Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters

by Lesley M. M. Blume

  “She snatched a bicycle from a Moroccan kid down the street,” Virginia replied. “And then she drove it into the garbage cans in front of the house to make as much noise as possible.”

  “Weren’t the guests mad that she made such a cacophony?” Cornelia asked. “Cacophony” was a fancy word for “hubbub” or “racket.”

  “Sure, they were mad,” said Virginia. “But in the end, they concluded that she was just another clueless American tourist. And then, when everyone realized that the bride was missing and got distracted, Alexandra grabbed the bicycle, limped it back to its owner as quickly as possible, and somehow made her way home through the souk. Without a map as well! As you can see, the Somersets were very resourceful girls.”

  Cornelia looked out the huge arched window and saw that it was getting late. Madame Desjardins would be expecting her soon for dinner. She didn’t want to leave, but on the other hand, she didn’t want to overstay her welcome.

  “I should probably go,” she said reluctantly, and slid off the bed. “It’s getting late.”

  “Oh, what a shame,” said Virginia coyly. “I was just getting to the best story. I suppose it can wait for some other time.”

  Cornelia stopped in her tracks. “What sort of story?” she asked.

  “A scary one this time,” said Virginia soberly. “But if you’re late for something, then go ahead.” She sighed and extended her hand out in front of her, admiring her ruby rings, and then slyly glanced at Cornelia.

  “I suppose I have time for just one more,” said Cornelia, looking meaningfully at her empty spot on the daybed.

  “Oh, good,” said Virginia. “I always love telling an old-fashioned, shivery ghost tale.”

  “The day started out innocently enough. The summertime sun beat down on Marrakech, and the four of us took refuge in a cool sitting room in our hidden house. The twins lay on opposite ends of a long couch and looked like damp mirror images of each other. Gladys sat near the window with her nose jammed in a guidebook about Morocco. I ran ice cubes across my forehead and counted the minutes until sunset.

  “‘It’s so scorching hot today that when I tried to paint outside this morning, the tubes melted,’ Beatrice told us for the third time that day.

  “‘Hmmm,’ said Gladys, not really paying attention.

  “‘Everything feels so drowsy,’ Beatrice complained. ‘Not even the dust is stirring outside.’

  “‘Mmm-hmmm,’ murmured Gladys, turning another page. Alexandra just nodded and fanned herself.

  “Gladys snapped her book shut. ‘It’s always hotter when you’re just lying around,’ she said. ‘Let’s take a trip. I’ve found someplace wonderful for us to go.’

  “‘Where, a beach?’ I asked hopefully. ‘An ancient shaded date grove?’

  “‘No—Meknes,’ Gladys answered.

  “‘Where?’ I asked. ‘What’s that?’

  “‘Meknes is a city, Virginia,’ Gladys said impatiently. ‘I just learned about it. Listen to this.’ She read aloud from her book:

  “‘About three hundred years ago, a cruel sultan named Moulay Ismail came into power. He had dozens of wives, and then he decided that in addition to those, he wanted to marry a French princess. But the French king at the time refused to give up one of his daughters, and this made the sultan cranky. So he decided to take revenge on the king. At that time, the French city of Versailles was one of the most spectacular cities in the world. So Moulay Ismail decided that he would embarrass the French king by building a city more spectacular than Versailles.’

  “‘And did he?’ asked Alexandra.

  “‘Well,’ said Gladys, ‘he made tens of thousands of workers and slaves work on the city for years and years. They built palaces and miles of walls and huge souks. But this book says that that ole Moulay didn’t even live to see it finished. And to top it all off, when he died, two clocks were hung near the entrance to his tomb. Gifts from the French king, which he’d sent instead of a French princess. That’s what I call poetic justice. Let’s go for the day. I’ll go tell Ahmed and Pierre.’ And she stomped out of the room.

  “A mere thirty minutes later, Alexandra, Beatrice, and I found ourselves wedged with Gladys into one of the cars along with a picnic basket, a camera, binoculars, and the guidebook. Ahmed and Pierre sat in the front seat, arguing over the maps and directions. My sisters and I wore our hats and white gloves to protect us from the harsh afternoon Moroccan sun. Only a few hardy souls meandered around on the streets of Marrakech as we drove out of the city.

