The Tenth Gift (40 page)

He shut the book with a snap and stowed it inside his shirt. No one must see this, he thought, wild with horror. When I take her from here we will burn it, or throw it overboard the ship, and we will
never speak of it again once we are married. He strode to the door, thrusting Latifa out of his way as she chattered at him.

“D
RINK THIS
.”

Cool water touched her mouth. Her eyes fluttered open. There was a face very close to her, features blurred with proximity, but a dark face with eyes as black as coals. Gentle fingers brushed her forehead, patted her cheeks.

“Cat’rin, Cat’rin, come back to me.”

Where had she been? Where was she going? Strange images crowded inside her head, images of a ship at sea bound for a green land, her cousin Rob at the helm. Taking her away …

She struggled to sit up, catching at the hand that touched her face, her fingers closing on it galvanically. “Don’t make me go. I don’t want to go.” She sounded like her six-year-old self, plaintive and whining, pleading not to be made to visit her aunt and uncle. She did not like the sound of her own voice.

The hand gripped her tight. Someone kissed her fingers.

“Oh.” She turned her head toward the source of the kiss and, before she could form the least rational thought, returned it, lip to lip.

The kiss that followed was not at all like the one that had been forced upon her by Sir John Killigrew, all whiskers and tongue and the stink of tobacco and beer. This kiss tasted of herbs and mint, and she did not want it to stop.

Eventually the raïs pulled away, holding her at arms’ length. “What you saying, Cat’rin? Are you in right mind, or wandering still?”

Back in focus now, he looked anxious. Cat folded her hands in her lap and looked down at them for a while, considering. Silence hung between them like a veil. Thoughts came thick and fast now. She had never willingly kissed a man in all her life. She had not
expected it to feel so momentous: It felt as though her skin—her
whole
skin—was alive with his touch. At last, forcing herself to concentrate, she said, “And I am no longer your slave?”

“I have freed you. You are own woman and you must make own choice.” He paused. “In truth, I think
I
now
your
slave,” he added softly.

She looked down again, trying to suppress a smile. Then she stilled. “If I stay, must I convert to Islam?”

“If you be my wife, Cat’rin, yes. But you may stay as free woman and live under my roof and continue your work, make own money and I never touch you, if you prefer.”

“You would make me your wife?”

Qasem nodded. “With all my heart.”

“Your only wife?”

“One is quite sufficient.”

“I thought you were going to marry your cousin Khadija.”

He laughed. “I think that a story begun by Khadija herself.” He pressed her hand against his chest so that she felt the deep, strong pulse that beat there. “Will you wed me, Cat’rin Tregenna?”

Her eyes went wide. If she did she must take his faith and be damned for all time according to the tenets of her own religion. She would become apostate, heretic, infidel. The choice felt unreal; she did not even know if she was a Christian still in her heart, for she had lost something on the voyage and later in the slave pens. She knew that in order to make a considered decision she should take all that had been given to her this day—Rob, her freedom, the heart and hand of this foreign man, a future as a master embroiderer— and spend a long day and night deliberating over the great choice before her.

She knew she should, but she could not. Too much thought would drive her mad. She took a deep breath and said, very fast, before the words failed her: “I will stay here and wed you, Qasem.”

It was at this moment that Robert Bolitho walked into the courtyard.
He missed hearing Catherine’s words, but the attitude of the two figures kneeling together beside the fountain was unmistakable. He felt himself intruding upon an intimacy he could not bear to witness. The dull pain that spread through him rooted him to the ground; by the time he spoke, it seemed the entire world had changed shape.

“Catherine!”

He watched his cousin start away from the corsair captain and turn toward him, and he saw that her eyes were stark and her cheeks flaming so that she looked like the fallen woman she had become.

“Catherine—let me save you, come home with me. You are not bound to him, whatever he may say.”

Now she was on her feet and the veil had fallen from her hair and it billowed about her like a fire. “I do not need to be saved, Robert Bolitho. I make my choice freely—so when you return to Kenegie you can tell them all that I
chose
to remain here of my own free will, and for many good reasons that you would never understand.”

“Oh, I understand well enough,” he said bitterly, looking toward the kneeling pirate. When he next spoke his voice was loud and uncouth, as Cat had never heard it before. “I do not know whether I shall see Kenegie again, or if I do, whether I will find I still have a job when I get there. I left without Sir Arthur’s permission. I took the first passage that was offered me, knowing even as I did, it was with rogues who might simply rob me and cast my nameless body overboard into the deeps. They might as well have done for all the good surviving has done me! And with me I brought my grandmother’s ring. I told myself that when next I saw you I would place it on your finger, as a promise that no danger would ever befall you again, but—” His voice broke. “They robbed me of that, just as surely as they robbed me of the money and my freedom. Cat, I have loved you all my life, and I know you love me, too. I do not care that you are ruined, I will take you as you are. I will wed you and still cherish you, and if a child comes and it is dark of skin and eye, then it will be our
cross and we will bear it. You see, I have thought of everything, and I say it out: I have no pride left to me. No matter what he has done to you, no matter what has happened, I forgive you.”

