“Perhaps. In any event, they left me concussed and bleeding, and seem to have taken my friend. I must find him.”
“This is … most remarkable,” she murmured to her plate, then raised her eyes. “Morocco may be a violent country, but it has little crime in that sense. We must report this.”
“No!” The threat of a combined French and native bureaucracy would be more than I could face. “Let me talk to the man with the cart first.”
“He may not answer your questions. Strangers are mistrusted here.”
“My Arabic is good,” I told her in that language.
“Even then.” But when I started to press her, she put up her hand. “I do see that you need to follow that train of events, but there is little point in your rushing off to question him. For one thing, he is almost certainly abed, and would be greatly alarmed by an invasion. And for another, I would be happy to accompany you into the medina tomorrow, but not tonight. I cannot force you to stay, but I refuse to countenance a person in your condition racing headlong into further activity.”
I watched her calmly resuming her fork, and her meal. “You will help me, if I agree?”
“If you permit me to examine you and then put you to bed, yes.”
“First thing in the morning?”
“If you wish.”
I picked up my utensils, and obediently ate what was on my plate.
And when she had finished prodding my skull and reassuring herself that I had not ripped out her neat stitches, I used the hot bath and curled up in the same bed I had occupied before.
To dream of vague figures flitting through the doorways of empty tiled rooms, carrying with them the loneliness of ghosts.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Tuesday when I woke, the vague clamour of city noise trickled into the room. I lay listening for a time, then jerked upright as the significance hit me: If traffic in the medina had already reached that pitch, the hour was by no means early.
I threw on various pieces of clothing, shoved my glasses onto my nose, and scurried down the stairs.
Miss Taylor was seated over the remnants of her breakfast, going through a stack of letters. She took off her reading glasses and smiled at my dishevelment. “Good morning, Miss Russell. Do sit down. Would you prefer tea or coffee?”
“You shouldn’t have let me sleep in. Shall we go?”
“When you’ve had breakfast.”
“Miss Taylor, I appreciate your concern, but I have a friend who may be in danger.”
Her reading glasses went down atop the letters and she stood up. “I will be just a few minutes. Help yourself to coffee.”
I heard her voice from another room, and a minute later, the cook came in with a basket of warm rolls.
“Thank you, Fatima,” I said. Only when I lifted the buttered and jammed roll to my lips did I realise what I had said.
I remembered coming here! Not the arrival itself, but my early hours in this house. What before had been a vague sense of motion and warmth was now peopled with faces and voices: Miss Taylor, bent over me with professional concern, talking and explaining as she worked; William holding a steaming bowl for her to sponge off my face; a woman taking his place as the removal of garments revealed my unexpected gender: Fatima.
The shadows had drawn back from another piece of memory.
And yes—the desert, and a tent! I had gone from the sea to the sand, working on—oh Lord: the moving picture. I was acting in a moving picture? I pushed away the memory, and concentrated on the tent.
Idir, his eyes roaming over the canvas room and its peculiarly sumptuous fittings (hired from Morocco’s Sultan; hired by me, in fact) as I prepared to join—
Mahmoud! Yes, Mahmoud Hazr had called me out of the desert, piled me into a rattletrap lorry—stolen? Could that be right? We had climbed into the lorry, which trailed great clouds of black smoke and slowed alarmingly with every hill—and blew a tyre—no, two tyres—on the way. But we had repaired them, and we had found a spring to fill the boiling radiator, and we had made it over the mountains and …
And there again, I came to shadows. There was dust, and a row of laden camels, and Idir’s frightened face, and a sensation of fury and violence in the night, but the more I pushed at it, the harder I concentrated and tried to force it into focus, the thicker the shadows became. All it gave me was a headache.
“Miss Russell, are you ill?” Peg Taylor’s voice came, sharp with concern.
Startled, I dropped the bread and jerked around. How long had I been staring off into the space between my ears? “I’m fine, just thinking.”
