The Serpent's Daughter (10 page)

Jade found a likely government vehicle parked away from any others and promptly siphoned off enough gasoline to fill the can. She started to leave when the truck’s own spare can caught her eye. She nabbed it, as well. Then, feeling guilty, she pulled three francs from her pocket and placed them on the seat, anchored with a rock.

From Rabat, Jade drove another hour southwest along the coast and pulled off the track to sleep. She awoke at dawn to something nibbling on her shirt collar.

“What the …” she exclaimed as she bolted upright in the seat. A brown nanny goat with its forehooves on the chassis stared back at her with its unreal-looking horizontal pupils. The goat
maa
ed and stretched its neck for her collar. Jade pushed it aside, and it dropped down to the ground as she got out of the car. She found herself in a small herd of the inquisitive beasts. “Shoo. Back off,” she scolded as a white nanny made a grab for her overskirt. She looked around for Bachir and found him bartering for fresh goat’s milk and one flatbread with a small, woven bag. He appeared to be unsuccessful.

Jade offered them francs, only to find they had no interest in the French money, either.
Fine, we’ll find something else to barter with
. She opened her carpetbag, found the wrapped parcel of ground coffee she’d thrown in lest she be caught without her precious brew, and tossed it to Bachir.

“Maybe they will take that,” she said.

The goat herder, a nomadic Berber judging by his short, black-and-red striped robe, sniffed the packet. He grinned, exposing more open gums than teeth. In a moment Bachir was back, followed by a boy leading one of the nannies and a little girl carrying two clay pots and the bread. The girl handed the bread to Jade, taking care never to look her in the eyes. Then she milked the goat while her brother held its head. She poured half the milk into the second jar and handed both to Jade. Jade passed one on to Bachir along with half the bread.

“Shukran,”
said Jade, thanking the girl.
“Besmellāh,
in the name of God,” she added, giving the proper invocation used before just about any activity. She guzzled the warm milk, her hunger taking over all sense of decorum. “Bachir,” she said between mouthfuls of bread, “ask them if they have seen another car, one with a woman in it.”

Bachir translated her question into Tashelhit, the language of the Atlas Berbers. Judging by the goatherd’s confusion, he spoke a different dialect, but with the insertion of the few Arabic words that the herder recognized and a lot of gestures, the man finally comprehended. The same process repeated itself in reverse until Bachir had the answer.

“He says he saw a car yesterday morning with two men.”

Jade’s shoulders slumped until it occurred to her that her mother might have been bound and gagged, lying down and out of view. “Can he describe the men or the car?”

After another painstaking exchange, Bachir gave the exhaustive report: “Black.”

Jade cranked the car and climbed back in. As she reached over the side to release the brake, the boy approached her. He pointed first to his upper lip then made several strokes across it with his finger.

“A mustache?” Jade murmured in English before saying “nose hair” in Arabic. It seemed the boy understood some Arabic, for he nodded. Jade recited possible colors beginning with black, followed by brown and yellow. The boy shook his head at each, looked around, and picked up a kid whose creamy tan fur was coated in the red dust of the
bled,
or wasteland desert, turning parts of it a pale rusty-butter mix.

“This color?” asked Jade. The boy nodded. She rewarded him with a franc.

They drove on to Casablanca, where Jade hid while Bachir purchased two cans of fuel from one merchant and food from another, then headed due south across the expansive wasteland towards Marrakech.

Except for one lone well where Jade tinkered with the car’s engine, refilled the radiator, and emptied her own in a much-needed personal stop, there was little to interest her. There were no villages, no trees, nothing but a flat land of rock and brick-colored dirt. Under the track itself the earth had submitted to so much pressure from countless hooves and feet that it had been pressed into a polished red rock, as hard as any stone floor. Bachir’s reticence increased each time Jade asked any more questions or attempted to engage him in conversation. Instead, he watched the never-changing landscape and sang in an atonal tenor voice a mournful-sounding tune. Perhaps he missed his distant home somewhere up in the Atlas Mountains.