Cat’s hands balled into fists. “How dare you offer me a charity wedding, Robert Bolitho! I do not need your forgiveness for anything! I have done nothing that I need be ashamed of. You look at me as if I have betrayed you, but I have never loved you, save as my dear cousin. It is hard to tell you this in such bitter circumstances, Rob, but it is best you know.”

Silence fell between them, heavy with misunderstanding and recrimination. At last Rob cried, “How can you stand there without your heart breaking to see me thus? You are as brazen as the temptress Nell called you, and now you have beguiled a richer man than me, and a heathen, to boot. You have lost your mind, Catherine Anne Tregenna, as well as your soul!”

At this the corsair captain sprang to his feet.

“Qasem, no.”

The way she laid a hand on the corsair’s arm, and the way the other looked at her and then gave way, was too much for Rob. The anger that had buoyed him up now ebbed away, leaving him unmanned. A great sob welled up and broke from him in a sort of strangled bellow.

Eyes welling, Cat addressed him gently. “I can see that you think me cruel and heartless, Rob. I know what you have done for me, the enormity of it, the risk, the horror. I am so sorry for what has happened to you. I would never have asked that you come after me. It was immensely brave of you….”

He waved a hand at her: He did not want her sympathy.

“It does not matter, I did not do it just for you, there are others to be saved.” A patent lie, the first large falsehood he had deliberately told in his life. “I hope you will make a good life for yourself here, Catherine,” he said; and that was the second. He watched her face change. Was it surprise he read there, relief, or disappointment? She
looked nothing at all like the girl he had crossed an ocean to find. That girl was dead to him now. He dragged his gaze from her and fixed it on the man instead.

“Sidi Qasem, I would ask a boon of you.”

“Ask.”

“There is another I would save, if it can be contrived. The gold the Sidi Mohammed took from me should surely cover her ransom.”

The corsair looked surprised. “Who you wish me to seek?”

“Her name is Matty Pengelly, taken in the same raid on Penzance. She is a simple, decent girl who deserves better than to be a slave in this place.”

Sidi Qasem inclined his head. “If is possible to do this thing for you, I do it. You have my word. I will also find you place on ship bound for England and write letter that ensure your safety if you to have misfortune fall into hands of other … traders. Is anything else you would ask of me?”

It was as if the corsair was glowing from within, Rob thought, as if a sun burned inside him, his triumph was that tangible. He turned away, for it hurt to look upon the man who had taken his dreams from him. “No,” he said dully. “There is nothing left in the world worth asking for.”

I
DRISS STARED FROM THE LETTER TO ME
. “S
UCH A SAD END
to a brave tale.”

We were sitting overlooking the wide mouth of the Bou Regreg in the Café Maure in the Qasba des Oudaias, where the sun fell brightly through the fretted trelliswork and a breeze off the sea carried the scent of roses to us. I had been watching a small tabby cat chasing a leaf in between the table legs while Idriss read the letter for himself, for I could not bring myself to read it out to him. It felt laden
with ill luck, and I had the sense that if I were to utter Robert Bolitho’s final words aloud, disaster would somehow fall on one or both of us.

“Do you believe in ghosts, Idriss?” I asked suddenly.

“Of course. Afrits and evil spirits walk beside us. We don’t like to talk about them, it encourages them too much.”

I told him about Andrew Hoskin, about the miasma of despair that had settled itself upon the house, the sense of panic that had engulfed me in the attic when I retrieved the family Bible for Alison. The family Bible in which Robert Bolitho’s letters had been hidden.

Then I remembered how I had found that Bible: in a box under layers of dust, a box that had clearly not been opened for a very long time. How, then, I wondered, had the wording of Andrew’s suicide note—Andrew, whose sensibility was in no way bookish or archaic— so clearly echoed that of Robert Bolitho? I shuddered, feeling the chill fingers of time on the back of my neck.

“Khamsa oukhmiss.”
Idriss touched the wood of the table. What a remarkably universal prophylaxis against bad things that was.

“I am glad I let Anna take the book. I’m beginning to think the story cursed, as if history will just go on trapping people in its toils and squeezing the life out of them. Tregennas, Pengellys, Bolithos— all my Cornish family seem to be caught up in it.”

