The Tenth Gift (19 page)

S
HE WAS SAVED
by the pirate’s weakness, for soon after this he fell asleep once more and slept fitfully through the rest of the day and night. The next morning his fever had broken and he came to without need of another burned chameleon, somewhat to Cat’s relief. She took him the food that one of the crewmen had brought to the door at first light and watched as he picked at it. She had after long thought come to a kind of decision.

“Yesterday you asked me why I wept. I will tell you. I wept because I do not understand your ways. I do not understand why you had Ashab Ibrahim killed. I do not understand anything about this ‘evil eye’ or how the burning of the lizard brought you back from the dead. I do not understand why you have stolen us away and believe it is right to do so. I do not understand why you hate good Christian folk so. I understand none of it at all, and most of all I do not understand why you keep me here in your cabin. I wept because I am used to understanding the world I live in, and now I understand nothing at all.” All this came out in a rush.

The raïs closed his eyes as if pained. “Women … Why they ask so much? We not here to understand world. We are here to
be
in world and give thanks for it. And I have only just woken up.” He gave a deep and heartfelt sigh. “I tell you why renegade dead: because he act as if my authority on this ship gone, as if I already dead. No one treats my captives ill without my order.”

Cat took this in silently. Then she said, “Abdal-haqq said he had put the evil eye on you, and that was why he had to die.”

The raïs made a noncommittal gesture with his piece of bread. “Abdal-haqq very wise. When he tell the crew I say this why the renegade must die, they will not question my decision. They are … how you say? Afraid of curse and such like. They will put bag over his head and throw him in sea so he cannot turn evil eye on them, too.”

“But what is the evil eye? How can an eye hurt anyone?”

“There is old Berber saying: ‘The evil eye can bring a man to his grave, and a camel to the cooking pot.’”

“I don’t know what a camel is.”

Al-Andalusi laughed. “Are all your people so ignorant? I cannot explain camel to you: A camel is itself and all men know its worth, but evil eye is like a light. You can see it, feel it, or hurt others by using it. It can make harm or death, but you can never hold it in hands; all you can do is avert it, by luck and by will of Allah.”

“So which was the lizard: luck, or the will of Allah?”

Al-Andalusi rolled his eyes. “Disputing with women bad for health. Already I feel my strength waning. Is clear to me now that stars in firmament must be female, and each month poor moon is worn down by their incessant tongues. The chameleon is strong magic, but if it works or not against evil eye is determined by Allah. More than that I cannot explain to infidel.”

“Why do you hate us so, and call us ‘infidels’ and ‘Nazarenes’?”

“Do you know nothing of world? Christians have made war against my people for thousand years. They persecute us cruelly and use religion as excuse. My family is dead at hands of the Nazarenes, and I alone left to avenge them.”

“Oh.” In a small voice she asked, “What happened?”

He looked away. “Why you want to know?”

“To help me understand”—she made a helpless gesture with her hands—“why you do this, why I am here….”

The raïs regarded her steadily. “I do not have to justify my actions. Besides, is not story to tell a child, let alone Nazarene child.”

“I am
not
a child. I don’t even know if I am what you call a ‘Nazarene.’”

“You are Christian, no? Follower of prophet Jesus the Nazarene?”

Cat bit her lip. Nell and Mistress Harris were constantly chiding her for her lack of Christian values. She did not know what she believed, what she was anymore. She had been baptized in Veryan’s font and had prayed silent prayers to the baby Jesus, to Son and Father and Holy Ghost in times of stress. But that was before the raid. Now she could not understand how a god who cared for his people could allow an entire congregation to be taken by heathen raiders while at prayer, then let them waste and die in such foul conditions—men, women, and innocent children. It tested the faith of the strongest believer, and she had never been that. But she was no Mahometan, so what could she say? Eventually she shrugged. “I suppose so.”

