groaned under the weight of my luggage.
‘Where are we going?’ I was alone in Africa. Now that I had left the riad no one knew where I was; no one would miss me if I disappeared. Could I trust Idriss? I remembered how nervous he had made me that afternoon and felt doubt gnawing at my stomach, as insistent as a plague-rat.
‘I am taking you to my home,’ he said without turning.
Which didn’t make me feel any easier.
22
Robert
To Sir Arthur Harrys from hys servante Robert Bolitho, this 15th daie of October 1625.
Sir, I wryte this in the offices of Messrs Hardwicke & Buckle, shippers of the Turkey Company, Cheapside, London, to keepe you abrest of my travails. I have taken upon myselfe a large decision, one that ys onlikely to meete with your approval or blessing…
Rumours as to the fate of those who had disappeared that cruel July morning from the church in Penzance had flown around West Cornwall like bats chased out of a belltower. Some had blamed the Devil, others the hand of the Lord after the rantings of mad Annie Badcock; but Andrew Thomas shamefacedly admitted to seeing the marauders putting in to Penzance Harbour when he should have been at church, having stayed away with a pounding ale-head after too late a night at the Dolphin. At the time, he’d thought the drink had tainted his senses; but when the hue and cry was raised he realized that his vision of a band of dark-skinned, turbaned, scimitar-wielding raiders arriving and then shortly departing with a large number of his fellow townsfolk in captivity, including the Mayor and the Alderman, had been no alcohol-induced haze but the very truth. Three ships, he had reported to the town council, weeping and shaking and wringing his hands. One fine caravel and two foreign-looking vessels carrying lateen sails and open decks. He knew them as xebecs, though it was a long time since he had traded in Mediterranean waters, where last he had seen such things. It was this detail, and his description of the vessels’ crew, which suggested the identity of the raiders: pirates of Barbary, famed for their boldness and the violence they used towards their captives, who were most likely bound for Argier or Tunis, maybe even thence to the court of the Grand Seigneur, the Great Turk, in Constantinople.
When word of Cat’s letter reached Rob, he had been standing in the farmyard at Kenegie, staring at a piece of harness that he held in his hands without the slightest idea of why he had taken it from the barn or what purpose he had meant to put it to. George Parsons had come upon him in this unusual state (for Robert Bolitho was known as a practical man who applied himself with thorough attention to his work and was ever quick and alert). He had to repeat his name three times before Rob replied. Ever since the raid Rob had found himself thus distracted: all he could think of was Cat and whether she was still alive. He existed in a sort of limbo, living from day to day, waiting to discover where she might have been taken, waiting for the time when he might decide on a course of action. Rob was not a man much given to introspection, so the effect that Cat’s theft had upon him was a shock in itself. He found himself dithering over the most ordinary and automatic task, his mind wandering in the middle of a sentence; he woke at odd times in the night, not knowing who he was, or where, or why. He was beset by nightmares, for a time even thinking himself haunted by some angry spirit, before he realized it was his own guilt which plagued him. His thoughts swung wildly: the raiders should have taken him, not Cat. He should have stayed with her at the chapel to defend her from the barbarians, instead of riding away to Gulval because of a sharp word or two. Had he so little determination? He had not even managed to persuade her to take his ring, which he now regretted with real force, as if somehow it might protect her, mark her as his own, even magically bring her back to him.
‘Rob, Rob! Robert Bolitho – the Master’s calling for you. In the parlour, now.’
His head had come up slowly, as if he rose through the deep waters of a dream. ‘Beg pardon, George, what did you say?’
‘There’s a letter come from Catherine.’
A letter? How could that be? Letters were civilized communications undertaken by educated folk and men of business, not from the squalor of a foreign pirate vessel sailing in who knew which godforsaken waters.
Even so, he found his feet making his decision for him.
Arthur Harris had been sitting at the parlour table, a ragged sheet of paper in his hands. It was the quality of the missive which struck Rob at once, for it looked at once well travelled and authentic, and the paper on which it was written was thicker and more yellow than the paper they used at Kenegie.
‘This has arrived by various convoluted means from Catherine, or so it seems. Is this her hand?’
He flourished the letter at Rob, who stared at it as if it might contain the very secret of the universe, which in that moment, for him, it did. He blinked, then nodded. ‘It is, sir.’ His knees began to wobble; he leaned forward to let the table take his weight.
‘Sit down, Robert. A messenger brought it this morning from Southampton.’
