Ali took out his cigarette papers, Holmes his pipe, Lyautey a cigar. The snoring boy had long since been carried off to a divan in Ali’s quarters, and at the thought of the cloud of smoke about to engulf the room, my own exhaustion tugged at my arm.
“If you gentlemen will excuse me,” I said, “I think I shall call it an evening.”
Lyautey stood when I rose, distractedly wished me a good night, then returned to the point under discussion before Holmes’ question about Mahmoud, namely how, lacking telegraph lines, Abd el-Krim had communicated with his men on the opposite side of the Front eighteen months before, and why he did not make use of …
I shed various garments on the floor beside the narrow bed, and barely managed to pull the covers over me before I fell asleep.
Some time later, a sound woke me. I sat up in alarm: A man stood in the doorway.
“I apologise,” he said, remaining where he was. “I should have retrieved my things earlier.” My husband.
“I’ve taken your room,” I said.
“This—” He stopped.
“Ah,” I said slowly. “This was intended to be our room.”
“If I may take some blankets from the other bed, I shall be quite comfortable on the divan.”
The divan was a foot shorter than he, and stuffed with a combination of horse-hair and rocks. “You’ll be crippled, come morning. Take the bed.”
“Are you certain?”
I was far from certain. “Of course.”
He came in, lit the lamp, and began to remove various garments. I lay with my eyes closed, following the sounds with some trepidation. How far did he intend to undress?
The answer was, not far.
At the sound of weight settling onto the other bed, I shot a quick glance sideways and saw the thinning top of his head as he bent to undo his shoes—saw, too, that he had removed his djellaba, but retained the trousers and long tunic he wore underneath. Once the shoes had slid beneath the bed, the sound of him standing up made me look again, but he was merely bending over the lamp. In the dark room, I listened to the vigorous rustle of bedclothes, the image of his lamp-lit profile fading before my eyes. Suddenly, the ridiculousness of the situation struck me. At the noise I made, he went still. “What?”
I turned onto my side in his direction, feeling an unaccustomed lift to my facial features. “I was reflecting how, after the business at the top of the stairs, it may be a while before you approach me without a qualm.”
“My dear Russell, never have I approached you without a qualm.”
Extraordinary, how it can hurt to laugh, yet also heal.
On Sunday morning, I woke to the thought of the onionskin pellet in the chest pocket of my shirt: a shirt long since dispatched to the laundry. But surely I had not left the scrap there? I had taken the ring from that pocket, so …
Aha: the crimson book, empty but for this torn-off corner of so-thin paper.
I carried it out to the next room, where Ali and Holmes were sitting with a collection of outdated English newspapers. Ali’s face held a peculiar sour look, and he glanced up as I approached, giving the offending paper a shake.
“The Times reports on Abd el-Krim taking Chaouen: ‘It will be curious to see what the Moors will make of these elements of civilisation.’ Do they imagine the Emir fights with spears and muskets? That the Rifi heal sickness with incantations and leeches?”
I thought it not the time to mention the sellers of dried lizards in the medina.
Ali flung the paper to the floor in disgust and looked at my hand.
“What is that?”
I gave him the scrap of onionskin. “Is this your young friend’s writing?”
By way of answer, he said a few words in the Berber tongue. Idir looked over from his plate (for a small child, he seemed always to be eating) and nodded. Ali switched to Arabic. “When did you give this to her?”
Then he had to get up and dig some paper and a pen from the room’s desk. Idir wiped his hands on his shirt, and began the process of transcribing his thoughts, chewing his lower lip in concentration.
“How do you feel today?” Holmes asked me.
“Better. I remember our—well, wedding, I suppose, and portions of that spring. And around the gaps, the memories seem more … substantial. Detailed.” It was as well that I now recalled events matrimonial—that glaring failure might cause even a sensible man to feel a degree of affront. However, the newfound clarity was not in all ways a good thing. The death of Dorothy Ruskin, the Holy Land archaeologist, was a fresh grief, while the reality of Mahmoud’s disappearance had taken on urgency: He was a friend, and I feared for him.
