Court of Lions

by Jane Johnson

  The bitterness had more to do with her own situation, Kate had reflected after her initial burst of anger. Jess and Evan had been trying to get pregnant for ages. They’d been married almost nine years and people had always concluded they must have decided to wait before starting a family while each pursued a career. But nothing could have been further from the truth. Jess had been desperate for children the whole time—Kate thought Jess had probably only married Evan so that she could start her brood. In the expectations of this they’d bought the perfect place to raise a large family: a rundown farmhouse on the edge of the Peak District, not far from their origins in the outskirts of Huddersfield. Jess had tried to get pregnant right from the start, but to no avail. Instead, her efforts went into the renovations, adding plastering, carpentry and electrical wiring to her already impressive skill set. The place was so beautiful—with its modern open-plan spaces and huge floor-to-ceiling windows, its massive old hearths and reconditioned Aga—that Kate had felt a sharp, but fleeting, jealousy. But sometimes she had wondered whether it was her sister’s total competence in all things that had contributed to the failure of the marriage as much as the pressures of failed conception and then all the rounds of in vitro fertilization. Evan once admitted to Kate that he felt he had no useful role to play in their shared life at all. She’d tried to suggest as much to Jess, on Evan’s behalf, since he was so hopeless at talking to his wife; but of course that had backfired mightily, leaving Jess furious at what she saw as Evan’s treachery in confiding in Kate, and Kate’s disloyalty as a sister. Her refusal to understand that Kate was trying to help had made them spiky with each other for months, despite all Kate’s efforts to placate Jess, and only when she’d apologized abjectly had Jess spoken to her again. Kate hated feeling in the wrong, hated conflict, and so, after James’s disappearing act, she had fallen into that same conciliatory role, for fear of setting off a furious response. But when he’d offered no explanation for his absence, she’d found herself asking, “Did you go to see your mother?” She’d watched for his reaction.

  He’d looked appalled. “Why would you ask that? I told you she died last year.”

  So Yusuf must have made a mistake about that.

  “Anyway, look, I’ve got something to show you.”

  She’d decided not to press the point, not wanting to spark an argument.

  He’d been full of glee and energy when he’d led her to his car, rolled down the soft-top and driven them west out of London onto the M40. In a pub car park in Beaconsfield he’d pulled a silk scarf out of his pocket. “Put this on.”

  Kate had frowned. “I don’t wear head scarves.”

  “No, silly, like this.” Quickly, expertly, he’d tied it around her forehead and pulled it down over her eyes.

  “A blindfold?” she’d said in some alarm.

  “Humour me.”

  She’d felt a fool buckled into the passenger seat with a scarf over her eyes, but James drove so fast down the long hill from Beaconsfield that she was comforted by the thought that it was unlikely anyone would notice her. Besides, no one she knew lived as far out as this, so she wouldn’t be recognized even if seen.

  James braked, then took a sharp left. She heard the note of the car’s engine drop in tone as they toiled uphill, and found herself shifted left then right as they banked around several corners before at last coming to a stop. James opened her door, released the seat belt and handed her out with all the gentility of a medieval knight. “Careful now,” he warned. “Lift your feet: the path’s a tad uneven.”

  He’d guided her with a hand in the small of her back, then held her shoulders to halt her progress. With a flourish, he removed the blindfold.

  “Welcome to your new home!”

  Kate found herself staring at a pretty brick cottage with a tangle of winter-flowering jasmine around mullioned windows and a heart carved into the panels of its front door.

  James dangled a set of keys in front of her nose. “Take them!”

  She rounded on him. “What on earth’s going on?”

  He swept his fall of dark hair out of his eyes, looking almost boyish in his glee. “I was picking up some items for the shop from the chap who was clearing the place out after his gran died, and I knew it was perfect for us. It needs a bit of renovation, but as soon as I saw it, I was certain you’d love it. We exchanged contracts last week and Tom let me have the keys especially so I could show it to you.”

  “You bought a house?”

  He beamed. “Tom and I have been clearing it out ever since. Didn’t want you to see it full of earwigs and cobwebs and the old lady’s knickers!”

