The Saracen's Mark

by S. W. Perry

  As Bianca reaches her door, a young lad pushes forward, drawing angry looks from the waiting customers. Simply dressed in woollen hose, jerkin and apprentice’s cap, he seems to think himself more important than he has a right to. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Jenny Solver asks petulantly. ‘Wait your turn, like the rest of us.’

  Ignoring her, he presses a folded paper into Bianca’s hand and disappears in the direction of the bridge.

  It is only when she has closed the shop again – an hour after nightfall, when the last customer has been served – that Bianca has the opportunity to study the message.

  She’d assumed it was a prescription, perhaps from one of the barber-surgeons at St Thomas’s hospital for the poor. But it isn’t. It’s a letter from Reynard Gault, written in a sweeping hand as ostentatious as the man himself – so much so that the lines have to curve downwards at the end to prevent themselves tumbling off the page:

  To Mistress Merton, my greetings and most respectful compliments. Mindful of your undoubted skill at physic, coupled with the mercy Almighty God has shown unto you of late, I desire you to repair to my house on Giltspur Street at Smithfield, at your earliest convenience. I find myself in need of your competence, to protect myself and my interests from this present dreadful winnowing. In addition, I have a confidence to impart that may be advantageous to you.

  Your True Friend whilst I breathe,

  Rynd Gault

  She reads it three times, gaining much pleasure from the fact that the popinjay who’d had the gall to imply to her face that she was a charlatan now has need of her. But when she lays the letter aside, she’s still none the wiser. What confidence could he possibly have to share with her that would be to her advantage?

  Unless, of course, he knows more about why Robert Cecil sent Nicholas to Morocco than he’s admitting.

  Or he’s suddenly and uncharacteristically found the need to unburden himself of the sin of lying – about knowing Solomon Mandel.

  25

  The Bab Doukkala. Hadir gives Nicholas the name so quickly he can barely catch it.

  It is unlike any city gate he has ever seen: a concentric nest of archways decorated in arabesque carvings and tiled in vivid colours: blues as brilliant as the sky and yellows as fiery as the sun, interlaced with weaving threads of silver. On either side, two forbidding towers of red mortar command the approach. From the battlements, bored sentries look down upon a throng of tradesmen, farmers, potters, weavers, spice merchants, all touting for business as vocally as any at St Saviour’s market on Bankside.

  Bringing the camels to a halt, Hadir calls a friendly greeting to a guard in a chainmail apron and a conical helmet wrapped in white cloth, who shelters from the sun in the shadow of the gateway. He has a wickedly curving scimitar at his belt, and a matchlock considerably newer than Izîl’s over his shoulder. The two exchange what Nicholas takes to be pleasantries, delivered at the same impenetrable speed. As Hadir speaks, the guard studies Nicholas in frank disbelief. Then he shrugs, dispatches a boy squatting in the shade of the left-hand tower to carry the news of their arrival to some destination unknown and, with a private joke to Hadir and a final shake of his head, nods them on their way into the city.

  ‘He said England must be a poor land if their envoys look so unremarkable,’ Hadir tells Nicholas cheerfully. ‘When the sultan sends an ambassador, he sends him robed in silk and bedecked with jewels, bearing a whole caravan of gifts.’

  Nicholas gives Hadir a tight smile to show he’s not offended. ‘My queen would rather spend her coin on fighting enemies,’ he says, in what he hopes is a suitably imperial tone. ‘And if there’s any flattery to be dealt, she prefers it to be imported.’

  In a garden shaded by the towering red city walls the camels fold themselves onto their knees like discarded empty wineskins. As his mount sinks beneath him, Nicholas tries to remember what he’s learned in the past three days. Hadir has told him that Christians are only allowed into the city by the express permission of Sultan al-Mansur; they must live together in a quarter named the Aduana; the Jews reside in the el-Mellah district to the east of the sultan’s great palace, where they help the cogs of trade between Christian and Moor turn with as little friction as possible; and each community is allowed to practise its own faith and custom in peace. But Hadir has not managed to teach Nicholas how to dismount from a camel with any semblance of dignity.