With half a dozen lines on the Dar Mnehbi stationery and ink blotches across both page and lower lip, Idir dropped the instrument (another blotch on the page) and returned to his bread.
Ali puzzled over the writing, then asked, “But why?”
This necessitated a repeat performance, even longer and messier than the first. Finally Ali sat back with the stained pages, translating for us.
“When the three of you ate in the medina on Thursday, Mahmoud said that if you were for some reason separated, you should return to that same café. He then tore the corner off a letter he carried and had the boy write the location, so you would know what to ask for.”
“Why didn’t Mahmoud write it?” I asked.
Ali looked at me as if I had said something remarkably stupid. “How will the boy become literate, if he does not practice?”
“Of course. I wonder why I kept the paper.”
“Tidiness?”
I shrugged, and put the red book away in my pocket, reaching instead for the coffee. “What now?”
“If there is to be a meeting between Abd el-Krim and Lyautey, I must return to the hills today.”
“But, Mahmoud—” I started to protest.
“—will have to wait.” Ali spoke as if it was no concern of his, but I remembered enough of the two men to see the swell of apprehension beneath the surface.
Holmes said, “As you said, there are two possibilities: that he was taken away in the motor on Thursday night, as the boy tells us, or the lad is lying, and Mahmoud left the city earlier.”
“The only thing that would have caused Mahmoud to leave on his own,” Ali said slowly, “would be an urgent message from the Emir. We may find that he has already returned to the Rif.”
“Wouldn’t he have told the boy?” I asked.
“Not if he’d wanted Idir to wait here for me. If he’d said where he was going, Idir would have followed.”
“But surely he would have left a message somewhere,” I objected.
“Perhaps,” Ali said pointedly, “he left the message with you.”
Ridiculous, to feel guilty at having been injured, yet I did. “Yes, of course.”
Holmes intervened. “In any event, unless one wishes to entertain some vastly improbable theory—such as Mahmoud Hazr being the victim of a completely random, run-of-the-mill crime, or sitting in a quiet corner of the medina eating bonbons—it points to the conclusion that some enemy knew of Mahmoud’s presence, and knew either where to find him, or how to tempt him out. The question being, What enemy? An opponent of Abd el-Krim? Another gun-runner, fighting off encroachment?”
“It could even be some old foe who recognised him from Palestine,” Ali remarked.
“The boy has no idea what Mahmoud and I were doing that night?” I asked.
“None.” Ali stood up. “I must leave the solution of this to you two. If I do not leave now, I will not reach the Emir tomorrow. We will meet you on Monday.”
“Mahmoud will turn up,” Holmes told him.
“Insh’Allah,” Ali said, not sounding at all confident of God’s will.
In ten minutes, Ali was gone and Holmes was preparing to set off into the city. I fetched my oddly ancient boots from beneath the table and started to put them on.
“You are staying here,” Holmes said.
“Mahmoud is my fr
iend, too,” I protested. “You’re not going in search of him without me.”
“Russell, you have had a severe head injury. A normal woman would be in hospital.”
“I’m fine!”
“You’re not fine.” He finished adjusting his turban and stood, facing me. “Can you honestly say that your presence will not distract me? Will not slow me down?”
I did not answer. He retrieved a heavy burnouse from the wardrobe and dropped it over his head. “I intend to return by dark. If I’m not back by midnight, you have my full permission to ask Lyautey to turn the city inside-out. Come, Idir.”
And they were gone.
Moments later, a rap at the door heralded Youssef, come to remove the coffee things. It was the first time I’d paid much heed to the servant, an immensely dignified Moroccan of around sixty with skin like warmed chocolate and eyes that saw everything. His djellaba and underlying shirt were pristine, his almond finger-nails spotless. He came and went with a manner that slipped just under one’s awareness, as if one of the delicate French end tables had become diffidently animated, for the convenience of the residents.