“You do not look at all fine.”
I picked up the roll, wiping a smear of preserves from the table, and took a bite as if that might prove the excellence of my health. “I was thinking,” I said around the mouthful, “about what you said concerning the Fasi disinclination to talk freely with outsiders. I know that you have been here for a long time, but I fear that the sort of things I shall be asking are those that your admirers might wish to shield you from. It would be better if you were to introduce me as someone worthy of trust, then leave us to talk unheard.”
She did not care for the feeling that she would be abandoning me, but she agreed that an un-overheard conversation might be for the best. It took the better part of an hour to get out of her door, following consultation with William, and checking on a patient, and just as we were about to leave, the arrival of a woman with a child needing stitches on his foot.
We finally stepped out into the medina. My companion slid through the tortuous streets with the ease of a native, although somewhat inevitably we found that the cart man was already about his day’s work. Miss Taylor insisted on accompanying me to the place where he had been going, a hillside tile-kiln outside the city walls, but when we were then informed that he had gone on to a destination over the next hill, I turned to the little woman.
“I can take it from here. You have patients requiring you, and I now know the man’s name and where he is going. I shall let you know what I find.”
In truth, I had no intention of letting her know anything, but I thought it would encourage her to leave me. And so it proved. Hesitantly, turning back twice to give me some forgotten piece of essential information about the man and his family, she finally retreated towards the city gates. I turned my face to the hills, in search of a man with a cart.
Few investigations follow direct lines, and this was no exception, but eventually I found the man, returning from a distant grove with three large canisters of olive oil and a tangle of firewood. I gave him greetings from Miss Taylor and engaged him in harmless conversation for a time, before asking him about the night he had found the wounded foreigner along the road.
He hesitated, but since I had established myself as a friend and nothing to do with the government, he agreed that he had found such a person, and helped him (as far as he knew, then and now, I was a him) down to the city gates.
“He was run down by the speeding motorcar, yes?”
“So it would seem. Some of the French drive so fast, it is a wonder any of us survive.”
“It was a French motor, then? Had you seen it before?”
“It was dark. I cannot be certain.”
“But something made you think it was a French motor. One you know.”
He chewed on his lip for a while.
“Your name will not come into it,” I assured him. “I promised Miss Taylor.”
At the reminder of the author of his son’s well-being, he reluctantly admitted that it was a motorcar he had seen before. “I do not know, for certain. But I was close enough to hear its engine, when it speeded up and flew down the hill, and it sounded like a motorcar that I have heard before, on that road. A motor that is kept at the palace.”
“What, it belongs to the Sultan?”
“The Sultan owns everything in the country,” he said. I did not correct him. “It is a handsome machine, very shiny. I have seen the Resident General in it. More tha
n once. It is probably a different motor,” he said again.
I asked him for any identifying marks on the motor, hoping that perhaps it was missing a fender or had a crack across its wind-screen—something obvious enough for a farmer to notice. I did not hold out much hope.
“One-zero-zero-six-two-seven,” he recited. I stared at him in disbelief. “The plate it wears. I like numbers,” he said simply.
I hastily removed the expression from my face, and turned the conversation to lesser matters. When the next road forked off to the south, I thanked him, wished his son long health, and took my leave.
The Royal Palace was in Fez el-Jdid, the newer section of old Fez (as opposed to the upstart French Ville Nouvelle, where the streets were broad and the lights were electrical). I bought a handful of nuts in the Jewish quarter, amused at the queer pronunciation of Hebrew, then continued on towards the Bou Jeloud gardens, to sit beneath a tree and study the palace walls. This was a different city from that whose gate lay mere yards away. The medina was tight and secretive and Mediaeval, but here, two women in frocks were looking at the banner of a cinema house, while a man wearing suit, necktie, turban, and sunglasses stepped into a bank. Not that those in foreign dress weren’t outnumbered by draped women and robed men, or that an approaching motorcar wasn’t forced to thread its way around a donkey onto which were roped six European chairs, being driven by a child wielding a willow switch, then another donkey laden with a family of five or perhaps six—hard to tell, since they were all intertwined.