  “We drove for hours before we reached the desert-like outskirts of Meknes. And let me tell you, Cornelia, it was no Versailles. Three centuries after Moulay Ismail was gone, his city was more like an old ruins. We parked our car near the town’s ramshackly old souk, mostly stalls filled with barrels of olives.

  “‘Come, come,’ Pierre said as we got out. ‘I will take you to one of the palaces.’ He flicked open one of the maps of the town center and traced over it with his finger. ‘Ah. Here is one. Follow me.’

  “The four of us followed him in a neat little line. Ahmed trailed behind, greeting the owners of the souk stalls as we went.

  “Soon we saw a huge fortress surrounded by a vast wall that seemed as tall as a skyscraper in New York City. The sun looked huge and pink as it sank toward the horizon, and our shadows made long, dramatic shapes on the ground. No other tourists loitered outside the wall with cameras, and no ticket sellers or tour guides approached us. We were all alone and the palace appeared empty.

  “Pierre shrugged. ‘Why don’t you go in and sneak a quick look,’ he said. ‘No one will notice. We will wait for you here and be the lookouts. You come out when it gets dark, which is soon.’ He glanced at the sky and lit a cigarette. Ahmed did the same.

  “‘Are you sure?’ asked Alexandra. ‘What happens if we get discovered inside without a ticket?’

  “‘They will think that you are a spy and then they hang you,’ Pierre said. He and Ahmed laughed. ‘Or the ghost of Moulay Ismail will come and make all four of you marry him.’ They laughed again.

  “Gladys had heard enough. She whipped out her guidebook and walked through the front entrance, a huge arch lined with beautiful patterned tiles. As usual, the other Somerset sisters followed her.

  “We walked through a huge outdoor courtyard, and then into a long cloistered hallway. The palace had been abandoned many years ago, and now it was deserted and almost completely silent, except for our footsteps and whispers. The light faded outside and the rooms and courtyards along the hallway grew grayer. All of the windows were glassless, so once in a while we could hear the melancholy evening wind blowing the dust around outside.

  “‘Look at the ceiling,’ Beatrice said softly, as though she were in a church. ‘That must have taken someone many years to do.’

  “The dome above our heads looked like a puzzle made of millions of assorted tiny colored tiles—all kinds of stars, shapes, and patterns. The ceiling and walls of the next room were covered in the same way. In the floor of each room lay an empty marble fountain, dry as a bone for generations. We must have walked through a hundred rooms like that, all of them echoing with eerie, vacant grandeur.

  “Finally, we wandered into a huge banquet hall.

  “‘Look at that!’ said Gladys, startling all of us. She pointed to a curious ancient wooden door in the back wall. Brass door rings as big as dinner plates hung on it, and an enormous rusty bolt ran across the middle. Gladys walked up to the door and examined her guidebook.

  “‘There should be a big courtyard with an orange grove behind this door,’ she concluded, squinting at the page in the dusky light.

  “‘We should go back,’ Alexandra said. ‘What if we get locked into this place by accident? They must close it at night. I mean, it might be empty, but it’s still a palace, after all.’ Beatrice and I agreed and turned around to leave.

  “‘You’re all acting like a bunch of old ladies,’ Gladys said with a scowl. ‘Did we com
e all this way for nothing? I want to see the orchard. It’ll only take a few minutes.’

  “She heaved the bolt on the door upward and it creaked open with a rusty groan. Gladys wiped her filthy hands on her skirt and leaned into the door with her shoulder. It grudgingly opened a crack.

  “‘Virginia,’ she said imploringly. ‘Help me open this.’ We pushed together and finally it opened far enough for us to squeeze through.

  “‘There’s the problem,’ Gladys said, pointing to a big rock on the other side of the door. She bent down and shoved the heavy stone backward. The door swung freely on its hinges now, and Beatrice and Alexandra followed us into the twilit courtyard. We could see the first stars coming out in the sky above us, but no moon.

  “Tall walls sealed in the yard, which was filled with long rows of small, gnarled orange trees. In the sunshine, you could have seen the trees’ bright green leaves and plump oranges, but at night, the trees looked metallic and sinister. Even though it had been a hundred degrees earlier in the day, a sudden chill swept over us.