Around noon, she skirted the military post at Zettát, careful to avoid detection. She sent Bachir into the post with the empty gas can and some of her few remaining francs to purchase much-needed fuel. She only hoped they wouldn’t ask too many questions of him, such as, Why do you need gasoline? But the soldiers at the post seemed too bored with inactivity to be concerned about Bachir’s request. Perhaps, Jade thought, they were in the habit of acting as a refueling station for the few people crossing the rocky desert.

From the outpost there, the road stretched out for miles across the wasteland to the gorge of the Oued Ouem. Beyond the river the road climbed gradually for fifty kilometers, striving to reach an elusive, hazy vision of the Djebilets Mountains. Jade began to think she’d taken the wrong road out of Casablanca, except there hadn’t been any other option. Then as the Panhard struggled and wheezed up to the top of the pass, she glimpsed an island of emerald green in the distance, a palm oasis. Somewhere tucked inside that jewel lay Marrakech. As if to prove the city’s existence, a lone tower shot up above the trees.

Just as seagulls are an indication that land is near, the presence of more people bore witness to the presence of water and a nearby city. They appeared walking beside donkeys, or sitting astride camels that moved in a languid motion, rocking the rider gently into oblivion throughout their long treks.

By the time they sputtered over the ancient stone bridge over the Oued Tensif’s broad but shallow course, Jade wanted only to throw herself in the little river and let it wash away the dirt and exhaustion covering her. She skirted around the north side to the west through the palm grove and its welcoming shade, waiting for Marrakech to reveal itself beyond the towering minaret standing sentinel above the trees. Beyond the palms grew olive trees and past them sat the newer, whitewashed buildings of Gueliz, where the French resided. Jade barely noticed them, her gaze riveted by the immense red wall rising up out of the soil as if the Earth itself had risen and hardened.
Marrakech
.

The ramparts of the red city loomed above her, the wall interrupted periodically by a gate. But what Jade found most curious were the evenly placed indentations that punctuated the wall. Some had chunks of timber sticking out, and she realized that the wall had been built up in sections by packing the earth in and around the scaffolding.

She glanced across at Bachir, remembering that he was told to bring her here.
Well, we’re here.
If there was a time to watch for tricks, it would be now. She waited for him to make a suggestion, give an order, do anything. Instead he stared ahead at the first gate into the city, his face a stoic mask. “We’re here, Bachir,” she said after a lengthy silence. “Where do I go now?”

“To find your mother,” he answered, without turning.

“Yes, but where?”

He shrugged.

Jade began thinking aloud, hoping to catch Bachir’s reaction for any evidence of his involvement. “Mother was not taken by a Moroccan. They would not brave the
jinni
in the Azilah tunnels.”
But you did, didn’t you, Bachir?
“Now, where would a European hide Mother in Marrakech?” She remembered the note telling her to come to the Square of the Dead. Would Bachir suggest she go there, as well?

Instead, he pointed to the French settlement of Gueliz. “There,” he suggested.

Okay, that was a point in Bachir’s favor. She had no intention of blindly walking into any place called a Square of the Dead. Maybe it would be useful to make some inquiries as to new arrivals. She turned the Panhard down the closest avenue, looking for what might be a hotel. The eucalyptus-lined street boasted three cafés and a few pitiful shops displaying European shoes and other Western items before it ended abruptly at a deep ditch. She put the car in reverse, spun around, and stopped at the nearest café, where she inquired where new visitors might find lodging.

“We have a room above the café,” said a poorly shaven, portly little Frenchman.

“Oh? I thought it was taken already. I understood two men traveling from Tangier arrived yesterday. I’m sure you’ve seen them. One has a reddish-blond mustache.”

“No, Mademoiselle. Very few visitors venture this far into Morocco.”

Jade persisted. “They were traveling with a woman. She may have been ill. They might have carried her inside.”

“I have seen no one new besides yourself. Did you wish the room for yourself?”

“
Merci,
no. I must try to find my friends. I will try the consulate’s office to see if they have gone there.”

Seeing that he couldn’t pawn off his room, the Frenchman grumbled under his breath for a moment. “You might try the Hotel de France. It is in the next avenue south.”

Jade tried the hotel, only to hear again that no one new had taken rooms for several months.