It was, all in all, not a bad place to wait, had I been in no hurry. However, time pressed on me, and I might have been forced to wait until darkness but for a works project, under French supervision, adjoining the palace. After a time I pocketed my snack and fell in with the queue of labourers, receiving my load of rough bricks, depositing them with the others, returning to the source.
Two trips in and out were sufficient to make my skull ache. Fortunately, they were also sufficient to tell me that the motorcar I was looking for was not in the section of the palace stables given over to the new age of transportation.
So I abandoned my unpaid hod-carrying and returned to my previous means of surveillance, perched atop a bit of wall, eating nuts and olives, longing for a cup of tea—but ingesting liquid while keeping lookout threatened to take a person from her post at a key moment.
Before dusk, my watch was successful. A pair of motorcars worked their way up the road and into the former stables. They pulled to a halt, but the people who climbed out looked nothing like Moroccan nobility. I stared, and realised that I was looking at the American family that had so irritated Lyautey the other evening. The motors might be royal possessions, but they were evidently used for many purposes, including the transport of day-tripping foreigners.
As they went past, their accents proclaimed their identities. The woman of the group, a New Yorker, was telling the others—a daughter and two young men—all about the coliseum in Rome. It seemed that my countrymen had spent the day at nearby Volubilis, the Roman ruins. I closed my ears to the stream of factual errors pouring from the grand dame, and watched two Moroccans come out from the stables to splash buckets of water over the dusty black metal before opening the doors and tossing out what seemed a remarkable quantity of débris.
The cleaners’ haphazard methods gave me some hope, although I had to wait nearly an hour for confirmation. When they had tidied the floors and run rags over the front window-screens, they started the engines and moved the two motors inside. No closer attention was to be given them, because the men came out, closed the big doors, and walked off.
With the shadows growing long, I found a place where trees grew up to the stable walls and let myself in through a smaller door, walking along the deserted space until I reached the newly arrived vehicles: There remained light enough to read the registration plates: white letters on black, French flag on the left, and on one: yes, 100627.
The car was not quite as pristine as it had appeared at a distance. There were scratches on the bonnet and front fenders, a chip out of its windscreen, and one head-lamp looked new—I had a brief vision of boys popping up from behind a low wall and pelting the passing motorcar with stones. Political turmoil in a country tended to affect the glass on shop-fronts and motorcars.
However, I was more interested in what the car had done than what had been done to it. And even without a magnifying glass, I could see that: two threads caught in the join of fender and running-board, and one hair trapped by a bolt of the folding roof.
A blonde hair.
How close I’d come to death. And one might have thought that remembering nothing about the event should have softened it, making it less immediate, but instead the internal images were worse. That one blonde hair, caught in the metal stub.
I shuddered, and fled.
Back in the city, darkness was falling. I felt cold, thirsty, tired, and desperately in need of a toilet suitable for female anatomy. My feet were tired, and the rest of me was both sore, from injuries just five days old, and shaken, by the significance of that pale strand. I was also out of money. I eyed a passing figure who had just slipped a laden note-case into his pocket, wondering how much a European-style hotel room would cost me. Or the funduq, where I needed to go in any event, to question the owner about the “bad men” who had been asking after us. On the other hand, there was a familiar retreat not five minutes away, warm and secure, where I could satisfy all my needs without resorting to criminal behaviour. Just for a short time, before I returned to questioning the residents of Fez el-Jdid and the funduq.
Holmes had told me to watch my back. And there was no doubt, the Resident General’s quarters could be as riddled with informants as any other institution in Morocco. But even if Dar Mnehbi was not completely safe, neither were the streets around me. At least under Lyautey’s roof, no one would run me down, and if I was held under gun-point, someone might notice.
