Court of Lions

by Jane Johnson

  She mused over the last one, draining the dregs of her third coffee. Then she left three messages on her sister’s voice mail, spelling out names and places, closed out of the computer, took her tray to the counter and marched purposefully up to the Alhambra. Her conservator pass saw her quickly through the crowds of tourists: she felt guilty about that too. The sun beat on her back as she made her way to the Tower of the Captive. The cords were still in place, but Kate ducked under them and marched right in. There they were, Omar and Abdou, bent over a section of tiling in the far corner, their heads almost touching: one man’s hair grizzled almost to white, the other’s close-cropped and as black as a crow’s wing.

  “Salaam!” she called out, and they both turned. Her disappointment felt physical. “Oh. I was looking for Abdou.”

  Omar came hurrying over, wiping his hands on his overalls. “Sorry. Is not here today. Can I help you?” The lad who was not Abdou sat back on his haunches, watching them curiously, his feet splayed, his spine straight: the posture patient men of this culture had adopted since ancient times, which modern people could never comfortably achieve even after years of earnest yoga and Pilates.

  Kate managed a smile. “No, it’s fine, Omar. It can wait. Will he be working tomorrow?”

  He shook his head.

  “The next day?”

  “The next day Friday.”

  Omar laughed. He said something to the lad, and he started to laugh too. Kate looked from one to the other. Were they joking about her desperation to see a man she’d only met twice? She waited, her smile becoming a rictus. At last the older man took pity on her.

  “Friday’s when Abdou make couscous. It’s a ritual. Some for us, some for the djinn, eh, Mohamed?”

  Mohamed grinned and got to his feet. “Nice to meet you—” he walked over to read her badge “—Señora Fordham.” They shook hands.

  “Señorita,” Kate corrected. “Miss Fordham.” How she wished she could wind back time to a place when that was true, when she hadn’t become Mrs. Foxley. Why had she taken James’s name?

  “Miss…Ford-ham?”

  She blinked. “Sorry. Miles away. What did you say your name was?”

  “Mohamed—I am Omar’s son.”

  Memory connected with a flash of insight. “Oh, the zellij expert from Fez?”

  His grin widened even more and he gave her a courtly bow, his hand on his heart. “Yes, madam. I am flattered that my reputation has travelled so far,” he said in excellent English.

  “Abdou told me about you. Or was it Abdelkarim?” She watched his reaction to the name that had been used at the Nest of Storks, but he just looked slightly puzzled.

  “Come back here on Friday, Miss Fordham. You will see why my cousin’s couscous is famous.”

  “I…uh…okay. Is Abdou a shortening of Abdelkarim?”

  Mohamed again looked puzzled, perhaps by her choice of words. “Everyone has more than one name, no? People often call me ‘Momo.’”

  Different names for different facets. Even plants had their common names and their Latin names. It was the same with people. Then it struck her: maybe Michelle Englefield had not become “Mrs. Foxley” after all; maybe she had kept her maiden name all along. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Because James had been so insistent that Kate take his name when they’d married, that was why: perhaps because his first wife had refused to do so.

  But if this was the case, and Michelle Englefield was still alive and well and maintaining her cheery Facebook page, what on earth was going on?

  Kate hurried away, with a promise to return to try the famous couscous. On the way back down through the Pomegranate Gate she punched Jess’s number into her mobile phone and waited impatiently as the international code took its time to connect—and went to voice mail yet again. Kate felt like screaming but left a long message.

  The next day she received a text message, in the usual code:

  YOU WERE RIGHT. AND THAT’S NOT ALL.

  Her heart felt light and fiery, ablaze with sudden hope and fear in equal measure.

  19

  Kate crossed a small paved square studded with pollarded trees, where children played on scooters and bicycles and two old men sat on a concrete bench, the smoke from their cigarillos spiralling into the greying twilight, and turned into one of the narrow streets leading off it. From the outside the house looked like nothing special at all: plain whitewash peeling away from old stucco; blue paint flaked off the wood of a wide door set with big flathead nails. On the wall across the alleyway someone had daubed a large graffiti tag, followed by the same odd little stick figure she’d seen outside the Nest of Storks. Kate had no idea what it meant, or indeed if it meant anything at all. A little nervous, she banged the round iron knocker against its striking plate and waited, feeling a chill in the air. A moment later the door cracked open a fraction and a long-lashed eye peered out at her.