“Does … Madame wish anything else?” he asked. I smiled at the hesitation: Since the previous night, he’d learnt that the yellow-haired guest was a woman, appearances to the contrary.
“No— Oh, but wait. Is there a library here in Dar Mnehbi?”
“But of course, Madame, there is a fine library.”
A hunt for information can, after all, take many forms.
The library opened off the grand central courtyard of the main dar, where an ornate expanse of tile echoed with the music of falling water and cushioned banquettes lay against the walls. The halka grid was directly overhead, indicating that this part of Dar Mnehbi was but a single storey high. I could see why it had been necessary to take over the adjoining dar—most of the doors opening onto this ornate courtyard stood open, revealing a series of formal salons. It took Youssef some time to lead me to the correct doorway, my steps being slowed by my attempts to take it all in. I goggled, frankly, at the intricate texture of the zellij tiles and carved plaster, zellij and water, zellij and painted wood, zellij and coloured glass. It was a space both intimate and intimidating: lavish to the point of majestic, yet clearly designed as a place to welcome guests.
The patient servant, having stopped me first from walking into the fountain and then from tumbling over a charcoal brazier, finally led me to one of the intricately painted doors off to one side.
It would originally have been a salon, but was now the library. The room was larger than it seemed from the courtyard, incorporating the corner space as well, and it was clearly a working room, not merely a collection of decorative leather spines among which the ladies took tea and the men their cognac and cigars.
For one thing, there was a much-hammered type-writing machine on a desk against the wall. For another, a gentleman’s gathering would have been considerably inconvenienced by the large wooden table that dominated the centre of the library. Lamps were spaced down the table’s surface; wide, shallow drawers slid out from its top; comfortable work chairs stretched down its sides.
The room was silent. It smelt of books and ink. I felt my muscles relax, as if the odour had the power to transport me to my faraway home. I turned my back on Youssef, lest he see my face, and thanked him. The fade of the splashing fountain was the only sound as he shut the door.
I made a circuit of the room, running my eyes over the shelves, sliding open a few of the drawers under the long table—the wider ones in the middle held maps; those on the ends held stationery, envelopes, notepads, writing implements.
Lyautey had lived here for a dozen years now, and appeared to have every book on Morocco ever published, from the report on a 1721 ransom expedition to Mequinez to a war-time Edith Wharton travelogue (of which there were eleven copies—explained by its dedication to the Resident General and his wife). I put one of those onto the table, then a volume on Old Morocco, and half a dozen others. I was leafing through an unbound box-file of Victorian photographs when the door startled me by rattling open.
The young man in the doorway looked as nonplussed as I—dark hair and eyes, but not Moroccan, his hair parted in the middle, a thin moustache that might have been pencilled onto his upper lip. He was dressed in a handsome suit of Italian wool. His eyes darted into the room, pausing on the table, before returning to me.
His French was impeccably Parisian. “Pardon, Monsieur. I did not realise anyone was here.”
“I was merely looking for some reading material,” I told him.
His gaze sharpened, rising from my men’s clothing to the sticking plaster on my scalp. “You are perhaps Madame Russell?”
“More or less,” I said, which rather confused him.
He crossed the room with his hand out. “François Dulac, at your service. I am Mme Lyautey’s secretary.”
His grip was light but pleasantly dry, and held not a hint of Gaulish flirtation.
“Good morning, M. Dulac. I have been ordered to pass a quiet day, so I thought I’d read up on the history of this country.”
“Very good idea. Ah, I see you have chosen Madame Wharton’s book. And Monsieur Andrews’. Perhaps you might be interested in this? And perhaps M. O’Connor?”
“Yes, thank you. You seem to have read a fair number of these.”
“It only seemed sensible, when I came here, to see what others had to say about the country.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I came with Mme Lyautey a year or so after the Maréchal arrived. He did not care to bring her at the beginning, of course, when the country was in turmoil.”
“Of course.”
“Her being here presents more of a … balanced face than that of a military leader alone.”
