‘What was the point of bringing me to Morocco?’ I asked one day when we were alone in the house together. ‘I don’t do anything here that I couldn’t do just as easily in Edinburgh. It’s stupid, it’s just a waste of time.’
‘Don’t call it that,’ he said. ‘I never waste time, least of all my own.’
‘It isn’t your time I’m talking about. You do what you want, see whom you want to see. All I do is sit here and read, or practise verbs with Mohammed.’
‘I told you when we started: you are here to observe and to listen.’
‘Observe what?’ I asked. ‘Listen to what? Old men grunting at one another? Old women sniffing cocaine?’
‘If I told you in advance, you would see and hear nothing. You must use your own eyes and ears.’
‘On what? All I ever meet are the old people who come here every night. They don’t even speak to me. They couldn’t care less about me.’
He smiled and shook his head.
‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘they care about you very much. And don’t you think they are worth observing, worth listening to?’
‘When we came here, you said you spent your summers with holy men, men with access to ancient wisdom. I didn’t expect to waste my time with a bunch of dried-up old socialites reminiscing about Barbara Hutton and her parties.’
His face suddenly grew serious.
‘Take care what you say,’ he warned me. ‘Take great care. And never say such a thing in front of any of them. Since you are new to such matters, you can be forgiven. But watch and listen with great attention. Some of them are holy people, even if they do not seem it. They have wisdom you can only dream of. Not all of them, to be sure – but it is for you to see who has mastery, and who has not.’
I said nothing more after that, but I started to watch Villiers and his guests more closely. The more I observed, the more I grew aware of gradations of difference between them. Some seemed to be peripheral to whatever was really going on, others to be part of an inner circle whose secrets were privy only to one another. Before long, I noticed that the centre of this circle was not, as I might at first have thought, Villiers himself, but a Frenchman, introduced to me as the Comte d’Hervilly. I now began to watch the count more closely than the others, to listen when he was talking. Generally, he spoke in French, distinctly enough to allow me to grasp part of what he said.
He was a man in his late sixties, yet by no means weakened with age. Well dressed and elegant almost to the point of affectation, he nevertheless seemed unaware or uncaring of his own physical refinement. I never saw him wear the same suit of clothes twice, yet the changes he made in cut or colour were always subtle. He would wear a flower in his buttonhole, a white or a red rose, and it would stay fresh from the beginning to the end of a long, sultry evening.
One evening, on the point of making his departure, he came across to me and asked me to join him for lunch on the following day.
‘You have been much neglected,’ he said. ‘It is time we remedied that. Come to me at one o’clock. Duncan will tell you where to find my house. But be sure to come alone.’
Later that night, I heard what I took to be feet just outside my room. Thinking it might be Duncan, I went to the door and opened it. There was no one on the landing, but I thought I heard someone creeping away towards the stairs. Duncan had mentioned that there were burglars working in the medina, that residents were taking greater care than usual. I slipped out after the intruder.
When I reached the turn of the corridor, I was able to see down through a latticed window straight onto the courtyard, round which the house was built. The moon was almost directly overhead, its light slick on the little fishpond in the centre of the sahn. I looked down, knowing this to be the only way out of the house. After the darkness in my room, the light was almost dazzling. It fell crookedly across a floor of wet tiles, blue and white rectangles laid in an intricate geometric pattern that seemed to move. As I watched, I saw a figure emerge from the house door. It was dressed in a dark-coloured jellaba, black or dark brown, with the wide hood drawn up over its head.
I opened my mouth to shout, to challenge the figure below, but my throat was dry, and words would not come. For some reason, I felt terribly afraid. I continued standing there, my lips open, my tongue wooden, watching as the hooded figure stopped, then turned and looked upwards in my direction. If it had a face, it was locked in deep shadow. I ducked aside, hiding behind the wall for several heartbeats. When I summoned the courage to look again, the courtyard was empty. A fish moved in the pool and grew still. The wet tiles lay cold in the moonlight. There was no sign that feet had passed across them moments earlier.