  Kate smiled uncertainly. “I’m Kate Fordham,” she said in careful Spanish. “Khadija invited me to supper.”

  “Marhaban.”

  It seemed to be some sort of greeting: the intonation of the speaker—a woman, young and definitely not the professor—did not rise. The door moved back to allow her inside.

  “Come with me,” the speaker said, and led her around a bend in the corridor. Quite unexpectedly, the house offered up its secret heart. In front of her lay a small, arcaded courtyard, its balconied upper storey draped in tumbles of bright bougainvillea. In the centre a fountain gently dropped water into the crossing of four tiled channels. Fretted iron lanterns scattered golden light across the paving stones and gilded the water so that it seemed the courtyard ran with rills of liquid fire.

  In the farthest corner a low round table surrounded by cushions had been spread with an embroidered cloth upon which glasses gleamed, their bowls catching and reflecting the light from half a dozen candles on silver-etched stands.

  “Oh,” sighed Kate. It was like walking back in time, like entering a tiny private palace in which a feast lay prepared for a visiting princess.

  “Beautiful, no?” asked the girl who had led her here.

  “Beautiful,” Kate agreed, though the word could not do justice to the enchantment of the scene.

  “I am Fatima,” said the girl, and held out her hand. It was small and smooth, covered with a complex orange-brown pattern of curlicues and flowers.

  “Is that henna?” Kate asked.

  The girl smiled shyly. “I am betrothed.”

  Charmed by this old-fashioned word, Kate was about to ask more, when Khadija swept into view, carrying a large water jug in one hand and an open bottle of wine in the other. She bore down upon the guest and embraced her, the jug and bottle chinking as they met behind Kate’s back. “Welcome, Kate. I’m so glad you could be here. Take a seat— no, first come and meet Brahim and Salka, see what happens in a Berber kitchen out of sight of the guests!” She deposited the water and wine on the table, caught Kate by the hand and towed her through the courtyard and between the pillars of the far arcade, into a long kitchen wreathed in perfumed vapour. In the midst of this, a large man in a brown cotton robe bent over a huge clay pot on a roaring gas ring, prodding its contents and muttering. Beyond him a young woman in a red-and-gold head scarf and dangling earrings shelled boiled eggs with an expert crack and flick, all the while chattering away in what Kate took to be the language of the Free People.

  At her appearance, Brahim stepped away from the gas ring and unceremoniously kissed her on one cheek, then the other, then the first cheek, until Kate, confused, moved the wrong way and they banged heads. They both burst out laughing, and any nervous tension Kate had felt about entering this unfamiliar environment evaporated.

  “And this is Salka.”

  The red-scarfed woman looked at Kate and a secretive expression passed across her face.

  “Hello,” Kate said, holding out a hand as Fatima had done. But instead of replying in Spanish and taking her hand as the other young woman had done, Sal
ka just bobbed her head and said quietly, “La bes.” Then she glided past Kate with a toss of the head that set her extravagant earrings tinkling, giving the Englishwoman the sense that she was an interloper into this private world and that one person at least resented her presence.

  Khadija’s brow furrowed as she watched Salka leave the kitchen, but when she turned back to Kate, she appeared quite serene. “Come, help me with the bread.”

  At the table, Kate found herself flanked by Salka and Fatima. Brahim, his big face wreathed in smiles, removed the lid from the clay pot with a flourish, like a magician performing his pièce de resistance. Steam billowed out, engulfing Kate in a wonderful scent. She leaned in under the spice cloud to gaze at the dish that had been revealed in all its scarlet-and-ochre wonder.

  “Lamb tagine,” Khadija pronounced. “A classic Berber dish, but with a few Andalusian additions.”