“When they come, do you wish me to tell them you are here?” asked the desk clerk.

“No. That won’t be necessary. Perhaps you can tell me something about Marrakech. What is this Square of the Dead I have heard about?”

The man chuckled. “Ah, that is a name for the great open plaza in the heart of the city. It took its name from the quaint old practice of once displaying the salted heads of executed prisoners there. Now it is a great gathering place,” he said, waving his hands in large circles. “Many shops, many storytellers. The Berbers, the Tuareg of the South, and others who do not reside in the city and so do not keep shops in the souk, gather there and sell their wares. Most entertaining,” he added, “especially in the morning and evening hours when it is cooler. You might find a few people beginning to meet there now. But you must enter the gates before sunset. They are closed soon after that.”

Jade thanked him again and returned to the city gate only to find that Bachir was not waiting for her at the Panhard.
Where did he go?
She spied him standing outside a great gate, speaking with a cluster of Berbers.

“Alalla,”
he said as he left the men, “they have seen the men you seek. They came yesterday with rugs to sell, and a black machine came like a wild camel through the
Bab Agnaou
. They say one was a Nazarene. The other was an Arab.”

“Where did they go?”

“They went to the street of the
riads,
” he said, using the term for palatial town houses. “There are many princely houses there. And,
Alalla,
they said there was a woman with them. She was wrapped entirely in white robes.”

One of the Berber men edged forward, avoiding Jade with the caution one showed when approaching a potentially dangerous reptile. He held his arms in front of him, elbows bent and wrists crossed above his chest while he spoke. Bachir listened, nodded, and turned back to Jade.

“
Alalla
, he says the woman’s hands were bound.”

Inez, still groggy, felt herself being lifted and carried. A slight nausea rose in her throat, and she struggled to fight it back. She heard the sound of a heavy bolt sliding against metal and felt herself drop. Whoever had carried her had deposited her, without ceremony but not roughly, onto a hard surface. She fell to her side and felt the bonds on her wrists being loosened. Then a heavy door shut and she again heard the bolt slide in its traces.
I’ve been locked in, but where?
She couldn’t see anything.

She wriggled her hands and discovered she had limited range of movement in her arms. Suddenly the nausea increased, as well as a sense that she was suffocating. Her hands clawed at the fabric that enveloped her head and upper torso. Her nails worked a small rent in the fabric, and Inez forced her fingers inside and pulled, rending the thin cloth. She sat up, forced her arms and shoulders through the gap, and yanked the cloth back from her head and face before she collapsed to the floor, gasping and retching. Her stomach didn’t deliver anything up, a fact that registered with her brain.
I haven’t eaten in a long time.

With the swaddling cloth gone from her face, she was again able to breathe freely. She inhaled deeply several times to clear her head.
What is that smell? It smells like … ?
Suddenly she stood up and let the rest of the cloth drop from her onto the floor.
Ether
! The fabric had been soaked in ether to drug her. She kicked it away.

Myriad sensations welled up inside her: hunger, fear, loneliness, dread. She longed for her husband’s strong arms to encircle her and hold her. “Richard,” she whispered. Would she see him again? Or Jade?

Jade!
What had happened to her? Inez remembered finding a note in her room from her daughter, entreating her to meet her, telling her she was sorry. Inez had gone to the rendezvous willingly. She’d wanted so much for them to reconcile. That, more than getting any stud horse, had been the ultimate point of this trip. She wanted to bring Jade home with her so that her daughter could take her proper place in Taos society by Inez’s side. The task of hosting endless committees and dinners wouldn’t be so lonely then. So when the English-speaking Arab man outside the hotel offered to be her guide, she went with him.

But Jade hadn’t been at the rendezvous. Now a fresh terror welled in her gut. Her heart raced, pounding hard against her chest. What had they done to her daughter?

The bolt slid back in its slot and the door opened. Inez blinked against the sudden glow of a candle. An Arab with a wicked-looking knife tucked inside a broad sash quickly set the candle on a low table. Next to it he put a plate holding a small mug of water, a flat circle of bread, and something that smelled like a spicy stew.