  “Beatrice shivered. ‘They meant business when they made that outer wall,’ she said, nodding toward the back wall of the garden. ‘It’s so tall and it must be twenty feet thick—probably impossible to climb.’

  “‘I read that Sultan Moulay Ismail was infamous for his brutality to the slaves who built these walls and palaces,’ Gladys explained grimly. ‘When they died from being overworked, the sultan had their bodies thrown into the walls as building material.’

  “‘Gladys Somerset!’ Alexandra shrieked. ‘You’d better be making that up!’

  “‘No, I’m not!’ Gladys protested. ‘It says it right here, on Back Matter.’

  “‘I’m going back,’ I said. The very idea of a body-filled wall nauseated me.

  “Without warning, the door behind us slammed shut in the wind. I ran to it and gave it a yank, only to hear the ominous clang of the rusty lever falling down into place on the other side of the door, locking us in the courtyard.

  “Our only hope of getting out rested with Ahmed and Pierre, who hopefully would come looking for us now that it was getting dark. We decided that we couldn’t shout over the wall to them, since we probably weren’t supposed to be in the palace in the first place and didn’t want to attract attention. So we just sat there, huddled on the edge of a stone terrace, waiting and staring queasily at the far wall of the courtyard.

  “‘I wonder if it’s true about the wall,’ Beatrice said.

  “‘If it is,’ Gladys said, ‘then I bet that this is one of the most haunted places in Morocco.’

  “The trees swayed gloomily in another gust of wind. The hairs on my arms stood on end and I got goose bumps all over.

  “‘I wonder what a three-hundred-year-old ghost looks like,’ said Gladys. ‘And if it would like Americans. You never know in these parts.’

  “‘Be quiet, Gladys,’ we all said together.

  “‘I guess this is a bad time to tell you that the sultan would also cut off the heads of his stable hands once in a while,’ Gladys added. ‘I think the stable is just over that side wall there.’

  “‘Be quiet, Gladys!’ we shouted.”

  Before she could help herself, Cornelia let out a little yelp.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Virginia, startled.

  “I got goose bumps,” said Cornelia. “About the ghost wall.” All of the hair on her arms was standing up.

  “The atmosphere was portentous, I assure you,” said Virginia dramatically. This word meant “showing a sign of evil or calamity to come.”

  Cornelia understood perfectly and hugged a pillow to her stomach. “Go on,” she urged.

  “Well, by this time, darkness completely shrouded the courtyard and the stone terrace felt like ice underneath my bottom. I put my head down on my knees and wished that we were anyplace in the world besides this eerie graveyard.

  “Just then, a long light flickered across the terrace, coming from a slit between the door and the doorframe.

  “‘That’s got to be Pierre and Ahmed!’ Beatrice exclaimed.

  “A thin line of orange light illuminated her face as she leaned in to peer through the crack. Gladys was about to shout out to them when Beatrice looked back at us and made a quick slashing motion across her throat with her finger. We froze.

  “‘It’s not Ahmed and Pierre,’ she hissed. ‘There’re about five men, and they must be Moroccan soldiers. They do not look happy.’ She tiptoed over to us. ‘What if they think that we were trespassing and they’re looking for us—to arrest us?’

  “Gladys padded up to the crack and peeked through. ‘Now there are a lot of them,’ she whispered. ‘They’re definitely not soldiers. They look like servants from the old days, and they’re filling the room with torches. Ladies, these are ghosts. I’m sure of it.’

  “‘Ghosts?’ I whispered. ‘I don’t believe it!’ Alexandra’s and Beatrice’s faces went pale.

  “‘You’d believe it if you saw what I’m looking at,’ Gladys answered ominously. She watched for another minute. ‘Now they’re bringing in long tables and setting them up. Here come the chairs. And candles…and they are scattering rose petals everywhere. Can you believe it? What on earth is going on?’

  “The voices of dozens of men came from inside as they set up furniture in the fire-lit room. I nudged Gladys aside to peek into the room. Men wearing long white traditional robes brought musical instruments into the room and set up a small orchestra in the corner of the room. They looked pretty solid for ghosts, but I’d heard stories about real-looking phantoms before.