  She didn’t know what to say. Anything that came to mind—like, How dare you be so high-handed? Or, You might at least have asked me! Or, What in God’s name made you think I would want to live in the middle of nowhere? —seemed so ungracious in the face of such a hugely romantic gesture. It was true that they had discussed moving in together, but the discussions had been desultory and Kate hadn’t taken them seriously. Besides, she’d thought if it ever came to that, James would be moving into her flat, after all the work they’d done on it together. It looked perfect now: she didn’t want to leave.

  A suspicion suddenly took hold of her. What if this had been his plan all along, and all the things he’d brought to her flat, all the artistic touches and the help renovating the damaged areas, had been a matter of getting it sale ready? But no, that couldn’t be right. Her view of men had been coloured by her experiences with Matty. She shouldn’t be so uncharitable.

  As soon as she stepped through the front door straight into the big lounge, with its huge stone fireplace and big old beams, all negative thoughts fled. As if by some remote magic, a fire was burning in the grate, sending gusts of warm air and glowing light out into the room. Old-fashioned fire irons in the form of a pair of crouching lions, a brass coal scuttle, logs piled in a pleasing mosaic on either side of the hearth: it was all utterly timeless and completely charming. She could suddenly imagine putting a colourful Arabic rug on the polished oak boards and lying down with a glass of Rioja to watch the leaping flames, while snow floated down outside and built pretty drifts on the window ledges.

  She turned to James. “It’s lovely. Really lovely. But how on earth would I get to work from here?”

  He grinned. “A friend of mine is selling his antiques shop in Old Amersham. We can work together: it does good trade. You could run the shop and I’ll do the buying and restoration: it will be ideal. I’ll sell the old shop and your flat to cover the bridging loan and we’ll be quids in.”

  Bridging loan? What had he done?

  “But I can’t just leave my job!” she cried. Or sell my flat!

  All the suspicions came roaring back. He’d made these plans without consulting her, as if they were married and living in the 1950s! She felt outraged that he thought her life was so expendable. For a moment she’d almost stormed out to walk the thirty-odd miles back to London, bloody motorways and all. But she hadn’t. Instead, she’d allowed the cottage to seduce her in a way James himself had never quite managed to.

  Looking back on it now, she felt appalled at her blindness, her lack of backbone. But the bridging loan had hung over her head like a threat, and when the company she worked for got taken over by a larger conglomerate the following month and she found her job spec changed beyond recognition and her new manager patronizing and unpleasant, it hadn’t taken her long to enjoy a glorious moment of madness by quitting, much to the admiration of her equally pissed-off, but trapped, colleagues. “Well done, Kate!” they’d crowed in the pub that night. “You were magnificent! What was it you called him, ‘a pompous, pea-brained prick’? Brilliant!”

  Kate had never done anything half so rebellious in her life. It felt great, until the next morning. Then the panic started. What was she going to do? A woman in her mid-thirties working in a specialist niche as a data analyst, who’d only ever held the one job with the same company, for which she now had no ref
erences, since the entire top level of managers who knew her had been cleared out in a single sweep with the takeover. A woman, moreover, with a mortgage to pay off. She put her flat on the market. Beautified by James and his expert eye, and stacked with antiques, it was indeed sale ready, and it sold in less than a week.

  James asked her to marry him in the garden of the cottage, going down on one knee (carefully choosing one of the little flat stones that paced across the lawn, so as not to ruin his trousers). “I want children with you, Kate. A son to carry on my line.”

  Kate had felt a spike of ice in her heart. But she’d looked around at the hellebores and sedums, the Rosa rugosa and the tumbles of candytuft, and felt the ice melt a little. It would be a beautiful place to live. And a wonderful home to raise children in…Except, did she want children with James? She thought she did. So why did she feel a little sick? “It’s too much to take in right now. I’m not very good at processing so much new information so quickly. Give me a week or two to think it all through.”

  James went all steely jawed, as if manfully holding back a sob.

