by S. W. Perry
‘The sharif make all this with gold taken from the Portugal infidel,’ Hadir tells him confidently, as though the sultan has been pleased to confide this fact to him personally. ‘And Portuguese slaves to build it. Take many slaves.’ He turns back to the roof terrace and with sadness in his voice says, ‘This is where my friend Sy-kess tell me many times of the English queen, and how it is to live in her country. Here we eat together when the sun goes down. Here I learn how to speak England.’
‘You admired him, didn’t you?’
‘Sayidi Sy-kess was a kind man. I like him, even though he was berraniyin, like you.’ He frowns as he searches for translation. ‘From outside.’
‘An outsider.’
‘Yes. An outsider.’
You couldn’t have described me better, if you were the president of the College of Physicians, Nicholas thinks. He walks to the street side of the terrace and looks down. Al-Annuri’s two armed men are still there, sitting in the shade of a date palm within easy striking distance of the front door, and looking like two wolves who’ve cornered a lamb in a thicket and can’t be bothered expending the energy to go in after it. At least, for the present.
26
Nicholas wakes to the morning call to prayer, a lyrically resonant song of unshakeable faith echoing from the Koutoubia mosque. He lets his head fall back on the pillow, feels the warmth of the sun flooding through the little window. And then he remembers: he is lying in a dead man’s bed.
By his judgement, in a week it will be Whitsunday. He looks into the future and imagines Bianca at the Jackdaw, supervising the celebrations, chivvying Rose and Timothy about their tasks. The taproom will empty as the Morris men pass by, stamping, clacking and trilling their way towards Bermondsey Street. Farzad is to be crowned Summer King this year – a role he will play to excess, insulting the Pope and the Spanish king to riotous applause as he’s enthroned on an upturned tub in the taproom.
Thinking of Bianca now, his memory offers him the occasion the night-watch caught the two of them together at the corner of Black Bull Alley, sneaking back from hiding the enciphered letters that had unlocked the Samuel Wylde conspiracy. She pushed him up against the wall of the chandler’s shop to make the watch think they were lovers enjoying a secret tryst. What had stopped him from kissing her then? Guilt at the thought he might love another woman, after Eleanor? Or the ring-bolt in the wall that was pushing on his spine like an implement of torture?
Remembering how her body had felt against his, Nicholas understands now that it was neither. It had been his own timidity. It had been the fear of what kissing her would unleash. He curses himself now for not being brave enough to seize the moment. Why did I have to wait for Ned and Rose to bring us together beneath the lover’s knot in the Jackdaw taproom? he asks himself accusingly.
Hadir’s voice, calling down from the roof terrace, breaks into his thoughts.
‘Did you sleep well in God’s city, Sayidi Nich-less?’ he asks when Nicholas joins him.
‘Very well, Hadir, thank you.’ The sleeping was fine. It was the waking I found disconcerting.
Hadir has conjured a breakfast of dates, freshly baked bread and preserves made of fruit that Nicholas cannot identify. He pours piping-hot atay into a glass cup. The scent of mint blows through his mind like a bracing winter wind.
When the meal is over, Hadir insists on trimming Nicholas’s beard with a sharp knife. ‘Sayidi Sy-kess like his beard short,’ he tells Nicholas. ‘My father was barber, so I do this for him.’
Nicholas is happy to submit. After almost three weeks aboard the Righteous his beard has become unruly, and he prefers to wear it close. Besides, he thinks, it would be better if Sir Robert Cecil’s envoy to the court of Sultan al-Mansur didn’t arrive looking like a country poacher.
‘Tell me, Hadir, does the new factor for the Barbary Company have the records of the old factor in his safekeeping?’
‘Of course, Sayidi Nich-less.’ A hurt look – What manner of incompetent fool do you take me for? – followed by a glint of suspicion. ‘Why do you wish to see them? You are a physician, not a merchant.’
‘Do you read English as well as you speak it?’
‘No, Sayidi. I cannot read it at all.’
‘Then what if there were letters amongst his papers that should rightly be returned to England?’
Hadir considers this hastily contrived explanation for a moment. Apparently it passes inspection. ‘I shall fetch them, Sayidi.’