  As if to rub salt in the wound, he spots in the corner of the garden a clutch of women regarding him with amused interest. They are clad in brightly dyed gowns and headdresses adorned with long ribbons studded with metal discs that flare in the sunlight. One of them, younger than the others, stabs an elbow into a neighbour’s side and the two women laugh conspiratorially. It makes him think of how Bianca and Rose like to prick his occasional lapses into pomposity.

  He makes the best fist of it that he can, trying not to wince as the muscles in his thighs protest when he swings his right leg over the pommel and slides off like someone slipping down a muddy bank.

  A man of Izîl’s age appears, armed not with an ancient matchlock but a round silver tray, on which stands an array of glass cups and a jug with an intricately etched lid. He lifts the jug and, from shoulder-height, pours a stream of dark liquid into the cups without splashing a drop.

  ‘It is atay,’ Hadir tells him. ‘The leaves come from China. The sugar and the mint are ours. The result is from heaven.’ He lifts his glass. ‘You must drink thrice while the leaves brew. The first drink will be as sweet as life. The second as strong as love. And the third as bitter as death. Is custom!’

  Grateful to have his thirst quenched, Nicholas drinks. The atay is sweet and fragrant. Piping hot and deliciously refreshing, it has the aromatic tang of mint.

  Over the rim of his cup, he sees Hadir watching him. His expression keeps shifting between pride and expectation. But the eyes, wide and brown, brim with a hope forged in the furnace of disappointment.

  ‘What is it, Hadir? Is something wrong?’

  Hadir shuffles on his haunches. ‘Is a long way from Safi to Marrakech,’ he says, as though the thought has only this minute occurred to him.

  ‘Yes, I’m glad it’s over.’

  ‘And the road is dangerous. Many bandits.’

  ‘Yes. I’m glad we had Izîl and his musket.’

  ‘Izîl’s musket very powerful. He makes good black powder with best saltpetre. Kill all bandits.’ He makes an explosive puff with both mouth and hand.

  ‘Thanks be to God, he didn’t need to,’ Nicholas says.

  Hadir suddenly looks very serious. ‘But saltpetre very costly. Izîl has wife and five children.’

  Even in the heat, Nicholas feels his cheeks bloom with embarrassment. ‘Of course. I understand.’

  He crosses to where his camel is resting, its mobile mouth munching on the sparse vegetation. Unlocking his travelling chest, he takes out a ducat from the Portuguese coins Cecil has provided and returns to Hadir. The lad has watched his every move, but his feigned astonishment would put to shame the best of actors at the Rose theatre of Bankside. You’re well on your way to becoming a seasoned merchant, thinks Nicholas with a smile.

  After that, it is simply a matter of waiting while a succession of officials appears, each apparently more important that the last, judging by the volume of the shouts they hurl at their growing number of attendants. It is only when a man in a white turban, which shrouds his face and hangs in plush folds around his neck, arrives that the mood in the garden changes. The dispenser of atay disappears, along with the women. And this time there is no shouting. Nicholas notices Hadir’s hands are trembling. The lad seems about to drop to his knees in supplication. Nicholas wonders if protocol requires him to follow. But the man reaches out and stops Hadir with the gentlest of touches on the left shoulder.

  He is clearly a man of great importance, though simply dressed in a white silk robe with a narrow jewelled sash across the breast. Nicholas guesses he is in his middle thirties.
The well-barbered black beard lies against the gleaming drape of the turban like dried blood splashed over white marble. He carries himself with an almost feminine grace. His dark eyes are quick and perceptive, the brows jet-black and gracefully arched. The face, sundered by a long curving nose, could almost be tyrannical, were it not for a mouth that seems ever about to break into an indulgent smile. The man addresses Nicholas directly: in Italian.

  Caught off-guard, Nicholas confirms that he is indeed the envoy sent by Minister Cecil. But his own Italian – learned mostly from Lutheran mercenaries in the Low Countries, the rest from Bianca, and none of it diplomatic – is soon exhausted.

  Rolling his dark eyebrows at Nicholas’s discomfort, the man tries Spanish. Nicholas grimaces apologetically.

  Giving up, the newcomer fires a stream of instructions to the quaking Hadir. A single snap of his fingers brings forth a scurrying minion bearing a heavy key a foot long. This is solemnly entrusted to Hadir as if it were part of the crown jewels. Then, his astute eyes lingering for a final – and clearly disappointed – appraisal of the newly arrived English envoy, the man in white shakes his head in disbelief and departs, his silent attendants gliding away in his wake. Hadir watches him go like someone who’s just had a close shave with death.