TEN
I said nothing the next morning about the supposed intruder, and no one said a word over breakfast about a burglary. I knew next to nothing about Villiers and his household: furtive as the hooded man’s behaviour had seemed, he may very well have been involved in some business that Villiers would prefer to have kept quiet.
After my morning lesson with Mohammed, I headed on foot for the exclusive Marshan quarter on its hill overlooking the sea. D’Hervilly’s villa was set behind tall white walls, heavy with scented jasmine. A green gate opened to reveal a stepped courtyard, pools and trees. I was led through cool shuttered rooms to a roof terrace covered in potted flowers and shrubs. D’Hervilly was seated at a table laid for lunch. Glass and silver caught the high Mediterranean light. My host was dressed in white, and his silver hair seemed part of the setting. Beyond him, I could see the city tumbling chaotically to the harbour, and the blue sea behind, flecked with gold and studded with red- and white-sailed boats.
‘Sit down, Mr Macleod. Please make yourself at home. I am glad to have this opportunity to talk with you alone. Take off that wretched hat, the umbrella will give us more than enough shade.’
We dined on bream fresh from the harbour, washed down with a bottle of Oustalet, the best of the local white wines. The sweet was a mint soufflé, and there were chocolates from Debauve & Gallais in Paris. D’Hervilly said that his cook was reputed to be the finest in Tangier, and that the king had once tried to steal him from him. He was not boasting, it was a mere statement of fact, as normal to him as being able to read or write.
We sat afterwards in a shaded room hung with carpets, drinking coffee.
‘This house is built on the most ancient site in Tangier,’ d’Hervilly said.
‘Roman?’ I asked.
He shook his head.
‘No, before that. Before the Carthaginians, before the Phoenicians. It may be as old as the second millennium BC. The first inhabitants of Tangier built a temple here. There are still some remains – I will show them to you before you leave. But you must promise to speak of it to no one. Its existence has only ever been revealed to a few people. The archaeologists would go crazy if they knew of it; there would be compulsory purchase orders, God knows what. I would certainly lose this house.’
‘Is that why you bought it? To have the temple.’
He nodded once.
‘Of course. Houses are very ordinary things, even ones as beautiful as this. But such temples are a rarity. They are an opportunity to touch the past, to come face to face with ancient wisdom, not as we would like it to have been, but as it truly was. Duncan tells me you have spent time with the Fraternity of the Old Path. What do you think of them? You may be frank with me.’
I told him what I thought, and he listened, smiling, but without condescension.
‘Yes,’ he said when I came to an end. ‘You are perfectly right. They understand the need for ancient wisdom, but they do not know how to come by it. And if they found real knowledge, they would have no idea what to do with it. You are extremely fortunate to have met Duncan. He is not like them, he belongs in a different league entirely. I hope you understand that.’
‘Yes, I do,’ I said, meaning it. ‘I owe everything to him.’
‘By the time he has finished, you will owe him much more than you
can possibly imagine. I knew his father. And my father and his grandfather were close friends. Did he tell you that?’
I shook my head. Three generations, on one side at least. It was quite remarkable.
‘He tells me many things,’ d’Hervilly continued. ‘For example, he says that you are unhappy here.’
I shifted in my chair, embarrassed, not knowing what exactly Duncan had told him. I repeated a little of what I had said to Duncan, somewhat watered down.
‘You are not entirely wrong. Some of Villiers’s friends are quite superficial. But we endure them for reasons you could not yet understand. Nonetheless, I advise you to stay with Duncan at all costs. His journey here has just begun. You will be changed by the time it finishes. I assure you. I know he has great plans for you. Very great plans.’