Squatting in the shadiest part of the terrace, Nicholas reads through Adolfo Sykes’s tally books and records, which Hadir has brought from a storeroom. They appear meticulously kept. Nicholas can imagine not a single bolt of imported English cloth has been unaccounted for, not a bushel of exported sugar or slate of salt overlooked. Whatever the reason for his death, it wasn’t poor accountancy.
‘Come, Sayidi Nich-less, we have work to do,’ Hadir says when Nicholas has finished. ‘Now Hadir find you servants!’
‘I told you, Hadir, no slaves. I will not buy a man – or a woman, for that matter – as I might purchase a new pair of boots.’
‘No slaves, no slaves,’ Hadir promises with a weary sigh.
Leaning over the terrace wall and looking down into the street, Nicholas sees al-Annuri’s two men lounging under a date-palm tree. He wonders if they’ve been there all night.
Am I a prisoner here? he wonders. Does my liberty depend upon the continuing indulgence of Muhammed al-Annuri?
When he steps out of the door with Hadir, his fears are confirmed. One of the men gets up, brushes the dust off his white robe and follows them at a discreet distance with all the feigned innocence of a Bankside purse-diver caught in the act.
At the end of the Street of the Weavers is a patch of open ground dotted with olive trees. In their shade sprouts an undergrowth of conical tents. Huddled around each, Nicholas can see families taking their ease in the warm morning air. Their stoic faces tell of people who live or die by what they can scavenge from the earth after richer folk have had their turn; people who must daily ask God if they should starve, die of thirst, or – inshā Allāh – survive. The women, their faces darkened by the rims of broad felt hats fringed with trails of beads and medallions, gossip as they keep watch over earthen cooking pots. Children stand guard over grazing sheep and camels. The men wear cloth hoods dyed as blue as the sky.
‘Berbers,’ Hadir tells him. ‘They live in the empty desert beyond the mountains. It is told that before they learned of Allāh, the most merciful, the most compassionate, they worshipped nothing but rocks.’
Hadir delivers a rapid fusillade in his language to the nearest group. Nicholas stands uncomfortably as the faces lift to regard him with varying degrees of interest. To some, he is clearly a creature of fascination. To others, of no more import than the stones on the ground.
A glance over his shoulder tells him al-Annuri’s watchman is observing the proceedings from the shelter of the last house in the street, squatting nonchalantly against its earthen wall as though he has all the time in the world. Nicholas thinks: Robert Cecil’s watchers could learn a trick or two from you, when it comes to brazenness.
Within minutes Hadir has acquired a cook, a boy to fetch water and a girl of no more than ten to do the infidel’s washing. The cook is an ancient woman with wise eyes and a smile that all the years of a female Methuselah has not managed to dim. She grins at him maternally. The two children regard him with eyes the size of Cecil’s Portuguese ducats. As Hadir moves on to the next group, Nicholas realizes that if he doesn’t call a halt, Adolfo Sykes’s former house on the Street of the Weavers will have more servants in it than Greenwich Palace.
‘My needs are simple enough, Hadir. Let’s not trouble these people any longer.’
‘But you are ambassador of English queen!’ Hadir cries, like a hungry man dragged away from a feast.
‘I’m not an ambassador; I’m a physician. This will do.’
With his newly acquired househo
ld in tow, Nicholas heads back towards the house. As he passes al-Annuri’s watchman, he says cheerily, though without any expectation of being understood, save by his smile, ‘Good morrow, sirrah. I hope you slept well last night, under your tree. I’ll ask Hadir to send you and your companion some breakfast.’
The man does not react. He stares clear through Nicholas, as though his eyes have been put out. But no sooner has Nicholas passed by than he’s padding along in the wake of the man he’s pretended not to see.
The sound of the altercation becomes audible long before Nicholas reaches the house. Not so much an altercation, he thinks, as the sound of an angry schoolmaster berating a lazy pupil.
Beneath the date palm that has become their sentry post, the second of al-Annuri’s watchmen is standing, head bowed, before a rotund little man in a brightly striped robe. The man is in full flood. His raised voice has a high-pitched sweetness about it, quite at odds with the invective it delivers, punctuated by aggressive stabs of a chubby forefinger.
