‘Where did you learn your English, Hadir?’ Nicholas asks between mouthfuls. ‘It’s good.’
‘I learn from my friend Sayidi Sy-kess,’ Hadir says. ‘He teach me well, yes?’
‘Very well. Did he teach you so that you could become his apprentice?’
A flicker of guilt clouds Hadir’s eyes. He appears to have a sudden need to study the fingers of his right hand. Nicholas laughs in admiration, as the realization dawns. ‘You came to Safion your own, didn’t you? You came to see if you could make your own way as a merchant. That’s why you looked relieved when I said I was a physician and not the Barbary Company’s replacement factor.’
‘I am an honest man, Sayidi Nich-less,’ Hadir insists almost plaintively. ‘Very honest. I do not steal from anyone. Is against all teaching – even to steal from an infidel.’
‘It will be our secret. On one condition.’
Hadir spits a fragment of gristle onto the dark earth. ‘Name it, Master Nich-less?’
‘You tell me how Adolfo Sykes died.’
At first Hadir says nothing. He stares into the fire until Nicholas convinces himself he does not intend to answer. Then he begins to draw patterns in the dirt with the end of a lamb bone.
‘It was after al-’isha prayers, early in Jumada al-Thani – March. I go to his house on the Street of the Weavers as usual. But he is not there. I look everywhere for him. I do not find him.’ Hadir raises his hands in supplication to show how diligently he’d searched. In the firelight, Nicholas can see grief written plainly on his face. ‘Next morning I hear from a Jewish merchant that the body of Sayidi Sy-kess is found outside the city walls. I run to see. The guard at the Bab Doukkala tells me he must have fallen and smash his head.’
‘You saw Master Sykes’s body yourself, as it was brought in?’
The gentle face tautens as the mind remembers. ‘No man deserves to be food for beasts, Sayidi Nich-less. Not even an infidel.’
‘What do you mean, “food for beasts”?’
‘Leopards and jackals, Sayidi Nich-less. They don’t come close to the walls these days. But perhaps they knew my friend was an infidel, so then they come. I pray to Allāh, the most merciful, the most compassionate, that my friend was already dead when this happen.’
‘When what happened, Hadir?’ Nicholas asks, though somehow he already knows what the young lad is going to tell him.
Hadir seems unable, or perhaps unwilling, to find the English for what he wants to say. But the awful picture is clear in Nicholas’s mind as the Moor’s fingers make a clawing motion against his own body, like a predator raking a carcass. Or perhaps, as in the case of Solomon Mandel, someone cutting the flesh from a man’s chest, in case the secret he was carrying was somehow buried under the skin.
Later in the night, when the others have fallen asleep, Nicholas stares up at the great cascade of stars above his head and recites his thoughts like a man reading a book written in a language not his own, cautiously testing them to avoid mistranslation.
A Jew in Christian London who keeps his faith a secret.
A Christian who keeps a secret watch over Marrakech.
And nothing to bind them together in death, save the apparent similarity of their wounds.
And an Irish sea-venturer named Cathal Connell who thinks nothing of pitching a still-living soul into the depths of the ocean.
And Robert Cecil, who would not rest until Nicholas had agreed to come here.
23
There is a sense of quiet expectation amongst the little caravan now. Yesterday, after the pre-dawn prayers, there had been only the promise of more tedious miles to cover. More discomfort. Another night on the hard floor of a caravanserai. But now, in the sharp light of early morning three days after leaving Safi, Nicholas can detect a renewed purpose. The most taciturn of faces have begun to smile. Even old Izîl, his ancient matchlock musket slung across his back, has found a new animation. He keeps grinning at Nicholas through the toothless cavern of his mouth. Today, inshā Allāh – a phrase Nicholas has heard frequently since leaving Safi, and without which it appears nothing may be imagined or hoped for – they will reach Marrakech.
The road is little more than a narrow track scoured into the dust. It winds through orchards of citrus trees, crosses rivers that died of thirst long ago, loops around ragged hills with crests like shattered flint. It rises over gritty dunes and plunges down wind-swept inclines beneath the bluest sky Nicholas has ever seen. Hadir has given him a cloth turban to wind about his head to keep the sun at bay and the dust out of his mouth.
Several times during the journey Nicholas has feared that the caravan has wandered off the track. But Berber guides don’t lose their way, Hadir has assured him; they have been travelling the road from Safi to Marrakech for a thousand years. Nicholas wonders if any of them ever managed to get comfortable on a camel.
He has often caught himself glancing down at the travelling chest slung from the saddle of his camel, as though the letters Robert Cecil has entrusted to him might be conspiring to burst out and fly away on the warm wind, a wind that now carries the scent of oranges on it. He can hear Robert Cecil preparing his reluctant agent for the journey: One of the sultan’s close advisors is benefactor to a hospital in the city…
As they ride together, Nicholas asks Hadir if he’s heard of Sumayl al-Seddik, the man he has come so far to meet. Hadir glances across from his swaying saddle as though he suspects Nicholas of performing magic. ‘Sumayl al-Seddik is famous in England, too?’
‘No, not famous. But he came to England with your sultan’s envoy a few years ago. I bear a letter to him, from our queen’s Lord Treasurer, Lord Burghley. It is Burghley’s son who sent me here.’
Nicholas can see the calculation in Hadir’s eyes. It is not greed. It is not even particularly mercenary. It is simply the look of a young man who’s trying to make his way in a hostile world and has just found his companion to be particularly well connected.
‘Sumayl al-Seddik is most famous,’ he announces proudly. ‘He makes much al-waqf. You have al-waqf in England?’
‘You’ll have to tell me what it is, before I can answer that.’
‘It is how a rich man may be judged mercifully when he stands before Allāh. He must give a part of his treasure to fund hospitals, schools, rest-houses for pilgrims, even sabils – our public fountains. When I am a rich merchant, I shall give much al-waqf.’
‘He sounds to me like a good man. Apparently Lord Burghley thought so.’
‘Everyone knows of Sumayl al-Seddik. He was at the Battle of Ksar el-Kébir – where Izîl won his firing-piece from the Castilians – fighting against His Majesty’s brother, Abd al-Malik, may Allāh rest his soul in heaven.’
‘Against? You mean al-Seddik was an enemy of the present sultan and his brother?’
‘Was fifteen years ago, when Abd al-Malik was our caliph. He had overthrown the caliph who came before him – the dog Muly Mohammed. But the dog made a pact with the infidel Portugals. Together they raised a great army to make a gift of Morocco to the Spanish infidel king.’ Hadir glances up into the bright-blue vault of the sky. ‘But Allāh willed that the plotters should be cast down. He gave al-Malik a great victory, and Izîl his musket.’
‘So the present sultan’s brother won.’
‘In a great slaughter, Sayidi Nich-less. The Portugal king… the deposed dog Muly Mohammed… all their warriors – all dead.’ He gives Nicholas a superior look. ‘No woman queen of England could make such a victory, yes?’