We talked after that of what I had read and what I planned still to read, and to Duncan’s advice d’Hervilly added some suggestions of his own. He had spent time with Jewish rabbis in nearby Chechaouene, a Rifian town some one hundred kilometres south-east of Tangier. The Jews there – now all vanished, mostly to Israel – had been the descendants of refugees from the Spanish Inquisition and spoke an early form of Castilian long extinct in Spain itself. From them, d’Hervilly had acquired information long thought lost, the key to innumerable Kabbalistic texts.
‘When you are ready,’ he said, ‘Duncan will send you back to me. I shall introduce you to matters of which even he is ignorant. It will not be next year, it may not be for another ten. But rest assured that the time will come. Now,’ he glanced at a small clock near the door, ‘let me show you our little temple.’
It was no more than a tiny, low-ceilinged chamber, cut from solid rock, and located beneath the floor of d’Hervilly’s cellar. Although the house itself was cool, the moment I stepped down the ladder into the temple, I felt as if a very ancient and inhuman cold had entered me.
D’Hervilly switched on an overhead lamp that shed a cheerless yellow light on the bare rock. The cold seemed to deepen, to penetrate more sharply beneath the skin. On one wall, a tall figure had been carved in the rock, a ram bearing a solar disc between its horns. At its feet, a man stood over the prostrate figure of a victim. On the floor, directly underneath the carving, stood a rough block of stone, perhaps a piece of the same rock that had been quarried to create the temple.
As I stood there shivering, I felt wave after wave of depression pass over me. I remembered Catriona’s death as though it had just been yesterday. As time passed, the little room filled with other, darker sensations, ugly and uncompromising, as though, in the deepest antiquity, fear and loathing and brutality had been laid down there for all time. Then, underneath all that, I became aware of another sensation, a conviction that I was in the presence of something wholly evil, something darker and older than the earth itself.
I turned to see d’Hervilly watching me intently.
‘You feel it?’ he asked.
‘It’s . . . horrible,’ I said. I felt as though I wanted to be sick.
‘Come back upstairs,’ he said. ‘You are not ready for this yet.’
Back in the cellar, d’Hervilly shut the trapdoor that led to the temple.
‘You will return here,’ he said. ‘When you are stronger, when you understand more. What you experienced today were the feelings of the victims who died here. The chamber is full of their pain, and if that is what you are attuned to, that is what you will experience. But in time you will see that there are other sensations, and when you are old enough and wise enough, you will be able to share them as well. Feelings of mastery, feelings of deep joy.’
We went upstairs to a room overlooking the sea.
‘What did you feel exactly?’ asked d’Hervilly. ‘It is best to explain, to bring it into the light.’
I told him what I could, finding it hard to put what I had felt into words, however simple.
‘The worst thing was the very beginning,’ I said. ‘I remembered someone I once knew, someone who’s dead, and it was as if I were reliving her death. It was as fresh as if it had happened yesterday.’
‘That is not uncommon,’ he said. ‘The room seeks out our griefs and uses them to construct its own sensations in our minds. The first step in overpowering it is to gain control over our own feelings.’ He paused. ‘The person you told me about was Catriona, is that right?’
‘Yes. How did you know?’
‘Duncan told me about her, about how badly her death affected you. I am sorry. Duncan says she was very beautiful.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And very kind, and very funny. I miss her very much.’
‘That is natural. Do you have a photograph of her?’
I took one from my pocket and passed it to him. As he took it he smiled. I saw his finger move in the same circular motion that had been described by Duncan’s, as though encircling Catriona’s face; and he too whispered something inaudible beneath his breath.
‘Is this the only one you have?’he asked.
I shook my head.
‘No, I have several. I seldom look at them. But I like to have some with me.’
‘May I keep this? To help me remember your grief.’
I hesitated. I had given the photograph of Catriona’s grave freely to Duncan, since I considered him a friend. But d’Hervilly was a comparative stranger. On the other hand, he had just entertained me lavishly and spoken of further visits. He would not be a man to cross lightly.
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘If you would like it.’