The guard is taking this tirade without protest, even though he’s a head taller than his tormentor and half his age. Close by, a younger man in a plain cloth robe, his bald head gleaming in the sunlight, looks on with amused interest.
As Nicholas approaches, the little man turns towards him. The invective stops in mid-sentence. The face softens. He becomes a wholly different character altogether: smiling, avuncular, a soul whose sparkling brown eyes hold malice towards no one.
‘At last, the esteemed English physician returns from his first adventures in our noble city,’ he says in his high, dancing voice. A flick of his fleshy hand, a sudden, short reversion to his former angry self, and al-Annuri’s guard slinks away to join his companion, who has stopped a little way down the lane. Their brief exchange reminds Nicholas of a pair of troublemakers who’ve just been thrown out of the Jackdaw by Ned Monkton. They seem to be debating whether to go back and try their luck with their fists. But then they appear to think better of it, setting off in the direction of the Berber encampment with the edgy swagger of the publicly defeated.
The little man fixes Nicholas with a benevolent smile that fractures his curly white beard like a fall of sunlight on snow. ‘And I am Sumayl al-Seddik, minister to His Majesty Ahmad al-Mansur, beloved of Allāh, conqueror of the Songhai, lion of Timbuktu. I am charged by him to bring you greetings.’ He extends a plump little hand for Nicholas to shake. ‘I must ask your forgiveness for the insult,’ he says, nodding towards the departing guards. ‘That desert scorpion al-Annuri has no honour – that he should set watchdogs on our foreign guests as though they were nothing but bandits and thieves!’
‘In truth, sir, I felt a little sorry for them – having to follow me around and sleep under a date palm.’
‘They are nothing. Less than the dirt beneath your shoes. Al-Annuri is a dog. He knows only how to make people fear his bite.’
Remembering how Hadir’s hands had trembled when al-Annuri appeared in the garden beside the walls, Nicholas says, ‘I don’t want them punished, sir. I was becoming a little fond of them.’
Al-Seddik finds this amusing. ‘I’d forgotten how sentimental the English can be. Fear not. They will know how to bear it. A mule cannot live long if he does not become accustomed to the cane.’ His eyes observe Nicholas with interest. ‘So, you are the English man who has come to study medicine in our land? I hear of your arrival from the governor of Safi.’
‘I am, sir,’ says Nicholas. ‘My name is Dr Nicholas Shelby. I carry a letter for you, from Lord Burghley, who wishes to be remembered to you. I am here by command of his son, Sir Robert Cecil.’
‘So the queen has knighted him at last,’ says al-Seddik with a chuckle. ‘I trust that made him happy.’ He indicates the man beside him. ‘And this splendid gentleman is Dr Arnoult de Lisle. He is privileged to hold the position of physician to His Majesty. We thought we should both come to bid you welcome.’
De Lisle offers a reserved nod in lieu of a greeting. With his skin burned a dark brown, he could easily pass for a Moor. His iron-grey beard, cut close, adds a bladed edge to a face that has a keen intelligence about it, bordering on the haughty. He seems like a man not overly given to the tolerance of slower minds. Nicholas puts him in his late thirties.
‘I’m honoured by your presence, Masters,’ Nicholas says in what he hopes is a suitably deferential tone for a newly arrived envoy.
‘Professor de Lisle is reader in Arabic at the Collège de France, appointed by King Henri himself,’ al-Seddik says with a gracious nod to the younger man. ‘He is also one of his nation’s finest physicians. He speaks our language as if it were his own. And English, too. We are fortunate to have him in our humble land.’
De Lisle gives the merest wince of a smile, as if to show humility in the face of undeserved abundance. As he reaches out to shake Nicholas’s hand, the robe slips from his wrist. Heavy gold bracelets, Nicholas notices. De Lisle had done well in the sultan’s service, it seems.
‘This letter, from milord Burghley: may I see it?’ says al-Seddik.
Nicholas hesitates. What is the protocol for playing host to a sultan’s minister – or a sultan’s physician, for that matter? He adds the question to the growing list of things that Robert Cecil has failed to tell him.
Hadir comes to his rescue. Within what seems like moments, Nicholas is sitting on the cushions on the roof terrace while Hadir pours atay for the guests. The Methuselah woman from the Berber encampment serves the dates and nuts left over from breakfast.