  She handed Kate a plate and cutlery, then dealt out heaped spoonfuls till Kate had to protest about the limits of her appetite. She was, she noticed, the only one thus honoured: all the others used their flatbreads and fingers to delve into the tagine, selecting their mouthfuls deftly and without spilling a morsel. A neat trick if you could manage it, but she was glad to have her spoon and fork. Among the tomatoes, peppers and onions and the browned chunks of lamb, Kate found garbanzo beans, apricots, almonds and the hard-boiled eggs Salka had been shelling. The spices were less easy to identify. Chili seared along her tongue, but its edge had been gentled with cumin and something sweeter—not cinnamon, but something similar that held a faint taste of flowers and honey. And was that saffron that gave the onions their golden glow? After the third mouthful, she found she was no longer assessing the food but merely scooping it up and savouring it in a sort of dream. Opposite her, the man of the house lazed on his cushions like an Ottoman sultan, beaming at his harem as they enjoyed the exotic stew, which hardly seemed to diminish despite their best efforts.

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  Shocked out of her haze of pleasure, Kate swallowed too fast the mouthful she had been contemplatively chewing and burst into a mortifying, eye-watering round of spluttering. Several solicitous back pats and a glass of water later, she wiped her eyes and through teary vision made out the face of the late arrival: the zellij worker, stealer of fragments and hearts, grinning as he held out a paper napkin to her.

  By the time Kate had dabbed her eyes dry and drunk the rest of the water to control her coughing fit, Abdou had seated himself beside Brahim and was digging into the clay pot with gusto, between mouthfuls throwing into the conversation noisy bursts of foreign words that had both Fatima and Salka shrieking with laughter. He looked mightily at home, she thought, caught somewhere between admiration and jealousy. Whatever was he doing here, appearing unannounced and apparently uninvited and helping himself to dinner without a care in the world? It was only when his gold-lit eyes met hers with the lambent insouciance of a cat that she realized she had been staring at him the whole time.

  “Hello again, Kate,” he said, in English.

  “Hello.” She tried for calm aloofness and poise, and failed, as something inside her had swelled hot and unhelpful. “You disappeared rather rapidly the other night.”

  “I’m sorry. The police…”

  He gave a small shrug that could have meant any number of things: it’s not important; you know how it is; who wants to stay to talk to the cops?

  “Yes,” Kate said, still in English, “the police. They arrested me, you know.”

  “Arrested you?” That cut through his charming ease. “What did they charge you with?”

  “Well, okay, they detained me. For hours. I had to call Khadija in the end, to come and vouch for me.”

  Abdou winced. He shot a look at the professor, who all this time had been watching the pair of them with interest. “Sorry, Mother,” he said, in Spanish.

  Mother? Kate glanced from Abdou to Khadija and back again. There was no mistaking the resemblance, she saw now, if you sought it. Khadija’s face was thinner and more lined, but the pair shared the same straight nose and high cheekbones, the same set to the mouth. Why hadn’t she seen it before?

  “You never should have invited Kate to the Nest of Storks. What must she think of us?” Khadija shook her head.

  Salka gave Kate a narrow look. Then she said something to Abdou in their shared language that made him hit the table with an open hand so that the water shook in the glasses. There followed what appeared to be an angry exchange between the two: but perhaps it wasn’t, for a moment later the pair broke into a gale of laughter. Kate watched, appalled, confused, fascinated, shut out. She tried to detect similarities in Salka’s appearance that might denote kinship, but really, Abdou and Salka didn’t resemble each other much at all, which was disturbing. Did he wear a ring? She had not noticed one, but she stole a glance at his hands now. No ring. But that didn’t necessarily mean he was not married: a lot of men didn’t wear a wedding ring. Then, with a sinking feeling, she found herself checking Fatima’s hennaed hands. When she looked up again, it was to meet the girl’s dark, kohl-edged eyes. “When are you getting married?” she asked, forcing a smile.

  “Oh, not for a long time,” Fatima said, blushing. “We are saving for a house.”