  “‘What are we going to do?’ I whispered to my sisters. We each took turns watching the preparations in the hall. Suddenly someone shouted something in Arabic inside and then the orchestra began to play. It was Gladys’s turn at the door, and she reached out and grabbed my arm.

  “‘It seems that some very important men just came in and sat at one of the tables,’ she whispered. ‘And one of them is dressed like an ancient sultan. He’s quite fat, if I do say so myself. I can’t see the other ones.’

  “I imagined Sultan Moulay Ismail presiding over a lavish feast three hundred years ago in that very room, attended by terrified servants. Was history being repeated before our very eyes?

  “‘I want to look,’ whispered Beatrice, giving Gladys a prod.

  “Gladys waved her away. ‘Now they’re bringing out huge silver platters of food,’ she told us. ‘Who ever thought that you could smell ghost food? But it looks good, whatever it is.’

  “‘Gladys, it’s my turn!’ whispered Beatrice indignantly.

  “Gladys didn’t budge. Beatrice stamped her foot and gave Gladys a little shove. Gladys stepped backward, but she had forgotten about the sullen rock that had held the door shut. She stumbled backward over it, lost her balance, and fell down noisily, letting out a resounding squawk.

  “The music stopped inside and footsteps thundered toward the door, followed by the sound of the rusty lever being pushed up. The door flew open, bathing us in light from inside the hall. Several Moroccan men stared out at us in great surprise. Gladys lay on the terrace with her skirt up around her waist. One of the men suppressed a laugh and rushed out to help her up. The others reached out and took us by the arms, pushing us into the banquet room. Everyone in the room stared at us. Gladys was right—the feast looked and smelled delicious, and my stomach ignored my fright and rumbled loudly.

  “The man who Gladys described as the sultan sat at a table. At his side sat several men wearing modern business suits, making this the most peculiar of ancient supernatural gatherings. One of them let out a gasp and stood up when he saw us.

  “‘What on earth!’ he exclaimed in English. ‘The Somerset girls! I absolutely don’t believe it! What in heaven’s name are you doing here?’

  “‘Mr. Plitt?’ Alexandra croaked. ‘What are you doing here?’”

  “Who?” shouted Cornelia, very excited by this time.

  “Mr. Edwi
n A. Plitt,” said Virginia matter-of-factly, as if Mr. Plitt’s appearance at this time made all the sense in the world. “He was a great friend of our father’s from New York. He was very short and as round and brown as a walnut, with a neatly cropped mustache shaped like an umbrella over his mouth.”

  “My sisters and I gaped in shock at Mr. Plitt, who proclaimed, ‘I am currently the American ambassador to Morocco, ladies. In fact, I saw your parents at a dinner party in New York about a month ago, and they told me that you were in the country. I promised them that I’d personally check in on you, and here you are! And you look…um…splendid!’ Which, as you can imagine, Cornelia, we did not.

  “‘But what in Sam Hill were you doing lurking about in the courtyard?’ he asked, and said hastily to a young man standing next to him, ‘Please explain to His Highness the sultan and his guards not to be alarmed, and that these ladies are in fine standing in New York.’ The translator relayed this message in Arabic to the sultan, who appeared to be very amused. Plump and relaxed as an old pillow, he still managed to look very regal.

  “‘We were just admiring the orange trees in the moonlight,’ Beatrice offered ridiculously.

  “‘I see,’ said the ambassador dubiously. ‘It is indeed a fine palace. His Highness Sultan Mohammed V has been kind enough to host me for dinner in this majestic but tormented shrine to Moroccan history. Your Highness, may I present the Ladies Somerset: Alexandra, Beatrice, Gladys, and Virginia. Such as they are.’

  “As we bowed to the sultan, he snapped his fingers, and suddenly four men carried another table and four chairs into the room.

  “The translator turned to us and said, ‘His Highness Sultan Mohammed V requests your presence at the feast which you see before you. He says that you seem like fine women of adventurous character.’

  “And with that, we found ourselves seated at an extravagant banquet with the royal ruler of Morocco. The music started again, and the men turned their attention to the food.