“Then you my enemy and I tell you why. My mother’s grandfather’s father came from Rabat in Morocco, but he leave because no work, so he join colony of Moors in Estré madure, in mountains of Spain. My mother’s grandfather and father born there and then my mother, too. Four generations of her family—you understand?— they live there, they work, they make trade, make community prosperous. My father was trader, he travel all over Morocco, bring salt and gold and ivory from southwest, from Tafraout to north coast, and then to Spain, and take fine Spanish steel, swords, and guns back. One visit, he stay my mother’s family and meet her, ask for her as bride. Next trip they marry; then he take her home to Morocco, to mountains of Atlas, where I born. But she very sick for home in Spain, miss family much, spoke no Berber, no Arabic, only Spanish,
so when I five, we move to Estré madure to be with her family. Then Spanish King Philip decide all Moors must leave Spain, no matter how long they live there or how Spanish they become. Some our family, they see signs of persecution early and they leave—my uncle, some cousins—they take everything they can carry and go back to Morocco, but my father angry. He already moved all he had to be in Spain, his business is good there. Why he should leave, just for being Muslim? He refuse to leave. They make him Catholic by force. It great shame for him, but my mother beg him support it. They stay longer, but all time it get worse, he treated like dog, disrespected, cheated in business; then finally Inquisition come. They take my father away in night; next morning my mother put me on mule and send me down mountain trail to be with cousin who leave for Morocco. All sisters cry because I leave. They all babies. ‘We join you there,’ my mother promise, but I knew I never see them again. I cry all the way down the mountain. It is last time I ever cry.”

Cat’s eyes were round. “And did you ever see them again?”

He swallowed. “I not know my family’s fate for a year. I went with cousin to Slă and found two uncles and other cousins living there. I wait for my father and mother and sisters, but they not come. At last my uncle said one night, ‘Come with me. There is a man, Spanish prisoner.’ I went to qasba in New Slă where ship had come in with captives. This man, he blacksmith in Hornachos, but when Moors left he no work, he became soldier. He told me Inquisition racked my father to death. They drew his arms from his sockets, left him rot in prison cell.” He closed his eyes. A tiny muscle in his cheek twitched and jumped.

Looking down, Cat found her knuckles were white where she gripped her skirts. She did not dare ask the question she wanted to ask for fear of what the answer might be.

“The soldiers came for rest of my family two days after taking my father. They rape my mother and kill my sisters. My mother die of shame and grief. I was ten years old. My sisters were two, four, and seven. I should have stayed and defended them….

“The blacksmith, he saw. He said he tried to stop them, but I knew he lie. My uncle gave me knife to kill him. He was first Nazarene I kill; at age of eleven. Now I have lost count.

“I swore revenge, so my cousins make me apprentice to a great corsair: Yussuf Raïs, once Englishman called John Ward. English treat him ill—call him hero when he take foreign prizes for Crown, and villain when he take them without letter of marque—so he renounce Christianity and come instead to Islam, make war on Nazarenes. He once said me, ‘If I meet my own father at sea I rob him, and sell him when I had done.’ He was good teacher. I sail with him five years. When he went to Tunis he give me this ship. He die three years ago. I bless his name. Now I operate under
usanza del mare
, code of corsair: I bring much money, many captives back to my people, kill many Spanish, many Nazarenes,
damara’hum Allah
, may God destroy them. Is both my revenge and holy work. I cannot bring down Inquisition nor Spanish throne, but I can wage war against its religion and wreak what havoc I may.”

His eyes flashed, and with a shock Cat remembered the same expression on the face of her grandfather as he recounted tales of the Bloody Queen, half sister of the great Elizabeth, who had burned three hundred Protestants at the stake and threatened to bring the Spanish Inquisition to English shores to turn the whole country Catholic. The Spanish were roundly hated in Cornwall: He had himself lost a leg in an action against a Spanish privateer. And she remembered how only two years ago when King James had sent a delegation led by his favorite, George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, to attempt to win the Spanish Infanta as the Prince of Wales’s bride there had been much fury and riotous talk in Marazion; how Thom Samuels had talked of taking up arms if England were to have a Spanish queen, and Jack Kellynch had punched him, since his own mother was Spanish. It was rather extraordinary to find that her own people had anything in common with this violently zealous pirate. It was also extremely disconcerting to discover how moved she was
by the story he had told. For a moment, at least, he seemed less a monster and more a man who had a reason to do the terrible things he did.

She realized she had been staring at him; when he looked up suddenly and met her eyes, she found the intensity of his gaze uncomfortable and had to look away.

“But I still do not understand what you have against the English,” she said at last. “Especially if you sailed with an Englishman and he gave you his ship. It wasn’t the English who killed your family, it was the Spanish, and England is at war with Spain again, just as we were under the old queen, so they’re our enemies as much as yours.” She paused. “And Cornwall’s really a separate country all its own, not really part of England at all.”