‘You have the gauge of us already, Dr Shelby,’ al-Seddik says admiringly. ‘We are simple folk and are at our most contented with simple pleasures.’
A glance across the roof at the magnificence of the sultan’s palace tells Nicholas that al-Mansur’s minister, for all his avuncular charm, is being disingenuous.
‘I have to compliment you on your command of my language, sir,’ Nicholas says. ‘It is a great comfort to a stranger in your land. Did you acquire it while you were in England, with His Majesty’s envoy?’
‘I had a little of before I went, from the English merchants here in Marrakech, and from Dr de Lisle. But I’m an inquisitive fellow, and our delegation went to your London playhouses more than once.’ Al-Seddik smiles at the memory. ‘An extraordinary affair – to see young boys pretending to be females, and weak men with proud bellies taking the parts of heroes. How you English contrive to deceive each other!’
Nicholas hands over Burghley’s letter, which al-Seddik tucks away in his satin robe. ‘I also carry a letter of greeting from Her Grace, Queen Elizabeth, to Sultan al-Mansur,’ he says. ‘When may I hope to present it?’
‘I will arrange an audience,’ al-Seddik tells him. ‘It may take a while; the sharif is much concerned with the work taking place on the el-Badi Palace. In the meantime, my tent shall be your tent. You will feast with me tomorrow afternoon, after the al-zuhr prayers. I shall send Dr de Lisle to fetch you. Does that please?’
Nicholas confirms that it pleases greatly. He follows al-Seddik and de Lisle down the dark stairway and out onto the Street of the Weavers. When his eyes recover from the transition from light to darkness and back to light again, he sees al-Annuri’s guards have not dared to return to their place beneath the date palm. The street is empty, save for a child leading an old blind man, stick-thin and hollow-cheeked, towards the Berber encampment.
‘This house, sir…’ Nicholas begins tentatively.
‘It does not satisfy?’
‘On the contrary, it’s perfect.’
The faintest lift of one white eyebrow. ‘So, then?’
‘I understand the previous tenant was the factor of the Barbary Company here in Marrakech.’
‘Adolfo Sykes, yes.’ A sudden look of remorse as al-Seddik comprehends. ‘Of course! Forgive me, Dr Shelby. An unforgiveable error. You should never have been lodged here, not after Master Sykes’s sad demise.’
‘It’s not that. It is a very agreeable house,’ says Nicholas, aw
are the ground beneath his feet suddenly feels as though it’s made of eggshells. ‘I merely wondered why it had been chosen. It is not in the Christian quarter.’
‘Does that offend you?’
‘Not at all. It’s simply that I understood the Aduana district was where visitors from Christian lands were quartered.’
‘There was nowhere vacant in the Aduana that was as comfortable,’ al-Seddik assures him, beaming with goodwill. ‘Besides, this is a large city. We like to know where to find our most honoured guests.’
And as Nicholas watches him go, a jovial little puffball wrapped in silk, Arnoult de Lisle’s angular frame loping along beside him like a servant trying to anticipate his master’s whim, it occurs to him that there are subtler ways of keeping watch on someone than sitting outside their door in the shade of a date palm.
27
The lanes leading to Smithfield are emptier than when last Bianca came this way, the taverns quieter even than those on Bankside. At this rate, Whitsunday will be the quietest she’s known since coming to the city. In happier times the maypoles would be festooned with ribbons fluttering on the breeze. The Summer Kings and Queens would parade in their makeshift finery. Courting couples would slip away to hide beneath the washing laid out on the hedges to dry in the early-summer air. But now the maypoles stand forlornly naked. Even where public gatherings are not forbidden, people have lost their appetite for a crowd.
Whitsuntide. She still can’t get used to the term. She prefers to call it by its Catholic name – Pentecost – but only when she’s amongst those she trusts. Use it elsewhere and she knows she’s likely to mark herself as, at best, a recusant. At worst, a heretic.
As she walks towards Giltspur Street, Bianca imagines how she would spend this coming Whitsunday, if Nicholas was here. She might persuade him to dance a measure or two with her in the Pike Garden on Bankside, even though he has said more than once that dancing occupies much the same place in his mind as tooth-pulling. But she would have found a way, she thinks.