“Habibi,”
he said, taking my hand, “there are a thousand and one reasons why people take their own lives, just as there are a thousand and one types of people in the world. Patterns may repeat themselves, but we are not entirely fate’s slaves. In our culture we believe that every soul is asked of it only what is within its scope to deal with in life.”

“That obviously didn’t work for poor Robert Bolitho, or for Andrew, either. Such anger, such disappointment.” I sat there with my head in my hands feeling sorrow for them both. After a while I said, “Do you think the sins of our ancestors are visited upon us?”

Idriss turned my hand over in his and traced the lines on its
palm. “In Islam there is no such thing as original sin. Each soul comes bright and pure to the world, bearing no burden of guilt. There was a Fall, but it was forgiven. Adam and Hawa were sent down from Heaven to the earthly paradise of Jenaa to be its guardians, and it was there that Satan tempted them to taste the forbidden fruit of the Tree, but in the Qu’ran the two of them together shared the blame, and when they repented for their transgression, God forgave them both and sent them out into the world as equals, to work the land. Their children carried with them no taint of the parents’ failure: No one died to save our souls. The past is past: Things happen, we suffer, and then we move on into the light.”

I blew my nose. “That’s a remarkably humane view.”

“Guilt and blame are corrosive, Julia. They destroy lives. I am sure that it is possible to make fresh starts, to find happiness. I know it to be so.”

T
HAT AFTERNOON WE
left the old city behind us and walked in the wide, sunlit modern boulevards of new Rabat. We visited bookstores and café s and at last a clothes shop, full of vibrantly colored scarves and kaftans.

“You should have something to take back to London with you,” Idriss said. “To remind you of Morocco.”

I touched one of the scarves. It was woven silk, all blues and greens and golds, like a summer sea. “Very pretty,” I said appreciatively.

He held it up against me. “Very.”

It was ridiculously cheap, but even so Idriss spent a long time haggling furiously with the poor woman who owned the shop until they both looked exhausted. At last she wrapped it in paper and held it out for me and I paid and thanked her and turned to leave.

Idriss caught my arm. “No, no, there is something else.” He exchanged a smile with the woman behind the counter—they looked wickedly complicit.

“What?” I asked, frowning.

“Imane will show you.”

The woman ushered me into a curtained area at the back of the shop and left me stranded there with the fluorescent light shining down on me in front of a vast, unforgiving mirror. In it I looked washed out and ghostly, my skin and hair white-pale, my eyes as dark as pits. It was a relief to have something else to look at when she returned a minute later with a bundle of turquoise fabric in her arms.

She shook it out. It was a silk kaftan in traditional style, floor length and with long, wide sleeves. Buttons ran from neck to hem, each worked into a perfect Turkish knot, which fitted into a corresponding chain-stitched loop. The facings on either side were hand-embroidered with crescent moons and stars in gold and silver thread. More stars and moons adorned the cuffs and hem.

I gasped. “It’s beautiful.
Fabuleuse”

Imane smiled and helped me into it. Then we stood there together, admiring the transformation in the mirror.

“Ça vouz vraiment convenir, madame. C’est votre couleur. Allez montrer votre mari!”

“He’s not—” I started. But really, what was the point of making a complicated and clumsy explanation? I grinned. “Okay.”

Idriss was standing by the door, looking very much like a man who wanted a cigarette. When he heard the curtain rings rattling, he turned, and his eyes widened.

He had, it transpired, already paid for it; hence the haggling.

“I want you to wear it and think of Morocco.”

“How could I ever forget Morocco?”

It was a generous gesture and it made me uncomfortable. I didn’t know what to say to him. There was already something unspoken in the air between us, an edge of tension that clouded our afternoon. I was flying back to London the next evening. In some ways I did not want to go—but I also needed space to myself, to weigh up my choices and make some decisions.

We walked through some pretty ornamental gardens where men played chess at little tables outside a café and children played on the pavement beside them, some complicated game involving bottle tops and stones. I watched the café owner come out and put down a bowl, and three rangy cats immediately detached themselves from the shade in which they had been lying and ringed the dish, making a swift end to the scraps of chicken with silent, focused greed.

“It is said the Prophet once sat in contemplation in his garden,” Idriss told me while we watched them eat, “but when it came time for him to leave to attend his prayers, he found his cat Muezza had fallen asleep on his sleeve. Now, this was the very cat that had once saved him from a serpent, so instead of disturbing it, he cut off the sleeve of his garment and went about his business.”

I smiled, watching the three cats finish licking out the bowl and wander away, tails high. It was a very charming tale. How nice to be a cat and confident that the world would always provide.

At that moment, Idriss’s mobile sounded. He opened it and spoke loudly into it, laughing and gleeful. When he finished, his eyes were shining. “Jeddah is back from the mountains. She is waiting to meet you.”