Al-Andalusi gave a short laugh. “I have raided the Spanish coast so hard there’s no village we haven’t struck. They well fortified now: too many guns. So I take Nazarenes where I find them. Your people not well prepared: no guns, no defenses, very easy.” Seeing her face fall, he said more kindly, “Here, Cat’rin—take bread and eat. If you tend me until I well, you need be strong.” He handed her the remains of the small, hard loaf. “Dip in oil to make soft or you break teeth. Broken teeth lose me money at market. And take some of these, too—good for digestive organs.”

Heaped on a brightly colored earthenware plate on the table beside him were a number of the salty black fruits she had so disliked and some round, squashed-looking objects that resembled nothing so much as miniature turds.

Cat wrinkled her nose. “No, thank you.”

“Take,” the raïs told her. “Is good.” He picked one up and held it out, and when she hesitated, thrust it at her with greater insistence. “With my people, hospitality important. To refuse is insult.”

She took a small bite. Sweetness flooded her mouth so that she gasped. It was not in the least what she had expected, for it tasted remarkably like the preserved medlars the cook bottled each autumn
from Kenegie’s orchard. “Oh …” She took the rest whole, saliva breaking from the corner of her mouth.

Al-Andalusi looked on, eyebrow cocked sardonically. “Is fig,” he said. “In some traditions it was the fruit Eve gave to Adam from the Tree of Knowledge.”

“In the Bible that was an apple!”

“In our tradition, according to Qu’ran, it was apple also. And when Adam swallowed mouthful of fruit, it stuck in throat and made lump all men have.”

“The Adam’s apple!” Cat cried, astonished. “We call it that as well.”

“We are, perhaps, not such strangers to each other as you think.”

“W
HY DID YOU SHOOT OFF LIKE THAT
, J
ULIA
? IT looked really odd, you know.”

I regarded her steadily. “I really can’t bear to be around him.”

Alison made a sympathetic face. “Sorry. I’ve just made it worse, haven’t I? Look, if you’d rather I walked away from the renovation of the cottage, I will. It’s only money.”

“Did Andrew leave a lot of debts?” I felt awkward asking. “I could help you out, you know.”

She smiled, and her eyes filled up. “It’s probably not as bad as I think it is. I haven’t dared look at the statements, haven’t felt up to it. But I could do with a bit of work, if only to have something else to think about.”

“Of course you must take on the cottage, if you want to do it. Don’t mind me.”

“It’s just that …” She looked embarrassed. “Well, I may have got a bit carried away with telling Michael what could be done with the cottage. He seemed quite fired up by it. In fact, he called Anna and she’s coming down tomorrow to discuss what we might do.”

“Is she?” I was horrified. Had Michael suggested Anna visit before or after he called me? If before, he must have decided it would be his last chance to see me before she arrived. If after … I felt sick. Was it his way of punishing me for turning him down? I knew there was the purely practical matter of the cottage, but something told me there were other, darker reasons. “Does Anna know I’m here with you?”

“Um, yes,” she said. “Sorry. When Michael came off the phone, he said she sent her regards and was looking forward to seeing you.”

Cold iron in the heart. “I can’t stay. Can’t do it.”

Alison rubbed her forehead. “God, what a mess. Isn’t it better to get it out of the way? Try to get things back to normal?”

I shook my head. “It’s too soon. I just can’t face her. Not feeling strong enough yet.” My mouth twisted suddenly; I thought I might cry.

Abruptly tears started to spill out of the corners of my eyes and a moment later Alison welled up, too. She hugged me. “I’m so sorry. God, now we’ve both got the waterworks going.”

I gave her a wobbly smile and pulled myself together. “Sorry, I’m being pathetic. It’s only a stupid affair, one that should never have started. I brought this on myself, but you—”

She waved her hands at me. “Don’t.” She gulped. “Look, don’t you think it might give you closure, put a proper end to it?”

“No, I’m just not ready.”

“To be honest, I don’t think Michael is, either. He talks about you a lot when you’re not there.” My traitor heart leapt up.

“Oh, and he asked about the little needlework book, too, whether you’d finished it yet. He seems to think it might be valuable.” “If it is, Al, you should have it back.”

She shook her head. “He gave it to you. It’s yours, Julia, honestly. And don’t you give it to him without getting a receipt, okay?”

I grinned. “Because we all know what an honest man Michael is, eh? You know, Al, I really should get back to London for a bit, just to make sure the shop’s okay, try to get myself straight.”