  ‘I have seen him, but never do I speak with him,’ he whispers, clearly in awe.

  ‘Were we in the presence of Sultan al-Mansur?’ Nicholas asks.

  He might as well have asked if they’d just been visited by the Holy Roman Emperor, given the laugh his question elicits from Hadir. ‘No, Sayidi Nich-less. The sultan would not leave his cushions to greet an infidel!’

  ‘Then who was that?’ Nicholas asks, wondering if it is the fate of all envoys to be insulted by their hosts.

  ‘That was His Excellency Muhammed al-Annuri, the sharif’s most trusted minister.’

  Cold bugger, Nicholas can hear Cathal Connell saying. Eyes like a peregrine’s. Not the sort of Moor you’d care to cross.

  ‘Did he know who I was?’

  ‘Of course. The governor of Safi sends a message ahead.’

  ‘And the key?’

  ‘His Excellency says I am to take you to the same house the sultan gives to my friend Sy-kess. I am to see you well lodged there. Then, when the sultan wishes to see the letters you bring from the England queen, he will send word for you. That is good, yes?’

  ‘How long do you think I’ll have to wait?’

  Hadir shrugs. ‘His Excellency al-Annuri does not tell Hadir. Hadir is less than the dust on his sandal. He will send word when the sultan is ready.’

  ‘In that case, once I’ve had the opportunity to sleep a while, I would ask a favour of you, Hadir.’

  ‘You have but to name it, Sayidi Nich-less, and it will be done – inshā Allāh.’

  ‘I would like to visit Master Sykes’s grave. Is that possible?’

  A happy grin, but a hesitation nonetheless. Slight, but noticeable. ‘Is easy, Sayidi Nich-less. Is in the Aduana quarter: in the Christian cemetery. I take you there later.’

  ‘And then I’d like to see the place where he had—’ Nicholas pauses. How much does Hadir suspect about Sykes’s death? he wonders. Is there perhaps the possibility that the new, self-appointed factor for the Barbary Company knows more than he has so far admitted? ‘I’d like to see where Adolfo Sykes met with his unfortunate accident.’

  ‘Why does Sayidi Nich-less wish these things? He was not your friend.’

  Nicholas puts on the smile he keeps for distrusting patients. ‘Master Sykes died here in the service of my country. The least I can do is to mark his passing.’

  Hadir contemplates Nicholas’s answer for a moment. ‘It shall be done as you ask,’ he says, nodding wisely. ‘But first we go to your lodgings. Sharif al-Annuri says I must stay close with you always – like a shadow.’

  And to help Hadir in this important task, Nicholas notices, the imposing Muhammed al-Annuri has thoughtfully left behind two taciturn young men of fighting age, clad in white robes, a scimitar at the belt and a threatening aloofness about the eyes. The sort of men you’d employ if you wanted to protect a precious possession.

  Or to guard a valuable prisoner.

  As they step out from the shade of a winding lane and into the merciless glare of the sun, Hadir announces they have almost reached the house on the Street of the Weavers. Shading his eyes, Nicholas looks ahead.

  He is standing at the rim of an open, circular space. It is large enough to stage a decent May Day fair – fire-eaters, jugglers and performing bears included. But there is no scene of bucolic entertainment to meet his eyes, no courting couples sneaking off into the woods while their parents watch a morality play, no archery contests, no one dressed up as Queen Elizabeth smiting the village clod-pate, disguised as Philip of Spain. Some other purpose is being enacted in this open furnace. It takes Nicholas a while to comprehend what he is seeing.

  It is a market. But the merchandise on sale is human. Small clusters of people – some naked, almost all with shaven heads – stand cowering as though they’ve been caught in a storm and have nowhere to shelter, no alternative but to brace themselves for the downpour. The stink of confined human bodies hangs in the air like a hot fog.

  As his eyes adjust to the light, he sees that many are Blackamoors, but not enough to make the scene uniform. There are numerous white faces, too. Prospective buyers walk amongst the huddled groups, inspecting the wares for breadth of back and conformation, while the merchants beat their stock into pleasing postures with lengths of cane.