I
DON’T KNOW
what I expected Idriss’s grandmother to be like, but when I first saw her standing there in the salon, I thought she was some other visitor to the family home. But: “This is Lalla Mariam,” Idriss told me proudly, and then exchanged an embrace with her and a great rush of Berber in which I heard my name—Julia—twice, isolated like islands in a sea of incomprehensible sound.

The next thing I knew I was enfolded in her arms. No frail old lady, this, I thought, feeling corded muscle and strong bones press against me. She bade me welcome—
marhaban, marhaban
—and there followed a torrent of Berber of which I understood not a word, and then she flew off across the room and I heard her footsteps clatter
swift and sure as the hooves of a mountain goat on the tiling of the stairs.

I stared at Idriss. “She’s a force of nature, your grandmother! How old is she?”

He shrugged. “No one knows. It’s not something we speak of much, and they didn’t have birth certificates or documentation where she was born. Even Jeddah probably has no idea how old she is. We don’t count away our days the way you Westerners do.”

“How old is your mother, then? She is your mother’s mother?” I persisted.

He nodded, but he had to think about that for a while, too. While I waited I thought what a very different culture this was to mine, in which every newspaper article would identify the age of its subject alongside the name no matter how irrelevant such a detail might be.

“I … think, sixty-three.”

“And how many brothers and sisters does your mother have?” He counted them off on his fingers. “Twelve. My mother was the seventh.”

I made a rough calculation. I had read that women in the mountain regions often married very young, but even given that and any possible gaps between births, that made her …“Good grief. Eighty-five, at least!”

“She’s remarkable, isn’t she? Come upstairs—she’s brought the thing I wanted you to see.” He held his hand out to me and together we went up the stairs.

At the top of the house, on the other side of the stairs from Idriss’s room, the door was ajar, and inside someone was singing. I stopped on the landing to listen, not wanting to interrupt. A moment later, Idriss joined in without any hint of self-consciousness, surprising me by raising a melodious light tenor as a counterpoint to the old woman’s shriller notes. I thought of the birds we had heard in the medina, singing across the ancient walls to one another.

“Tell me the words,” I begged when he finished.

He raised my hand to his lips. “You shall be loaded up with beauty before leaving us for your gray old city,” he promised, pushing the door open. “You have your silk, Jeddah has brought argan soap from the south, and my cousin Hasna will henna your hands for you later….”

I hardly heard what he was saying. The light from the unshuttered window fell upon Lalla Mariam, who stood there, straight as a reed, examining a length of shining cloth. But it was not the item in her hands that caught my attention, it was her face as she looked out at me. Downstairs in the semi-gloom of the salon I had formed an impression of a stately old woman with silver hair framing long bones and smooth, dark planes. Now the sun fell squarely upon her and I caught my breath.

“Yes, it’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Idriss was saying. “I knew you’d love it, it’s so craftily made. Jeddah is very proud of it, she loves to show it off to people….”

I tore my gaze from his grandmother’s face and looked down at the thing she had brought from the mountains. It was a great swath of brocaded white silk, and along all its yards of selvage, both top and bottom, someone had embroidered the most exquisite design. Hundreds of ferns and stylized curls of bracken fronds uncoiling toward an unseen sun, adorned here and there by tiny pink blossoms and rich golden flowers. The ferns and fronds were orderly, almost geometric in the exactitude of their execution; they formed a framework
through which the rambling roses twined. But it was the tiny golden flowers on their spiky stems that made my knees go to water.

“It’s gorse,” I said, remembering the crown Robert Bolitho had made for the girl he loved. The buds and blossoms were embroidered with such unusual realism that I could almost smell their rich confectionary aroma—like warm marzipan—unfurling from the cloth.

“Gorse?”

“This flower here. It grows all over the hills and cliffs of Cornwall. It’s a wild and thorny thing—a very unlikely flower to find depicted in embroidery.”

Idriss translated this for his grandmother, who through it all stood there calmly watching me with her unblinking bright regard. Then she started to speak quickly and Idriss answered her, then he asked a question, to which she responded, and then the flow of words went back and forth like the chatter of magpies.

At last he turned to me. “Jeddah says three things. Firstly, that this flower—this bush—is also found here on the Atlantic coast. Secondly, that this veil—it’s a bridal veil—has been in the family for generations, but no one knows where it came from or who made it, though there have always been handy women in our family, expert with a needle. Thirdly, that the style of the piece is known as
aleuj.
It is a mé lange of traditional Berber skills—very dense and precise and geometric—with a more fluid and realistic European style.
Aleuj
in classical Arabic means ‘alien’ or ‘foreign,’ or even ‘foreigner,’ but it can also mean ‘one who has converted to Islam.’ And the earliest known examples are from the seventeenth century.”