“A good idea.”
“What do you think of this one?” He held out a book for me.
As I paged through it, I asked him, “What are your responsibilities here? That is to say, does Mme Lyautey perform official functions? I haven’t met her.”
“She is in Casablanca at present, visiting friends. I assist in her appointments and correspondence, much of which might be termed ‘official.’ And of course, I make myself available to the Maréchal.”
“Yes, these look fine to begin with. And might I borrow a map?”
“A map?”
“Of Morocco.”
“But of course, Madame; the maps are in this drawer. However, the Maréchal makes use of them with some regularity, so it is requested that you not remove them from the room.”
The idea of my absconding with the cartography seemed to make him uncomfortable, so I assured him I was quite happy to leave them in place, which was especially true since so many of them were awkward sizes. Few of the maps were commercially printed, and those that were had been corrected by hand. Others were entirely hand-drawn, showing patches of close cartographic detail set against large areas of vagueness. South of Fez and to the coastline, details were good, but to the north, beyond the Werghal River, it might as well have been labelled Here be monsters.
“Mapping the country is a work in progress, I see.”
“Indeed, Madame.”
“Well, the books should keep me occupied.”
He insisted on helping me, exchanging a greeting with a Moroccan as we crossed the tiled courtyard, following me up the guesthouse stairway with the books in his arms, carrying on the kind of light and charming conversation that is part of the personal secretary’s profession. Were he a touch more handsome, I might have speculated about his services to Mme Lyautey, but by the time we reached my room, I had dismissed from my mind the possibility of a French liaison.
Dulac placed the books on the table, arranged some pieces of charcoal in the brazier, and said he would send Youssef up with tea. This time, I accepted.
I opened the Wharton book. Around me, I was dimly aware of activity, and after a bit I heard the dull clang of a small Europea
n-style church-bell. I stopped reading to listen. After a few minutes, the sounds of Dar Mnehbi slowed. Sunday morning: Somewhere on the grounds was a chapel.
My own reading was less spiritually refreshing. Considerably less. Every chapter seemed a reminder that I was a Jew and a woman in a land firmly rooted in Mediaeval Islam. The pirates of Salé and that town’s ongoing simmering xenophobia. The sacking of Fez’s Jewish quarter, twelve years before. A dance of fanatical self-mutilation in the nearby town of Moulay Idriss. The jaw-dropping brutality with which a pretender to the throne was dispatched—and not in some distant and barbaric age, but here in Fez, a mere fifteen years before. The palaces of Mequinez, an African Versailles built by Sultan Moulay Ismaïl, a contemporary of Louis XIV and the very image of what happens when a mad ruler has no checks on his power and no end to his resources. Ismaïl solidified the hand of the Alaouite dynasty—still in power, two and a half centuries later—with a Black Guard of some 150,000 Africans, brought in from the other side of the Sahara. Ismaïl drove the English from Tangiers, forced peace onto the land, fathered hundreds of children, and built a vast and magnificent city, using tens of thousands of slaves captured by the far-ranging Salé Rovers, many of them Christians whose families were too poor for ransom. The slaves—forty thousand? sixty thousand?—were kept in a vast underground prison beneath Mequinez called Habs Qara, whence they were brought out to work on the mad sultan’s projects. When a man died, he was simply walled up by his fellows, and the building continued—only to have much of Mequinez flattened in the massive earthquake of 1755. After that, the Alaouite dynasty shifted its centre to Fez. To a palace one mile from where I sat.
The reading was not conducive to the rest Holmes had assigned. I’m sure it did my blood pressure no good.
In the end, I carried the books back down to the library and searched for something less troubling. I hesitated at the title of the latest volume by M. Proust—Le Prisonnière—but decided that the coincidence was unlikely to extend to its subject matter. And indeed, the fictional tribulations of Albertine and her tedious companions proved the ideal soporific. I spent the remainder of the afternoon under the influence of that balm of hurt minds, sleep.