  “What does your fiancé do?” Kate inquired, dreading the answer.

  “He’s working in Marrakech as a tour guide. I haven’t seen him since March,” she replied mournfully.

  Kate’s heart lifted. “That must be hard for both of you,” she said more gaily than the response required.

  “It is, but he will visit soon, alhamdulillah.”

  “And you, Kate,” Salka interjected. “Are you married or engaged?”

  Was that a spiteful light Kate detected in her eye? “Are you?”

  “Not yet.” A smug smile.

  Avoiding an answer to Salka’s question, Kate turned a shoulder to her. “So, Abdou, tell me why you ran off and left me in that place. It wasn’t very gallant.”

  He had the grace to appear sheepish. “Force of habit. In our community you don’t welcome police attention. Give them half a chance to accuse you of something and they’ll find a way to make out you’re some sort of drug dealer or terrorist—or both.”

  “I hope you’re neither.”

  He grinned. “I may be many things, but neither of those.”

  “Just a thief, then.”

  “What?”

  They all looked at Kate, but she ignored them, enjoying the flicker of shock in Abdou’s widened eyes. “Oh, that,” he said at last.

  “And what would ‘that’ be, my lad?” asked Brahim, straightening up on his cushions.

  “Nothing important,” Abdou assured him. “Really.”

  There was a subtext here, Kate realized. Secrecy and things unsaid drew a tight line between her and the zellij worker. It should have been thrilling, but it made her uncomfortable. “It might be important,” she persisted.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Abdou said in a tone that brooked no discussion.

  It was past eleven by the time the meal came to a lazy end with an assortment of fresh fruit from the market, and creamy homemade yogourt, and glass upon glass of mint tea accompanied by little pastries that tasted of almond and orange and honey. These were arrayed on the plate in such an intricate way that Kate was suddenly struck by their likeness to Moroccan tiles. There were crescents and stars, tiny squares and hexagons. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “They’re exquisite! Just like zellij!”

  “You are kind.” Brahim beamed. “Even now that I am retired I cannot help but return to my old trade.”

  “You made these?” Kate was amazed. She thought of her own father, shooing away the acrid smoke caused by setting fire to the sausages he had left too long under the grill in an ill-fated attempt to feed his family.

  “Once a tile maker always a tile maker, eh, Papa?”

  “As a master zellij worker, Abdou has not yet felt the need to turn his hand to pastries,
” Brahim said, giving his son’s head a gentle push with the flat of his hand.

  It was such a gesture of affection that Kate felt her heart clench. She should be with Luke, giving him the warmth and stability of a loving home, not leaving him in the hands of her sister, no matter how much Jess cared for the boy. One guilt slid into another as Kate realized that in all these hours—this lacuna of joyful hedonism—she had not even thought to check her phone. While father and son joked together about Abdou’s failings in the kitchen, she snuck a look at her mobile. No message, no emails, no missed calls. Nothing. The absence left a hole inside her, a small pit of anxiety. Well, it was too late to call her sister now. She’d try again in the morning.

  When the table was cleared and Khadija, Fatima and Salka were in the kitchen with Brahim, washing and drying the glasses (Kate having been firmly told her help was not required), she found herself alone with Abdou, who leaned suddenly across the table and ran a finger across her forearm. A shock of electricity thrilled through her at his touch, making her head so woozy that he was forced to repeat his question.

  “What gave you these scars, Kate?”

  Mortified, she pulled her sleeve down to cover the marks of her self-harm. “Oh, it was nothing.”

  “‘Nothing’ like the scraps of paper?”

  “Touché. Why wouldn’t you talk about them in front of your family?” She paused. “Are they all your family?”

  The dark eyes became golden crescents of mischief. “Maybe.”

  Kate pressed her lips together to prevent a more direct question escaping. “Fatima seems lovely,” she said at last.

  “She is indeed lovely.” He watched her mercilessly. “But by omission, Salka is not?”

  You’re digging yourself a hole. “Salka is lovely too,” Kate lied.

  “You know she is not. My cousin is descarada.”