  How does a human soul not break when it finds itself in such a place as this? Nicholas wonders. What hopes and plans did these people have, what ambitions, before ill fortune tore them to pieces? Surely, he thinks, when God created people, He never intended that they should be of no more value than a stool in a bedchamber, or a cart in a barn – just another possession. He remembers the despair that had engulfed him when his own life had been ruptured by the deaths of Eleanor and the child she was carrying. If it had not been for Bianca, he would have given in. Perished. What possible hope of redemption can these poor souls have?

  Thinking of her brings an overwhelming loneliness flooding over him. He pictures her at her bench in her apothecary shop, mixing her cures with one hand while she pushes those heavy, dark tresses back from her forehead with the other. He sees her in the Jackdaw, herding the errant Rose, the girl she likes to call Mistress Moonbeam; hears her putting Walter Pemmel in his place, her voice gentle but implacable. In his mind, he even can smell her: the rosewater she likes to splash on her neck, and which is one of her few extravagances. And he wonders if she has forgiven him yet for leaving her.

  ‘Are there no slaves in England?’ asks Hadir, seeing the expression on Nicholas’s face.

  He is about to reply with an emphatic No. To protest. To insist that all Englishmen are freeborn. But then he remembers the English indentured servants who are tied through contract to their masters, the day-labourers who carry like mules for pennies, the Bankside doxies who sell their bodies in the stews, and the vagrants and vagabonds forced onto the road through destitution. So he confines his answer to a bland, ‘Where have they come from, Hadir?’

  ‘Everywhere,’ Hadir tells him. ‘Some come across the desert from Arabia. Some from Africa. Some are captured at sea by our corsairs. Some are captured in battle. Some are sold by their own families. An important man is judged by the slaves he can count. Hadir shall find you many slaves.’ A conspiratorial dip of the eyes. ‘Women, too, for concubines. Tomorrow Hadir will take you to the market so you may choose your own slaves. I tell you which dealer to trust. You must have cook and washerman. And a fellow to carry a sun canopy for you.’ He places a hand over his head to illustrate the necessity.

  ‘I’d rather you find me willing servants I can pay,’ Nicholas says.

  ‘Sayidi Sy-kess was the same,’ Hadir laments, rolling his eyes at the strangeness of the infidel mind. ‘This is what comes of h
aving a woman sultan!’

  From the outside, the house on the Street of the Weavers resembles a squat, defensive tower raised to guard some wild and disputed borderland. The plain walls are made of compacted mud and pierced by nothing that could ever claim to be a window. With the key al-Annuri gave him, Hadir opens a door carved with intricate arabesque designs. Nicholas follows him inside. Ducking under a low lintel, his sun-soaked eyes register little but darkness. He smells cedar, cinnamon and hot plaster.

  And then he steps out from a cloister of graceful arches into an inner garden bathed in sunlight. There are olive trees in the garden, and a fountain set upon a mosaic plinth. There are strange shrubs with spikes instead of leaves. There are tiled paths that quarter the flowerbeds. Looking up, he sees the cloister has an upper gallery where little windows peer down in approval of his captivation, and sparrows sing beneath a square of brilliant blue sky.

  ‘Sultan al-Mansur is a generous man,’ Nicholas says admiringly under his breath to no one in particular as he looks around his temporary new home.

  Hadir leads him back into the cloister and up an enclosed staircase. They emerge onto a roof terrace that runs around all four sides of the house, affording a magnificent view over the city. On one side he can see the tower of the Koutoubia mosque rising into the sky, on another the vast walls of what he takes to be Sultan al-Mansur’s palace. He lets his gaze expand out beyond the city, across distant groves of date palms to the hazy horizon and the snow-capped curtain of the High Atlas.

  ‘It is beautiful,’ says Nicholas. ‘Until I came here, I had never seen a mountain. We don’t have them in Suffolk.’

  Hadir’s outstretched hand draws his gaze back towards the palace. It looks to Nicholas like a castle set down inside the city. While it lacks the ravelins, bastions and tenailles of a modern European fort that create a killing ground for any attacker, it looks formidable enough, though he suspects it wouldn’t take long for an artillery train to batter down the sandstone walls. Wooden scaffolding reveals where construction work is still going on.