  “I’m not going to let you go, Kate,” he said when they parted. “We’re destined to be together. I knew it from the first moment I saw you.”

  At the time it had seemed such a determined, stoical thing to say; she’d even felt guilty. But now she saw it for what it really was: a threat.

  12

  Kate

  NOW

  The walk to the Tower of the Captive was spectacular, the air hanging over the gorge filled with the scent of roses…but when she reached it, she found cords roping off the area and a notice informing visitors to the monument that important restorations were being carried out. Still, the door was open. In the shady interior she could see two figures crouched, heads almost touching, hands working at something between them, as if they were playing chess.

  “¡Hola!” she called out, and the heads jerked up. An older man in his sixties and a younger one, perhaps his son. They both had that peculiar configuration of sharp facial bones and sand-brown skin that marked them out as North African. Their dark eyes glittered at her, and suddenly she felt like an unwelcome intruder, disrupting a ritual.

  Then the older man straightened up, rubbed his hands on his trousers and came toward her, one hand held out in greeting. She noticed it was covered in clay dust, and so were the knees of his overalls.

  “Hello, lady.”

  He had a broad, pleasant face, with a close-cropped white beard and deep wrinkles around his eyes. “You’re working on the renovations?” she asked.

  And he grinned. “Sí.” Then he caught sight of the badge on her lanyard and his tone changed. “You come to inspect?”

  Kate touched the badge, then laughed. “No, no: I’m just a guest.”

  He relaxed visibly. “You want to see?”

  She did. But she felt the other man’s gaze on her, wary and not exactly hostile, but not welcoming either. “No, it’s all right. I don’t want to interrupt your work.”

  “You won’t be interrupting us,” the younger man said. “We were about to stop for some tea. Would you like some?”

  The invitation was offered in excellent English with a strange, unplaceable lilt: he might have been inviting her to join him in the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon at Fortnum’s. Which was where James had taken her to celebrate their engagement. She pushed that thought away. “I’d love some.”

  The younger man said something in what she thought was Arabic and the older man unhooked the rope and guided Kate through into the cool interior. For a moment she stood gazing around the hall, entranced by its serene beauty, which was nothing at all what you would expect from seeing the rough tawny walls enclosing it. Light spilled in from recessed windows on three sides, each defined by a gorgeous stucco arch. Intricately patterned enamelled tiles reached to hip height around the walls; above that, every square inch of wall was covered in carved plaster, arabesques contained by diamond grids, stretching up to the ceiling, fifteen feet or so above her head. On a dust sheet spread over the floor lay pieces of wood and tile and a pile of cement, a scatter of tools and a barrel of water. In a corner of the room a silver teapot sat on a small brazier. Beside it on a tray stood three coloured glasses, as if they had been expecting her. She felt like Alice, arrived in Wonderland.

  The older man smiled. “Our custom is always to be ready for guests,” he said in heavily accented Spanish. “I am Omar. This is my nephew, Abdou. He’s the master, the ma’allem.”

  “I’m Kate,” she said, for the second time that day.

  While Abdou worked, seemingly oblivious to them, his uncle chatted away, drawing out from Kate how long she had lived in the city; what she thought of the Albayzín, of where she worked; what she thought of Spanish food. All the while Kate watched as the younger man adjusted one tiny piece of dull clay tile after another among a jumble of others in a wooden form on the floor, moving them with careful intent. He picked up a sieve and scattered a fine dust over the jumble, then followed this with sprinklings of water from the barrel; then he knelt and, spreading his fingers in the resultant mud, smoothed it from side to side, his movements precise and mesmerizing. She could not look away: there was something so beautiful about his intense concentration on what seemed a simple task. It was like viewing a child immersed in some act of imagination you could not fathom. She took in the straight line of his long nose, the pleasing angle where cheekbone met the bone beneath the eye, the way his dark eyebrows and lashes contrasted with the warm brown of his skin.