Rob’s heart had at that moment leaped up. ‘She’s in Southampton?’
The Master of the Mount held up a hand. ‘No, no, Robert, let me finish. He brought it from the offices of a shipping company there. The captain of the Merry Maid delivering his cargo to his masters in that harbour told how he was intercepted by a merchantman sailing under the protection of the Porte, who had it from a Turkish trader out of Barbary.’
‘Barbary?’ echoed Rob, his heart sinking as rapidly as it had risen. It seemed his worst fears had been realized, and his face must have betrayed his horror, for Sir Arthur nodded grimly.
‘And not merely Barbary but the town of Sallee, which is, I have heard, a veritable nest of sea-devils, home to the most fanatical of pirates and scavengers. There have been some hundreds of fishermen and merchantmen taken from our seas to the Barbary shores, but they say no Christian ever comes back alive from Sallee. Many of them are tortured into apostasy and succumb to Islam out of fear for their flesh, if not their souls.’
Rob had closed his eyes. It was not only the fate of Cat’s soul he feared; the thought of her tortured and ill used made him groan aloud. The content of the letter had not reassured him. Eight hundred pounds? Where could he ever raise such a sum? Already, he was calculating wildly: advances on his wages, the sale of his few worldly goods, a loan here or there, some charity. He might raise, what? Fifty pounds with great good fortune. Some part of him knew he should care for the fate of the other captives so cruelly taken – for Cat’s mother and uncle and aunt, for the death of the little nephews, for Matty and Jack and Chicken and the others – but all this was just a distraction from the one thing that really mattered: that Cat was alive, at the time of writing, at least. If he could sell his soul to redeem her, he would.
That day he completed his chores in record time and with massively increased efficiency. He then begged audience of Lady Harris, whose heart, he thought, might prove softer than her husband’s, and felt sudden wild optimism when she immediately waved him into her sitting room. Unfortunately, he found Sir Arthur had already talked with his wife, and when he raised the subject she pursed her lips.
‘I am sorry, Rob. I know you were set on making her your wife. But such an immense sum! Were she the worthiest young woman in Penwith, I’d still have the same answer for you. Eight hundred pounds is the ransom of a queen, not a little jade like Catherine Tregenna. Better you settle your heart elsewhere and find yourself an honest wife from an honest family. Besides, there is not only Catherine to consider, but our fellow townspeople: we cannot be seen to favour one above another.’
Colouring furiously, he had pressed her again until at last she said wearily, ‘If you are so determined to save the girl, you had best seek out her father.’
Rob’s brow wrinkled in consternation. ‘Madam, he is dead these past many seasons.’
‘Would that were true. Poor John Tregenna: a stolid man and not greatly to Jane’s taste; but he did not deserve to give his best years to raising a whelp that was not his own only to die early of the
plague. If you would ransom Catherine, you had best visit Sir John Killigrew at Arwenack.’
A hard knot formed in his throat, and he could not speak. An hallucinatory image of the two flame-haired figures standing too close in the courtyard earlier that summer came to him suddenly, and he knew at once that Lady Harris spoke the truth. But how could John Killigrew not take one look at the girl who carried his blood and not know her for his own?
‘Here.’
He looked up. Margaret Harris was holding something out to him. His fingers closed around it before he realized that it was a pouch of coins.
‘Don’t tell anyone I have given you this. For all her faults, Catherine is still dear to me, and if there is any chance of saving her and Matty, I hope that you will do your best to redeem them. You are a resourceful young man: maybe you will be able to find a way of using this small token on their behalf. The thought of two young girls in the hands of such wicked heathens is too much for me to bear.’
She turned away; but Rob had seen the glitter of her eyes.
The meeting of the town council, chaired by Sir Arthur in the absence of Mayor John Maddern, came to no useful conclusions. There was much recrimination. Why had the lookouts not seen the ships sail in? Why had the guns of the Mount not defended the town? Why had the Vice-Admiral of Cornwall not foreseen the danger if there had, as had been reported, been a dozen and more attacks up and down the coastal waters before the attack on the church? Why were there rumours that the Lord High Admiral, the Duke of Buckingham, was sending English warships to assist Cardinal Richelieu of France against the Huguenots, rather than policing the West Country seas? And what was the point of all this talk of war with Spain if there was already a war on their doorstep, a war against terror from the sea? Did the new King not care about his own citizens? More than one voice declared grimly that Cornwall was too far from the heart of things for anyone to care overmuch about their fate.