Dar Mnehbi’s tall, dignified butler, coffee-man, and general factotum drew open the door at my knock, standing back with the Moroccan equivalent of a courtier’s bow.
He didn’t even cast a disapproving glance at my garments.
“Good evening, Madame,” he said in his lightly accented French.
“Good evening, Youssef,” I replied, stepping inside. “I haven’t come to stay, nor do I wish to disturb the Maréchal, but if I could sit for an hour or so in the library, it would refresh me greatly.”
But he insisted on ushering me to “my” room, where he summoned life into the brazier and assured me, despite protests, that both drink and food would arrive. He even brought me a pair of leather slippers.
When I returned from the lavatory, I sank into the chair, revelling at the heat. A wave of exhaustion took me. I sat without moving, too limp even to lean forward and unlace my boots. I would do so. In just a minute.
Voices came from out in the dar, men in conversation, their words indistinct. They went sharp, then silence fell, for perhaps a minute. I had just roused sufficient energy to sit upright, aiming at removing my boots for a time, when a rap came on the door. Youssef entered.
“Your tea, Madame. I apologise for the delay, I fear it has gone cold.”
“You were very quick, thank you.”
“Shall I pour?” he asked, already doing so. “Is it cold, Madame? Shall I take it away?”
I already had a cup in one hand and a fried savoury in the other, although with him standing at my side, I couldn’t carry through and shove the morsel into my mouth. He hesitated, adjusting a spoon, then noticed that my laden hand was hovering.
Whatever he had been about to ask, he did not, merely gave a small bow and left, saying, “Enjoy, Madame.”
I did.
A gratifyingly large plate occupied one side of the tray, contributing a spicy odour to the mint of the tea. Even cool, the savoury pastries were a perfect counterpoint to the sweet, fragrant liquid, and I polished them off, leaving only one or two of the sweet tit-bits.
/>
Satisfied, I poured another cup of the refreshing brew, and sat back with it. The room was warming nicely. Really, I thought, I should slip off my boots to rest my feet, just for a few minutes. And perhaps the djellaba, since the room was growing so warm. Though I mustn’t get too settled. I had things to do. But the warmth of the room was lovely, so lovely, making me so relaxed, even drowsy. Oddly drowsy. Drowsy enough that the internal alarm seemed tiny and faraway. Not that it mattered. I was comfortable. Still, I mustn’t fall asl
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I dreamt.
It was dark, and there was a sound. I stopped to listen, hearing only the gabble of conversation near the camp-fire and the laughter of English girls.
It came again, as of a finger-nail scratching canvas. I glanced at the pillow on my camp-bed and decided against pulling out the revolver I had just secreted there: A robber was unlikely to knock—or, scratch—at my door.
I pulled aside the canvas, standing back so the bright light fell on my visitor, and looked out, then down. The late-night intruder was a winsome young urchin with brown skin and hair, light brown eyes, and gleaming white teeth, of which I could see nearly all due to his wide grin.
“No thank you,” I said in Arabic. The local inhabitants were ingenious when it came to sales techniques, and had quickly learnt to send their most attractive children to prise coins out of the Fflytte Film crew. Either children or parents decided early which of our members were easy targets, and had left me alone. This lad seemed not to have got the message.
I fastened the door on his winning smile and outstretched hand, and turned back to my beckoning sleeping roll.
The scratching came again. And again.
Bare-footed now and with my knife clearly displayed in my hand, I yanked away the canvas door. The smile disappeared; the eyes fixed on the blade; the small hand remained outstretched.
“Whatever it is you are selling, I do not wish one,” I snarled.
The boy shook his head vigorously, and pushed his grubby hand at me. I looked more closely, and saw there a piece of paper, folded in precise quarters. The moment I took it, the lad’s hand dove back into his garments, coming out with something more solid. Not a weapon. Something the size of an acorn, with a gleam to it.