  When he was satisfied that the cement was spread evenly, Abdou pushed himself to his feet, washed his hands in the barrel, dried them on his overalls and sat down cross-legged in a single fluid movement beside the now-steaming teapot. Once he’d pulled his sleeve down to wrap the handle, he held the pot out to his uncle, and Kate watched as Omar added pellets of tea from a colourful square tin, then a handful of mint leaves from a plastic bag, and finally a large bar of sugar. That’s a lot of sugar, she thought, looking away.

  The younger man caught her eye. “Moroccans have a sweet tooth,” he said.

  “What are you doing here?” As soon as her query came out, it sounded wrong, like an accusation. She smiled uncertainly, trying to soften her words. But neither man appeared insulted.

  “We’re repairing the zellij.” Abdou indicated a section of the wall to one side of the central arched window where the tiles had been cut away for restoration. Uncoiling himself, he walked to the other side of the hall. “Hold your hand out.” He rummaged on the floor and picked out a handful of bits of nondescript-looking clay. But when he turned them over on her palm, the colours were startling. Some were tiny lozenges in white enamel; some like stylized flower buds, in deep greens and blues. “Back in Fez, the tile makers place the enamelled sheets in the kiln in careful order: white at the base, then yellow, then green, then blue, then black. This particular colour—” he touched a piece less than an inch in length, and an odd shape, like a geometric bluebell flower, in a fiery burnt orange “—this is very hard to replicate.” He took the piece back from her and held it up against one of the undamaged areas of the wall. “This is the only part of the palace where the tiles were glazed with magenta. We had to experiment with all sorts of minerals before we got it right. My cousin in Fez—Omar’s son, Mohamed—managed to coax the magenta out of a mixture of yellow and brown at high heat.”

  Kate laughed. “You make it sound like alchemy!”

  Abdou nodded, serious. “It is. Mohamed uses olive pits to heat his oven to eight hundred degrees. But even so, each batch comes out slightly different, according to minute variations in temperature. It can be very hard to match exactly the colours we’re repairing: some of these tiles were made the best part of a thousand years ago.”

  Kate gave a little whistle. “Really, that old?” She frowned, trying to make her brain work. For some reason, in his presence she was finding it hard to do math she would normally find simple. “The palace dates
from the 1300s—”

  He looked slightly annoyed, as if she were pulling him up. “It was renovated by Yusuf the first of his name, sultan of Granada, around 1333,” he said stiffly. “So, all right, seven hundred years or so.”

  Feeling flustered, Kate bent to pick up a fragment on the floor. It was in the form of a—she counted—twelve-pointed star; when she turned the fragment over, it was to find that it was a deep, deep blue.

  “Ah, the heart-star,” Abdou said. “The starting point, the centre, from which the whole pattern is born. A whole galaxy depends on that one beginning. See here—”

  He took her by the arm, and she felt a sudden shock of electricity run through her as his warm fingers guided her across the hall. She had not felt anything like it since…She had to concede she could not remember when she had felt quite so dazed, or dazzled, or frazzled: something with z’s in it, anyway—hazardous, fizzing, bizarre…It had to be the zellij…

  “And then we turn it back the right way up when it’s set.”

  Kate almost fell down: she had not been paying attention to his explanations and the thing he had picked up had looked like nothing special at all—just a form of wood about two feet square, containing rough, dried cement. But when he turned it over…

  “Oh…That’s…that’s amazing.” It was entirely inadequate as a response to the beauty of the zellij work: hundreds of tiny fragments of coloured tile fitted with exquisite precision into the mosaic so that no glimpse of the prosaic mortar that held them in place could be seen.

  “There’s your heart-star, where everything begins—see how the rest of the pattern rays out from it, makes embellishments based on its shape? That’s what I start with when I make a section of zellij.”

  “It’s like…like…” Something deeply buried in her memory came to the surface: her and Jess on a wet Sunday morning making patterns with an old Spirograph set; and at school, cutting tiny shapes out of coloured paper to fashion a kaleidoscope. She had loved the process, and the gorgeous symmetry of the results. Like fractals, she thought; like losing yourself in the heart of a many-petalled flower. The idea that it could be done out of anything so sturdy as clay and enamel was bewildering.