Alison shrugged. “You do what you have to do.” She put her hand on my arm. “It’s been great having you here, you know, Julia. I’ve really appreciated it.”

“I was glad to be able to do it,” I said, and meant it.

“It’ll all work out for the best in the end. I mean, there has to be a reason for it all, doesn’t there? There are days when I think there really is some huge great tapestry of a plan out there and we’re all woven into it—this fabulous, complex pattern of life and death, full of recurring motifs and waves of color, and we’re each one tiny thread in the weave. And then there are the days when I know that we’re on our own and it’s all a horrible mess and our own fault.” She sighed. “But there are some amazing coincidences going on. I mean, how weird is it that Andrew should have sent those books up to Michael, and one be about embroidery, just your thing, and contain the journal, and that Michael should spot it and think of you? Let alone that Catherine should come not just from Cornwall, but right here at Kenegie? There was a load of old Kenegie stuff in the attic, you know, odds and ends, books and broken furniture. Probably been dumped there when they were renovating the manor, been moldering away for centuries.”

“Mmmm,” I said, feeling uncomfortable. “Synchronicity, I guess.”

“Have you read any more of it? Is she still working on the Countess of Salisbury’s altar cloth? Do you think she ever finished it?”

“We’ll probably never know.”

“Well, why don’t we walk down to the manor house and have a look at where she lived? Before you go back up to London.”

Reluctantly, I agreed.

B
Y THE END
of the afternoon, I very much wished I hadn’t. Visiting Kenegie Manor had been a grim experience. Alison had told me that it had been developed into a holiday complex, but I hadn’t really thought about what that might entail, so the sight of dozens of ugly little bungalows and chalets jammed together in what must have been Lady Harris’s prized orchard and gardens was dispiriting, compounded by the harsh primary colors of the children’s playground, the acre of parking lot, the modern annex housing the swimming pool, and racks of tourist information leaflets inviting visitors to a host of lurid artificial attractions—stately homes with tropical butterfly collections and teddy bear exhibitions, petting zoos and miniature railways. It seemed the whole of Cornwall’s heritage was being prostituted in much the same tawdry way. Adjoining the annex was the manor house itself. Tall Tudor chimneys were about the only feature that spoke honestly of its origins. The granite stonework had been refaced and repointed, the windows and doors had been replaced, and where the knot garden and herbs had once grown, now there was a paved concrete courtyard. A large estate agent’s board on the way in had boasted that the Grade II listed manor house was being redeveloped into stunning modern apartments. It gave a number to call for viewings.

“We could call the number and pretend to be prospective buyers,” Alison suggested.

I shook my head wearily. “No thanks.” I was already feeling glum enough. Who could do this to such a historic old house? How could
the local planning department allow such a commercial insult to one of the county’s treasures? I said as much to Alison.

“It’s probably been messed around with so much down the centuries that there wasn’t anything original left to preserve,” she said, shrugging. She stuck her head in through the open front door. Distant sounds of hammering wafted through the corridors. Then there came the sound of booted feet on bare boards and a man in a yellow hardhat and overalls appeared, a claw hammer in his hand.

“Hello,” he said. “Have you come for a viewing?” He peered over our shoulders. “Is the agent with you?”

“We’ve got an appointment for later,” Alison lied cheerfully, “but we thought we’d get here early and have a bit of a nose around. You know what agents are like, always hurrying you past the things they don’t want you to ask awkward questions about.”

They both laughed, complicit.

“Well, you might as well come in, then,” the builder said. “Have a poke around. It’s not like there’s anything to nick. Not unless you’re partial to cordless drills!” And with a hearty chuckle he waved us through and tromped off to destroy some other part of the house.

If I had been feeling downcast before, now I was feeling properly disillusioned. What trace of Cat and her seventeenth-century life could survive amid all this new plasterboard and wiring, the gallons of brilliant white paint and multiple phone lines? There was no trace of any of the previous inhabitants. Even my overactive imagination couldn’t picture the shades of Sir Arthur and Lady Harris among the sea-grass matting and the double-glazing; or of Robert Bolitho and Jack Kellynch amid the sterile concrete pathways; or Matty and Nell Chigwine amongst the soulless melamine and stainless steel of the fifteen identical new kitchens. I bet no old gypsy women came to the parlor door now, seeking a groat and a mug of furmity, or whatever the modern equivalent might be.

As I followed Alison miserably from room to room, it became
ever clearer that wherever the soul of Catherine Anne Tregenna rested, it was not here.

