by Jane Johnson
‘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 the braids and trimmings known as mjadli, wall hangings, or 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 colours with rudimentary skill. Then Habiba shyly drew out of her burlap bag a length of dark velvet that was 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, on to 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, which reached from the foot of the curtain 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 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 no one 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 that of 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 were best she avoid too realistic a representation of the living things of the world; and anyway they seemed to favour 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 large one set between two smaller stars, and pretty petal patterns running through the friezes above and below. This found universal approval, so that when Habiba returned with the piece of fine cotton, some charcoal crushed to powder and the sharp awl that Cat had requested, 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 centre 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 grey film – but, when the template was lifted, there was the design as neat as could be underneath. Now they really did think her capable of magic.
‘You must choose your colours – try not to choose the same as your neighbour or we will run out of some colours and all the work will look too similar. And choose shades that are complementary. You are lucky – you have so many beautiful colours to choose from. In my country most women are limited to threads that we dye ourselves from onion skins and the like: the colours are rather muted and will fade with time. Only rich women could afford something like this’ – she held up a skein of bright masareene 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 each other’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.
That 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 labour 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.
‘Good evening, Cat’rin.’
It was the raïs.
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bsp; He held her gaze until she looked away, then offered something to her. ‘I thought you like this back.’
It was a small object, wrapped in a length of cotton. She unwrapped it, feeling as she did so the contours of the object within. She hardly dared hope, but then suddenly there it was, its calfskin a little scuffed and darkened but otherwise undamaged.
She clasped it to her breast. ‘My book.’
‘Is a little charred, I fear. Khadija try to burn it.’
‘Khadija?’
‘My cousin, the amina, she who prepare my female slaves for market. I am sure you have not forgotten her so soon. She has not forgotten you. Unfortunately good djellaba I gave you did not fare so well.’
Now she remembered the amina: the small, imperiously beautiful woman who had stripped them bare and subjected the possible virgins among them to such indignities. Her cheeks flared. She gazed down at her feet. ‘I have not forgotten her.’
‘She is, I think, jealous of my attentions to you.’
Incredulous, Cat stared at him. ‘Jealous? Jealous that you stole me from my home for sale like a common chattel? How could she ever be jealous of me, whom she treated like an animal? No, worse, for no animal is conscious of shame when its naked body is subjected to the scrutiny of strangers!’
He gave her a crooked smile. ‘I see that your experiences have not quenched the fire in you, Cat’rin Anne Tregenna.’
‘They have not yet served to destroy me, no,’ she returned, low-voiced. ‘So if that was what you sought, you have not succeeded. In fact, it seems I have been most fortunate, for my new master is a man of considerable sensibility: he has put me to work that I am enjoying greatly, and it has done much to restore to me some self-respect and hope in the world.’
‘He must be a fine man, to have achieved so much in so little time.’
‘I am sure he is. I have not yet had the pleasure of making his acquaintance.’
‘Strange, he should spend so much good coin on you and not even introduce himself,’ he mused.
Cat folded her arms and said nothing to this, though she had to admit she thought the same.
‘I hope this good master not find you as dangerous as I have found you,’ he went on.
‘Dangerous?’
‘They say God made mankind from clay; He make the djinn from fire. The djinn very dangerous, they have power to possess a man.’ He pulled a strand of her red hair loose from the cotton wrap and ran it thoughtfully through his fingers. ‘Which are you, Cat’rin: a woman or a djinn?’
She took her hair back from him and stuffed it back inside the headscarf. ‘I am a flesh and blood woman,’ she said sharply.
‘I think maybe that is most dangerous thing of all.’
And with that he swept her a mocking bow and took his leave.
25
We read together, Idriss and I, until the sun started to come up. Its first rays came filtering through the shutters of the salon, making slices of black and white of everything it touched. Where the sunlight hit Idriss’s hand on the table, it rendered his skin a pale and radiant gold that was almost white. Mine, by contrast, lay in shadow. But the book was cut in two by it, one half glowing, the other hidden. I wanted to say something about this observation, for it seemed somehow significant, but I was too tired to frame the thought in words, and instead a vast yawn took me in its vice-like grip.
‘Why did the raïs sell her to this merchant?’ I said, mystified. ‘Or is he also Qasem? But then why would he buy her, wasn’t she already his property? I don’t understand.’
‘You need some sleep,’ Idriss said firmly. ‘Here.’ He picked up the book, closed it gently and placed it in my hands. ‘When you have slept for two hours, we will finish it together; then we will have breakfast, and later we will go to see Khaled.’ He paused. ‘And at breakfast you may want to read these too.’
There were three sheets of paper in his hand, rather crumpled-looking. I stared at them, not registering what they were. Frowning, I reached for them, but he stood up and held them out of my reach. ‘Not now,’ he said.
I realized then with an unpleasant jolt what they were: the note and the photocopies Michael had left for me at the riad. I had folded them into the back of The Needle-Woman’s Glorie and forgotten all about them. And about Michael. Oh, God, what was I going to do about Michael and his determined pursuit?
‘Give them to me!’ I cried.