‘I would like it very much. Duncan was not mistaken. She was beautiful. At my age, it is good to be reminded of beauty.’
* * *
I left him shortly after that, walking back towards the medina in light that was losing its earlier strength. The air was still warm, but I could feel a freshness in the wind coming from the sea. I was too confused and full of thoughts to want to go straight back to Villiers. Instead, I headed into town, wandering past shops and cafés in the hope of distraction. At the end of Boulevard Pasteur, I saw a sign for the main post office, and this reminded me that I had told the secretary of the department back in Edinburgh that, should they need to get in touch with me, I might be contacted at the Poste Restante in Tangier.
I had a long wait in a queue that seemed frozen by the malign magic of Moroccan bureaucratic inertia. In the end, after many spellings and respellings of my name, I was handed a small pack of letters. There were two from the university, with forms I had to sign, one from New College, saying my services would not be required for the seminar course beginning in the autumn, and one from Harriet Gillespie.
There was a bar a few doors away on Mohammed V. When I had ordered a Pastis, I sat down to read Harriet’s letter. It was written in a small, hurried hand, the letters well spaced, but somehow carelessly set down, as though time or anxiety pressed her to write without her usual attentiveness.
Iain is ill, she wrote. He’s asked me to write to you, though it isn’t easy. Our last meeting wasn’t very happy, was it? Maybe the next will be better. But I don’t know, I don’t know if we should meet again. And I think, I fear Iain may be dying.
He fell ill a few days after visiting you. It was nothing at first, just a cold that wouldn’t leave him. Some weeks after that, he had a fever that lasted for over ten days. He recovered and went back to work, but early in June he grew frettish and his behaviour changed. He was cold towards me, something he’d never been. The illness returned, worse than before, with frequent headaches.
The doctors say they don’t understand what’s wrong. Iain’s symptoms don’t correspond to anything they’re familiar with, their tests show nothing conclusive, their drugs have no effect. He’s been in and out of hospital several times now, with no result.
Sometimes the fever passes and he’s clear-headed for a day or two. Then the headaches start again, and he has hallucinations. They’re very like the ones you told us about, the ones you had last year. Last night, he told me he saw a hooded man in his drea
ms, in a long, dark street with many voices. Does that mean anything to you?
He wants you to see him. I’ve told him you’re abroad, that you aren’t expected back until the end of the summer, and that you may not be contactable; but he insists I try to reach you. There’s something he wants to tell you, he won’t say what it is. I think he’s afraid for you, I think there’s something he knows about Mylne.
Andrew, I don’t want Iain excited, and I think seeing you would disturb him; but he gets anxious and frets terribly if I try to put off writing. So here’s the letter, if it ever reaches you. Come if you can, and if you can’t, write. A letter from you might help settle his mind. If you’ve broken with Mylne, please tell him so, for I think that’s who he fears above all else. No, that’s not quite right. There’s someone else, an associate of Mylne’s, someone Iain wants to warn you about. He says there are things you have to know before it’s too late.
She had started to write something else here, but had scratched it out and begun over again, perhaps after a little time had passed. Her handwriting was shakier than before.
Last night there was something waiting at the foot of the stairs. I don’t know what it was or when it will come again. But all the time it waited, Iain’s fever was high, and when he regained consciousness he asked if it was still there. I didn’t see it, but I heard it.
Come if you can, but be quick about it. He’s growing weaker every day. I think he cannot have long left if you do not come and reassure him that all is well.
Harriet
ELEVEN
We set off for Fez the following morning. I had come too far to turn back now; and, frankly, I was afraid of what Duncan might do were I to tell him that, instead of continuing with him as arranged, I had to rush to a friend’s bedside. I reasoned with myself that Harriet must be exaggerating, that Iain could not be that ill, that Edinburgh had some of the best medical facilities in Europe, that there was plenty of time. The best thing would be to write or phone once I got to Fez.
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