Hadir fetches a knife and cuts through the bindings around Nicholas’s wrists and ankles. As he follows Nicholas out of the storeroom he says plaintively, ‘Half a ducat a week – it is not suitable for work such as this.’
That evening grandmother Tiziri the Methuselah woman, Gwata the boy who fetches the water, and his sister Lalla who does the washing do not hide themselves away. They eat with Nicholas on the roof terrace. Hadir explains that tomorrow a holy month of fasting begins, and the meal must be savoured; Nicholas, as an unbeliever, may eat and take water between sunrise and sunset if he wishes, but only grandmother Tiziri may take sustenance, because of her great age.
The Berbers listen wide-eyed as Hadir translates vignettes of life in England. There is much laughter when Lalla announces that she will be the second Queen of Morocco, after grandmother Tiziri has tired of the luxury.
The good companionship is dented only by Nicholas’s deep-seated fear: that Adolfo Sykes unearthed something in this city that cost him his life. And that someone suspects Nicholas has come here to finish what he began.
After the dishes are cleared away, he goes down to the courtyard and lingers awhile, savouring the coolness of the evening air and the scent of orange blossom while he tries to make sense of the day’s events. He sees again Surgeon Wadoud at work and stores away what he has learned, though he’s sure if he ever attempts the same procedure back in England the College of Physicians will very likely impeach him. He remembers the gelded slave Marcu, and the pink, rapturously optimistic face of Fra Cyprien – who may, or may not, negotiate a captive’s return to his family for somewhere approaching fifteen hundred marks. He thinks of the kufiya’s warning about how a man may disappear into the galleys without trace, if he doesn’t take sensible advice and go home at the earliest opportunity. And of Adolfo Sykes, a man he has never met, but to whom he feels he owes the duty of commemoration.
And he yearns to be back in England, making love to Bianca Merton, and not here on the Barbary shore where beauty and butchery wear interchangeable faces.
The square of sky above the courtyard is a luminous mauve, the first stars emerging tentatively from the haze left by the heat of the day.
‘Sit with me a while, Hadir,’ Nicholas says, sinking down against the trunk of an old pomegranate tree. He has known this moment was inescapable from the time he first put his trust in the young Moor. ‘I have to be honest with you. While I am a physician, and I have come to Morocco to learn about your people’s physic, I have also been sent here to find out what happened to your friend, Adolfo Sykes.’
Hadir, squatting down beside him, seems to sag like a man freed from a heavy load. ‘I know this since you ask me questions by the Bab Doukkala. I think then that this berraniyin who has come from England is more than he says.’
‘Well then, this berraniyin doesn’t believe your friend died of an accident and was then mauled by wild beasts, any more than you do.’
Hadir nods miserably.
‘How long have you suspected?’
‘Since my friend Sy-kess decided he must hide the letters he was planning to send to England,’ Hadir says, pointing across the courtyard.
Set into the wall of the opposite cloister is something Nicholas has not noticed before: a talisman to ward off ill fortune and evil spirits. A talisman in the shape of a plaster hand, the fingers pointing downwards. Just like the one beside the door of Solomon Mandel’s house on Bankside.
32
The dimpled wall of the little cloister is bathed in soft evening light. Nicholas studies the talisman in which both Adolfo Sykes and Solomon Mandel had so misguidedly placed their trust. The stone hand seems firmly cemented to the masonry, its fingers pointing downwards towards the tiled floor.
‘Let me, Sayidi,’ says Hadir. ‘My friend Sy-kess show me how.’
Hadir cups the talisman with both hands, curling his slender fingers over the stone to get purchase. In Nicholas’s mind, it is the hand of Adolfo Sykes he clasps, greeting his mentor after a hard day spent trading in the Aduana.
After a moment’s careful manipulation, Hadir slowly pulls the talisman away from the wall. It makes a rasping sound as it slides out, revealing the slug of stone that held it in place. Triumphantly Hadir lifts it away, revealing a dark recess some three inches square.
Nicholas squats down and tries to see into the hole, but the fading light and the ceiling of the cloister make it impossible. He is about to put his fingers in when Hadir stops him.
‘Sometime scorpion make his home in a place like this. Is not good to touch.’
An oil lamp is obtained from grandmother Tiziri. By its light, Nicholas peers again into the cavity. There is no scorpion. But nor are there any letters. The space is empty.
‘Perhaps Sayidi Sy-kess already send the letters to England,’ Hadir says with a shrug.
‘But why did he need a hiding place? Who was he hiding them from?’
‘I do not know, Sayidi.’
‘Did he tell anyone other than you about this hiding place?’
‘He made me swear an oath not to speak of it. And I did not.’
‘Did Master Sykes have many visitors here? Could someone else have found the niche?’
‘Sayidi al-Seddik, he comes sometimes. And Day-Lyal, too. Also many merchants from the Aduana. But my friend Sy-kess, he would not want anyone to know of this place. I am sure of that.’
Nicholas returns to the pomegranate tree and sits down in the shadows, leaning back against the gnarled trunk. Hugging his thoughts to his body, he discovers tiny fragments of grit from the floor of the storeroom still stuck to his elbows. He hears the scraping of masonry as Hadir replaces the talisman in the wall. It sounds to him like a tomb being sealed up.
Imagining himself their judge, he pictures the faces of the three men most likely to want to decipher and read the messages from Robert Cecil’s agent in Marrakech. First amongst the guilty is Muhammed al-Annuri, with his assassin’s smile. Even though his master the sultan is England’s ally, the minister himself has already proved he’s not above putting her envoy under harsh questioning. Then there are the two Frenchmen: Arnoult de Lisle and Fra Cyprien, Catholics both. Perhaps they are all guilty – a triumvirate of conspiracy.
He breathes in the scent of orange blossom, watches the birds flitting in and out of the courtyard, darting along the upper gallery. The sparrows have made way for the swifts that come with the evening. They wheel and swoop, diving so fast they seem about to dash themselves to oblivion against the walls, yet break away at the last moment to go soaring back into the darkening sky.
When it hits him, the answer is so obvious that he wonders why he hadn’t realized it before. Adolfo Sykes didn’t send the final letter of his life on this earth to Robert Cecil. He sent it to Solomon Mandel.
Seals can be broken and artfully replaced. Letters can be read by those for whom they are not intended – even encrypted ones, if you’re clever enough. Which means that Adolfo Sykes did not trust Cathal Connell to carry his last dispatch to England.
‘Hadir, did any other English ships depart around the time the Righteous, the Marion and the Luke of Bristol last left Safi?’
From the cloister Hadir replies, ‘No, Sayidi. None that I know of.’