He grinned. ‘Now I know something about your Catherine’s story that you do not yet know,’ he said teasingly, and the sun in his eyes made them as enigmatic as a cat’s. ‘I had asked myself one question many times, and the doubt it raised made me wonder greatly whether your book was a forgery, for the question was: how, if it was brought on a slave ship that crossed the wide ocean to Salé, did it ever make its way back to England, and eventually into the hands of the extraordinary Miss Julia Lovat?’
‘And now you know?’
‘I have an idea… a theory. And I am more sure than ever that what you have here is a genuine artefact and not a fake.’
‘And you know that from the papers you have there?’
‘They suggest something… remarkable.’
‘I wish you would tell me.’
‘I do not want to spoil the story for you,’ he said, smiling. ‘Stories should be told in the right order and at the right time. Did you learn nothing from One Thousand and One Nights?’
‘This is not a fairytale,’ I said frostily. ‘And that is my property. What makes you think you have the right to withhold it from me?’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘If you are in such a bad temper now, how much worse will it be if you have no sleep? But do not worry, I will keep them safe for you.’ And he calmly proceeded to fold the photocopies into quarters and stow them inside his shirt. ‘You see, I will sleep with them next to my heart. Besides, there is still a big piece of the puzzle missing, and in order to come by it you – like your Catherine – will have to make a large decision, and large decisions should never be made on a lack of sleep.’
I yawned again, hugely. If I was not careful, my head would be joining the photocopies, and I would be snoring away on Idriss’s chest. Would that be such a bad thing, my traitor brain whispered. Yes, it would. I got up abruptly before I could say or do anything really stupid, and went upstairs. Alone.
It was only after I had crept into the little bed and laid my head down on the pillow that I remembered something Idriss had said.
The extraordinary Julia Lovat…
He thought I was extraordinary. And with that thought hovering like a protective cloud above me, I fell asleep with a smile on my face.
26
Rob
November 1625
Robert Bolitho had always considered himself a robust man. So it was with some detestation that he found himself weak as a mouse, heaving up a thin yellow bile day after endless day on this, his first sea passage.
‘’Tis just sea-sickness, lad,’ the first mate told him, laughing to see such an ox of a man reduced to his piteous state. ‘It’ll not kill thee.’
But that couldn’t be right, Rob thought. His blood was half brine, like that of any Cornishman. There must be some other, more sinister cause.
By the end of the second week at sea, with the vile nausea showing no sign of abating, he was more than ready to cast himself overboard to end the misery. Only the image of Catherine, bruised and beaten by barbarian slave masters, drove him grimly to survive each day. ‘She is suffering far worse than I,’ he told himself time and again. ‘And if she can endure, then so can I.’
Then a day came when he managed to keep down a little stale bread and dried meat, and after that he improved moment upon moment, until one morning he found himself out on deck with the sun on his face and the smell of the salt spray in his nostrils, and the waves spangled with light, and he thought he could be in no finer place in all the world. The wind had whipped the wave tops into peaks and crests, the sails bellied smoothly, and the ship spe
d along like a great seabird. It had been a fair passage, the first mate told him; he was a lucky man. And then he regaled Rob with tales of storms and broken masts and foundered vessels and the cries of drowning men till Rob felt quite queasy again. ‘And that’s to say nothing of the pirates,’ the man went on, blithely unaware of the effect his reminiscences were having on his listener. ‘The waters are infested with ’em. It’s a rare vessel makes it through the Strait nowadays without some sea-devil out of Sallee or Argier on its tail. Mate of mine was taken by a renegado just off the Canaries and put to the galleys in the Med. The stories he had to tell would make your balls shrink.’
Rob really didn’t want to hear this, but the mariner had got him fair pinned to the gunwale.
‘Chained naked to a bench, rowing twenty hours a day, he was, whipped till he was bloody. All they got to keep ’em going was a bit of bread soaked in wine when the officer went round, just to stop the poor wretches from fainting. A round dozen of them died, and then they flogged ’em just to make sure they was dead and not fakin’ it, and after that they chucked ’em in the drink. He survived three years of that, then he got bought by another master and put to work building some barracks or such outside of Argier. Not much changed, he said: still got flogged day and night, but at least he got to lie down from time to time on something that wasn’t pitchin’ and tossin’ on the brine. He saw some right fearful sights there. Men beaten on the soles of their feet – bastinadoe, they call it, the brutes – till they was black and bloody and never walked aright again. One who tried to escape, he was brought back and dragged behind horses round and round through thorns and rocks till he expired; another was cut up into little pieces while he was still alive – one joint at a time till he died screaming. For they hates and loathes Christendom, these Mahometans; nothing pleases them better than to see a Christian suffer. Another poor bastard got away but killed one of his guards in the process. When they finally caught up with him, he’d have been better off making a fight of it and having them kill him then and there. Poor bugger, he was cast off the city walls till his body caught fast on one of the cruel spikes they had embedded there for that very purpose, and there he hung, pierced through thigh and groin, unable to move up or down, in agony, while crows picked at him and women came and threw stones at him and laughed when they drew blood.’