T
HAT NIGHT
I dreamed. It was inevitable after the turmoil of my day. None of the images that stayed with me in the gray light of dawn illuminated the problems I faced, but rather seemed to emphasize them. Anna in a hooded cloak, a great curving knife in her hand, dripping blood. People shouting at me in a language I did not understand. The smell of burning. Michael pleading with me for his life. I dozed, I reentered dream situations, I surfaced; went under again and finally came back to full consciousness feeling a weight of dread pressing in on me.

Alison knocked on the door. “Are you okay? It’s late—gone ten.”

“Damn!”

I had meant to take the first train home out of Penzance. In the end we didn’t make it to the station until lunchtime. As we stood on the platform, watching the passengers from the just-arrived London train disembark and make their way through the throng of friends and relatives waiting to meet them, Alison said suddenly, “Isn’t that Anna?”

My heart fell like a stone into the pit of my stomach. Out of the first-class carriage stepped a dark-haired woman in an expensively tailored jacket and straight-legged jeans, which slid seamlessly into a pair of glossy, high-heeled brown boots. Despite the looming horror of the social situation about to explode around me, I found myself admiring her effortless style.

Then I turned to run.

Alison caught my arm. “Look, you’re just going to have to brazen it out. What’s worse, saying hello for five minutes on a station platform with your escape ready to chug off into the distance, or dodging around for the rest of your life trying to avoid her?”

She had a point, though I couldn’t see why we couldn’t just nip
into the station café and hide while she walked past, and said so. Alison pulled a face. “Don’t be stupid. She’s bound to spot you, and then it’d be obvious you were trying to avoid her. Besides, if she thinks I’m playing the same game, she’s hardly going to trust me to do up her cottage, is she?”

So there I was, waiting like a sacrificial lamb, knowing that my execution was coming ever closer, watching my ex-lover’s wife tow her dinky little silver suitcase down the platform toward us, her perfectly made-up face showing no sign of having registered our presence.

I had seen Anna only intermittently in the last seven years, enough to witness her changing fortunes and style and in some way envy them. But as she approached, her eyes fixed on the tarmac in case it was booby-trapped, I realized with a shock that she had aged. Dye and clever cosmetics can hide a lot, but what they cannot hide are the erosions caused by catastrophic life experience. Lines were deeply incised on either side of her beautifully painted but down-turned mouth: Anna. She walked right past us and out into the sunlight without seeing us at all, and it struck me that I was watching the passage of a deeply unhappy woman.

I pondered that for some time on my return journey. I knew in my gut that the depth of grief I had seen etched into her face was that of a woman who has known for a very long time that her husband is unfaithful to her, a woman who has borne his infidelity silently, and only let the mask slip in private, or in an unguarded moment such as the one I had just witnessed. I sat for three hours, through Exeter, through Taunton, as the train cut through the ancient landscapes of the Salisbury Plain, remembering my times with Michael. I revisited his body, every inch of it, clothed and naked, in repose and aroused. I cried, very quietly, with my face pressed against the window so that no one could see. The train rushed through Hungerford; by the time we stopped at Reading, I had put Michael away from me, shut all my memories up in a box and stowed it away in a dark attic corner of my mind.

I
T WAS WITH
some relief that I closed my own front door behind me after the weeks in someone else’s house, and felt its familiar shades and contours enfold me.

I dumped my suitcase in the bedroom and went to make myself a mug of tea. Then I wandered from room to room, reacquainting myself with my home. Perhaps I was tired and fraught, or perhaps my mind was playing tricks with me, but little details of the flat kept catching my eye. Had I really left the Sunday papers so untidy under the desk? Had the books on the shelves to either side of the fireplace always been so higgledy-piggledy? I didn’t remember leaving the cardboard box full of files out where it was now, nor the bureau lid open. I frowned.

In the bedroom I found that the drawer of my bedside table had not been properly shut, the faulty catch not engaged. There was a knack to it, and only I had it. Someone had been here. Someone had broken into my flat.

In sudden panic I raced back into the front room, but the entertainment center appeared untouched, all its little silver high-tech boxes still wired in place. My paintings still hung on the walls; my old laptop still sat on the desk, and no one had bothered to steal the few pieces of jewelry my mother had left me.

I frowned. Not a very successful burglary, all in all.

When I finally realized what must have happened, my knees gave way and I suddenly found myself sitting firmly on my Afghan rug.